1,720,961 research outputs found
'What do we chat about when we chat about culture?' The discourse of online intercultural exchanges
No full textThis chapter draws upon over seven years of experience of using telecollaboration as an integral part of an undergraduate course in English language at the University of Glasgow. This final-year course, ‘Culture and English Language Teaching’, addresses intercultural language learning through a combination of lectures, student presentations, class discussions and experiential online exchanges through ‘Intercultural Communications’, a specially tailored moodle platform. ‘Intercultural Communications’ allows spaces for students from Europe, South America and Asia to explore aspects of their culture and identity for themselves, and for the Glasgow-based students (who typically include UK undergraduates as well as European and Asian exchange students) there is also explicit input on the goals of intercultural learning, and ethical, political and practical issues in language education. Students may post online the outcomes of intercultural activities, such as home ethnographies, reactions to literature from other cultures, and example language learning activities. One discussion forum is set up as a ‘café’ where students initiate and develop their own discussions.
The results over the years have been patchy: some groups entered into discussion enthusiastically, while others held back; some discussion threads attracted many responses, while others attracted little; many of the more successful topics seemed to the teachers to avoid the ethical and political issues raised by the course, and to concentrate on what, at face value, might seem like ‘trivial’ points, though a few discussions did raise sensitive issues to do with justice, ethics and identity.
This chapter reviews online intercultural exchanges from the perspective of what students choose to talk about, and how they talk about the topics they choose, in both asynchronous and synchronous chat contexts. This content and linguistic analysis is complemented by an exploration of how students reflect on their experience of the course in interviews carried out with the most recent class of Glasgow-based students after teaching and assessment was over, and focusing largely on the value and functioning of the intercultural exchange element of the course. The chapter also offers suggestions on the role of the tutor in a context where the goal is intercultural dialogue on equal terms, and whether and how to shape online discussions on intercultural issues
Images de mafia à cheval sur trois cultures : Una storia semplice de Leonardo Sciascia et ses traductions espagnole, française, anglaise
No full textLeonardo Sciascia’s A Simple Story (Una storia semplice) sparked interest among translators and readers worldwide. The paper explores the relationships between a literary representation of the mafia in the Italian original text and its iterations in English, French and Spanish translations. The Sicilian author aptly uses the framework of the mafia detective story, where fiction and reality intertwine, to unravel and condemn the enigmas of the mafia criminal system. Through the use of a language marked by regionalisms, a specialized vocabulary and an often complex syntax, Sciascia creates color and atmosphere in his narrative and provides an important ironic flavor. These aspects present particular challenges for translators; their creative versions of Sciascia’s text, in each of the three languages mentioned, will be analyzed in order based on the year of publication
El libre albedrío y el arte de la memoria en Leonora de Elena Poniatowska.
Full text linkLeonora (2011) de Elena Poniatowska, inspirada en la vida de la artista mexicana, nacida en Inglaterra, Leonora Carrington, celebra la contribuciόn significativa de los inmigrantes a la cultura mexicana. Mi interpretación de esta narrativa está situada en el marco de los acercamientos a la libertad intelectual, la memoria y la novela biográfica, planteados por Isaiah Berlín, Sigmund Freud y Vladimir Nabokov. Las ideas de Berlín sobre la libertad como esencia de lo humano me permite discutir la representaciόn poética de Leonora Carrington, rebelde y feminista madame del arte surrealista. El acercamiento a la imaginación como una forma de memoria, curiosamente compartido por Freud y Nabokov, me permitirá analizar las funciones de la memoria literaria e histórica en la novela, construida en la intersecciόn de las historias individuales y las nacionales. Enfatizando la herencia perdurable de los inmigrantes en el desarrollo de la cultura mexicana, el libro de Poniatowska ejemplifica la novela biográfica como un vehículo poderoso para exponer y críticar la cultura, y además añade una dimensiόn global a la novela histórica mexicana del siglo XXI.
Abstract
Elena Poniatowska’s Leonora (2011), inspired by the life of the English-born Mexican artist, Leonora Carrington, celebrates immigrants’ contribution to the Mexican cultural landscape. I will discuss this biographical novel through the lenses of the ideas on intelectual freedom, memory and biographical novel, developed by such diverse thinkers as Isaiah Berlin, Sigmund Freud y Vladimir Nabokov. Berlin’s ideas about freedom as an essence of being human will help me to examine a representation of Leonora, a rebellious surrealist and a femenist. An approach to imagination as a form of memory, which Freud and Nabokov, intriguingly share, will help me to unravel the functions of the literary and historical memory in the novel, built at the intersection of the national and world histories. Underscoring immigrants’ lasting legacy in shaping Mexican culture, Poniatowska’s book both exemplifies a biographical novel as a powerful tool for the exploration and critique of culture, and adds a global dimension to the historical Mexican novel of the twenty-first century
Intercultural/lingual Mediation: Vladimir Nabokov\u27s Pushkin and The Art of Translation
No full textVladimir Nabokov’s vision of multilingualism is central to an understanding both of his own fiction and of his work as a translator. Taking a cue from Nabokov’s theoretical interventions on translation and his view of exile as a stage for the creative fusion of past and present through the work of memory and imagination, this paper aims at exploring the integrity between Nabokov writer, critic and translator as reflected in his version of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, and his own novel The Gift. My reading of Nabokov’s texts is informed by two complementary perspectives. Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of linguistic homelessness, and his concept of dialogue, will help me to consider Nabokov’s multilingual approach to writing and translation as emphatically singular forms of artistic expressions inspired by others’ words. Willard van Orman Quine’s ideas about the indispensability and indeterminacy of translation will allow me to examine the topos of translation as an imaginary encounter in Nabokov’s fiction written in exile. In light of Bakhtin’s and Quine’s perspectives, I will discuss Nabokov’s vision of translation, shaped by his trilingual childhood and émigré experience, his version of Pushkin’s text as a daring performative response to a major poet, and a concept of translation as intercultural/ lingual mediation and communication in Nabokov’s last Russian novel
Book Review – Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching and Telecollaborative Language Learning
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Book Review - The Impact of E-Learning Programs on the Internationalization of the University
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