Translation and Medical Humanities

Magdala Jeudy demonstrates her practice of translation with an episode from Emile Zola's L'Assommoir that raises many questions about conscious and unconscious translation practices.

A short film highlighting the two day Translation and Medical Humanities Conference 2023 Funded by Bodies in Translation: Science, Knowledge and Sustainability in Cultural Translation, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, and The Research Council of Norway.

Marta Arnaldi introduces the idea that medical humanities is a fundamentally translational field. This vision reshuffle, and invites us to rethink, our beliefs of what counts as science, practice, and/or knowledge. Marta Arnaldi is a Lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo.

A moving scholarly exploration and poetic performance. Appearing from distinct cultural traditions, but coalescing in the tradition of scholarship, we not only recognise but rely on gist to navigate the often-opaque waters of intercultural flows. A moving scholarly exploration and poetic performance. Alison Phipps holds the UNESCO Chair for Refugee Integration through Languages and Arts at the Uni...

In this keynote speech, Trish Greenhalgh uses ideas of translation to analyse, make sense of, and bring under a unified lens the heterogenous knowledge networks at play in long-covid clinics. Trish Greenhalgh is Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the UK Royal College of Physicians: https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/trish-greenhalgh

The speakers outline the possibilities and implications catalysed by rethinking translation and medical humanities as continuous, ever-changing, and synergistic fields. At the end of the Translation and Medical Humanities conference (https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences/2023/translation-and-medical-humanities.html) at the University of Oxford, Marta Arnald...

A fascinating exploration of the likenesses between cellular and verbal communication, and their impact on the insurgence of disease. Banafshé Larijani (https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/banafshe-larijani) is Director of the Centre for Therapeutic Innovation, University of Bath. She is an international scientist and poet who explores the continuum between science and art, and the ways i...

Nicola Gardini challenges the idea that health is the opposite of disease. Nicola Gardini suggests that health is a creative process of self-fashioning culminating with death. It resembles translation – in particular, translation from poetry. Constructing health is constructing the ‘beauty’ of a new form. An award-winning writer and a painter, Nicola Gardini is Professor of Italian and Comparative...

The speakers share their disciplinary journeys (and crossings) by outlining the ways in which they came to research translation and medical humanities independently and collaboratively, as separate areas and as a unified field. Marta Arnaldi is a Lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo: https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/people/marta...

Mona Baker’s key note examines the work of recently founded groups of volunteer translators who focus on the intersection of health and the environment. Contrary to the dominant view of translation as an empowering ‘act of care’, much of the work of these (often well intentioned) groups perpetuate, rather than combatting, epistemic injustice. Mona Baker is Affiliate Professor at the Centre for Sus...

Marta Arnaldi helps us imagine medical humanities as a fundamentally translational field. She envisions ways of thinking translationally about health and disease, while also pinpointing potential risks and likely areas of failure. Marta Arnaldi is a Lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo: https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/people/ma...

Professor John Ødemark outlines the key ideas underpinning the Bodies in Translation project and its role in shaping a translational medical humanities imagination. More details about the Bodies in Translation project, can be found here: https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/bodies-in-translation-science-knowledge-and-sustai/index.html#:~:text=In%20this%20project%2C%20we%20look,and%...

This keynote lecture approaches issues of translation by decolonizing dominant conceptions of language and medicine. It proposes collaborations aimed at creating incommunicability-free zone that promote communicative justice in health and medicine. Charles Briggs is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley: https://anthropology.berkeley.edu/charles-l-briggs