The Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication was inaugurated in fall 2007. Initially located in the Department of Comparative Literature, it is now supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. [Read more]
David Bellos
French and Italian, Comparative Literature
[Full committee]
Issues of translation and intercultural communication arise everywhere in the contemporary world: in literary texts, on the internet, in television and film, in business, science, and in questions of human rights. How does one translate the language of a poem? How does one translate a legal system or concepts such as democracy, or happiness, or scapegoat, or hero from one culture and language to another? How does the brain perform translation? What are the languages of artificial intelligence? How do we translate meanings across disciplinary as well as international borders—from genomics to dance, from philosophy to film?
The Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication seeks to allow students to develop skills in language use and in the understanding of cultural and disciplinary difference. Translation across languages allows access to issues of intercultural differences, and the program will encourage its students to think about the complexity of communicating across cultures, nations, and linguistic borders. For this reason, all students in the program must have proficiency in a language other than English, and must also spend time living in a country where that language is spoken.
Though the program takes linguistic translation as its base, and has a strong international flavor, it also encourages students to study other forms of discourse, the languages of different scholarly disciplines, for example, and seeks to foster lively debates among the sciences, humanities, and the arts.