Language in the USSR

"The Politics and Pragmatics of Translation in the USSR: The Daily Life of Language in a Multi-National Empire," 1512 SIPA (Thursday–Friday)

This conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines across the humanities and social sciences to discuss the politics of language and the pragmatics of language policy under state socialism in one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world. Invoking “translation” in the broadest terms, the conference will address such topics as the art of translation of formal literary works from minority languages into Russian (i.e., Boris Pasternak’s use of cribs to translate Georgian literature without ever learning the Georgian language), practices of code-switching between official and local languages in informal conversation as well as formal literary contexts, and the mobilization of local language ideologies as a form of resistance against the hegemony of the Russian language in every aspect of daily experience. In an effort to understand the politics and pragmatics of translation in the USSR in comparative perspective, the conference program also features scholars whose work addresses similar problems elsewhere in the world and in other socio-historical contexts.

Keynote speakers: David Bellos, Princeton University and Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh.

For more information, contact Lauren Ninoshvili. Conference Program