Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures

Italy offers an exceptional example for the study of translating cultures. In the 150 year history of the country as a nation state, communities identified as Italian have formed all over the world, while in the last 30 years Italy has also become a destination country for migrants from a variety of national, religious and ethnic backgrounds. All these communities have shaped the way in which 'Italianness' is understood within the nation and beyond its confines, while contributing to the formation of local identities in linguistic and cultural contexts markedly different from Italy. The project will examine the forms of mobility that have defined the development of modern Italian culture and its interactions with other cultures across the globe. It will concentrate on a series of exemplary cases, representative of the geographic, historical and linguistic map of Italian mobility. It will look at the Italian communities established in the UK, the US, Australia, South America; at colonial settlement in Africa; and at the migrant communities in contemporary Italy. Focussing on the cultural associations that each community has formed, the project will examine the wealth of publications and materials - journals, literature, life stories, photographs, collections of memorabilia, and other forms of representation - that are associated with these organizations. It will investigate the processes of translation that are evident at every level of the communities in question and that characterize all the textual/ visual material associated with them. It will analyse the significance of the choice of writing in the language of the host community or in that of the country of origin; the hybridization of linguistic codes. It will focus on the circulation of texts and materials within the communities themselves and beyond, examining the impact they have on notions of national identity. At the same time as the project develops insights into transnational Italian cultures, it will produce a new framework for the discipline of Modern Languages as a whole, one which sees the study of the interaction of cultures as its most essential characteristic. The project will bring together researchers from the different subject areas of Modern Languages and show the importance of the connection with research in other arts and social science disciplines. In order to achieve this aim, the project will produce a major work of scholarship on the theory and practice of cultural translation, a reader on culture and translation for students of Modern Languages and a website which functions as a hub for related work on this theme. It will also serve to enhance public understanding of Modern Languages by fostering public debate between discipline specialists and policy makers. The research outputs are intended to produce new frameworks to address contemporary concerns regarding linguistic/ geographical/ cultural mobility, they will serve an important pedagogical function, and will be of clear benefit to the wider community. They consist of five edited volumes, explicitly intended to further new methods of studying national languages and cultures and their inter-relation; three workshops; two international conferences and an exhibition to be staged at a variety of international locations; the website will provide an interactive context for the above publications and activities. The highly inter-disciplinary nature of the PhD and post-doctoral projects are intended to prepare a new generation of researchers in advancing skills of inter-cultural and inter-lingual awareness. The inter-disciplinary nature of the project, its addressing of new resources and its establishment of new research frameworks which locate translation and mobility at the centre of the study of contemporary cultures. The dissemination of the outputs is designed to take place at every level of secondary and higher education and to have clear public policy implications.