The Translating Through Time (TTT) network creates a platform for a timely intervention in the study of historical translation in Europe, from the late Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century. Its aim is to gather scholars whose overlapping and distinct expertise will allow a large-scale investigation of dynamic transformations in the theory and practice of translation. The chief aim of TTT is to stage a critical, multidisciplinary intervention in the presentism in current translation research, where the prevailing focus on modern translation hinders a fuller understanding of its historical riches and its enduring afterlives.
The network ambitions to advance the current state of the art both conceptually and analytically. Conceptually, TTT will work towards a co-created historicized glossary of key concepts in the study of translation. At present, the premodern period is largely neglected by Translation Studies, whose theoretical concepts mostly derive from the post-1990s. Not only is the practice and theory of translation far older; the period which TTT studies is key to a longue-durée understanding of translation’s foundations. Analytically, the Network’s focus will lie in charting and analyzing the media and actors of translation in the long early-modern period through a comparatist approach. Then as now, translation was a highly dynamic, rapidly-developing practice of pivotal cultural importance. With the transition from manuscript to print arose a proliferation of media that transformed culture. It was also a time of increased literacy and changing reading publics; a period in which the actors of translation became increasingly varied. Our aim is therefore to foreground changing concepts, actors, and media.
The network consists of a core team (Brecht de Groote, Ghent; Beatrijs Vanacker, Leuven; Alisa Van de Haar, Leiden; Freyja Cox Jensen and Helena Taylor, Exeter; Noreen Humble, Calgary) and involves research groups from these universities, in addition to groups based in Antwerp, Queen Mary London, Liège, Lausanne, Louvain-la-Neuve, and UCL.