The Alliance Research Group Centre for Literature in Translation (Centrum voor Literatuur in Vertaling; CLIV) was created in 2014 by Ghent University and the VUB. This cooperation resulted from the merger of two former research groups which focussed on literary translation: the Ghent University/University College Ghent Association research group Literature in Translation (2009-2014) and the VUB Centre for Literary Translation (2012-2014).
Due to market mechanisms, literary translation has gradually been disregarded in the academic curriculum and is only being treated marginally in translation studies and literary theory. This explains the need to pool the existing expertise in a joint forum that actively cooperates with similar or overarching fora in Belgium and abroad, e.g. the Platform Vertalen & Vertaalwetenschap (Platform for Translation and Translation Studies; UvA/Utrecht), which channels communication between researchers in literary translation in Holland and Flanders. An established network of associated members should guarantee the international embedding of the centre’s research and contribute to new initiatives that broaden research perspectives.
CLIV’s main line of research concerns the discursive presence or absence of the translation instance as it manifests itself on different levels (poetical, ideological, ethical,…) IN certain areas of literary texts (such as paratexts, retranslations or adaptations) and, at the macro level, AROUND the text (through translation sociological research or research into the relevance of translation for literary theory as well as for literary history).