China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney
1:00 PM to
3:00 PM (AEST), 9 August 2019
Room 708, Jane Foss Russell Building, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006
Since the United Nations’ (UN) announced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, there is increasing pressure on member states to frame their policies and agendas in the context of ‘sustainability’. How they do so is a key area of focus across a wide range of academic disciplines. In the narrow sense of the word, translation refers to the rendering of meaning from one language into another. In a broader sense, however, translation also refers to a form of conversion from one plane or act to another. Given also that the definition over the implementation of the SDGs are left to member-states of the UN, it is true that there is room for states to reinterpret international efforts towards sustainable development which is not limited to translation in the narrow sense. ‘Translation,’ used in this sense, includes the important factor of political and cultural reinterpretation of sustainable development on the one hand, but accepts that national capacities and socio-ecological contexts can also dictate how the norm of sustainability is instrumentalised politically, on the other. The dynamics of transition are not solely within the deliberative control of individual states and their interactions with each other across the world. Rather it is necessary to recognise the transnationalism imbued in the sustainable development discourse and indeed how the recession of the social and economic significance of national boundaries and expansion of international markets have caused states to adapt by recalibrating political responsibilities with respect to citizens.
About the Speaker
Dr Christine Ji specialises in translation studies. She has published widely on language and cultural studies of translations. She is the first editor of Advances in Empirical Translation Studies: Developing Translation Resources and Technologies (Cambridge University Press) (2019); The Oxford Handbook of Translation and Social Practices (Oxford University Press) (2020), and a dozen other books with Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, Waseda University Press (Tokyo), Peter Lang, John Benjamins, etc. As the founding editor, she has developed two major book series for Routledge and Cambridge University Press on advanced language studies as empirical research fields. Her books have been translated to Japanese, French and Italian. Dr Ji worked as a professional translator (Chinese/Spanish/English) for the UN before her academic career in the UK, Japan and Australia.