Radical Translations: The Transfer of Revolutionary Culture between Britain, France and Italy (1789-1815)

自革命时期以来，平等和权利的激进思想在国际上的传播深刻地影响了欧洲社会。然而，今天，这种国际主义的遗产被认为已经结束，或者至少不能被转化为新的背景。该项目着眼于法国大革命，以重新激活这一共同的激进过去。它的问题是：翻译对革命思想和政治的影响是什么？即使在今天，我们与革命思想的关系是如何通过翻译来调解的？长期以来，革命的翻译作品一直被当作纯粹的山寨宣传而不予审查或贬值。与此相反，我们的项目试图重新定位译者的角色，不是被动的合作者，而是积极的激进分子，寻求将民主“传播”到新的文化和语言中——这在当时和现在都是一个有争议的想法。关注翻译发生的原因和时间以及翻译失败的地方，我们试图理解跨国革命成语是如何被采用、改编、抵制或拒绝的，以努力为当地的政治行动创造具有文化特色的工具。我们还试图阐明翻译在使民主运动能够接触到更广泛的公众并使自己成为国际斗争的一部分方面所发挥的关键作用。调查将集中在两条轴线上：一条连接英国和法国，另一条穿越阿尔卑斯山到达意大利并返回，英语文本通常通过法语翻译到达意大利读者手中。一项关键的产出将是一个数据库，其中载有大约400种具有激进目的的译文的资料，这些译文分散在世界各地的图书馆和档案馆，从来没有系统地整理过。我们将考虑各种各样的材料，包括：已发表的翻译，自我翻译，想象为翻译的文本以及未发表或计划翻译，因快速变化的政治事件而受阻，并可从期刊，出版商的说明书和个人通信中恢复。我们将使用表面学数据模型来揭示翻译人员及其专业和政治身份的阴暗世界，首先是50名翻译人员的核心名单，他们工作在英语，法语和意大利语中，可扩展到其他语言。我们将通过一系列个案研究来分析译者如何克服不同国家和社会地区在物质和符号资源上的不对称。我们的课题不限于历史问题。为了测试革命思想在今天引起共鸣的能力，我们将邀请学生、翻译人员、戏剧从业者和基层活动家，用现代语言翻译和表演一些激进的文本。这些翻译和表演活动记录在项目网站上，旨在提高公众对激进思想的世界性根源的认识，并激发将激进作品翻译为“活文本”的新方法。对翻译中“存在效应”的同样探索，将形成一部新的翻译文本选集，最终使被遗忘的激进文化杰作在英语中可用。通过突出激进主义，该项目有可能改写关于翻译作为一种文化和创造性活动的基本假设。在动荡的革命政治气候中，翻译不仅仅是一个受人尊敬的原创作品的新容器，而是一种直接行动，依赖于政治机会的开放或关闭。通过强调激进翻译分析中最重要的时间因素，本项目将解决以下更具思辨性的问题：-是否存在一种跨国革命成语，它是否因地而异？翻译能否识别出思想是如何被吸收的，哪些是不合适的和不合适的？对激进翻译的关注如何挑战我们对“激进”和“翻译”的理解？

The international circulation of radical ideas of equality and rights has deeply shaped European societies since the revolutionary period. Yet today, this legacy of internationalism is assumed to be over or at least incapable of being translated into new contexts. This project looks to the French Revolution to reactivate this shared radical past. It asks: what was the impact of translation on revolutionary thought and politics? And how is our relation to revolutionary ideas mediated by translation even today? Revolutionary translations have long been left unexamined or devalued as mere copycat propaganda. Our project, in contrast, seeks to reposition the role of translators not as passive collaborators but as active militants seeking to 'spread democracy' into new cultures and languages - a contested idea then as now. Focusing on why and when translation happens as well as where it fails, we seek to understand how a transnational revolutionary idiom was adopted, adapted, resisted or rejected in the effort to create culturally specific tools for political action on the ground. We also seek to illuminate the crucial role played by translation in enabling democratic movements to reach wider publics and cast themselves as part of an international struggle. The investigation will focus on two axes: one connecting Britain and France and the other crossing the Alps to Italy and back, with Anglophone texts often reaching Italian readers via French translation. A key output will be a database containing information on an estimated 400 translations with a radicalizing purpose, scattered in libraries and archives around the world and never systematically collated. We will consider a diverse range of material including: published translations, self-translations, texts imagined as translations as well as unpublished or projected translations, blocked by rapidly changing political events and recoverable from periodicals, publisher's prospectuses, and personal correspondence. We will use prosopographical data models to shed light on the shadowy world of translators and their professional and political identities, beginning with a core list of 50 translators working across English, French and Italian, scalable to other languages. We will identify a series of case-studies to analyse how translators sought to overcome real asymmetries between countries and areas of society in both material and symbolic resources. Our project is not limited to historical questions. To test the capacity of revolutionary ideas to resonate today we will invite students, translators, theatre practitioners and grassroots activists to translate and perform a selection of radical texts in present-day language. These translation and performance activities - documented on the project website - aim to enhance public awareness of the cosmopolitan roots of radical thought as well as stimulate new methods of translating radical works as 'living texts'. The same search for a 'presence effect' in translation will shape a new anthology of translated texts, finally making available in English forgotten masterpieces of radical culture.By foregrounding radicalism, this project has the potential to rewrite fundamental assumptions about translation as a cultural and creative activity. In the convulsive political climate of revolution, translation was not simply a new container for an esteemed original but became a type of direct action, dependent on the opening or closing of political opportunity. By highlighting the all-important time factor in the analysis of radical translation, this project will address the following more speculative questions: - Is there a transnational revolutionary idiom and does it vary from place to place? - Can translation identify how ideas are assimilated and which remain inappropriate and out of place?- How might a focus on radical translation challenge our understandings both of what is 'radical' and what is a 'translation'?