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The next seminar in the Department of Philosophy research seminar series will take place on Wednesday 28 February.

How to preserve literary value through translation? Is translating literary texts always to betray? In the case of literary works Saying almost the same thing (borrowing the title of Eco’s essay) does not seem to be enough. Translation is based on the idea that equivalence can be established between two languages, the original and the target language. Equivalence which, however, in the literary case in which tone and colour, far from being mere details, are (in many cases) the substance, can never be given (which is why we sometimes speak of the “untranslatability” of literature); hence the inevitability of betrayal.

Carola Barbero is a philosopher of language and literature. She has been visiting at the University of Auckland (2007) and visiting professor at ETH Zurich (2020). She is the author of many academic papers. Among her books are Madame Bovary: Something Like a Melody (2005), Who fears Mr. Hyde? (2010), Philosophy of Literature (2013), Meaning (with S. Caputo 2018), The door of Phantasy (2019) and That Shiver in the Back. The languages of literature (2023).

More information is available on the . For further information please contact the Research Seminars series convenor, Prof. Jean-Paul De Lucca.