Report on the Symposium "The Translation of Multilingual Films"

This symposium was the first public presentation of the TRAFILM project (FFI2014-55952-P), which researches the phenomenon of multilingualism in films. The seminar started with a plenary lecture by Dr. Carol O’Sullivan, University of Bristol, “Translating Multilingual Films: from the Multiplex to the Arthouse” which presented an inspiring historical and theoretical overview of multilingualism in the cinema and its relevance for translation.
This was followed by papers from all TRAFILM members.  Dr. Corrius and Dr. Espasa, as coordinators of the project, reviewed the general theoretical and methodological framework of the project. The titles of their papers were “From multilingual texts to Trafilm: A pathway to validate and refine the theoretical models on AVT” (Corrius), and “An overview of Trafilm project: methodological considerations and corpus selection” (Espasa).
Then, Dr. Zabalbeascoa and Dr. Sokoli showed how the theoretical and methodological foundations of the project can be articulated and integrated in an online plataform of metadata, an essential tool for the TRAFILM group, which is open to the collaboration of other researchers working in this field. The titles of their papers were “From pretty theory to messy reality: adapting L3 models and variables to the Trafilm design of a usable online form for collecting metadata” (Zabalbeascoa), and “Collecting data analyses of L3 instances in multilingual films: towards the Trafilm consultable database” (Sokoli).
Last but definitely not least, the seminar ended with papers by Dr. Santamaria and Dr. Pujol, who showed the versatility of the TRAFILM project to account for relevant phenomena in multilingualism in film, such as cultural referents, or the presence of constructed languages in films and transmedia projects: “L3 as a cultural referent” (Santamaria), and “Constructed languages as L3 in Transmedia films” (Pujol).

This was followed by a hands-on open research seminar in the afternoon, which let all participants test the design and use of the TRAFILM database. Among the participants, Dr. Carol O’Sullivan, who provided feedback from her expertise, as well as doctoral students, including Guillermo Parra, who officially joined the TRAFILM team in that seminar and incorporated his findings from his ongoing PhD project. A phrase in the seminar that was often repeated was “From pretty theory to messy reality”. This does show the complexity of this research, but does not do justice to its positive effects: the richness involved in collaborative research, and the fruitful interchange of information and perspectives that this provides.

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