Mercator Newsletter - No.17, September 2005
[Mercator-Education] [Mercator-Legislation] [Mercator-Media]
From January 2005 the Mercator Common Newsletter is a monthly newsletter. This way you will be kept informed with more recent and updated information.


4th Mercator International Symposium
Mercator-Media

Translation of Culture, Culture of Translation: Languages in Film, Television and Literature
Aberyswyth, Wales
26 - 28 October 2005


IV Mercator International Symposium
"Translation of Culture, Culture of Translation: Languages in Film, Television and Literature"

MERCATOR-MEDIA

 

Dates Announced for the 4th Mercator International Symposium

The 4th Mercator International Symposium will be held on 26, 27 and 28 October 2005 in Aberystwyth, Wales and will have the theme of "Translation of Culture, Culture of Translation: Languages in Film, Television and Literature".

Language transfer, which includes, for the purposes of this symposium, subtitling and dubbing of both film and television as well as literary translation, is a multi-faceted phenomenon from the point of view of minority languages. It can be used to disseminate cultures which find themselves outside the audiovisual and literary ‘mainstream’ and to maximise audience or reader numbers for minority cultural products. Moreover, translation into minority languages not only increases the volume of available material in a marginalised language, but may have a wider cultural impact and contribute to the development of the language as a dynamic creative medium. On the other hand, the effect of ‘importing’ cultural references on a large scale may not always be viewed positively.

This symposium will seek contributions to this discussion from those active as practitioners and policy-makers in the audiovisual and literary fields (producers, directors, broadcasters, subtitlers and dubbers, scriptwriters, publishers, authors, translators) as well as those concerned with these issues in an academic context. While the emphasis will be on autochthonous minority languages (that is to say the languages of groups long-established on their current territory and using a language other than the primary official language of their state or a language in some sense socially and/or politically marginalised) connections may be made with issues of concern to smaller state languages, migrant languages and cultural production originating from beyond the metropolitan mainstream. We shall welcome contributions which make those connections. Key areas of discussion will include (but need not be limited to):

  • The politics of translation
  • The effects of ‘global’ culture
  • Cultural policy and translation
  • Language transfer and cultural transfer
  • Translation and language planning
  • International partnerships
  • Digital technology and the internet
  • Sign languages in the audiovisual media
  • Learners and fluent speakers as audiences/readers
  • Children as audience/readers

Registration closes 10 October 2005 and will be on a 'first come first served' basis. Details at:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/mercator/english/events.htm



News September 2005 (links to the Mercator websites)

Legislation news - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation

  • The Council of Europe publishes a report on minority languages in Croatia [+]
  • 15th anniversary of the Office for National and Ethnic Minorities of Hungary [+]
  • The Catalan government issues the new language policy plan [+]
  • CoE holds the colloquium "European culture: Identity and diversity'' [+]
  • The Intergroup issues a critical report on the conditions of the Slovenian minorities in Austria and Italy [+]
  • Four million euros for Hungarian and Italian minorities and languages in Slovenia [+]


Publications

 New: Bulletin n.63 - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation

In its Bulletin n. 63, Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation publishes the following items:

  • The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005
  • Draft Law on the Statute of National Minorities living in Romania
  • Resolution ResCMN(2005)4 on the implementation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities by “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”
  • As well as new bibliography and links.

  Projects: Research at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University - Mercator-Education

    From 1 September until 1 November 2005 Tjeerd de Graaf, research associate at the Frisian Academy is working at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University in Japan.He is invited by this Center in the framework of its Center of Excellence Program. Part of his work concerns the minority situation for two ethnic minorities and their languages: the Ainu of Japan and the Nivkh of Sakhalin. He will compare the similarities of and differences between those groups and use this for a contribution to an article on Endangered Languages for the UNESCO encyclopedia of life support systems.

    One of his tasks consists of the study of archive material in Sapporo (in particular at the Slavic Research Center) and the analysis of recordings made for the Ainu language and the Nivkh language and to set up an acoustic database for these languages and their oral literature and folklore. He is working in the Ainu research centers of Hokkaido and comparing their facilities with those of centers in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk where important data are stored.

    The archives of the Sakhalin Regional Ethnographic Museum contain material collected by famous researchers of Nivkh. One of the research topics will be the reconstruction and further analysis of these recordings and the creation of similar facilities as for the Ainu. This work is financially supported by a research grant of the Netherlands National Science Foundation NWO and sponsored by the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. Co-ordination of the related research program Voices of Tundra and Taiga is possible in Sapporo. During his stay in Sapporo he continues the joint work with his research student Hidetoshi Shiraishi who has a position at Sapporo Gakuin Daigaku since April 2005 and prepares his PhD at Groningen University.

    The work at the Slavic Research Center will also be related to the Nicolaas Witsen Project, which is aimed at an investigation of the minor peoples of Northeast Asia, their history, culture, language and way of life. It gets its inspiration from the book ‘Noord en Oost Tartarije’ by Nicolaas Witsen who traveled to Russia in 1664/65 and collected data on the physical appearance of the country, its fauna and flora and, in particular, on the peoples of the Asian Far East. An interdisciplinary team of specialists has been created which considers the various aspects of this project and started research in the archives in order to find out from where Witsen got his information. The whole text of the book has been translated from 17th century Dutch into Russian and part of it will be published together with annotations.In Sapporo Tjeerd de Graaf continues the investigation of Witsens material in relation to the border areas of Japan and Russia and prepares a publication on this topic.

    Tjeerd de Graaf
    Frisian Academy, Netherlands Academy of Sciences
    e-mail: tdegraaf@fa.knaw.nl
    URL: http://www.let.rug.nl/~degraaf

     

Conference on ‘Lesser Used Languages in Estonia and Europe’ - Mercator Education


On 30 September and 1 October 2005 this conference was organised by the Estonian Bureau for Lesser Used Languages (EstBLUL). It was held in Roosta which is situated in the beautiful area where for a long time a Swedish minority community is living. The main objective for this conference was to inform the language communities in the Baltic Sea area about the EU, Council of Europe and other initiatives such as Mercator as well as to provide information about the situation of the language commmunities in this region.
The participants of the conference were mostly experts, officials and politicians. Most of the minority communities living in Estonia were present, among them the Võro, Seto, Yiddish, Romani, Swedish, German, Finnish, Tatar and Russian community.

For Mercator – Education Cor van der Meer participated in this conference. He gave a presentation about Mercator – Education and about the Frisian language in the province of Fryslân in the Netherlands.

More information can be found on the website EstBLUL, http://www.estblul.ee



Miscellany
European Youth Seminar ‘Minnows’ by the Wales’ Premier Youth Movement

 

Urdd Gobaith Cymru
Wales’ Premier Youth Movement

European Youth Seminar ‘Minnows’
“Pysgod bach mewn mor mawr”
“Small fish in a big sea”
Caerdydd/Cardiff 1-8 July 2006 Cymru/Wales

Urdd Gobaith Cymru would like to invite young people to participate in a Seminar to be held in Wales next year. The focus will be on a European Dimension celebrating the culture and identity of countries and their part in Europe focusing on minority languages, customs, traditions and culture. Up to 8 participants (18-22 years old) including one leader per country.

Accommodation will be at the Urdd Residential Centre at the celebrated Wales Millenium Centre in Cardiff (http://www.wmc.org.uk) Close to Cardiff Wales Airport.

Application for European funding (Connect Youth) will be made early 2006 and usual criteria will apply - which involves part grant and part funding by participating groups.

If you are an interested group or need more information please contact LlinosR@urdd.org 0044-1678 541008. Please also visit our organisation website http://www.urdd.org

New titles Library - Mercator-Education

·New titles library ME Mercator Newsletter no. 17, 2005

· Landscape, Law and Customary Rights : Report from a symposium in Guovdageaidnu-Kautokeino 26-28 March 2003 / [ed. by] Michael Jones and Audhild Schanche. – Norway, Guovdageaidnu-Kautokeino : Nordic Sami Institute, 2004. – (Diedut no.3, 2004) – issn 0332-7779 – signature 100Sam10

· Sustaining and supporting the lesser used languages: An exploration of the impact of language revitalisation on developmental and educational issues in peripheral communities; Sámi Languages in Scandinavia and the Gaelic Languages in Scotland / [ed. by] Sigrid Skålnes. – Oslo : NIBR (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 2001. – 106 p. – signature 100 Sam11

· Kansen in het graan : Rapportage Kansrijk Oost-Groningen / Berend Stellingwerf, Maaike Pulles and Fanny Dusseljee. – Groningen : Rijksuniversiteit Groningen; Expertisecentrum taal, onderwijs en communicatie, 2004. – 15 p. – signature 100Ge228

· Dialect en school in Limburg / [ed. by] Sjaak Kroon and Ton Vallen. –Amsterdam : Aksant : Academic Publishers, 2004. – 93 p. – isbn 905260147x – signature 100Gsb162

· Notitie taalmodellen Fries : Opvoeden tot tweetaligheid in de voorschoolse periode / Bianca Bijlsma. – Leeuwarden : Stichting Partoer, 2004 – 40 p. – signature 100Fri34

· Ramtlearplan : Frysk yn it fuortset ûnderwiis 2005 / [ed. by] Jan Popkema and Henk Jongsma . – Ljouwert : Afûk, 2005. – 110 p. – isbn 9062736564 – signature 100Fri13

· Actieverbeterplan 2005 : RMC functie regio de Friese Wouden / RMC Regio De Friese Wouden. – Drachten : RMC Regio de Friese Wouden, 2005. – 28 p. – signature 100Ge227

· Effectrapportage RMC functie Regio de Friese Wouden : schooljaar 2003-2004 / RMC Regio De Friese Wouden, 2004. – 35 p. – signature 100Ge226

· Taal- en spraaktechnologie en communicatieve beperkingen / Toni Rietveld and Ingeborg Stolte. – Den Haag : Nederlandse Taalunie, 2005. – 52 p. –isbn 109070593068 – signature 100Gsl81

· Fremdsprachen in der Grundschule am Beispiel von einer dreisprachigen Grundschule (Friesland) / Vera Marks. – [S.l.] : [s.n.], 2002? – 93 p. – signature 100Gbe160

· Minderheiten und Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit im Alpen-Adria-Raum / [ed. by] Stefan Böckler … [et al]. – Trient : Arbeitsgemeinschaft Alpen-Adria; Autonome Region Trentino-Südtirol, 2004. – 240 p. – signature 100MLG271

· Sprachrevitalisierung aus kontaktlinguistischer Sicht : Theorie und Praxis am Beispiel Altbelgien-Süd / Jeroen Darquennes. – St. Augustin : Asgard Verlag, 2005. – 213 p. – isbn3537864310 – signature 100Gsl80

· Razprave in gradivo = Treatises and documents : Revija za narodnostna vprasanja = Jounral of Ethnic Studies / ed. by Boris Jesih … [et al]. – Ljubljana : Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja = Institute for Ethnic Studies, 2004. – issn 0354-0286 – signature 100Slo39

· Voices from Tundra and Taiga : Sound materials of the Nivkh Language 3 / Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Galina Lok. – Groningen : Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2004. – 115 p. + CD-ROM. – signatuur 100FINNO1

· Managing the Mix Thereafter: Comparative Research into Mixed Communities in Three Independent Successor States / [ed. by] Albina Nećak Lük, George Muskens and Sonja Novak Lukanoviĉ. – Ljubljana : Institute for Ethnic Studies, 2000. -166 p. – isbn 961615916X – signature 100SLAV2

· Developing minority languages : The Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Minority Languages / [ed. by] Peter Wynn Thomas and Jayne Mathias . – Cardiff : Cardiff University : Department of Welsh; Gomer Press, 2000. – 763 p. – isbn 1859029620 – signature 100MLG266

· Language rights in the Basque Country / Hizkuntz Eskubideen Behatokia = Observatory of Linguistic Rights. – Iruñea : / Hizkuntz Eskubideen Behatokia = Observatory of Linguistic Rights, 2005. – 47 p. – signature 100Bas48

· Écrire les langues d’oïl : Actes du colloque organise à Marcinelle les 27 et 28 septembre 1997 / [ed. by] micRomania. – Charleroi : micRomania, 2002. – 254 p. – signature 100Dut65

· Kiíl ja hindätiidmine : Keel ja identiteet [ ed. by] Toimõndanuq Karl Pajusalu and Jan Rahman : Konvõrentś Rõugõn, 23. -25. rehekuu 2003. – Võro : Võro Instituudi Toimõndusõq , 2004 – Publications of Võro Institute; no. 16. – 248 p. – isbn 9985938682 [Estonian] – signature 100Est5

· Botta e risposta : sugli sloveni in Italia / Vida Valenčič. – [Triëste] : SLORI- Istituto sloveno di ricerche, 2003. – 127 p. – signature 100Slo36

· 3rd Sociolinguistic Map 2001 = III. Mapa Soziolinguistikoa 2001= III Mapa Sociolingüístico = III Carte Sociolinguistique 2001 / Eusko Jaurlaritzaren Argitalpen Zerbitzu Nagusia + Servicio de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco, 2005. – 82 p. – signature 100Bas49

 

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