CSDH/SCHN Annual Conference: intraduisible/Untranslatable

Join us for the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/La Société canadienne des humanités numériques CSDH/SCHN in Montréal, QC! This year's theme is intraduisible/Untranslatable.

This year, we are particularly interested in exploring the notion of “Untranslatable.” Digital Humanities explore and mobilize cultural objects that undergo digitization, modelling, or editorialization. These digital representations result from translation or remediation processes that can introduce biases, reductions, and simplifications. Drawing on the notion of the “untranslatable” proposed by the French philosopher Barbara Cassin, the conference will examine the things that either resist translation, or cannot be translated, due to their materiality and/or cultural specificity.

Each translation opens a problem of meaning-making, context, and conceptual association. For Digital Humanities, “untranslatable” emphasizes that computing implies not only the impossibility of one-to-one equivalence but also layered, modelled, and often probabilistic relations. In particular, when large language models marketed as “artificial intelligence” seem to encompass the entire human knowledge and even generate new ones, it is necessary to discuss how those models could be appropriate for humanistic investigation.

The conference theme also considers the Canadian context, in which French–English bilingualism shapes scholarly communication, culture and politics, and the urgency of Indigenous matter. When Digital Humanities projects engage with knowledge practices and systems of representations, they imply reflexivity and responsibilities for distinct values, selfdetermination, and stewardship.

Does the untranslatable in Digital Humanities arise from its inherent qualities or from the technology itself? Are there any advantages or disadvantages to being untranslatable or translatable? Finally, what are the stakes of translation in contemporary Digital Humanities?

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