Inaugural Lecture: Professor Piotr Blumczynski

This lecture reflects on translation as experience mediated by the senses. Combining insights from embodied cognition with a somatics of translation (Douglas Robinson) and the concept of sensuous translation (África Vidal Claramonte), it explores selected implications of theorising and practicing translation as complex embodied experience. Some aspects of this experience are unsettling and humbling, others – reassuring; collectively, they highlight the sensitising role of translation in both perception (including self-perception) and representation. To test the explanatory power of this approach, it will be applied to a range of real communicative and educational challenges calling for sensitive, engaged, and ethical translation.

was born and raised in Wrocław, Poland, where he completed all stages of his formal education: BA in English, MA in Linguistics, PhD in Translation Studies, and Habilitation in the Humanities. After several years in post at his alma mater, he joined Queen’s University Belfast as a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting (2010), and was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer (2017), and to Professor (2023). His research interests span translation theory, philosophy of translation, ethnolinguistics, and cognitive semantics. He has published more than fifty scholarly outputs, including the books Ubiquitous Translation (2016) and Experiencing Translationality (2023), and the edited volumes Translating Values (2016, with John Gillespie) and The Languages of COVID-19 (2022, with Steven Wilson). During his time at Queen’s, Piotr has supervised to completion over twenty doctoral projects in translation, interpreting, and linguistics. He is the Editor-in-chief of the journal Translation Studies.

The lecture will be recorded and available to view online shortly after the event.

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Host or Publisher School of Arts, English and Languages