Just when you, I, and others were thinking it was about time for Translation World to be paying more attention to the literature of the African diaspora (not to mention Africa itself), this press release comes in:
New Organization: Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA)
During the Third Summer School for Translation Studies in Africa in Lusaka in 2014, participants suggested the founding of an association for translation studies with an African agenda. After much deliberation, we are now at the point where we want to announce our intent to found such an association. We intend to have a founding meeting during the Fourth Summer School for Translation Studies in Nairobi between 29 August and 1 September 2016. In the meantime, the to-be-founded association will be run by a steering committee, with the official leadership being elected at the first meeting.
With this communication, we invite scholars, students and practitioners who want to associate themselves with translation studies in Africa to join this association. We conceptualise translation studies as wide as possible, including interpreting, intercultural communication, intersemiotic translation, multimodal communication, sociologies of translation and all other forms of rewriting and recreation.
Please visit our web site at https://atranslationstudiesafrica.wordpress.com/ where you will find application forms, the names of the steering committee, a suggested constitution and other relevant information.
If you’d like to know more, the contact person for queries is Kobus Marais.
I’m so delighted to see that this is happening, and hope that the new organization will successfully embrace literary translation practitioners as well as those who are theorizing and studying the translation and transmission of African and African diaspora literature. (Oftentimes the same people engage in both spheres of activity, anyhow.) I hope a journal results – on paper or online – and very much look forward to following the development of this project. I just signed up to become a member, and hope that many of you will do the same.