PRG project Translation in History, Estonia 1850-2010: Texts, Agents, Institutions and Practices (2021-2025)
The Translation in History, Estonia 1850-2010: Texts, Agents, Institutions and Practices project (2021-2025), led by Prof. Daniele Monticelli and funded by the Estonian Research Council, involves six researchers and several PhD students. The project builds on a long tradition of translation studies combined with semiotics, cultural and literary studies at the School of Humanities.
The project studies Estonian translation history (1850–2010) by considering translation as an active agent of cultural change that is functionally crucial to a culture’s self-understanding. It aims to:
- write a multi-layered history of translation in Estonia (1850–2010) structured around fundamental changes in the social and political history of the country;
- explore the fundamental role of translation and translators in the cultural, social and political transformation of Estonia by combining statistical and translation analysis with insights from the sociological turn in translation studies;
- highlight the centrality of translation and translators for transnational cultural history by promoting international cooperation between scholars in translation studies, history, literary and cultural studies.
The research will focus on the institutional and social settings of translation, translation norms and practices, translators, translated literature and the place and function of translation in culture in different periods of Estonian history. Two new databases will be created in cooperation with Tallinn University’s Academic Library: the Translator database, containing brief biographical information about the Estonian translators who worked during the 1850-2010 period; and the Translation database containing data on literary translations into Estonian as published books or in periodicals in the 1850-2010 period as well as reviews of these translations.