Minna Hjort

Monolingual multilingualism, multilingual monolingualism

In my poster presentation I will examine a selection of interesting examples from contemporary literary fiction and more specifically fictional dialogue containing an act of translation or an illusion of translation in some form. These include examples of 1) literary multilingualism where the translation of an item in a language other than the main language of the work is provided in the immediate context, 2) fictional translation where a fictional character explicitly marks a passage as a translation, and 3) examples of what could be called monolingual multilingualism where the language used by a fictional character according to the narrative is different from the language in which it is actually presented. I am particularly interested in the markers of language and translation in the texts and the functions of these acts and illusions of translation, as well as the potential challenges they pose to translation in the classical sense.

Minna Hjort is a professional translator and a PhD student at the University of Helsinki. She is currently applying the finishing touches to her thesis on the translation of swearing. Her current research interests include literary translation, the translation and sociolinguistics of taboo language usage, and literary multilingualism in translation.