Tervetuloa kuulemaan Serenella Zanottin vierailuluentoa elokuvien käännöshistoriasta ja arkistotutkimuksesta! Luentoa seuraa paneelikeskustelu, jossa syvennytään kääntämisen arkistoaineistojen tutkimukseen. Tapahtuman kieli on englanti.
Pe 21.11. klo 13–16
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran juhlasalissa (Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki) ja suoratoistona (linkki päivitetään SKS:n tapahtumakalenteriin)
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You are warmly invited to a guest lecture by Serenella Zanotti on the history of film translation and archival research. The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion exploring the study of translation through archival materials. The event will be held in English.
Friday, 21st of November, 1 pm to 4 pm (EET, UTC +2)
At the Finnish Literature Society (Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki) and online (the link will be updated in the events calendar of the Finnish Literature Society)
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Program
13.00–13.15 Opening: Welcome words by Sakari Katajamäki (the Finnish Literature Society & the Traces of Translation in the Archives project)
13.15–14.45 Guest lecture by Serenella Zanotti
Serenella Zanotti is Associate Professor of English and Translation Studies at Roma Tre University. Her research has focused on topics including audiovisual and literary translation and translation archives, and she has held fellowships at the Lilly Library (Indiana University) and the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin).
Archival Pathways in Film Translation History: from Chaplin to Kubrick
The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in film translation history (Mereu Keating 2016, O’Sullivan and Cornu 2019a and 2019c, Dwyer 2019, Mingant 2019, Gambier and Jin 2022, Abend-David 2025, Zanotti 2025a and 2025b). This resurgence of attention is generating a significant expansion of historical knowledge, characterized by a deeper engagement with what Casper Tybjerg terms “the raw material of film history” (1998). As the place where the past becomes palpable and concrete, the archive has assumed a central role in current research into film translation practices of the past (O’Sullivan and Cornu 2019b).
The aim of this talk is to interrogate the affordances and limitations of the archive in film translation research. Focusing on film directors as diverse as Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick, it will reflect on the intricacies involved in researching film translation history through the prism of the archive. The talk will consist of two parts. The first one will focus on archival traces documenting the “adaptive strategies” (Adamson 2019, 32) employed by silent film translators to tailor foreign films for local audiences, enabling them to transcend their original cultural boundaries. Archival material relating to the Italian releases of Chaplin’s films in the 1920s will be examined with a view to exploring methodological questions arising in silent film translation research.
In the second part, I will consider some of the issues involved in researching translation in a film director’s archive. The Stanley Kubrick Archive offers a rich trove of primary sources for investigating film translation practices. Translation holds an important place in this archive, as Kubrick was deeply involved in all aspects of production and post-production, including the making of foreign versions (Zanotti 2021). And yet this is an aspect that has until recently remained largely in the dark. The examination of archival traces will serve as a platform to discuss the significance of translation in Kubrick’s filmmaking, while also addressing methodological questions central to historical research. It will be argued that, as an aspect that becomes prominently visible in the archive, translation provides fertile ground for interrogating the potentials and limitations of the personal archives of influential filmmakers.
14.45–15.45 Panel discussion: Why Should We Study Translation Using Archival Materials?
Discussion with Hanna Karhu (Finnish Literature Society), Outi Paloposki (University of Turku), Niina Syrjänen (University of Eastern Finland) and Serenella Zanotti (Roma Tre University)
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Vapaa pääsy, ei ennakkoilmoittautumista. SKS:n juhlasaliin mahtuu 100 henkeä. Tietoa esteettömyydestä saat tietoa täältä. Tilaisuutta on mahdollista seurata myös suoratoistona, linkki päivitetään SKS:n tapahtumakalenteriin.
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Free entry. The lecture hall can accommodate 100 people. Information on accessibility. The link to the online stream will be updated in the events calendar of the Finnish Literature Society.
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References
- Abend-David, Dror. 2025. Translating Silent Cinema: Film History, National Culture, and The Roaring Twenties. Routledge.
- Adamson, Patrick. 2019. American History at the Foreign Office: Exporting the Silent Epic Western. Film History, 31 (2): 32–59.
- Dwyer, Tessa. 2019. Undoing Dubbing: Singin’ in the Rain. In I. Ranzato, & S. Zanotti (Eds.), Reassessing Dubbing: Historical approaches and current trends (pp. 17-39). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Gambier, Yves & Jin, Haina. 2022. A connected history of audiovisual translation: Sources and resources. In Bielsa, E. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media (pp. 283-301). Routledge: London.
- Jin, Haina. 2020. Intertitle translation of Chinese silent films. Babel, 66(4–5), 719–732.
- Mereu Keating, Carla. 2016. The politics of dubbing: Film censorship and state intervention in the translation of foreign cinema in fascist Italy. Peter Lang.
- Mereu Keating, Carla & O’Sullivan, Carol. 2021. Researching the history of audiovisual translation. In C. Rundle (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of translation history (pp. 435–451). Routledge.
- Mingant, Nolwenn. 2019. When the Thief of Bagdad tried to steal the show: The short-lived dubbing of Hollywood films into Arabic in the 1940s. In I. Ranzato, & S. Zanotti (Eds.), Reassessing Dubbing: Historical approaches and current trends (pp. 41-62). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- O’Sullivan, Carol. 2019. ‘A splendid innovation, these English titles!’ The invention of subtitling in the USA and the UK. In C. O’Sullivan & J.-F. Cornu (Eds.), The translation of films 1900–1950 (pp. 267–296). Oxford University Press.
- O’Sullivan, Carol & Cornu, J.-F. 2019a. History of audiovisual translation. In L. Pérez-González (Ed.) The Routledge handbook of audiovisual translation (pp. 15–30). Routledge.
- O’Sullivan, Carol & Cornu, J.-F. 2019b. Introduction: Film history meets translation history: The lure of the archive. In C. O’Sullivan &J.-F. Cornu (Eds.), The translation of films 1900–1950 (pp. 1–23). Oxford University Press.
- O’Sullivan, Carol & Cornu, J.-F. 2019c (Eds.). The translation of films 1900–1950 (pp. 1–23). Oxford University Press.
- Tybjerg, Casper. 1998. The Raw Material of Film History. In Dan Nissen, Lisbeth Richter. Larsen, Thomas Christensen, and Jesper Stub Johnsen (Eds.), Preserve then Show (pp. 14-21). Copenhagen: Danish Film Institute.
- Zanotti, Serenella. 2021. “Stanley Kubrick and Translation”, in Nathan Abrams and Ian Hunter (Eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (pp. 65-74). London: Bloomsbury.
- Zanotti, Serenella. 2025a. “In Pursuit of the Cinematic Experience: Film Translation in the Late Silent Era”. Translation Spaces, 15.1.
- Zanotti, Serenella. 2025b. “Film Translation Practices in the Silent Film World”. Journal of Audiovisual Translation 8.2.
Tapahtuma-ajat
- Alkaa:
- 21.11.2025 13:00
- Loppuu:
- 21.11.2025 16:00
- Tapahtumapaikka:
- Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran juhlasali
- Osoite:
- Hallituskatu 1
- Postitoimipaikka:
- Helsinki
- Etätapahtuma nimi:
- Suoratoistolinkki päivitetään SKS:n tapahtumakalenteriin
- Etätapahtuma osoite:
- Avaa verkkosivut
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