Linguistic and Cultural Translation are a crossdisciplinary focus of research and teaching at HHU’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. This focus particularly brings together the philologically and historically oriented subjects: From diverse disciplinary angles it examines the ways in which cultures, communities and creative practices are constituted by acts of translation. That processes of translation enable connection, connectivity and exchange across the boundaries of different cultures, eras and spaces appears evident with regard to today’s transculturally connected world, which is shaped in unprecedented ways by migration, mobility and translocation. However, historical perspectives too reveal a wide range of multidirectional translation strategies, e.g. in the contexts of European colonialism, of voyages of discovery and even scholarly networks. European cultures are frequently considered as ‘cultures of translation’, i.e. as cultures that develop largely through discontinuous processes of cultural transfer. The same holds true for many non-European spaces that are examined in a variety of contexts at HHU. In all these cases, translation is more than a mere transfer of existing – linguistic, cultural, epistemic or normative – orders into other contexts. Translation goes beyond that which already exists, mobilizing cultures and opening them to alterity, inscribing what is apparently foreign into what is considered familiar.

The Centre for Translation Studies brings together numerous research activities carried out at HHU which share common ground in their connection to translation. It offers an interdisciplinary forum for researching culturally and historically diverse translation practices and interdisciplinary research activities. Activities in cooperation with both national and international translation institutions as well as HHU’s renowned MA programme “Literary Translation” offer a unique environment for research in Translation Studies.