"Translating the Past.." Workshop Held at ISAW

Recently ISAW hosted an international workshop, Translating the Past, (Re-)shaping History?: Translation Issues in Late Antique and Medieval Christian Historiographical Sources in the Middle East. Organized by Perrine Pilette, ISAW Visiting Research Scholar, the workshop was a collaboration with the Centre d'Etudes Orientales of the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). 

Scholars from both the US and Europe gathered at ISAW to discuss the phenomenon of translations that occurred in the framework of the Christian Middle East, specifically in the field of historiography.

More specifically, they adressed the issue of the impact of the translation processes on the actual historical content of such corpuses,whether occurring  in their (often complex) composition or in their later transmission.

Since all of the participants had different bilingual or multilingual traditions, they were together able to identify common patterns and draw substantial conclusions about the transformation, adaptation and re-writing of history in ancient times, depending on the transformation of its context, whether political or religious.

Consequently, possibilities for publishing the proceedings of the workshop for broader distribution are currently being assessed.