French Connections

Department of French and Francophone Studies Research Seminar Series

Translating Proust’s Correspondence: Developing a Crowdsourced Translation Platform and Implementing It in the Classroom

Dr Nicholas Strole (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Abstract

Researchers and instructors in world languages and literatures are often faced with the challenge of engaging a large international and multilingual audience. The digital humanities project Corr-Proust: Digital Edition of Marcel Proust’s Letters publishes digital content in French, but the research team has found it difficult to make its work available in other languages. To expand its audience and draw on the resources of a broader research community, the Corr-Proust team developed the Corr-Proust Wiki: a crowdsourced translation platform that gives students, scholars, and fans of Proust the opportunity to translate his original correspondence into any language. In this presentation, I will show researchers the steps they can take to build similar translation platforms for academic projects. I will also demonstrate how this digital tool can be implemented in the French curriculum to encourage students to engage with authentic materials and contribute to current scholarship in the digital humanities.

About the speaker

Dr Nicholas Strole is the Digital Humanities Coordinator for Corr-Proust: Digital Edition of Marcel Proust’s Letters at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests lie in French and Francophone theatre, biopolitical theory, postcolonial and migration studies, and the digital humanities. He is currently working on his first monograph, Performing Dépaysement: Biopolitics and Community Building in Contemporary Theatre in French, which examines how contemporary French and Francophone playwrights adapt myths and origin stories to critique issues of postcoloniality and migration.

For more information, contact: Dr Nathalie Ségeral – nathalie.segeral@sydney.edu.au

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