Our research is concerned with a wealth of crucial matters in translation and multilingualism and is carried out using a broad range of methodologies. The projects affiliated with our centre have been awarded important national and European funding. A non-exhaustive list of chronologically ordered research projects is provided below.
MISTE measures multilingual practices to investigate the role of translation in bringing together migrants/refugees and local communities; and to explore the creative potential of translation to raise awareness of cultural diversity in Ireland. The project compares approaches to language and migrant/refugee integration in different sites with a view to informing policy and best practice. PIs: Anne O’Connor (University of Galway); Piotr Blumczynski (Queen’s University Belfast)
PIETRA is funded by the European Research Council under its Consolidator Grant Scheme, Grant No. 101001478. It is a study of the foundations on which the Catholic Church builds it’s multilingual communicative structures, and is the first, large-scale, multilingual study of the translation products and processes that underpin communication in global religion. (PI: Anne O’Connor)
VICO is a sociolinguistic study of migration in rural areas. The project works with rural communities in Ireland to understand how different languages and cultures coexist in these environments, investigating the obstacles and opportunities for intercultural communication in rural areas. The ethnographic-based research investigates how intercultural communication emerges and explores links between migration and rural development through focus groups and participatory research. (PI: Dr Andrea Ciribuco).
RoC is a four-year project, which examines the literary techniques adopted by Irish poets to respond to international human rights conflicts and violations from 1914 to the present. The project has been funded by the Irish Research Council under the auspices of the IRC Laureate Awards Programme. It covers poetry in English, Irish, and in translation from other languages, and investigates the interfaces between literary production, literary translation and human rights discourse. (PI: Prof. Rióna Ní Fhrighil)
LINCS was funded by the Irish Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. This project explores the language learning and translation practices of migrants and refugees in relation to the landscape of an Italian town, Perugia. Researchers: Andrea Ciribuco / Anne O’Connor.
This project centres around the translation of Irish and Galician poetry, organising public lectures, symposia, conferences and workshops in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Galicia. The project intends to challenge negative assumptions about the possibilities of translating poetry, and the capacity of poetry in translation to create new international readerships. (PI: Prof. Lorna Shaughnessy)
Awarded an Irish Research Council Project Grant (2013-15), the project looks at translation from languages such as French, German, Irish, Italian, Latin and Spanish into English. It considers a series of fundamental questions regarding cross-cultural transfer and transformation; the chief agents driving translation practice; the influence of translation on nationalism, romanticism and Catholicism; the role of women in translation; and the contrast and continuity between native Irish traditions and European influences. This project involves an in-depth study of translation and translators in nineteenth-century Ireland. It uses translation history to widen our understanding of cultural exchange in this period, and will create new perspectives on historical, political and cultural debates of the era. This project will assess how translation was used for informative, creative or transformative purposes in nineteenth-century Ireland. (PI: Anne O’Connor)