Student life, Why study languages?

An Introduction to the Taylor Institution Library

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Today’s post was written by Frank Egerton, who is a writer and the Operations Manager of the Reader Services Team at the Taylor Institution Library. The Taylor Institution (affectionately known as ‘The Taylorian’ by our students and staff) is the University’s centre for the study of Modern European languages and literatures, other than English. As well as its West and East European collections, the library houses collections for Linguistics, Film Studies, and Women’s Studies. Here, Frank tells us more about this incredible resource.

I started work at the Taylor Institution Library on 5th January 2009. As I approach the building ten years later and look up at its classical columns, its statuary and its almost unimaginably massive windows, I continue to think (how could I not?), How lucky I am to work here.

Yet I’m also aware that all that architecture might seem unreal – think Downton Abbey or National Trust – and at worst, forbidding.

It is my job and that of my Reader Services team to make the experience of the building and its amazing collections welcoming, friendly and fulfilling.

More on the present later, but first, history.

It’s a common misconception that the Taylor Institution is part of the Ashmolean Museum. Well it is, on the outside, but inside, the library is totally separate. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the University had two bequests, one for an art gallery, the other for a centre dedicated to the study of modern European languages. The solution was to run an architectural competition for the best design of a single building that accommodated both spaces. This was won by CR Cockerell and his building was completed in 1844.

The Taylor Institution Library

The money for the institution and its library had come from another architect, Sir Robert Taylor, who had travelled in Europe and who had amassed a magnificent collection of architectural books written in Italian, French and English, which the library now holds.

Not that getting the money was easy. Taylor died in 1788, having stipulated that the University would only receive his bequest if his son, resplendently named Michael Angelo Taylor, died without a male heir. While this did eventually happen, Michael Angelo also tried to overturn his father’s will – despite being one of the richest men in London.

That the money came to the University and the Taylor Institution was built has benefitted generations of scholars for over 170 years.

In the 1930s an extension – which is now our Teaching Collection – was built in the Art Deco style. It was formally opened by the Prince of Wales – who went on to become King Edward VIII, before abdicating. You can see photographs of the future king and all the senior academics of the day outside our lecture hall.

The original collection of books was partly created by donations, just as the original Bodleian Library had been at the end of the sixteenth century. Last year I was thrilled to come across a book that my great-great-great grandfather had given in 1849.

Since then, our collections have grown enormously – in fact, they have outgrown our building! In total, we have some 750,000 items (books, journals, a rapidly growing collection of DVDs, and… a lock of Goethe’s hair). But only half of these are kept in the building. The rest being at the Bodleian’s Book Storage Facility, some 40 miles from Oxford. (The Taylorian is one of the Bodleian Libraries.) Nevertheless, these books aren’t mothballed but can be ordered using the University’s online catalogue, SOLO (feel free to explore it). If the order is placed before 10.30 am on a weekday, it will arrive at around 2 pm that afternoon and most of our offsite books can be borrowed just as if they had been collected from our bookshelves.

Our bookshelves… As you can imagine, there are quite a lot of those. Sometimes I look along just a bay of them and I am overwhelmed by how many books there are. All that knowledge, all those ideas, all those opportunities for learning… In stacks and rooms reached by stairs that remind you of the library in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose…

Which is where the librarians come in. The Subject and Reader Services teams work together to make sense of the collections for our readers and to help them find what they need for their studies or research. The Taylor has a deserved reputation for the friendliness of its staff, their knowledge and their willingness to go the extra mile. One of the most important messages we aim to get across at inductions is that library staff are always there to help.

The Library in the Modern Languages Faculty, Oxford

Our subject librarians also curate and expand our outstanding collections, buying new books, of course, but also ebooks and ejournals, and electronic resources. Not to mention putting together exhibitions of works from our special collections, arranging talks and teaching courses on how to access information and digital scholarship.

I’ve mentioned that you can get an impression of the richness of our collections by browsing the University library catalogue, SOLO, but for a deeper understanding of what they contain you can check out our website and, above all, the tremendous online guides that our subject consultants have created for their particular language. Here you will find not just information about what is available in Oxford but open (freely available) resources and websites.

Yet for all the convenience of the digital age, the Taylor Institution Library remains the human heart of Modern Languages research, teaching and learning. It contains quiet spaces, lecture rooms, a common room and corridors which are alive with discussion. Its staff are there to welcome, to help and to unlock the possibilities of its world-class collections.

Further info

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For regular updates follow us on Twitter (@TAYOxford).

Links

Frank Egerton

If there are any teachers reading the blog, you may also be interested in our  ‘Sir Robert Taylor Society Conference’ – an annual conference for MFL teachers held each September in Oxford, and named after the founder of the library. More information is available here.

Year Abroad

A year abroad in Jordan

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One of the joint degrees we offer at Oxford is in European and Middle Eastern Languages (EMEL). Unlike most of our students, who take their year abroad in the third year of their course, EMEL students go abroad in the second year (the same is true of those studying Russian from scratch). In today’s post Sarah, who studies Spanish and Arabic, tells us about the Arabic part of her year abroad in Jordan.

Only a few months ago, my friends and I went out for our very last meal together in Jordan. We had been there for around nine months, give or take a few weeks, and I think we were all genuinely upset and a little bit tearful to be leaving. It was sad to go, but it also felt a bit strange, given how much time we had spent there, and the many wonderful experiences we had had together in that beautiful country.

Our year in Jordan began in early September, when the weather was still warm and our Arabic still a little bit flimsy. We still spoke to the taxi drivers in formal, fuṣḥā Arabic, the kind of Arabic you hear in news broadcasts and official speeches, but not in the street. But as the heat ebbed away, and the weather turned so cold we started wearing blankets and coats even indoors, we learnt more dialect – both in classes, and through going out in Amman, Jordan’s capital.

At the suggestion of our teachers, we tried mansaf, Jordan’s national lamb and yoghurt dish, at traditional restaurants. We often ate baklava, and the cheesy dessert kanafeh, as a treat on Thursdays (the last day of the working week in Jordan, as it begins again on Sunday). We visited the towering malls of al-Abdali, haggled in the downtown markets and souqs of Wasit al-Balad, felt sophisticated eating cake in classy Jabal al-Weibdeh.

We travelled further afield, to the cities of Irbid and Madaba, to the Red Sea city of Aqaba, to the Roman ruins of Jerash, and of course to Petra and the Wadi Rum. Some of us had the opportunity to visit other parts of the region, and saw the wonders of Lebanon, Egypt and Oman. We met so many kind people, of whom perhaps the kindest were our teachers. They were so generous and shared so much of their lives and culture with us, and we are so grateful. We had so much fun.

I think we also grew more confident, as we were forced to leave the bubble of Oxford. We were living in a different country, with a different culture and a different language that we were trying our best to learn, and it could get hard at times. We had to rely more on each other, and I was so fortunate to share a flat for almost a year with three amazing women, each unique, but all so intelligent and kind. Being abroad built stronger friendships between us. There were ups and downs, highs and lows, but I think we could all enjoy the year so much because we had each other. Soppy, I know, but true.

It was for all those reasons that we felt so sad to leave at the very beginning of June. I was, and continue to be, so grateful for the opportunity we had to live in Jordan for nine months. It is why I am so jealous of the students going abroad this year. I wish you all luck; a little part of me wishes, too, that I was going with you.

German life, Student life

The Lidl Prizes: picking up German from scratch

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A few weeks ago we published a blog post written by one of the winners of the Lidl prizes for German, Cecilia. Today’s post was written by another winner: Anna won the Lidl prize for the best performance in the examination after the first year of all students studying German from scratch. Here she tells us what it’s like to study German as a beginners’ language at Oxford, and how she sued her prize money to further her study of German.

By the end of year 12 I knew that I wanted to study French at university, but felt an additional beginners’ language would be quite exciting and a bit of a change from what I was used to. I considered Russian or Italian for a while but ultimately settled on German; it seemed to complement French well while still being a new challenge (the Cyrillic alphabet seemed just a little too scary) and I liked the idea of the complicated yet logical grammar system.

My first year studying German has been such a great experience; I arrived knowing only a few basic words and now feel I have a very strong foundation in German grammar to take into my second year. The course is fast-paced yet comprehensive, with a lot of contact hours and long (but manageable) lists of vocabulary to learn, but it was all absolutely worth it; it’s amazing to see how far I’ve come in a relatively short space of time. Additionally, the teaching style at Oxford means that you spend a lot of time with your coursemates, which is especially true for beginners’ German (and indeed any other beginners’ language); there were seven of us on the course and we would see each other for class every day, so we all ended up really close which was a lovely support system during exams or if we had a particularly difficult translation task.

I came to Oxford from a very average state school; the feeling of ‘impostor syndrome’ was very real before I arrived and I was worried I’d be miles behind everyone else. However, I’ve really enjoyed being pushed academically and crucially have never felt that my educational background has hindered me in any way. Winning the Lidl prize for best performance in beginners’ German was quite a surprise but I’m so grateful for it and overall feel that I’ve done myself proud.

The prize money has helped to fund my summer travels – I went to Heidelberg for two weeks with one of my classmates to do a language course. It was really beneficial to have a familiar face in class and someone at the same level to speak German with; we even went out for cocktails one night and didn’t speak a word of English! There were also plenty of opportunities to practise our German with others – we met lots of fellow students from all over the world, and Germans are generally quite accepting of learners and let you muddle through (and then correct your mistakes, which is a bit embarrassing but very helpful).

I couldn’t recommend studying German at university more to anyone who enjoys modern languages, whether it’s following an A-Level qualification or starting from scratch. For those considering the latter, don’t be put off by the daunting prospect of reaching A-Level standard within a year – it’s definitely achievable and more rewarding than you could ever imagine.

Careers, Russian, Why study languages?

Snapshots of graduate destinations in Russian – back for more

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Two weeks ago, we posted some snapshots of career destinations from alumni who have studied Russian. From journalism to business, from marketing to translating, it’s fascinating to see where our graduates end up. This week, we’ve included a few more snapshots to give you an insight into the vast range of career options open to linguists. These were originally published on the Creative Multilingualism blog.

  • “I became a journalist when I left Oxford – and intended to go back to Moscow to become a reporter. However, I ended up in New York instead and took a different path, which led to a career as an author. I have now written 8 books and am about to embark on a 9th. I was awarded an honorary D.Sc. last summer, which is perhaps unusual for an arts graduate and a Russianist. I have done a huge amount of work in making science accessible and entertaining to primary school children, hence the award.”
  • “After graduation I spent 3 and a half years in Moscow. I worked for a French sports retail company called Decathlon. I spent that time speaking virtually no English. It meant that I am now very fluent in both French and Russian (plus I know how to say every type of sports equipment under the sun in both languages). After Decathlon, I decided that I wanted to pursue a more academic career (law) and I went to work for an English law firm in Moscow as a paralegal for the remainder of my time in Russia. I came back to the UK, did my law qualification and, before starting work in London, I decided I wanted one last adventure. I went to China for a year and taught myself Mandarin. I’ve been working in London since 2011 in an international law firm and have also spent spells working in China. I specialise in EU and competition law.”
  • “I joined a classical music publisher on leaving Oxford, at first as an intern and then as a permanent member of staff. I have also worked in the Publications team at the National Portrait Gallery.”
  • “I produce TV commercials.”
  • “I have been working as an editor for an educational publishing company since graduating from Oxford. Presently, my husband and I are setting up a beer brewery.”
  • “I went back to Moscow after graduating and tried out various jobs such as English teaching, working as trilingual PA in a Russian bank, a journalist, translator, copy-editor; then I worked for 3 years at an artist management company in London (working with many Russian artists), then for a year at a marketing company with a Russian client base. I’m now back at university doing an M.Sc. in Speech and Language therapy (which involves linguistics and phonetics).”
  • “I completed a Master’s in Russian and East European Studies at Harvard. I’m now a corporate lawyer by day (and most of the night) where I work heavily with Russian and Eastern European clients (I have used Russian, Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian – picked up at Harvard – at work). For the remainder of the night I am a struggling writer (on things Russian).”
  • “I continued my study of languages, first Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies as part of a Master’s, for which my major was Law in the Middle East and North Africa, then Chinese at BPP University as part of a Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC), all funded by the law firm I work for in London as a trainee solicitor. I’m also a freelance producer of short films, comedy and theatre.”
Events and Competitions, German life

2020 German Olympiad: NATUR UND TECHNIK

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The Oxford German Olympiad 2020 launched on 26 September 2019, the European Day of Languages! The topic is NATUR UND TECHNIK (Nature and Technology). There are tasks for learners of German in Year 5 to Year 13, tasks for group entries, and even some tasks for complete beginners.  The deadline for entries is noon on Friday 13 March 2020. You can find the full competition and submission guidelines here. Read on to see an outline of this year’s tasks…

Years 5 and 6 (age 9-11):

  • Design a robot and label its parts, and write what it can do.
  • Draw a picture of your home city, town or village from a Vogelperspektive – bird’s eye view. Label the things the bird is most interested in.
  • You’re going to set up a community on Mars – draw your spaceship and the fifteen most important things to take, and label them.

Years 7 to 9 (age 11-14):

  • Create a poster explaining Klimawandel.
  • Find out about Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman. What technical invention would he choose to take back to his community if he could time-travel? Draw Ötzi with a speech bubble explaining his choice, and illustrate and describe the invention.
  • Create a blogpost on a topic of your choice, with 3-5 photos taken by yourself, for a German-language online conservation magazine.

Years 10 and 11 (age 14-16):

  • “Ein Tag ohne Technik” – Write a story or create a video or website on this theme.
  • Paint or draw a landscape in the style of Caspar David Friedrich and write about the work of art that inspired it.
  • “Machen wir unsere Erde unbewohnbar?” Write a dialogue between two people who disagree about the answer.

Years 12 and 13 (age 16-18):

  • “Klimawandel – was können Jugendliche tun?” Plan a conference for 16-18 year olds including the advertisement and programme with keynote lectures and topics for roundtable discussion.
  • “Vorsprung durch Technik – Rückschritt für die Natur?” Write a blogpost or create a video with this title.
  • Record yourself giving a presentation on “Fahrerloser Verkehr – Utopie oder künftige Wirklichkeit?” or “Techno-Pop – Typisch deutsch?” .

Open Competition for Groups or Classes (4+ participants)

  • Create a film or PowerPoint presentation with the title “Amazonas in Gefahr”.
  • Write and illustrate a short book for children about a migrating bird.
  • “Ein Roboter in der Schule!” – Create a video or song about a robot designed for helping with practical tasks in your school.

Discover German – Taster Competition (1-3 participants with no prior experience of studying German)

  • Years 7 to 9: Find 10 inventions from German-speaking countries and the German word for each invention. Film yourself saying the German and the English word for each of your 10 examples.
  • Years 10 and 11: Rewrite (in English) the Grimm Brothers’ story of “The Frog Prince” (Der Froschkönig) with the title “The Robot Prince”, setting it in a real modern German-speaking city and including 15 German compound nouns (like Frosch+König).
  • Years 12 and 13: Write a blogpost on the topic “Will machine translation make human translators obsolete?” and support your argument with examples from German.

 

Careers, Russian, Why study languages?

Snapshots of graduate destinations in Russian

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Continuing the careers theme, today on Adventures on the Bookshelf we’re sharing some glimpses of the many career paths our graduates in Russian have followed. These quotations from our former students were gathered in 2016. They were originally featured on the Creative Mulitlingualism website. Here are a handful – more will follow in the coming weeks…

Where has your degree in Russian taken you?

  • “I now live in Vienna and am working as a translator at the UN, the International Atomic Energy Authority and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, mostly translating from Russian.”
  • “I moved to a business intelligence firm in the city, where I specialised as an analyst on Russia and the former Soviet Union. I undertook due diligence and intelligence analysis on businessmen, corporations and politicians, looking for signs of corruption, criminal activity and unsavoury connections. I was using my Russian (and at times also Polish) on a daily basis, scouring Russian-language news articles, legal records, corporate registries and blog sites, as well as speaking to human intelligence sources on the ground. I’ve recently begun a two-year-Master’s of International Affairs in Berlin, and hope to spend the second year of the degree abroad at Columbia University in New York, specialising in security and human rights in Russia and the former Soviet Union.”
  • “I worked in Moscow for 4 years, first at the BBC Monitoring Service for a year and a half (translating news broadcasts from Russian TV and radio), which I enjoyed very much. I then moved to the Moscow Times. I’ve now gone back to university in London and am doing an M.Sc. in Speech and Language Therapy.”
  • “I did an M.A. at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, and started working at the BBC. I spent a total of 6 years with the BBC – from admin to on-air journalism, and loved it. From news producing in the World Service newsroom, to a 3-week research trip to Pakistan. Then moved to Moscow to work with the RIA Novosti translation department (on Russian government websites). I’ve been in Moscow for 5 years and am now a Consultant in PR and Financial IR, in a consultancy specialising in Russia, the former Soviet Union and emerging markets.”
  • “I’m an installation artist and writer, also a translator specialising in art and architecture (from German into English as I live in Austria) and occasionally fiction. I’ve also worked as a cultural journalist.”
  • “I run a language learning website through which I sell intensive German, Russian and Greek courses and learning materials, while also organising international conferences on language learning and multilingualism, and working with organisations such as the British Council and the European Union to promote multilingualism worldwide, while also writing a book on language learning.”
  • “I initially worked as the PA to a wine critic for a few months while applying for grad schemes. I ended up in my current job (as a strategist in a branding agency) almost by chance, but am very much enjoying it. As the only person in the agency who speaks Russian, I’m often called on for translations and general cultural insight.”

These are just a handful of the possible career options in languages. Truly, the world is your oyster!

German life, German Literature, Student life

The Lidl Prizes: Discovering Germany

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This post was written by Cecilia, who is studying German sole at Wadham College. Earlier this summer Cecilia was named one of the first recipients of our new Lidl Prizes: awards that have been generously donated by Lidl to promote and celebrate the study of German language and culture. In this post, Cecilia tells us how she used her prize to fund a trip to Gemany.

I was really grateful to win the Lidl prize for academic achievement in German sole this summer; it enabled me to experience Germany in a whole new way. With my prize money, I visited friends in Detmold, in the north of Germany, and Eisenach, a town in the former GDR. I then took a train to Munich, where I stayed with a friend I’d met at Oxford, and even visited Austria for the first time, venturing to Salzburg. I was fascinated by the way in which the language and culture differs across German speaking countries.

My first stop was Detmold, where I spent a few days staying with a teacher who had visited my school while I was doing my A-levels. I was really interested in the way in which my Gastfamilie did their bit for the environment. Just by accompanying them on their weekly shop, I got to see Detmold’s Bio-Supermarkt and a shop that used no plastic whatsoever! Whilst I am yet to come across such shops where I live in Hull, I am determined to follow Germany’s good influence and reduce my own plastic use.

I then took the train to Eisenach, where I stayed with a girl whom I know through a mutual friend. Far from the green smoothies and kale I had been eating in Detmold, I was able to try much more traditional food, with the Grandad even teaching me how to make Rinderroulade and Thüringer Klöße. I also enjoyed going to school with my Gastschwester, who is studying for her Abitur. I even learnt about Effi Briest, a text which I loved studying in first year, sharing ideas with students in German about this iconic read! But most interesting of all in my time in Eisenach was having the opportunity to hear about life in the GDR. Practically knowing Das Leben der Anderen off by heart from my A-level studies, I was keen to hear my Gastfamilie’s first-hand accounts of the system. I was particularly surprised by my Gastschwester’s remark that she sometimes wished the wall still stood today.

Different again was my time in Munich. I spent the week staying with my friend from university, who is doing a tech internship there. I really enjoyed being part of a flat share; it made me look forward to my year abroad where I’ll be living with German speakers who are my age! It was really interesting to chat with these students and young professionals about everything from relationships and their volunteering to European politics. The Bavarian countryside was really beautiful and completely different to anything I had seen before in Germany. Reading Schiller by Lake Starnberg was definitely a highlight of my trip. I even got the chance to make a fleeting visit to Salzburg, which made me realise I’d love to get to know Austria better.

Hispanic, Latin America, Spanish

Eduardo Lalo’s term as TORCH Global South Visiting Fellow

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This blog post was written by Franklin, a second-year student studying Spanish and Portuguese. Here, Franklin tells us about Eduardo Lalo’s stay in Oxford and the way it shone a spotlight on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Every term, a number of academics from countries in the ‘Global South’ – a term that refers to countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean whose economies are small to medium-sized – arrive in Oxford as TORCH Global South Visiting Fellows. TORCH, short for The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, collaborates with an Oxford-based academic to sponsor and support the academic whilst they are here hosting events to do with their research interests and current projects.

One of the academics Oxford welcomed in ‘Trinity’ term (summer term) was Eduardo Lalo, Professor of Literature at the University of Puerto Rico and a multidisciplinary artist, whose work spans creative writing, drawing and photography. Eduardo’s academic host in Oxford was María del Pilar Blanco, Associate Professor of Spanish American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Trinity College; together, they devised a range of events throughout the term for him to showcase his work and engage with the local and university communities.

The first of those events was a seminar series entitled ‘The Mis-invention of the Caribbean’. In the three seminars that comprised the series, which brought together students, researchers and members of the wider Oxford community, Eduardo examined the literature of the encounter between the Caribbean and its peoples and Europeans, with key texts including Christopher Columbus’s journal, dating from 1493, and the edition of it annotated by Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish cleric whose writings chart the first decades of the colonization of the Caribbean. The series reconsidered the historiography surrounding the ‘discovery’ of the Caribbean, revealing that, at the heart of Columbus’ journal, lie a number of problematics and points of contention, and that, as a text, it cannot always be taken at face value. Beyond Columbus, Eduardo explored works by English travellers in the nineteenth century – texts by such figures as James A. Froude and Spenser St. John – and how they relate in style and content to Columbus’s fifteenth-century diary. In particular, Eduardo analyzed the recurrence of the cannibal as a figure that European writers return to again and again to represent their cultural others.

Alongside his three-part seminar series, Eduardo led a separate creative writing workshop for a group of ten students. After a short question-and-answer session, Eduardo, through a range of exercises, invited seminar-goers to consider the importance of the notion of writing in space (the space of a page of a book, for instance). Those in attendance enjoyed the opportunity to think creatively about, and move through, approaches to creative writing.

San Juan, Puerto Rico. Photo by Ramiro Collazo on Unsplash

Aside from his more academic seminars and creative writing workshop, members of the Oxford community were able to attend an exhibition of his photography, entitled ‘Deudos’, or ‘Death Debts’, held at St John’s College. Eduardo’s black-and-white images of life in Puerto Rico, taken between 2012 and 2018, bring to the fore in powerful detail the realities of day-to-day life in what has been termed the world’s ‘oldest colony’ (Puerto Rico remains a commonwealth of the United States). Held over the course of the fourth week of term, the exhibition was well attended and its venue appropriate, in the light of the recent announcement by St John’s College’s that it will launch a new research project, named ‘St John’s and the Colonial Past’, to examine the role the college played in creating and maintaining Britain’s overseas empire. Eduardo’s exhibition seemed apt at a time when the Oxford community is opening discussions about decolonial approaches to art and scholarly work.

Eduardo’s term as a TORCH Global South Visiting Fellow, then, shone a spotlight on the relative lack of research that is done in Oxford on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, compared with that done on Spain and South America. His seminar series was a very useful follow-up to Professor Blanco’s lectures in ‘Hilary’ term (spring term) on ‘Literature of the Spanish Caribbean’, providing attendees with important historical context as far as the literary history of the Caribbean is concerned. Equally, it was enjoyable and insightful to explore new approaches to creative writing and to engage with photography, two aspects of the arts under-represented and under-explored in Oxford curricula:  approaches that challenge us to think of long-established canons from a decolonial perspective.

Comparative Literature, Multilingualism, Translation

Mapping Jane Eyres across the world

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This post was originally published on the Creative Multilingualism blog. Creative Multilingualism is a four-year AHRC-funded programme investigating the interconnection between linguistic diversity and creativity.  Regular readers of Adventures on the Bookshelf will remember Prof. Matthew Reynolds’s earlier post about translations of Jane Eyre. In this post, Prof. Reynolds talks about the process of mapping different translations of the novel.

In April, Prismatic Translation’s  Associated Researcher in Digital Humanities, Giovanni Pietro Vitali, stayed in Oxford to work with me on mapping the global diffusion of translations of Jane Eyre. Giovanni Pietro’s trajectory has taken him from Pisa to Perugia, Nancy and Leipzig (where he trained in Digital Humanities); he is now a Marie Curie Fellow attached to Cork, Reading, and NYU.

Mapping Jane Eyre’s translations is a challenge, on several fronts. First, where do you locate a translation on a map? It will have been done by a translator in a certain place, or places; but then it may have been published somewhere else; and it can be read wherever there is a reader who understands its language – which is, in many cases, pretty much anywhere.

Usually, we can find no information about where a translation has been written (often translations are anonymous). We don’t want to attach the translations to particular nation states, because languages don’t correspond to nation states: think of the many languages spoken in India (or indeed the UK), or the many states that have Spanish, French or Portuguese as official languages. So we have opted for the place of publication – not endeavouring to put boundaries around the territory inhabited by a translation, but showing the point from which it came out into the world.

Yet where exactly is a place of publication? For one set of maps, which allow readers to trace the development of the cover images in connection with the place and time of publication, we have used the publishers’ street addresses (this necessitated much careful work on the part of the project’s researchers – and caused some anguish!). Here we find a by-product of looking at the world of books through the lens of Jane Eyre: tracking the translations, we discover the bits of cities where publishers cluster, and find harmonies between the books’ designs and their locales. But for the general maps, which allow us to see and understand the spread of Janes across the world, street addresses seemed too specific. For these visualisations, the city seemed the right unit of location.

When I made this theoretical decision, I hadn’t quite understood the relationship between the computer-magic of Digital Humanities and the mind-numbing, slow, human labour that lies behind it. Once you know a translation’s place of publication, the computer can do quite a good job of assigning latitudes and longitudes to the given names. But not a perfect one: it can’t know if you mean Paris (France) or Paris (Texas), the Tripoli in Libya or one of the lesser-known Tripolis in Lebanon or Greece. And you can’t know when it is going to make a mistake – which means that every point needs checking by human eye and hand. In the case of Jane Eyre the number of points that have needed checking (so far) is 543.

But latitude and longitude still do not amount to a city. For that, you need to find the outline of each city and paste it onto your map. In our case, that meant 171 cities from Addis Ababa to Zutphen. You find the outline of a city in a long list called a ‘Shape File’; and there are separate Shape Files maintained by every State. So you go to the Shape File for India and find Ahmedabad; then you go to the Shape File for Syria and find Aleppo, and so on. And on. The process is not so very painful when you are dealing with Berlin or Rome; but when it is Dushanbe in Tajikistan, or Kaifeng in China (written in non-alphabetic characters) you feel your life draining away as you struggle to be sure you have pinpointed the right place.

Then, after days of labour, the moment of magic, when you are suddenly able to witness the spread of Jane Eyres across the world, like this:

Or zoom in for a more detailed view, like this:

Map of Jane Eyre translations zoomed in

And this is only the beginning. The maps that we are currently working on organise the translations according to region and language, allowing a more analytical understanding of the processes at work; and they also show the translations unfolding year by year. So now (or, soon) you will be able to see before your eyes the startling spread of Jane Eyre translations that had already happened by 1850: Berlin, Brussels, Paris, St Petersburg, Stuttgart, Grimma, Stockholm, Groningen and – Havana!

Events and Competitions, French

FRENCH FLASH FICTION: THE SIXTH-FORMERS

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Our final post from the 2019 French Flash Fiction competition: here are some of the highly commended stories from our Year 12 and Year 13 entrants. As well as some excellent command of the French language, you’ll see some extraordinary creative imagination here, all expressed in a hundred words or fewer. Congratulations to all the writers featured here, and we hope you enjoy their stories.

La Pianiste

Là, dans la presque noirceur, je me sens vivante. La pianiste caresse le clavier et les notes tombent- un filet de bulles en verre qui semblent flotter dans l’air avant de se fracasser en éclats scintillants qui transpercent mon coeur. Deux mains, dix doigts; des centaines de notes qui m’entourent. Les mélodies se mélangent; les ruisseaux qui deviennent les fleuves qui deviennent les vagues- déferlant sur ma tête et me laissant trempée avec des larmes et de l’extase.
Les doigts du pianiste s’immobilisent. Elle a perdu ses eaux, et je suis renée.

— Jemima, Year 12, The Henrietta Barnett School

Photo by Kai Dahms on Unsplash

Connaissez-vous les nuits glacées? Ces nuits qui font mourir les feux et font danser les fantômes au-dessus des lacs glacés? Les nuits qui peuvent faire frissonner le diable, les nuits tellement silencieuses qu’on peut entendre les morts soupirer?
C’était dans une telle nuit que j’ai rencontré mon amante. Elle s’est tenue au milieu d’un champ enneigé, avec un visage gelé et des cheveux stalactites.
Elle m’a tendu sa main bleue et noire et elle a soufflé: Ne sais-tu pas qu’il fait trop froid pour les vivants? Viens. Danse avec moi.

— Hannah, Year 12, Bryanston School

 

Être Libre

D’ici, le monde en dessous semble petit. J’observe les humains et j’essaie de les comprendre. Mais ce n’est pas facile. Avec mes vastes ailes de plumes noires, qui reflètent la brillance du soleil et me font glisser dans l’air, je surveille la ville chaotique. Je n’aime pas trop m’approcher. Il y a des oiseaux qui s’installent sur les lampadaires, et même des moineaux qui flottent entre la jungle de pieds, pour qu’ils puissent trouver à manger. Mais moi je suis libre et sauvage, entre les nuages. Les enfants me montrent du doigt, mais ils ne me toucheront jamais.

— Juliette, Year 12, St Helen’s School

 

Il s’est rendu compte de la chaleur cette journée-là, comme dans une ruche agitée. Tous portaient des grandes lunettes de soleil, pour cacher leurs yeux bulbeux.
En regardant autours de lui, il a entrevu des milliers de corps errants, des milliers de cages thoraciques, piégeantes les torses comme des exosquelettes.  
Il a essayé d’ignorer tout, mais le fredonnement du lot s’est transformé en bourdonnement violent à telle enseigne qu’il ne pouvait plus le bloquer.
Sur son bras, une abeille mourante était assise, sa piqûre enfoncée dans la chair. L’abeille le suivait avec ses yeux d’insecte, ses grandes lunettes de soleil.

— Camille, Year 12, The Latymer School

 

Sous le ciel nocturne de juillet, le chaos se déroule. Le rouge, le blanc et le bleu du drapeau de notre nation sont partout ; ce sentiment d’espoir est tangible. La Bastille autrefois si puissante- se mit à genoux face à la foule qui marque l’histoire. Coups de feu ! Fumée ! Des soldats à perte de vue ! Personne ne comprend la signification de cette journée. Personne ne se rend compte que cette attaque sur la Bastille marquera le reste de la Révolution Français –
Un coup de fusil !
Ma vie prend fin… la révolution commence.

— Katie, Year 12, Skipton Girls’ High School

 

“Prends-le, ça ne vous fera pas de mal”, murmura-t-il dans mon oreille de sa voix douce. Je plaçai la substance bienheureuse sur ma langue et fermai les yeux. La terre tournait dix fois plus vite sous mes pas; j’ai ressenti de la chaleur, mais je tremblais de froid en même temps. Il y avait des teintes magnifiques dans tout ce que je voyais et la ténèbre était absente de le bonheur dans mon esprit. C’est tout ce dont je pourrais me souvenir avant mon réveil: les lumières crues de l’hôpital m’éblouissant de leur regard.

— Vikita, Year 12, St Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar School

 

Assis sous un cerisier, on voit la vie en rose. L’ébène de l’arbre est derrière soi – on est incapable de broyer du noir. Tout est bleui, bleuâtre, mais on n’est ni triste ni solitaire. Les nuages veloutés d’azur s’enroulent comme des feuilles couvertes de givre. Le ciel bleu lavande, presque violet, se consomme. On n’a nulle part où être mais ici. On respire et le paysage soupire aussi. Les pétales rougissants, crémeux, caressent le visage, comme pour dire, « Tout va bien. Tout ira bien. On n’a pas besoin de s’inquiéter. » Et on ne s’inquiète pas.

— Ella, Year 13, South Hampstead High School

A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!