Haidee Kotze held her inaugural lecture: Changing Tongues

Since 1 November 2019, professor Haidee Kotze is Professor of Translation Studies at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Humanities. On Monday 22 January, she held her inaugural lecture entitled: ‘Changing Tongues: Translation, Language, Politics and Power in the (Post)colony’.

Two case studies

How does translation function in multilingual societies where languages have varied and often highly contested relations with each other? How can its uses serve the ends of linguistic and political powers? And what role does translation play in processes of language variation and language change, within such linguistically contested spaces? Kotze explores these questions using two case studies from the (post)colonial South African context.

The first study focuses on the role of translation as a potential ‘bad cultural engineering habit’ in the production of children’s books in the South African educational context, while the second considers the role of translation in bi- and multilingual colonial and postcolonial parliaments. Together, the two case studies demonstrate how translation is interwoven in the language ideologies of (post)colonial multilingual societies.

This article is originally from the UU website. Photo taken by Ed van Rijswijk.