This workshop engages with the role of migrants as translators and cultural mediators, as innovators or brokers of knowledge, or simply as transmitters of information. The focus will be for the most part on communication through manuscript or printed texts, considering the relationships between translators on the one hand, and potential readers and audiences on the other.

Migration and translation naturally go together. While those leaving their homes either due to persecution and economic hardship or for education, employment and adventure rely on translations to get by in new environments, those who successfully master the language of their new home often become cultural mediators for those who follow, as well as channels of communication with the new host community. In the early modern period in particular we find examples of translation playing an important role in numerous stories of exile, mobility and migration, often with profound political, ideological, religious and social implications. Yet, many of these stories lie hidden, seen as secondary to the grand narrative. It is the aim of this workshop to uncover and analyse them in their context.

Funded by Van Runset-Stiftung and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)