Theater translation and linguistic hospitality

Speech by Katrin Ahlgren, Associate Professor of language education at Stockholm University, member of the international multidisciplinary Research Centre MIRCo at Autonomous University in Madrid, and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Research Chair), as part of the literary translation seminar directed by Elena Balzamo, specialist in Scandinavian and Russian literature, essayist, translator and literary critic, at the Institut suédois de Paris.

Event closed to the public.
Presnetations in French and Swedish.

Présentation

In this seminar, Katrin Ahlgren will reflect on her dual experience as a theatre translator, from French to Swedish and Swedish to French. Among the francophone authors she has translated into Swedish are Wajdi Mouawad, Joël Pommerat, Jean Genet, and Georges Feydeau. In French, she has translated a play by Victoria Benedictsson and around ten plays by Lars Norén.

Her translation work is enriched by research projects in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, particularly around language and exile. The link between these activities is established through the concept of linguistic hospitality, inspired by the philosopher Bachir Diagne — according to whom translation serves as an epistemological model that brings languages and cultures closer together.