Periodizing, Articulating, Narrating and Computing: Methodological Challenges of Writing a “Big Translation History”

Abstract:

This talk asks how translation history can be written as an integral strand of cultural, intellectual and political history. What can the study of translation reveal about the formation, development and transformation of languages, literary cultures and national identities? Which methods and tools best serve these inquiries, and what are their limits?

Drawing on a large-scale, multi-author project that maps literary translation in Estonian history, I reflect on core methodological dilemmas for long-span translation histories: periodization, the articulation of findings into a coherent narrative, and the trade-off between thematic focus and comprehensiveness, close and distant reading. Special attention is given to the affordances and challenges of digital‑humanities approaches in big translation histories. Combining archival research and close reading with computational methods, the project has produced the Estonian Translation Database (ETD; ≈70,000 entries) and the Network of Estonian Translated Literature (NETL), which together trace texts, translators, institutions and circulation patterns across five historical periods.

I discuss practical problems encountered such as uneven and unstable metadata, selection and synchronization choices, and the risks and rewards of datification. Using examples from network analysis and visualization, I show how these tools reveal hidden agents and flows while also exposing the exclusions and distortions caused by missing data. The talk will appeal to scholars in translation studies, literary and cultural history, and digital humanities, and to anyone interested in how translation shapes broader historical processes.

Daniele Monticelli is Professor of Semiotics and Translation Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. His research is characterized by a wide and interdisciplinary range of interests which include philosophy of language, semiotic of culture, critical theory and translation history. His work in translation history has focused on translation in contexts of radical cultural and social change with particular focus on the role of translation in the (de)construction of national identities in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and translation under Communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Currently, he coordinates the research grant “Translation in History, Estonia 1850-2000: Institutions, Agents, Texts and Practices”, which brings together researchers from different disciplines with the aim of writing the first comprehensive history of translation in Estonia. He is co-editor of Between Cultures and Texts: Itineraries in Translation History (2011), Translation under Communism (2022) and the Routledge Handbook of the History of Translation Studies (2024). In the last fifteen years he has authored several literary translations from Estonian into Italian.

The seminar will be held in English.