By Chris Stamatakis (UCL English Language & Literature)

Professor Gesine Manuwald

When is a translation more than just a translation? When might it become an imitation? What happens when translators adopt, transpose, and freely modify writing in one language as they turn it into another? How does a translator do more than merely convey the words or sense of the original, and instead recreate something of the style and elegance of that language?

Aficionados of Latin and the curious layman alike had a wonderful opportunity to grapple with these questions at a talk on Latin as a language of translation in Renaissance England, given at UCL on 10 October by Professor Gesine Manuwald, in the first of this year’s ‘Translation in History’ lectures.

An expert on Roman literature, Professor Manuwald, Head of UCL Greek and Latin  , drew on her extensive interests in the reception and writing of Latin literature in England. In Elizabethan England, Prof. Manuwald explained, Latin was not only used as a literary language by English writers because it allowed them to reach a wider European audience (as Francis Bacon would prove); it also served as a language for developing fluency and stylistic elegance.

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Written by Ashley Cowburn, UCL History 2013

How did you react to Baroness Thatcher’s funeral? Were you present among the hundreds of people who gathered in Goldthorpe to witness an effigy of Thatcher set alight, accompanied with chants of ‘scum!’?

Or were you mourning at the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, paying tribute to one of Britain’s longest serving prime ministers?

The point to this juxtaposition, as Dr Andrew Flinn (UCL Information Studies) proposed in his Lunch Hour Lecture, ‘Hidden No Longer: Community history-making’ on 25 June, was not a question of ‘respect’. Rather, Thatcher’s funeral unearthed emotional histories of community remembrance.

In Nottinghamshire, former mine workers gathered for a minute’s silence to mark the demise of their community. In Grantham – the birthplace of the former PM – a rose was unveiled in her memory, celebrating Thatcher’s intrinsic involvement in the community history.

Only by exhuming hidden community histories, Dr Flinn argues, can we fully appreciate the incredibly diverse – and ‘inevitable’ – nature of the reaction to the funeral. (more…)

How do victims cope with the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust? What’s more, how do the perpetrators?

This Festival of the Arts panel session on 9 May addressed different elements of how people struggle to remember or forget their experiences of the Holocaust. It was not, as I had expected, about the psychology behind memory loss or recall following traumatic events; rather about how strategies of coping can manifest itself in various forms such as film, literature and discourse.

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, courtesy of Daniel Foster on Flickr

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I suspect you’ve never heard of Będzin, a town 25 miles north of the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. I hadn’t. And until she discovered the dark secret of a close family friend, neither had Professor Mary Fulbrook.

Then, one morning, she stumbled upon a shocking fact: Udo Klausa, the man married to her godmother had been the Landrat of Będzin and had sent thousands of Jews to their deaths during World War II.

Thus began years of discovery as Prof Fulbrook attempted to piece together Klausa’s involvement in the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi party and the truth behind his repeated claims of innocence. A journey that has culminated in the publication of her new book, A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust.

On 6 February, Professor Fulbrook (UCL Professor of German History and Vice-Dean of Faculty of Arts and Humanities) joined the Institute of Jewish Studies to discuss the research behind her latest book and the impact the personal story had on her and her historical objectivity. (more…)