Date: Tuesday 19 November | Time: 1-2pm | Venue: THB-1003 | Hardiman Research Building (HRB) Floor 1
“Non-Basic Meaning-Making in Prophecy Texts from First-Millennium BC Assyria: Translation versus Interpretation”
by Luke McDermott
The corpus of Neo-Assyrian prophecy which comes down to us dates entirely to the reign of the 7th century king Esarhaddon and his son Assurbanipal. The prophecies generally consist of affirmations of support for the king to whom they are addressed, expressed by divine voices and transmitted via the hieratic medium of prophetic “shouters” (raggintu). The majority of these oracle annunciations are compiled together in collective “anthologies” known as the Prophecy Collections or Sammeltafeln. Three such collections are extant, with fragmentary evidence of a fourth.
The “textualisation” of these prophecies involved scribes as creative agents who were active on a fundamental level of production, rather than mere functionaries who recorded mechanically, and added semantic potential that could only be accessed from a material, written text. These prophecies in their written form anticipate and gesture towards a continuous and active scholarly reception. They often ask to be engaged with beyond their initial “one-dimensional” reading as cohesive syntactic units with monovalent or prescriptive meanings.
This workshop will look at some of the metalinguistic techniques of meaning-making that are present within Neo-Assyrian prophecy texts, based in syntax, orthography and semantic “equations.” With these considerations in mind, we can contemplate and problematise to what extent the process of “translation” interacts and even interferes with a deeper “interpretation” of the texts.
Translation Café is a monthly event run by the Emily Andeson Centre for Translation Research and Practice. It functions as a reading group for colleagues interested in the many facets of the art of translation. The format of the group allows participants to share their interests, research or linguistic investigations with other colleagues in an informal manner.
Colleagues interested in leading future Translation Café events are invited to contact Ira at irina.ruppo@universityofgalway.ie.