Translation of Experience

Experience is a multilayered, cumulative affair with transformation at its core. Its study, a necessary first step for its translation, requires an exploration of embodiment, the senses, and cultural and social environments.

The second of two volumes, this book explores how artefacts, as outcomes of experience brought about by the “artistranslator” perform semiotic work. This semiotic work arises through the intervention of their makers but also through their viewers/audience, often through the latter’s direct participation in the artefacts’ creation, which we see as an open-ended process. Drawing on diverse examples from across the world, the chapters explore visual materiality, the digital world and the multisensory nature of artefacts such as monuments, festivals, theatre performances, artworks, rituals, the urban environment and human bodies—the embodied perception of which may draw holistically or variously on the haptic, olfactory, auditory, kinetic or kinaesthetic senses. Throughout the book, experiential translation is framed as a political endeavour that allows experience to be shared across linguistic, cultural, generational or gendered divides in the form of artefacts that facilitate transformation and the acquisition of knowledge.

This book and its companion volume The Experience of Translation: Materiality and Play in Experiential Translation include an international range of contributions from graduate students and early career researchers (ECRs) to tenured academics in translation studies, comparative literature, performance arts, fine arts, media and cultural studies, as well as educators, artists and curators. It will be of particular interest to translators and arts practitioners, scholars and researchers in the transdisciplinary field of humanities.

Madeleine Campbell teaches at Edinburgh University. Her transdisciplinary research spans arts-informed language education, experiential translation and creativity. Publications include The Experience of Translation (2024), “The multimodal translation workshop as a method of creative inquiry – acousmatic sound, affective perception and experiential literacy” (2024) and Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders (2019). She is Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded Experiential Translation Network (ETN).

Profile: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/madeleine-campbell

Ricarda Vidal is Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Experiential Translation Network (www.experientialtranslation.net). As researcher, text-maker and curator, she explores the multimodal aspects of communication across perceived cultural and/or linguistic divides. Recent publications include The Experience of Translation (2024), Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders (2019), Home on the Move (2019), and the bookwork series Revolve:R (2011–2023).

Profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ricarda-Vidal-2