Our languages reflect foreign dominances as well as conquests: how does translation approach the foreign language layers? Three translators discuss their strategies for dealing with historical relicts in their source languages: with images and sentence structures of the Indonesian of the former Dutch East Indies, corrupted German from the former countries of the Hapsburg monarchy, Russian in Polish and Belarussian texts or with Turkish borrowings in Bulgarian.
With: Bettina Bach, Eva Profousová and Thomas Weiler. Moderated by : Henrike Schmidt

Currently, English has established itself as the language of science that non-native speakers use as well and write their texts in English or have them translated into English by computers. This greater range, however, is juxtaposed by the risk of standardization and the fruitful work of local specializations is threatened by a possible flattening of content. Internationally active scientists and a translator discuss: what kind of language is this Globish? Does it make translations by human beings obsolete or does it actually make their significance visible for the first time?
With: Alexandra Berlina, Hanna Engelmeier and Eva Geulen. Moderated by : Wolfgang Hottner

We live in a postmigrant society in which there are a diversity of other languages besides German. What happens to our understanding of the German language in a society shaped by immigration and cultural diversity? How does this change affect literature and translation? What linguistic challenges are translators confronted with when they translated books from societies that are also shaped by different language cultures?
With: Charlotte Bomy, Tomer Gardi andMiriam Mandelkow. Moderated by: Nora Bierich

Literary translation made tangible: on their journey along the Polish-German language border and through the Central European Jewish cultural landscape of The Books of Jacob, the translating travelers picked up many objects that open up hidden dimensions of the sense beyond the printed book and which allow the associative sparks to fly. How does these sparks make the jump over to translation? What material properties do the Polish language and the German language have? In what ways do the air of fiction and the energy of invention affect the languages?
With: Lisa Palmes and Lothar Quinkenstein. Moderated by: Dorota Stroińska

In conversation with Jing Bartz, Karin Betz carries us off into the kinetics of the names, bodies and cultures in Jin Yong’s martial arts saga The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The Hong Kong grandmaster of the kung-fu novel has written an exploration of Chinese cultural history that is simultaneously poetic, funny and philosophical with his adventure novel. With a lecture by the kung-fu grandmaster Hong Thay Lee as well as Janik Jungjohann and Zäcilia Runkewitz weighing in about the exploding turtles, the rains of peach blossoms and the remorse of the proud dragon.
With: Karin Betz, Hong Thay Lee, Janik Jungjohann and Zäcilia Runkewitz. Moderated by: Jing Bartz

The Bosnian writer Dževad Karahasan is equally rooted in the spiritual traditions of the antique, Islamic and Christian cultures. His works combine tradition with the modern, interweave poetry with philosophical reflection and make universal contexts visible. Karahasan, who experienced the fall of the multi-ethnic state Yugoslavia and the besiegement of Sarajevo, has, as a witness to the destruction of this culturally and religiously diverse city distinguished by spiritual diversity and tolerance, a sharpened awareness for the meaning of language, for its inhumane instrumentalization as well as for its enlightening power to bring human beings together. His festival keynote speech turns the attention to the living language that connects the individually specific with the all-encompassing general and which lives on in translation.
With: Dževad Karahasan. Moderated by: Cornelia Jentzsch
Translation of the festival keynote speech: Katharina Wolf-Grießhaber