On Wednesday, May 29, 2024, the UNESCO Chair in Translating Culture at King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) with the support of Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission, hosted an online lecture entitled “Rethinking Translating Cultures in 16th-Century Islamic Spain”.

The lecture was delivered by Prof. Ovidi Carbonell Cortés, Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Salamanca and the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture. Prof. Moneera Al-Ghadeer (Holder of the UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at KFCRIS) introduced the Chair, the Translating Cultures Lab (TCL), and Prof. Charles Forsdick (University of Cambridge and TCL Fellow) who served as a moderator. 

The lecture is part of a series organized by TCL, a collaborative forum for scholars affiliated with the UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at KFCRIS. The lecture examined the intercultural power dynamics that underpin “cultural translation” by reflecting on how Islamic concepts were translated and appropriated in early modern Spain for the purposes of assimilation, and also examined its contemporary parallels.