Name: Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26: Lecture by Prof. Matthew Reynolds
Start: 2026-03-19T16:00:00+08:00
End: 2026-03-19T17:30:00+08:00
Location: HKU Black Box

Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26: Lecture by Prof. Matthew Reynolds

Distinguished Lecture Series, 2025-26 Semester 2
About this Event

Public Lecture: Translalia: A Possible Future for Translation with GenAI

Speaker: Matthew Reynolds, Professor of English and Comparative Criticism, University of Oxford

March 19, 2026 (Thu), 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location Map)

Abstract:
Large Language Models (LLMs) are biased, error-prone, and bad for the environment; they reinforce the dominance of English and generate large amounts of terrible writing; and they are associated with a simplistic, functional conception of translation. But they can also represent language variety in unprecedentedly fluid ways, and enable new kinds of translational creativity that nurture an ethical awareness of difference. I call this potential ‘translalia’: in the talk I will explain what it is, how it relates to the history of translation, and why we should all be practising and promoting it.
Biography:
Matthew Reynolds is Professor of English and Comparative Criticism at Oxford, where he founded and chairs the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Research Centre (OCCT) and the associated Masters in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation. Some of his books are: the open access Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages (2023) which includes interactive digital elements; Prismatic Translation (2019); Translation: A Very Short Introduction (2016); The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer & Petrarch to Homer & Logue (2011); Likenesses (2013); The Realms of Verse (2001); and the novels Designs for a Happy Home (2009) and The World Was All Before Them (2013). He is currently leading a collaborative research investigation into 'AI, Decoloniality and Creative Poetry Translation' and developing an app to support creative, ethically reflective translation through language(s) in dialogue with AI tools.