Presented on March 3, 2016 at the CGC 2016 Conference Play / Rewind River Building, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
This is early thinking about translating place names in a post-colonial socio-technological and national context. In Ireland the place name, have been translated from Gaelic to English and back again, transcribed on paper, digitized into maps and then into a linked database – thus augmenting the interconnections with Irish digital artifacts be them descriptions of archaeological and historical artifacts and places but also linked to historical texts, photographs, letters which discuss, references or represent these places. The first Translations were portrayed by playwright Brian Friel.
In the context of place names in Canada’s North it is about translating place names from their aural record in the context of Inuit local and traditional knowledge into digital records and recordings, creating typologies based on their emergence, and then mapping these into atlases. This is a process of translation by remediation and appropriating western legal and record keeping frameworks to preserve and share this knowledge.
In both cases, in Ireland and Canada’s North it is about media translations which re-play memories and by re-mediating them into a database create news.
Tracey P. Lauriault 