Teaching eco-translation : reclaiming the climate crisis discourse in the time of coronavirus

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has kept us individually as well as publicly in a state of preoccupation that prohibited us from staying with the trouble of an ecologically damaged planet. The authors of this contribution are sharing their experience and reflections upon teaching, as an active intervention to this absent presence in everyday Covid-19 lives, an eco-translation course. For this we will first offer a short discussion of our scholarly backgrounds and biases. Second, we will describe our efforts in translating these biases into concrete teaching. The course that serves here as a case study was taught in a project format in the 2021 winter term 2 at the Faculty for Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at Mainz University. It was a five-day course which blended localisation and nature writing framed by a holistic approach to scholarship and teaching. Third, we will discuss the teaching experience in terms of the presences and absences it made apparent.