The McGill School of Continuing Studies will be awarding an honorary doctorate to translator and interpreter, Giuliana Elena Garzone, at its Spring Convocation held on Tuesday, May 28, 2019.
Thirteen other individuals will be receiving honorary doctorates across McGill’s faculties. These newest honourees represent a wide range of fields. Recipients include a Nobel-winning mathematician, an exceptional jazz improviser and an advocate for agricultural reform in Africa. These 14 men and women come from different continents, and have excelled in different fields. What unites this varied group is a dedication to improving the lives of others, whether through research, art, public service or philanthropy.
Giuliana Elena Garzone has distinguished herself as a dynamic force in Italy and beyond in the promotion of intercultural understanding and cultural and linguistic diversity.
Well-known for her groundbreaking writings, Professor Garzone is currently a full professor of translation and interpreting at IULM University in Milan. She has enjoyed a rewarding professional career as an accredited translator and interpreter, academic, and researcher. A prolific author, she has published over 140 essays and book chapters, and has (co-)edited or (co-)authored more than 45 volumes.
Having started her academic career in translation and interpreting at Milan’s Scuola Superiore per Interpreti e Traduttori, she accepted an appointment as Associate Professor of English and Translation at the University of Bologna in 1998. In 2001, she moved to the University of Milan as a Full Professor, where she taught English, translation, and intercultural studies in the Department of Studies in Language Meditation and Intercultural Communication. In 2005, she was appointed Chair and Director of postgraduate programs and research in that Department, where she supervised the PhD program in Linguistic, Literary, and Intercultural Studies. She currently directs the postgraduate program in Specialized Translation and Conference Interpreting.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lingue Culture Mediazioni – Languages Cultures Mediation – a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes up-to-date research on multidisciplinary approaches to linguistic and cultural mediation in English, French, Spanish, and Italian – Professor Garzone has to her credit publications comprising a wide range of subjects, including scientific discourse, legal language, business communication, political discourse, and translation and interpreting. Over the years, these publications have informed and, in many cases, fundamentally influenced the study and practice of specialized communication in Italy and abroad.
She has been involved with several international and national associations and research groups in linguistics, translation, and intercultural studies, including the US-based Association for Business Communication, from which she received the Francis W. Weeks Award of Merit in 2018. For her activity in the promotion of English studies in higher education in Italy, she was appointed to the executive committee of the Associazione Italiana di Anglistica.
Giuliana Garzone has played a key role in the organization of the DICOEN (Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise) conferences, a series of biennial events gathering scholars interested in the relevance of discourse and communication to the world of business and organization. In 2013, Professor Garzone was asked to lead the Italian translation of the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities.
Giuliana Garzone’s publications and the challenging direction given to her students and fellow researchers have served to highlight the growing importance of international English, while at the same time respecting the specificity of national languages. Her insight into the evolution of communication and discourse practices makes her a leader of excellence in communication.
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Encoding Citizen Rights and Responsibilities in Multilingual Political and Legal Contexts: A Conversation with Professor Guiliana Garzone
Language and words matter! This proposition lies at the core of a fundamental question facing societies: “How do political notions that emerge from the debate on rights and responsibilities really matter in society when they are turned into legal concepts and encoded in formal documents and legal communication?” This question was and remains important for Montreal, a city which has led the way for many other global municipalities in codifying its own values and commitments in the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (MCRR), enacted in 2006.
An important manifestation of UNESCO’S policy on linguistic and cultural diversity, the Charter -initially issued in Canada’s two official languages- has since been translated into numerous other languages. The Charter’s Italian translation produced by Professor Giuliana Garzone in collaboration with P. Catenaccio and D. Mazzi, under the coordination of McGill University’s Professor James Archibald, plays a particularly important role in Montreal given the City’s substantial population of Italian descent.
Prof. Giuliana Garzone will discuss the crucial role played by language professionals in the translation and of codification of rights, with special reference to the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities. She will argue that in multilingual contexts, such as in Montreal, the act of translating in itself has political significance. The very decision to translate the Charter into several languages speaks to the spirit of inclusion and openness, and to the values of cultural diversity inherent in the Charter and its translation.
Register for the event here.