Prismatic Jane Eyre

The Prismatic Translation research strand, part of the AHRC-funded Creative Multilingualism Programme (2016-20), sees translation as a creative act. It is not simply the transference of words from one language to another but the release of multiple signifying possibilities. Our research, presented in the volumes Creative Multilingualism: A Manifesto, Prismatic Translation, and the website Prismatic Jane Eyre: An Experiment in the Study of Translations, shows how translation facilitates new expressive forms and ideas.

The website explains how Charlotte Brontë's novel has been translated at least 593 times into 57 languages, and uses interactive maps and digital visualisations of the text and translations to bring this phenomenon to life.

Prismatic Translation's vision locks into a wider dialogue about translation as an educational and aspirational tool, which recognises that learners involved in creative and translation-focused activities benefit on multiple levels. A 2019 report from the Stephen Spender Trust, our collaborator, and the MEITS Policy Briefing on Community Languages and Social Cohesion (2018) point to the benefits of cultivating and celebrating languages and translation.

The Stephen Spender Trust, in particular, notes that learners partaking in creative education and translation activities enjoy heightened critical awareness and understanding of other languages and cultures, whilst also developing literacy and decoding skills. They assert that raising the profile of community languages has the effect of promoting the self-esteem of multilingual children.

Our research uses the Prismatic Jane Eyre website as the starting point for workshops and competitions in translation and creative writing for learners (ages 13-19) who are either learning modern languages, or speak English as an additional language. From the examples brought to life on the website, learners will gain an understanding of translation's creativity and practical importance: this will inform and enhance their own language appreciation, comprehension and use.

Our activities will foster a sense of creative aspiration, whilst also enabling learners to take ownership of the languages they already know or are learning. EAL learners producing poems in community languages will socially profit from the recognition of their languages, impacting upon their sense of self-worth and sense of societal cohesion.

The workshops offer an intellectual space in which learners can work with the Stephen Spender Trust's translators. In the workshops, learners will participate in exercises that will assist them in creating translation and versions of passages from Jane Eyre, or will write poems inspired by aspects of the novel. The learners will also write commentaries explaining their creative and language choices in producing their work.

The website looks closely at Charlotte Brontë's novel as it is translated into multiple languages, understanding this process as transformation and growth rather than as loss. The website is an especially rich resource containing a list of every known translation of Jane Eyre, and a series of interactive maps showcasing the novel's global proliferation.

It demonstrates how the novel's words, scenes, and metaphors change as they move across languages. Comparative close readings of parallel passages draw attention to how the text is re-realised in different languages in different ways. The website gives learners a distinctive form of language learning in which they may explore grammar and semantics, linguistic politics and history, textual productivity, and the agency of translators.

The website was conceived as a means of publishing the Prismatic Jane Eyre project's scholarly research: its potential as a learning resource for schoolchildren and a stimulus to creative translation has only become apparent after its launch in late 2019. Follow-on funding would give us an opportunity to optimize our work's educative potential.