Introduction : pure language, pure medium?

In March 2008, we convened a British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) graduate conference entitled ‘The Media of Translation/Translation between Media’ at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) in Cambridge. The following papers were presented at the conference and subsequently developed for publication. The conference sought to initiate investigations into the intersections of translation theory and the study of intermediality by setting one against the other: when one medium aspires to the condition of another, or attempts to simulate its effects, is it useful to think of this as ‘translation’? Might different languages be considered as separate media? If so, should translation be conceived of as an ‘intermedial’ pursuit?