Abstract ID: 3.12873 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

Translation is one of the great unseen of mountain culture. The climbing and mountaineering community stresses its international flair, but little attention is paid to the language dynamics operating within. This paper provides a first step of the analysis to bring translation practices and language difference to the fore in mountaineering studies. I focus on subtitling in mountain films, as the most accessible form of translation and proof of language diversity for contemporary mountain practitioners and enthusiasts. This paper builds on my expertise in genetic translation studies, surtitling history, and in particular on translation practices in mountaineering literature (Saroldi 2023). I draw on Sven Leuckert’s analysis of mountaineering English and its global variations (2024), Claudia Posch’s work on mountaineering corpora, as well as on audiovisual translation studies and on scholarship on mountain films (Quendler et al.) Their scholarship, however, does not address the practice of translation and the specificities of multilingual interaction in mountaineering landscapes and cultures. In particular, these issues are linked to the larger contextual history of mountaineering expeditions, most notably the role of the British Empire in the Himalayas. For my analysis, I consider data from key mountain festivals around the world, primarily the selection of members of the International Alliance for Mountain Film (IAMF). This allows me to compare data from programmes of festivals around the world (with, in addition to Europe and the Americas, data from festivals held in Nepal, South Korea, and New Zealand). I focus on the short features presented at these events, and on the role of subtitling in them. I will be providing an overall account of the languages featured in the past 25 years (with a larger historical overview for pre-existing festivals), and more specific analysis of the 2024 editions. For each festival, a specific short film will be analysed for qualitative analysis (the in-depth discussion of which will be developed in the resulting paper).