translation studies - Facultatea de Litere - Dunarea de Jos

Foreword
• create, maintain and gradually expand a thematic network which should create all
partners the possibility to exchange ideas on cultural issues;
• offer specialists from different fields of activity the framework for international
collaboration;
• provide a cyber space for partners where they could not only express but also have
their ideas published;
• contribute to the better understanding and integration of the members of other
cultures into the majority-dominated world.
The research carried out by the members of the Galaţi English Department explored
gender studies, on the one hand, and aspects regarding minorities in Romania, in general,
and the Roma minority in Romania, in particular, on the other. The contributions were
presented in international conferences which took place in Germany (Köln), Portugal
(Coimbra) and Sweden (Malmo). The project managers are still doing their best to get
European financial support to continue expanding the thematic network.
The second major project has been developed within the FP6 international
cooperation framework and focuses on possibilities of better knowing, understanding and
tolerating a wide diversity of subcultural groups. Still running, this project entitled Society
and Lifestyles: Towards Enhancing Social Harmonization through Knowledge of
Subcultural Communities (SAL) was described by Isabela Merilă who emphasized the
participants’ intention to explore an impressive amount of research areas and mentioned
that, so far, the results of their scientific investigations have been disseminated in
international conferences which took place in Lithuania (Kaunas), Hungary (Pecs), Latvia
(Riga) and Romania (Galaţi). The task of the Galaţi team has been the exploration of the
Romanian hip-hop subculture and of the possible consequences of the phenomenon upon
the Romanian society. (Project site: http://www.sal.vdu.lt )
The plenary session of the first day ended with Gabriela Iuliana Colipcă’s brief
presentation of Gender, Migration and Intercultural Interactions in the Mediterranean and
South-East Europe: an Interdisciplinary Perspective (GE.M.IC), the new FP7
collaboration scheme approved by the European Commission. Joining the efforts of eight
partners from Greece (as coordinator), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy, Romania, Spain, Macedonia
and Turkey, this new project that encourages multicultural and interdisciplinary
collaboration aims at shedding new light on migration trends, in general, and on women’s
status as migrants, in particular, so as to challenge the negative representations of mobility
and diversity in Europe, to contribute to improving policies and to promoting a fruitful
intercultural dialogue. Six specific areas make the subject of research within this FP7
project (starting from February 1, 2008), namely representations of national identity in the
media, education, urban social spaces and movements, religion, intercultural violence, and
mixed and transnational families. Out of them, two – national identity and the media, and
intercultural violence – will be particularly focused on by the Galaţi team whose members,
the presentation underlined, hope that their analysis of film and media representations of
migration trends characteristic for the Romanian context, next to their investigation of
migrant women’s testimonies regarding cases of physical and emotional violence (e.g.
trafficking, rape, discrimination, etc.) as well as that of discursive violence accounted for
on national identity differences, will bring a valuable contribution to drawing the attention
of the national/international academic and policy-making circles to relevant issues of
gender, migration and intercultural relations that need to be reconsidered. Thus, the Galaţi
team could take an active part in favouring significant changes for the better of the
mentalities and practices related to (women) migrants and to their influence on the cultural
heritage of Europe in the twenty-first century. (Project site: www.gemic.eu)
The conference proceedings continued with concurrent sessions, so devised as to
allow the participants to share their research findings in language-specific environments
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