Literary Translator Studies


Book Description

This volume extends and deepens our understanding of Translator Studies by charting new territory in terms of theory, methods and concepts. The focus is on literary translators, their roles, identities, and personalities. The book introduces pertinent translator-centered approaches in four sections: historical-biographical studies, social-scientific and process-oriented methods, and approaches that use paratexts or translations to study literary translators. Drawing on a variety of concepts, such as identity, role, self, posture, habitus, and voice, the various chapters showcase forgotten literary translators and shed new light on some well-known figures; they examine literary translators not as functioning units but as human beings in their uniqueness. Literary Translator Studies as a subdiscipline of Translation Studies demonstrates how exploring the cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive facets of translatorial subjects contributes to a holistic understanding of translation.




The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation provides an accessible, diverse and extensive overview of literary translation today. This next-generation volume brings together principles, case studies, precepts, histories and process knowledge from practitioners in sixteen different countries. Divided into four parts, the book covers many of literary translation’s most pressing concerns today, from teaching, to theorising, to translation techniques, to new tools and resources. Featuring genre studies, in which graphic novels, crime fiction, and ethnopoetry have pride of place alongside classics and sacred texts, The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation represents a vital resource for students and researchers of both translation studies and comparative literature.




The Work of Literary Translation


Book Description

Explores a literary translation dedicated more to the reader's perception and experience of text than to textual interpretation.




The Philosophy of Literary Translation


Book Description

While reading transforms texts through memories, associations and re-imaginings, translation allows us to act out our reading experience, inscribe it in a new text, and engage in a dialogic and dynamic relationship with the original. In this highly original new study, Clive Scott reveals the existential and ecological values that literary translation can embody in its perceptual transformation of texts. The transfer of a text from one language into another is merely the platform from which translation launches its larger ambitions, including the existential expansion and re-situation of text towards new expressive futures and ways of inhabiting the world. Recasting language as a living organism and as part of humanity's ongoing duration, this study uncovers its tireless capacity to cross perceptual boundaries, to multiply relations between the human and the non-human and to engage with forms of language which evoke unfamiliar modes of psycho-perception and eco-modelling.




A Companion to Translation Studies


Book Description

A Companion to Translation Studies is the first work of its kind. It provides an authoritative guide to key approaches in translation studies. All of the essays are specially commissioned for this collection, and written by leading international experts in the field. The book is divided into nine specialist areas: culture, philosophy, linguistics, history, literary, gender, theatre and opera, screen, and politics. Contributors include Susan Bassnett, Gunilla Anderman and Christina Schäffner. Each chapter gives an in-depth account of theoretical concepts, issues and debates which define a field within translation studies, mapping out past trends and suggesting how research might develop in the future. In their general introduction the editors illustrate how translation studies has developed as a broad interdisciplinary field. Accompanied by an extensive bibliography, this book provides an ideal entry point for students and scholars exploring the multifaceted and fast-developing discipline of translation studies.




The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy presents the first comprehensive, state of the art overview of the complex relationship between the field of translation studies and the study of philosophy. The book is divided into four sections covering discussions of canonical philosophers, central themes in translation studies from a philosophical perspective, case studies of how philosophy has been translated and illustrations of new developments. With twenty-nine chapters written by international specialists in translation studies and philosophy, it represents a major survey of two fields that have only recently begun to enter into dialogue. The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy is a pioneering resource for students and scholars in translation studies and philosophy alike.




Sympathy for the Traitor


Book Description

An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't. For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty—summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus: What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering “faithful”? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a “traitor” but as the author's creative partner. Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, “skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work.” In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated—something, as Goethe put it, “impossible, necessary, and important.”




Translation after Wittgenstein


Book Description

In this eminently readable study, Philip Wilson explores the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and shows how a reading of this philosophy can enable the translation theorist and the practising translator to reflect upon and improve the phenomenon of translation. Wittgenstein, whilst a key figure in twentieth-century philosophy, remains peripheral to the field of translation studies and Wilson argues that his later work, because it deals with the nature of language and meaning, is potentially of great significance and an awareness of this can change translation, both literary and non-literary. Wittgenstein’s life and thought is treated in the introduction, where it is shown how his methods can be applied to areas outside philosophy. The central three chapters of the book survey: the reading of the source text for translation; the writing of the target text; the theorisation of the target text. The author demonstrates how tools from Wittgenstein’s work can be of use in translation studies: the notion of the language-game, for example, helps us to understand meaning by looking at the way that words are used, and this can both help us describe translation and suggest ways of translating. A wide variety of examples and case studies is given throughout the book, from both literary and non-literary sources. Aimed at translation studies scholars, graduate students and researchers, this interdisciplinary book will also be of interest to scholars of philosophy and literature.




Literary Translation in Periodicals


Book Description

While translation history, literary translation, and periodical publications have been extensively analyzed within the fields of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and Communication Sciences, the relationship between these three topics remains underexplored. Literary Translation in Periodicals argues that there is a pressing need for an analytical focus on translation in periodicals, a collaborative network of researchers, and a transnational and interdisciplinary approach. The book pursues two goals: (1) to highlight the innovative theoretical and methodological issues intrinsic to analyzing literary translation in periodical publications on a small and large scale, and (2) to contribute to a developing field by providing several case studies on translation in periodicals over a wide range of areas and periods (Europe, Latin America, and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries) that go beyond the more traditional focus on national and European periodicals and translations. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, as well as hermeneutical and sociological approaches, this book reviews conceptual and methodological tools and proposes innovative techniques, such as social network analysis, big data, and large-scale analysis, for tracing the history and evolution of literary translation in periodical publications.




Dictionary of Untranslatables


Book Description

Characters in some languages, particularly Hebrew and Arabic, may not display properly due to device limitations. Transliterations of terms appear before the representations in foreign characters. This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities