Translation Under State Control


Book Description

In this book, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth explores the effects of ideology on the English-to-German translation of children’s literature under the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic. Giving prominence to extra-textual factors, the study undertakes a close investigation of the East German censorship machinery, showing that there was a close correlation between the socialist ideology propagated by the regime and the book selection process itself. Through an analysis of the contents of the print permit (censorship) files and the afterwords found in many books, Thomson-Wohlgemuth demonstrates that literature was re-written not only to placate the censor but also to directly guide the reader down the correct ideological path, both in the selection and interpretation of each translated text. Thomson-Wohlgemuth begins this engaging study with a concise but thorough historical background of East German children's literature, setting the context for an examination of how the state and party operated to control the development of the genre. She highlights the fact that there was multi-level censorship at work, with the Unity Party propagating certain ideological literary policies, and the publishers self-censoring when selecting suitable texts for translation and publication. This book serves as an exemplary study of how publishers collaborated with the state in all Eastern European countries, and should be of interest to historians and children’s literature scholars alike.







Translation Effects


Book Description

Explores how translation in texts from Ælfric's Lives of the Saints to Chaucer imagines political, cultural, and linguistic communities.




Translation Studies in China


Book Description

This book features the latest research on translation by a dozen leading scholars of translation studies in China. The themes discussed are diverse, and include: translation policy, literary translation, medical translation, corpus translation studies, teaching translation, translation technologies, media translation, interpreting studies and so on. The contributors are all respected experts on their respective topics. The book reflects the state-of-the-art of translation studies in China, and offers a unique window on the latest thoughts on translation there.




Translation Nation


Book Description

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the smash hit Deep Down Dark, a definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States—a parallel nation, 35 million strong, that is changing the very notion of what it means to be an American in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Tobar begins on familiar terrain, in his native Los Angeles, with his family's story, along with that of two brothers of Mexican origin with very different interpretations of Americanismo, or American identity as seen through a Latin American lens—one headed for U.S. citizenship and the other for the wrong side of the law and the south side of the border. But this is just a jumping-off point. Soon we are in Dalton, Georgia, the most Spanish-speaking town in the Deep South, and in Rupert, Idaho, where the most popular radio DJ is known as "El Chupacabras." By the end of the book, we have traveled from the geographical extremes into the heartland, exploring the familiar complexities of Cuban Miami and the brand-new ones of a busy Omaha INS station. Sophisticated, provocative, and deeply human, Translation Nation uncovers the ways that Hispanic Americans are forging new identities, redefining the experience of the American immigrant, and reinventing the American community. It is a book that rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in American identity.




Translation Spectrum


Book Description

The fascinating process of translation in its many varieties is the subject of the essays in this book. Five of the essays discuss the theoretical aspects common to all works of translation. Other essays elucidate the particular processes of translating literature, drama, social science, classics, and songs. How computers can assist in translation and the economics of translation are the subjects of two of the essays. Considering translation as a discipline, the sixteen authors of these essays provide a complete perspective on translation for students considering translation as a career and for anyone interested in how a translation is made.




On Self-Translation


Book Description

A fascinating collection of essays and conversations on the changing nature of language. From award-winning, internationally known scholar and translator Ilan Stavans comes On Self-Translation,a collection of essays and conversations on language in its multifaceted forms. Stavans discusses the way syntax is being restructured by texting and other technologies. He examines how the alphabet itself is being forgotten by the young, how finger snapping has taken on a new meaning, how the use of ellipses has lapsed, and how autocorrect is shaping the way we communicate. In an incisive meditation, he shows how translating one’s own work reinvents oneself in another tongue. The volume includes tête-à-têtes with Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Wilbur and short-fiction master Lydia Davis, as well as dialogues on silence, multilingualism, poetry, and the durability of the classics. Stavans’s explorations cover Spanish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and the hybrid lexicon of Spanglish. He muses on the meaning of foreignness and on living and dying in different languages. Among his primary concerns are the role and history of dictionaries and the extent to which the authority of language academies is less a reality than a delusion. He concludes with renditions into Spanglish of portions of Hamlet, Don Quixote, and The Little Prince. The wide range of themes and engaging yet informed style confirm Stavans’s status, in the words of the Washington Post, as “Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast.” “On Self-Translation is a beautiful and often profound work. Stavans, a superb stylist, offers erudite meditations on translation, and gives us new ways to think about language itself.” — Jack Lynch, author of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of' “Proper” English, from Shakespeare to South Park “Stavans carries his learning light, and has the gift of communicating the profoundest of insights in the simplest of ways. The book is delightfully free of unnecessary jargon and ponderous discourse, allowing the reader time and space for her own reflections without having to slow down in the reading of it. This is work born out of the deep confidence that complete and dedicated immersion in a chosen field of knowledge (and practice) can bring; it is further infused with original wisdom accrued from self-reflexive, lived experiences of multilinguality.” — Kavita Panjabi, Jadavpur University




Pathways to Translation


Book Description

This work examines the state of the art of translator training in Germany and Europe. It presents a survey of new approaches in translation teaching and a discussion of the contributions second language education theory and practice can make to translation education.




The Art of Translation


Book Description

Jirí Levý's seminal work, The Art of Translation, considered a timeless classic in Translation Studies, is now available in English. Having drawn on adjacent disciplines, the methodology of Czech functional sociosemiotic structuralism and the state-of-the art in the West, Levý synthesized his findings and experience in the field presenting them in a reader-friendly book, which combines the approaches of a theoretician, systemic analyst, historian, critic, teacher, practitioner and populariser. Although focused on literary translation from theoretical, descriptive and historical perspectives, it presents a conceptualization of a general theory, addressing a number of issues discussed today. The 'practical' mission of the book as a theory extending to practice is based on the same historical-dialectic affinity of methods, norms, functions and values, accounting for the translator's agency and other contextual agents involved in the communication process. The book will be useful to translators, researchers, students and teachers in Translation and Literary Studies.




What is Translation?


Book Description

An investigation into the state of translation studies which looks ahead at the direction in which the author sees the field moving. Included are reviews of the work of translation theorists. A volume in a series which aims to present a broad spectrum of thinking on translation.