Translation Effects


Book Description

Much of Canadian cultural life is sustained and enriched by translation. Translation Effects moves beyond restrictive notions of official translation in Canada, analyzing its activities and effects on the streets, in movie theatres, on stages, in hospitals, in courtrooms, in literature, in politics, and across café tables. The first comprehensive study of the intersection of translation and culture, Translation Effects offers an original picture of translation practices across many languages and through several decades of Canadian life. The book presents detailed case studies of specific events and examines the reverberation and spread of their effects. Through these imaginative, at times unusual, investigations, the contributors unveil the simultaneous invisibility and omnipresence of translation and present a cross-cut of Canadian translation moments. Addressing the period from the 1950s to the present and including a wide scope of examples from medical interpreting to film dubbing, the essays in this book create a panoramic view of the creation of modern culture in Canada. Contributors include Piere Anctil (University of Ottawa), Hélène Buzelin (Université de Montréal), Alessandra Capperdoni (Simon Fraser University), Philippe Cardinal, Andrew Clifford (York University), Beverley Curran, Renée Desjardins (University of Ottawa), Ray Ellenwood, David Gaertner, Chantal Gagnon (Université de Montréal), Patricia Godbout, Hugh Hazelton, Jane Koustas (Brock University), Louise Ladouceur (Université de l'Albera, Gillian Lane-Mercier (McGill University), George Lang, Rebecca Margolis, Sophie McCall (Simon Fraser University), Julie Dolmaya McDonough, Denise Merkle (Université de Moncton), Kathy Mezei, Sorouja Moll, Brian Mossop, Daisy Neijmann, Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Joseph Pivato, Gregory Reid, Robert Schwartzwald, Sherry Simon, Luise von Flotow (University of Ottawa), and Christine York.




Translation Effects


Book Description

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




A History of Modern Translation Knowledge


Book Description

A History of Modern Translation Knowledge is the first attempt to map the coming into being of modern thinking about translation. It breaks with the well-established tradition of viewing history through the reductive lens of schools, theories, turns or interdisciplinary exchanges. It also challenges the artificial distinction between past and present and it sustains that the latter’s historical roots go back far beyond the 1970s. Translation Studies is but part of a broader set of discourses on translation we propose to label “translation knowledge”. This book concentrates on seven processes that make up the history of modern translation knowledge: generating, mapping, internationalising, historicising, analysing, disseminating and applying knowledge. All processes are covered by 58 domain experts and allocated over 55 chapters, with cross-references. This book is indispensable reading for advanced Master- and PhD-students in Translation Studies who need background information on the history of their field, with relevance for Europe, the Americas and large parts of Asia. It will also interest students and scholars working in cultural and social history.




Empirical Translation Studies


Book Description

The present volume is devoted to the study of language use in translated texts as a function of various linguistic, contextual and cognitive factors. It contributes to the recent trend in empirical translation studies towards more methodological sophistication, including mixed methodology designs and multivariate statistical analyses, ultimately leading to a more accurate understanding of language use in translations.




Why Translation Matters


Book Description

"Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translator's role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, "My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented." For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: "Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable"."--Jacket.




Reflections on Translation Theory


Book Description

Originally published in different journals and collected volumes, these papers in conceptual analysis cover some central topics in translation theory and research: types of theory and hypothesis; causality and explanation; norms, strategies and so-called universals; translation sociology, and ethics. There are critical reviews of Catford’s theory, and of Skopos theory, and of Kundera’s views on literary translation, and detailed analyses of the literal translation hypothesis and the unique items hypothesis. The methodological discussions, which draw on work in the philosophy of science, will be of special relevance to younger researchers, for example those starting work on a doctorate. Some of the arguments and positions defended – for instance on the significant status of conceptual, interpretive hypotheses, and the ideal of consilience – relate to wider ongoing debates, and will interest any scholar who is concerned about the increasing fragmentation of the field and about the future of Translation Studies. Let the dialogue continue!




Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature


Book Description

Brian James Baer explores the central role played by translation in the construction of modern Russian literature. Peter I's policy of forced Westernization resulted in translation becoming a widely discussed and highly visible practice in Russia, a multi-lingual empire with a polyglot elite. Yet Russia's accumulation of cultural capital through translation occurred at a time when the Romantic obsession with originality was marginalizing translation as mere imitation. The awareness on the part of Russian writers that their literature and, by extension, their cultural identity were “born in translation” produced a sustained and sophisticated critique of Romantic authorship and national identity that has long been obscured by the nationalist focus of traditional literary studies. By offering a re-reading of seminal works of the Russian literary canon that thematize translation, alongside studies of the circulation and reception of specific translated texts, Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature models the long overdue integration of translation into literary and cultural studies.




Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies


Book Description

In Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies, Edwin Gentzler argues that rewritings of literary works have taken translation to a new level: literary texts no longer simply originate, but rather circulate, moving internationally and intersemiotically into new media and forms. Drawing on traditional translations, post-translation rewritings and other forms of creative adaptation, he examines the different translational cultures from which literary works emerge, and the translational elements within them. In this revealing study, four concise chapters give detailed analyses of the following classic works and their rewritings: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Germany Postcolonial Faust Proust for Everyday Readers Hamlet in China. With examples from a variety of genres including music, film, ballet, comics, and video games, this book will be of special interest for all students and scholars of translation studies and contemporary literature.




Constructing a Sociology of Translation


Book Description

The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator’s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu’s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.




The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of feminism and gender awareness in translation and translation studies today. Bringing together work from more than 20 different countries – from Russia to Chile, Yemen, Turkey, China, India, Egypt and the Maghreb as well as the UK, Canada, the USA and Europe – this Handbook represents a transnational approach to this topic, which is in development in many parts of the world. With 41 chapters, this book presents, discusses, and critically examines many different aspects of gender in translation and its effects, both local and transnational. Providing overviews of key questions and case studies of work currently in progress, this Handbook is the essential reference and resource for students and researchers of translation, feminism, and gender.