The Translation Zone

The Translation Zone

Author: Emily Apter

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-10-16

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1400841216

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Translation, before 9/11, was deemed primarily an instrument of international relations, business, education, and culture. Today it seems, more than ever, a matter of war and peace. In The Translation Zone, Emily Apter argues that the field of translation studies, habitually confined to a framework of linguistic fidelity to an original, is ripe for expansion as the basis for a new comparative literature. Organized around a series of propositions that range from the idea that nothing is translatable to the idea that everything is translatable, The Translation Zone examines the vital role of translation studies in the "invention" of comparative literature as a discipline. Apter emphasizes "language wars" (including the role of mistranslation in the art of war), linguistic incommensurability in translation studies, the tension between textual and cultural translation, the role of translation in shaping a global literary canon, the resistance to Anglophone dominance, and the impact of translation technologies on the very notion of how translation is defined. The book speaks to a range of disciplines and spans the globe. Ultimately, The Translation Zone maintains that a new comparative literature must take stock of the political impact of translation technologies on the definition of foreign or symbolic languages in the humanities, while recognizing the complexity of language politics in a world at once more monolingual and more multilingual.


Literary Translation, Reception, and Transfer

Literary Translation, Reception, and Transfer

Author: Norbert Bachleitner

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-09-21

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 3110641992

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The three concepts mentioned in the title of this volume imply the contact between two or more literary phenomena; they are based on similarities that are related to a form of ‘travelling’ and imitation or adaptation of entire texts, genres, forms or contents. Transfer comprises all sorts of ‘travelling’, with translation as a major instrument of transferring literature across linguistic and cultural barriers. Transfer aims at the process of communication, starting with the source product and its cultural context and then highlighting the mediation by certain agents and institutions to end up with inclusion in the target culture. Reception lays its focus on the receiving culture, especially on critcism, reading, and interpretation. Translation, therefore, forms a major factor in reception with the general aim of reception studies being to reveal the wide spectrum of interpretations each text offers. Moreover, translations are the prime instrument in the distribution of literature across linguistic and cultural borders; thus, they pave the way for gaining prestige in the world of literature. The thirty-eight papers included in this volume and dedicated to research in this area were previously read at the ICLA conference 2016 in Vienna. They are ample proof that the field remains at the center of interest in Comparative Literature.


Perspectives on Literature and Translation

Perspectives on Literature and Translation

Author: Brian Nelson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134521871

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This volume explores the relationship between literature and translation from three perspectives: the creative dimensions of the translation process; the way texts circulate between languages; and the way texts are received in translation by new audiences. The distinctiveness of the volume lies in the fact that it considers these fundamental aspects of literary translation together and in terms of their interconnections. Contributors examine a wide variety of texts, including world classics, poetry, genre fiction, transnational literature, and life writing from around the world. Both theoretical and empirical issues are covered, with some contributors approaching the topic as practitioners of literary translation, and others writing from within the academy.


Translation and World Literature

Translation and World Literature

Author: Susan Bassnett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1317246594

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Translation and World Literature offers a variety of international perspectives on the complex role of translation in the dissemination of literatures around the world. Eleven chapters written by multilingual scholars explore issues and themes as diverse as the geopolitics of translation, cosmopolitanism, changing media environments and transdisciplinarity. This book locates translation firmly within current debates about the transcultural movements of texts and challenges the hegemony of English in world literature. Translation and World Literature is an indispensable resource for students and scholars working in the fields of translation studies, comparative literature and world literature.


Against World Literature

Against World Literature

Author: Emily Apter

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1844679705

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Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability argues for a rethinking of comparative literature focusing on the problems that emerge when large-scale paradigms of literary studies ignore the politics of the “Untranslatable”—the realm of those words that are continually retranslated, mistranslated, transferred from language to language, or especially resistant to substitution. In the place of “World Literature”—a dominant paradigm in the humanities, one grounded in market-driven notions of readability and universal appeal—Apter proposes a plurality of “world literatures” oriented around philosophical concepts and geopolitical pressure points. The history and theory of the language that constructs World Literature is critically examined with a special focus on Weltliteratur, literary world systems, narrative ecosystems, language borders and checkpoints, theologies of translation, and planetary devolution in a book set to revolutionize the discipline of comparative literature.


Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation

Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation

Author: Harriet Hulme

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-11-19

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1787352080

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Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation engages with translation, in both theory and practice, as part of an interrogation of ethical as well as political thought in the work of three bilingual European authors: Bernardo Atxaga, Milan Kundera and Jorge Semprún. In approaching the work of these authors, the book draws upon the approaches to translation offered by Benjamin, Derrida, Ricœur and Deleuze to highlight a broad set of ethical questions, focused upon the limitations of the monolingual and the democratic possibilities of linguistic plurality; upon our innate desire to translate difference into similarity; and upon the ways in which translation responds to the challenges of individual and collective remembrance. Each chapter explores these interlingual but also intercultural, interrelational and interdisciplinary issues, mapping a journey of translation that begins in the impact of translation upon the work of each author, continues into moments of linguistic translation, untranslatability and mistranslation within their texts and ultimately becomes an exploration of social, political and affective (un)translatability. In these journeys, the creative and critical potential of translation emerges as a potent, often violent, but always illuminating, vision of the possibilities of differentiation and connection, generation and memory, in temporal, linguistic, cultural and political terms.


Dreaming across Languages and Cultures

Dreaming across Languages and Cultures

Author: Laurence Wong

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-10-02

Total Pages: 551

ISBN-13: 1443868280

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Dreaming across Languages and Cultures: A Study of the Literary Translations of the Hong lou meng (also called The Dream of the Red Chamber, Red Chamber Dream, or The Story of the Stone) is a groundbreaking monograph in translation studies. Integrating theory with practice, it examines, analyses, compares, and evaluates 14 versions of the greatest Chinese novel in five major European languages, namely, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In this study, translation, linguistic, literary, and semiotic theories, as well as the author’s own experience of translating Dante and Shakespeare, are drawn on. Though primarily aimed at scholars specializing in translation and in Hong lou meng studies, the book also introduces students of Chinese literature, comparative literature, and cultural studies to new interdisciplinary perspectives. By illustrating salient points with lively and interesting examples, too, it enables the non-specialist to see the fascinating intricacies of language and translation, as well as the complex relationship between translation and culture. In view of its new approach to a new topic, of its many impressive insights, and, above all, of the amazing depth and breadth of its investigation, Dreaming across Languages and Cultures is truly monumental.