Beyond The Translator S Invisibility

The question of whether to disclose that a text is a translation and thereby give visibility to the translator has dominated discussions on translation throughout history. Despite becoming one of the most ubiquitous terms in translation studies, however, the concept of translator (in)visibility is often criticized for being vague, overly adaptable, and grounded in literary contexts. This interdisciplinary volume therefore draws on concepts from fields such as sociology, the digital humanities, and interpreting studies to develop and operationalize theoretical understandings of translator visibility beyond these existing criticisms and limitations. Through empirical case studies spanning areas including social media research, reception studies, institutional translation, and literary translation, this volume demonstrates the value of understanding the visibilities of translators and translation in the plural and adds much-needed nuance to one of translation studies’ most pervasive, polarizing, and imprecise concepts.

Since publication over ten years ago, The Translator’s Invisibility has provoked debate and controversy within the field of translation and become a classic text. Providing a fascinating account of the history of translation from the seventeenth century to the present day, Venuti shows how fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape the canon of foreign literatures in English and investigates the cultural consequences of the receptor values which were simultaneously inscribed and masked in foreign texts during this period. The author locates alternative translation theories and practices in British, American and European cultures which aim to communicate linguistic and cultural differences instead of removing them. In this second edition of his work, Venuti: clarifies and further develops key terms and arguments responds to critical commentary on his argument incorporates new case studies that include: an eighteenth century translation of a French novel by a working class woman; Richard Burton's controversial translation of the Arabian Nights; modernist poetry translation; translations of Dostoevsky by the bestselling translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; and translated crime fiction updates data on the current state of translation, including publishing statistics and translators’ rates. The Translator’s Invisibility will be essential reading for students of translation studies at all levels. Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is a translation theorist and historian as well as a translator and his recent publications include: The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference and The Translation Studies Reader, both published by Routledge.

Voices of the Invisible Presence: Diplomatic interpreters in post-World War II Japan examines the role and the making of interpreters, in the social, political and economic context of postwar Japan, using oral history as a method. The primary questions addressed are what kind of people became interpreters in post-WWII Japan, how they perceived their role as interpreters, and what kind of role they actually played in foreign relations. In search of answers to these questions, the living memories of five prominent interpreters were collected, in the form of life-story interviews, which were then categorized based on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, ‘field’ and ‘practice’. The experiences of pioneering simultaneous interpreters are analyzed as case studies drawing on Erving Goffman’s ‘participation framework’ and the notion of kurogo in Kabuki theatre, leading to the discussion of (in)visibility of interpreters and their perception of language, culture and communication.

This book presents an East-West dialogue of leading translation scholars responding to and developing Martha Cheung’s "pushing-hands" method of translation studies. Pushing-hands was an idea Martha began exploring in the last four years of her life, and only had time to publish at article length in 2012. The concept of pushing-hands suggests a promising line of inquiry into the problem of conflict in translation. Pushing-hands opens a new vista for translation scholars to understand and explain how to develop an awareness of non-confrontational, alternative ways to handle translation problems or problems related to translation activities that are likely to give rise to tension and conflict. The book is a timely contribution to celebrate Martha's work and also to move the conversation forward. Despite being somewhat tentative and experimental, it probes into how to enable and develop dynamic interaction between and reciprocal determinism of different hands involved in the process of translation.

This edited collection opens up new intellectual territories and articulates the ways in which academics are theorising and practicing new forms of research in ‘wild’ contexts. Many researchers are choosing to leave the familiarity of their laboratory-based settings in order to pursue in-situ studies ‘in the wild’ that can help them to better understand the implications of their work in real-world settings. This has naturally led to ethical, philosophical and practical reappraisals with regard to the taken for granted lab-based modus operandi of scientific, cultural and design-based ways of working. This evolving movement has led to a series of critical debates opening up around the nature of research in the wild, but up until now these debates have not been drawn together in a coherent way that could be useful in an academic context. The book brings together applied, methodological and theoretical perspectives relating to this subject area, and provides a platform and a source of reference material for researchers, students and academics to base their work on. Cutting across multiple disciplines relating to philosophy, sociology, ethnography, design, human–computer interaction, science, history and critical theory, this timely collection appeals to a broad range of academics in varying fields of research.

Translation and Literature in East Asia: Between Visibility and Invisibility explores the issues involved in translation between Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as from these languages into European languages, with an eye to comparing the cultures of translation within East Asia and tracking some of their complex interrelationships. This book reasserts the need for a paradigm shift in translation theory that looks beyond European languages and furthers existing work in this field by encompassing a wider range of literature and scholarship in East Asia. Translation and Literature in East Asia brings together material dedicated to the theory and practice of translation between and from East Asian languages for the first time.

This book offers a historical analysis of key classical translated works for children, such as writings by Hans Christian Andersen and Grimms’ tales. Translations dominate the earliest history of texts written for children in English, and stories translated from other languages have continued to shape its course to the present day. Lathey traces the role of the translator and the impact of translations on the history of English-language children’s literature from the ninth century onwards. Discussions of popular texts in each era reveal fluctuations in the reception of translated children’s texts, as well as instances of cultural mediation by translators and editors. Abridgement, adaptation, and alteration by translators have often been viewed in a negative light, yet a closer examination of historical translators’ prefaces reveals a far more varied picture than that of faceless conduits or wilful censors. From William Caxton’s dedication of his translated History of Jason to young Prince Edward in 1477 (‘to thentent/he may begynne to lerne read Englissh’), to Edgar Taylor’s justification of the first translation into English of Grimms’ tales as a means of promoting children’s imaginations in an age of reason, translators have recorded in prefaces and other writings their didactic, religious, aesthetic, financial, and even political purposes for translating children’s texts.