Paratexts In Translation

As the 'thresholds' through which readers and viewers access texts, paratexts have already sparked important scholarship in literary theory, digital studies and media studies. Translation and Paratexts explores the relevance of paratexts for translation studies and provides a framework for further research. Writing in three parts, Kathryn Batchelor first offers a critical overview of recent scholarship, and in the second part introduces three original case studies to demonstrate the importance of paratextual theory. Batchelor interrogates English versions of Nietzsche, Chinese editions of Western translation theory, and examples of subtitled drama in the UK, before concluding with a final part outlining a theory of paratextuality for translation research, addressing questions of terminology and methodology. Translation and Paratexts is essential reading for students and researchers in translation studies, interpreting studies and literary translation.

This volume revisits Genette’s definition of the printed book’s liminal devices, or paratexts, as ‘thresholds of interpretation’ by focussing specifically on translations produced in Britain in the early age of print (1473-1660). At a time when translation played a major role in shaping English and Scottish literary culture, paratexts afforded translators and their printers a privileged space in which to advertise their activities, display their social and ideological affiliations, influence literary tastes, and fashion Britain’s representations of the cultural ‘other’. Written by an international team of scholars of translation and material culture, the ten essays in the volume examine the various material shapes, textual forms, and cultural uses of paratexts as markers (and makers) of cultural exchange in early modern Britain. The collection will be of interest to scholars of early modern translation, print, and literary culture, and, more broadly, to those studying the material and cultural aspects of text production and circulation in early modern Europe.

This book investigates different elements which have direct implications for translations but are not the actual text. These features are usually presented in a particular format - written, oral, digital, audio-visual or musical. They are furnished with, for example, illustrations, prologues, introductions, indexes or appendices, or are accompanied by an ensemble of information outside the text such as an interview with the author, a general or specialist press review, an advertisement or a previous translation. However, the boundaries of paratextuality are not limited to the aforementioned examples, since paratextuality has a direct implication for areas as diverse as censorship, a contracting economy, decisions taken by the various actors in the political or cultural context in which the text occurs. Therefore it is obvious that most of the key concepts in Translation Studies cannot be fully understood without reference to the part played by paratextual elements, examined here taking into account different language pairs from Turkish to Catalan. The content presented in this book is gathered from a conference on Paratextual Elements in Translation, held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2010.

As something that surrounds, extends, and presents a text to the world, the phenomenon of paratext is gaining more and more attention within the discipline of Translation Studies. This edited volume, with contributions by five Nordic scholars, aims to build on that attention by presenting five case studies on paratexts in translations into Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. A special focus lies on the paratextual mechanisms at play when works from different source cultures are translated into a Nordic target context. The translated works under scrutiny belong to genres such as literary novels, non-fiction works, and religious texts, and the paratexts surveyed include footnotes, covers, blurbs, introductions, and literary reviews. The scholars represented in the volume all work in Translation Studies, or at the intersection between Translation Studies and other disciplines.

Paratexts are those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher and reader: titles, forewords, epigraphs and publishers' jacket copy are part of a book's private and public history. In this first English translation of Paratexts, Gérard Genette shows how the special pragmatic status of paratextual declaration requires a carefully calibrated analysis of their illocutionary force. With clarity, precision and an extraordinary range of reference, Paratexts constitutes an encyclopedic survey of the customs and institutions as revealed in the borderlands of the text. Genette presents a global view of these liminal mediations and the logic of their relation to the reading public by studying each element as a literary function. Richard Macksey's foreword describes how the poetics of paratexts interact with more general questions of literature as a cultural institution, and situates Gennet's work in contemporary literary theory.

This book investigates the English translations and adaptations of the sixteenth century classic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei. Acclaimed the ‘No.1 Marvellous Book’ of the Ming dynasty, Jin Ping Mei was banned soon after its appearance, due to the inclusion of graphically explicit sexual descriptions. So far there have been more than a dozen English adaptations and translations of the novel. Working within the framework of descriptive translation studies, this book provides a translational history of the English versions of Jin Ping Mei, supported by various paratexts, including book covers, reviews, and archival materials. It also conducts textual comparisons to uncover the translation norms at work in the only two complete renditions, namely The Golden Lotus by Clement Egerton and The Plum in the Golden Vase by David Roy, respectively. The notions of agency, habitus and capital are introduced for the examination of the transference of linguistic, literary and cultural aspects of the two translations. The book represents the first systematic research effort on the English Translations of Jin Ping Mei. Given its pioneering status and interdisciplinary nature, the data, structure and findings of this book will potentially enrich the fields of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, Chinese Studies, Cultural Studies and Book History.

Crosscultural Transgressions offers explorations and critical assessments of research methods and models in translation studies, and points up new questions and directions. Ranging from epistemological questions of description and historiography to the politics of language, including the language of translation research, the book tackles issues of research design and methodology, and goes on to examine the kind of disciplinary knowledge produced in translation studies, who produces it, and whose interests the dominant paradigms serve. The focus is on historical and ideological problems, but the crisis of representation that has affected all the human sciences in recent decades has left its mark. As the essays in this collection explore the transgressive nature of crosscultural representation, whether in translations or in the study of translation, they remain attentive to institutional contexts and develop a self-reflexive stance. They also chart new territory, taking their cue from ethnography, semiotics, sociology and cultural studies, and tackling Meso-American iconic scripts, Bourdieu's constructivism, translation between philosophical paradigms, and the complexities of translation concepts in multicultural societies.

In his 1987 work Paratexts, the theorist Gérard Genette established physical form as crucial to the production of meaning. Here, experts in early modern book history, materiality and rhetorical culture present a series of compelling explorations of the architecture of early modern books. The essays challenge and extend Genette's taxonomy, exploring the paratext as both a material and a conceptual category. Renaissance Paratexts takes a fresh look at neglected sites, from imprints to endings, and from running titles to printers' flowers. Contributors' accounts of the making and circulation of books open up questions of the marking of gender, the politics of translation, geographies of the text and the interplay between reading and seeing. As much a history of misreading as of interpretation, the collection provides novel perspectives on the technologies of reading and exposes the complexity of the playful, proliferating and self-aware paratexts of English Renaissance books.