Translation As Muse

Poetry is often said to resist translation, its integration of form and meaning rendering even the best translations problematic. Elizabeth Marie Young disagrees, and with Translation as Muse, she uses the work of the celebrated Roman poet Catullus to mount a powerful argument that translation can be an engine of poetic invention. Catullus has long been admired as a poet, but his efforts as a translator have been largely ignored. Young reveals how essential translation is to his work: many poems by Catullus that we tend to label as lyric originals were in fact shaped by Roman translation practices entirely different from our own. By rereading Catullus through the lens of translation, Young exposes new layers of ingenuity in Latin poetry even as she illuminates the idiosyncrasies of Roman translation practice, reconfigures our understanding of translation history, and questions basic assumptions about lyric poetry itself.

Over the last 30 years there has been a substantial increase in the study of the history of translation. Both well-known and lesser-known specialists in translation studies have worked tirelessly to give the history of translation its rightful place. Clearly, progress has been made, and the history of translation has become a viable independent research area. This book aims at claiming such autonomy for the field with a renewed vigour. It seeks to explore issues related to methodology as well as a variety of discourses on history with a view to laying the groundwork for new avenues, new models, new methods. It aspires to challenge existing theoretical and ideological frameworks. It looks toward the future of history. It is an attempt to address shortcomings that have prevented translation history from reaching its full disciplinary potential. From microhistory, archaeology, periodization, to issues of subjectivity and postmodernism, methodological lacunae are being filled. Contributors to this volume go far beyond the text to uncover the role translation has played in many different times and settings such as Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle-east and Asia from the 6th century to the 20th. These contributions, which deal variously with the discourses on methodology and history, recast the discipline of translation history in a new light and pave the way to the future of research and teaching in the field.

That Goethe was also a translator is a well-kept secret. However, in this study the main focus lies on these translations. Especially on his five longest and most important ones, such as Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau and Cellini’s Vita.Not only will the translations be discussed but – and maybe even more importantly – also will this study try to give an answer to the motivation of Goethe. Why did he devote so much time to these translations? This volume offers a complete new perspective on Goethe and his works.

In the past decades, translation studies have increasingly focused on the ethical dimension of translational activity, with an emphasis on reflexivity to assert the role of the researcher in highlighting issues of visibility, creativity and ethics. In Reflexive Translation Studies, Silvia Kadiu investigates the viability of theories that seek to empower translation by making visible its transformative dimension; for example, by championing the visibility of the translating subject, the translator’s right to creativity, the supremacy of human translation or an autonomous study of translation. Inspired by Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, Kadiu presents practical ways of challenging theories that argue reflexivity is the only way of developing an ethical translation. She questions the capacity of reflexivity to counteract the power relations at play in translation (between minor and dominant languages, for example) and problematises affirmative claims about (self-)knowledge by using translation itself as a process of critical reflection. In exploring the interaction between form and content, Reflexive Translation Studies promotes the need for an experimental, multi-sensory and intuitive practice, which invites students, scholars and practitioners alike to engage with theory productively and creatively through translation.

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

This is the seminannual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Summer 2014 issue, Number 17. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry." - Dana Gioia. CONTENTS: A TRANSLATION ANTHOLOGY FEATURE ISSUE - Guest Edited by Charles Martin EDITORIAL - Alexander Pepple. GUEST EDITORIAL - Charles Martin. ESSAYS - Michael Palma. POETRY TRANSLATIONS BY - X.J. Kennedy, A.E. Stallings, Rachel Hadas, William Baer, Willis Barnstone, Tony Barnstone, Michael Palma, Dick Davis, Jay Hopler, Ned Balbo, N.S. Thompson, John Ridland, Kate Light, John Whitworth, Andrew Frisardi, Diane Furtney, Teresa Iverson, Julie Kane, Maryann Corbett, Bilal Shaw, Mark S. Bauer, Michael Bradburn-Ruster, Heidi Czerwiec, Claudia Routon, Brett Foster, Catherine Chandler, Terese Coe, Adam Elgar, Rima Krasauskytė, Kent Leatham, R.C. Neighbors, Deborah Ann Percy, Dona Roşu, Arnold Johnston, Maria Picone, Robert Schechter, Wendy Sloan, Jeff Sypeck, Ryan Wilson, Shifra Zisman, Laine Zisman Newman. POETRY TRANSLATIONS OF - Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud, C.P. Cavafy, Fernando Pessoa, Miguel de Unamuno, Catullus, Charles Baudelaire, Francesco Petrarch, Rainer Maria Rilke, Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Horace, Martial, José Luis Puerto, José Corredor-Matheos, Cecco Angiolieri, Delmira Agustini, Heinrich Heine, Christine de Pizan, Nur Jahan, Ayesheh-ye afghan, Jahan Khanom, Reshheh, Gaspara Stampa, Dante Alighieri, Armand Sully Prudhomme, Gérard de Nerval, François Villon, Euripides, Georg Trakl, Nelly Sachs, Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė, Gavin Douglas, William Fowler, William Dunbar, Bertolt Brecht, Antonio Malatesti, Giovanni Raboni, Fosildo Mirtunzio (Pseudonym), Zaharia Stancu, Paul Valéry, Tove Ditlevsen, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Giacomo Leopardi, Paul the Deacon, Giovanni Pascoli, Meleager, Lope de Vega, Dovid Zisman.

While many professional translators believe the ability to translate is a gift that one either has or does not have, Allison Beeby Lonsdale questions this view. In her innovative book, Beeby Lonsdale demonstrates how teachers can guide their students by showing them how insights from communication theory, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and semiotics can illuminate the translation process. Using Spanish to English translation as her example, she presents the basic principles of translation through 29 teaching units, which are prefaced by objectives, tasks, and commentaries for the teacher, and through 48 task sheets, which show how to present the material to students. Published in English.