Translation History And Arts

Art historians have been facing the challenge – even from before the advent of globalization – of writing for an international audience and translating their own work into a foreign language – whether forced by exile, voluntary migration, or simply in order to reach wider audiences. Migrating Histories of Art aims to study the biographical and academic impact of these self-translations, and how the adoption and processing of foreign-language texts and their corresponding methodologies have been fundamental to the disciplinary discourse of art history. While often creating distinctly "multifaceted" personal biographies and establishing an international disciplinary discourse, self-translation also fosters the creation of instances of linguistic and methodological hegemony.

An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't. For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty—summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus: What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering “faithful”? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a “traitor” but as the author's creative partner. Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, “skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work.” In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated—something, as Goethe put it, “impossible, necessary, and important.”

Jirí Levý's seminal work, The Art of Translation, considered a timeless classic in Translation Studies, is now available in English. Having drawn on adjacent disciplines, the methodology of Czech functional sociosemiotic structuralism and the state-of-the art in the West, Levý synthesized his findings and experience in the field presenting them in a reader-friendly book, which combines the approaches of a theoretician, systemic analyst, historian, critic, teacher, practitioner and populariser. Although focused on literary translation from theoretical, descriptive and historical perspectives, it presents a conceptualization of a general theory, addressing a number of issues discussed today. The 'practical' mission of the book as a theory extending to practice is based on the same historical-dialectic affinity of methods, norms, functions and values, accounting for the translator's agency and other contextual agents involved in the communication process. The book will be useful to translators, researchers, students and teachers in Translation and Literary Studies.

Translation, History and Arts: New Horizons in Asian Interdisciplinary Humanities Research is a collection of selected research papers originally presented at the Todai Forum in October 2011 in Lyon, France, under the auspices of the University of Tokyo, Japan. Papers selected for inclusion in this book stand at the frontier of interdisciplinary humanities research, and are concerned with translation and cross-cultural studies, social and art history, and comparative area studies. A central theme of the papers is the development of a new discursive narrative of local histories against the backdrop of world history. Through case studies of historical and modern socio-cultural events occurring in different regions and countries, this book strives to advance our understanding of the dynamic and complex interactions among distinct social and cultural systems in world history.

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.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation History presents the first comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this multi-faceted disciplinary area and serves both as an introduction to carrying out research into translation and interpreting history and as a key point of reference for some of its main theoretical and methodological issues, interdisciplinary approaches, and research themes. The Handbook brings together 30 eminent international scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, offering examples of the most innovative research while representing a wide range of approaches, themes, and cultural contexts. The Handbook is divided into four sections: the first looks at some key methodological and theoretical approaches; the second examines some of the key research areas that have developed an interdisciplinary dialogue with translation history; the third looks at translation history from the perspective of specific cultural and religious perspectives; and the fourth offers a selection of case studies on some of the key topics to have emerged in translation and interpreting history over the past 20 years. This Handbook is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of translation and interpreting history, translation theory, and related areas.

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.

Presents the most important statements on the translation of literature from Roman times to the 1920s. Topics covered: power, poetics, universe of of discourse, language, education. It contains many texts previously unavailable in English.