Western Translation Theory From Herodotus To Nietzsche

Douglas Robinson offers the most comprehensive collection of translation theory readings available to date, from the Histories of Herodotus in the mid-fifth century before our era to the end of the nineteenth century. The result is a startling panoply of thinking about translation across the centuries, covering such topics as the best type of translator, problems of translating sacred texts, translation and language teaching, translation as rhetoric, translation and empire, and translation and gender. This pioneering anthology contains 124 texts by 90 authors, 9 of them women. Sixteen texts by 4 authors appear here for the first time in English translation; 17 texts by 9 authors appear in completely new translations. Every entry is provided with a bibliographical headnote and footnotes. Intended for classroom use in History of Translation Theory, History of Rhetoric or History of Western Thought courses, this anthology will also prove useful to scholars of translation and those interested in the intellectual history of the West.

This cutting-edge collection, born of a belief in the value of approaching 'translation' in a wide range of ways, contains essays of interest to students and scholars of translation, literary and textual studies. It provides insights into the relations between translation and comparative literature, contrastive linguistics, cultural studies, painting and other media. Subjects and authors discussed include: the translator as 'go-between'; the textual editor as translator; Ghirri's photography and Celati's fiction; the European lending library; La Bible d'Amiens; the coining of Italian phraseological units; Michèle Roberts's Impossible Saints; the impact of modern translations for stage on perceptions of ancient Greek drama; and the translation of slang, intensifiers, characterisation, desire, the self, and America in 1990s Italian fiction. The collection closes with David Platzer's discussion of translating Dacia Maraini's poetry into English and with his new translations of 'Ho Sognato una Stazione' ('I Dreamed of a Station') and 'Le Tue Bugie' ('Your Lies').

This is a book-length commentary on Walter Benjamin’s 1923 essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers," best known in English under the title "The Task of the Translator." Benjamin’s essay is at once an immensely attractive work for top-flight theorists of translation and comparative literature and a frustratingly cryptic work that cries out for commentary. Almost every one of the claims he makes in it seems wildly counterintuitive, because he articulates none of the background support that would help readers place it in larger literary-historical contexts: Jewish mystical traditions from Philo Judaeus’s Logos-based Neoplatonism to thirteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah; Romantic and post-Romantic esotericisms from Novalis and the Schlegels to Hölderlin and Goethe; modernist avant-garde foreclosures on "the public" and generally the communicative contexts of literature. The book is divided into 78 passages, from one to a few sentences in length. Each of the passages becomes its own commentarial unit, consisting of a Benjaminian interlinear box, a paraphrase, a commentary, and a list of other commentators who have engaged the specific passage in question. Because the passages cover the entire text of the essay in sequence, reading straight through the book provides the reader with an augmented experience of reading the essay. Robinson’s commentary is key reading for scholars and postgraduate students of translation, comparative literature, and critical theory.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the complex field of translation studies. Written by leading specialists from around the world, this volume brings together authoritative original articles on pressing issues including: the current status of the field and its interdisciplinary nature the problematic definition of the object of study the various theoretical frameworks the research methodologies available. The handbook also includes discussion of the most recent theoretical, descriptive and applied research, as well as glimpses of future directions within the field and an extensive up-to-date bibliography. The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies is an indispensable resource for postgraduate students of translation studies.

Translation and Race brings together translation studies with critical race studies for a long-overdue reckoning with race and racism in translation theory and practice. This book explores the "unbearable whiteness of translation" in the West that excludes scholars and translators of color from the field and also upholds racial inequities more broadly. Outlining relevant concepts from critical race studies, Translation and Race demonstrates how norms of translation theory and practice in the West actually derive from ideas rooted in white supremacy and other forms of racism. Chapters explore translation’s role in historical processes of racialization, racial capitalism and intellectual property, identity politics and Black translation praxis, the globalization of critical race studies, and ethical strategies for translating racist discourse. Beyond attempts to diversify the field of translation studies and the literary translation profession, this book ultimately calls for a radical transformation of translation theory and practice. This book is crucial reading for advanced students and scholars in translation studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and related areas, as well as for practicing translators.

The Dao of Translation sets up an East-West dialogue on the nature of language and translation, and specifically on the "unknown forces" that shape the act of translation. To that end it mobilizes two radically different readings of the Daodejing (formerly romanized as the Tao Te Ching): the traditional "mystical" reading according to which the Dao is a mysterious force that cannot be known, and a more recent reading put forward by Sinologists Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, to the effect that the Dao is simply the way things happen. Key to Ames and Hall’s reading is that what makes the Dao seem both powerful and mysterious is that it channels habit into action—or what the author calls social ecologies, or icoses. The author puts Daoism (and ancient Confucianism) into dialogue with nineteenth-century Western theorists of the sign, Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure (and their followers), in order to develop an "icotic" understanding of the tensions between habit and surprise in the activity of translating. The Dao of Translation will interest linguists and translation scholars. This book will also engage researchers of ancient Chinese philosophy and provide Western scholars with a thought-provoking cross-examination of Eastern and Western perspectives.

Thinking through Translation with Metaphors explores a wide range of metaphorical figures used to describe the translation process, from Aristotle to the present. Most practitioners and theorists of translation are familiar with a number of metaphors for translation, such as the metaphor of the bridge, following in another's footsteps, performing a musical score, changing clothes, or painting a portrait; yet relatively little attention has been paid to what these metaphorical models reveal about how we conceptualize translation. Drawing on insights from recent developments in metaphor theory, contributors to this volume reveal how central metaphorical language has been to translation studies at all periods of time and in various cultures. Metaphors have played a key role in shaping the way in which we understand translation, determining what facets of the translation process are deemed to be important and therefore merit study, and aiding in the training of successive generations of translators and theorists. While some of the papers focus mainly on past metaphorical representations, others discuss recent shifts in both metaphor and translation theory, while others still propose innovative metaphors in a bid to transform translation studies. The volume also includes an annotated bibliography of works centrally concerned with metaphors of translation.

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