Category Translation Studies
Skinless Light and Time That Breathes: Oscar Duffield on Translating the Poetry of Gabrielle Althen
The work of French poet Gabrielle Althen (pseudonym of Colette Astier) is a simmering broth of intensity, strangeness and wild overgrowth verging on surrealism. These qualities are paradoxically nurtured rather than inhibited by her preference for miniscule, aphoristic snippets of text ‘sculpted’ (her phrase) out of the blank space that envelops them.
There Can Never Be Too Many Cooks: On Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen” in English and in Italian Translation
For six years, I have had a tradition: right around the beginning of December, when the Florida heat finally cools off, I slip my copy of Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen” off the shelf and allow it to rekindle a warmth within my being. Translated in English by Megan Backus, the light, intricate, and mouth-watering prose of the novella has delighted me endlessly.
TRANSLATOR, READER: “THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSLATION” BY DAMION SEARLS
“The philosophical account of translation in this book is of what it means to read like a translator” (5) writes Damion Searls. Some might object that philosophy isn’t particularly good at describing reading (or writing, for that matter) and argue that one should prefer literary theory, but Searls enlists philosophers to describe what translators do (they read). Philosophy, moreover, usefully displaces translation ‘theory’ which too often, in his view, involves telling translators what they should or shouldn’t do.
Does my translation have an accent? Exophonic Translation and the Experience of Language
Exophonic translators question not only the equation language and culture, but also the motives driving the translation of a certain work of literature in a certain language. The motives rest in the translator’s “language biography,” a complex and fascinating intersection of personal experiences, bodily encounters and relationships with languages and texts, as well as subjective perception of languages and cultures. In other words, with exophonic translators, the focus is not on the translated text, but on the translators themselves. This shift of focus from text to translator has led to the creation of a new sub field of Translation Studies, called Translator Studies, investigating the lived experiences of individual translators, or their Spracherleben.
The Translation Review: Why it Matters and How to Do it Right. Part 1.
This essay explores the work that reviewers of translations do in the American context, from reviews in mainstream publications to those written for independent specialized outlets. It discusses what the work of reviewing a translation entails; what the purpose of the translation review is and what it can achieve in different contexts; and how the practice of reviewing translations can be improved.
Translation and its Present Contexts: On Translating Eudora Welty into Hebrew
A year ago, I was relatively new to the United States – living in Durham, North Carolina – when I found a copy of “The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty” in my neighborhood’s Little Free Library. I did not know Welty, but I took the book with me. I thought reading it could be a good way to get oriented. After reading some of it, I closed the book, but something in that story, “Where is the Voice Coming From?,” asked me to translate it. I didn’t understand why. It is a somewhat problematic story, I thought. I felt uneasy.
On the Problem of Determining the Essence of Translation
To the extent to which translation is a new re-play, a re-shaping of the given material according to the universal language rules, it is, in principle, just as independent as the original. It is simply that same original, only re-cast in a new form, and continuing to live in that new form. The original appears to be original only outwardly, in a temporal sense. In essence, that is, in its relation to the possibilities of human speech, it is not more original than the translation. The original is lost, imprisoned in its private form. Translatability rescues it from those constraints.
Bibikhin’s Task of the Translator
Vladimir Veniaminovich Bibikhin (1938-2004) was a philosopher, translator, and philologist. During the 1970s and 1980s, Bibikhin established himself as a prominent translator of the most complex philosophical, theological, and literary texts, and as a widely respected humanitarian scholar of a rare and extensive erudition. His translations were remarkable not only as philological, but also as philosophical achievements, as they aggressively revised the principles of text interpretation, typical of the Russian tradition of philosophical translation—something that made many of his contemporaries suspicious of his theoretical and ideological proclivities.
Toward a Speculative Poetics of Translation: Janine Beichman’s Translation from Japanese of Ishigaki Rin’s “This Overflowing Light: Selected Poems”
In the volume’s artful and engaging introduction, Beichman calls our attention to several correspondences with contemporary poetics: first, there is the speculative orientation of Ishigaki’s work, capable of uncanny leaps in spatial and temporal perspective. Then there is its under-explored connection to eco-critical thought. And finally there is its playful but intense awareness of the agentive role of fantasy and imagination in constructing ‘real life.’
Global Feminist Translators Unite!: “The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism, and Gender,” edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal
The Handbook shows a global community of women linguists at work and reveals what a fast-developing field of translation studies truly is. It demonstrates that it’s a fool’s errand to talk about “accurate” translation, though “good” or “beautiful” translation is possible, as well as translation that dares to pursue a socially progressive agenda. As translators, we are called to develop feminist techniques and criticism, not only of the words on the page, but also when considering who gets to translate, edit, and publish our books, as well as how our words are illustrated, printed, and marketed.
Julia Kornberg’s “Atomizado Berlín”: Creating a New Reader Across Translation
In this essay, I investigate how Julia Kornberg writes a novel that challenges and subverts this ‘lazy’ reader with stylistic, formal, and thematic innovations, and think about how a translation of her text, though difficult or precisely because of that, has the ability to support and communicate across another language her careful mediation of the demands of the global literary market.
Erasing the Dividing Line: On Christian Bancroft’s “Queering Modernist Translation”
The uninitiated may wonder, what can queer theory offer translation, as a study and practice, aside from ways of uncovering or confronting the gender biases and heteronormativity in and between languages? Much more than that, I can enthusiastically report.