De-sacralizing the origin(al) and the transnational future of Translation Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article begins with the premise that the shift from source-oriented approaches in Translation Studies to target-oriented approaches has left the concept of the original largely undertheorized. As such it remains haunted by Romantic notions of originality that in turn associate translation with loss, distortion, and contamination. Tracing the transnational circulation of a Russian-themed English poem, Thomas Moore’s ‘Those Evening Bells’, and its Russian translation, the author models a kind of cultural transfer that has long been ignored in literary studies and translation studies as ‘inauthentic’. Only by historicizing the concept of the original, the author argues, can Translation Studies fully participate in the transnational turn in cultural studies, serving as an important critical site for interrogating the legacy of Romanticism it has until now merely replicated.