Literature In English Translation Research Articles

Transcultural Poetics: Chinese Literature in English Translation ed. by Yifeng Sun and Dechao Li (review)

Transcultural Poetics: Chinese Literature in English Translation ed. by Yifeng Sun and Dechao Li (review)

Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission

The introduction to the Special Issue, ‘Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission’, provides an overall view of the theme. It starts with a discussion of the definition of popular culture and its powerful presence in today’s world assisted by technological development. To follow is a sketch of Chinese popular culture in the contemporary political and cultural context. We then propose a translational perspective, through which modes and issues of exchange, mediation and intervention when Chinese popular culture enters the western cultural and ideological landscape can be located, examined and analysed. Finally, five articles in this special issue – respectively on ‘tai chi’, Peppa Pig and China, internet celebrities and Chinese learning, Chinese online literature in English translation and fan translation of BL web novels – are briefly introduced. When read together, the collection reveals some paradigms and trends of Chinese popular culture in global cultural flow.

Caste Issue in Literature and Regional Literature

The key objective of this piece of writing is to examine the manner in which caste is portrayed as a subject for two popular schools of writing in India, that is, Indian Literature in English & Indian Literature in other languages. The collaboration of David Davidar & Omprakash Valmiki is chosen for the post. Among their plays, The House of Blue Mangoes (2002) & Joothan: A Dalit's Life (2003) are selected because they deal with caste problems. Both plays are critical portrayals of the lives of low-caste citizens & their efforts to come to grips with the truth of their shackled life. This is not a question of classifying the two schools of writing, but of examining their disparities in the way they explain the caste concept as portrayed in mainstream writing and regional writing. In order to understand the developments in writing & regional writing, it is important to have an overview of Indian literature in English & Indian literature in English translation.

Review of Sun & Li (2023): Transcultural Poetics: Chinese Literature in English Translation

Review of Sun & Li (2023): Transcultural Poetics: Chinese Literature in English Translation

Humanized Microhistory of Translation: The Case of Modern Arabic Literature in English Translation

Throughout history, translators have played a vital role as cultural agents in shaping the histories of different nations and cultures. Nevertheless, the translators’ role has been largely ignored in translation history research studies, which have often focused on the texts translated. Therefore, many scholars in translation history research (Adamo 2006; Munday 2014; Pym 2009) have argued for the importance of studying translators themselves. The present study draws on the method of microhistory and applies it to the Arabic translation tradition by analyzing the life, personal relationships, and statements of one of the leading translators of Modern Arabic Literature (MAL) into English, Denys Johnson-Davies (J-D). The paper explores and analyses J-D’s autobiography, interviews, and paratextual materials accompanying his translations in order to better understand how J-D’s experience as a translator and cultural agent can shed light on the bigger picture of MAL translation history. The data analysis reveals insights into the status of translation during the different periods of MAL translation history. This includes the publication of Arabic-translated literary works into English, the reception of MAL by the English readership, and the reception of translators and their work by Arab authors and governments during the different periods of the translation history of MAL. This study also confirms the argument that the study of translators is a valid, useful method for researching translation history. Keywords: Modern Arabic Literature, Translation Microhistory, Arabic Translation history, Denys Johnson-Davies, Humanizing translation history, Translator Studies

Olanda

Olanda

Bibliographies of Turkish Literature in English Translation

Bibliographies of Turkish Literature in English Translation

A Chronological Bibliography of Turkish Literature in English Translation: 2004 – 2020

This bibliography, which covers English translations of literary works produced in Turkish—including the works penned by minorities living in Turkey—from 2004 to 2020, is a sequel to Saliha Paker and Melike Yılmaz’s bibliographic research published in the 2004 special issue “Turkish Literature and Its Translation” of Translation Review (vol. 68, no. 1). Paker and Yılmaz’s work, despite its comprehensive coverage from 1949 to 2004, leaves out the translations published in the latter half of the cut-off date, presumably due to the publication date of the issue. Therefore, the following chronological bibliography begins with the works that were not included in the previous study. Taking Paker and Yılmaz’s research as its basis, this bibliography includes literary genres common to world literatures, such as poetry, drama, novel, short story, as well as creative non-fiction such as travel literature and memoir. Other works of non-fiction and self-published works are not represented here.

An Etat Présent of the Kurdish literature in English translation

ABSTRACT Inspired by studies on minority language in translation and feminist translation studies, this article presents an analysis of a small corpus of Kurdish literature in English translation and examine the process of its constitution, its main actors and practices, and the image of Kurdish literature it depicts. In the absence of state and institutional support, Kurdish translation initiatives are largely individual supply-driven and they entail a form of activism. Presenting a historical overview of Kurdish literary translation into English, we illustrate the diversity of actors in its complex evolution. We examine the opportunities collaborative practices such as co-translation offer Kurdish as a stateless minority language but also the perils of such practices in reinforcing the minority and dominated status of Kurdish. Finally we assess the (re)presentation of Kurdish literature in English translation and demonstrate that it is at odds with the Kurdish canons.

Indian Translation Traditions: Perspectives from Sujit Mukherjee

This paperrevisits Sujit Mukherjee’s seminal work Translation as Discovery and Other Essays on Indian Literature in English Translation (1981) to analyze his contribution in foregrounding the translation traditions of India. In the book, he uses the term ‘transcreation’ to refer to translation as a practice in the Indian literary scenario and cites examples from the ancient to modern times, to show how we have perceived and practiced translation. He centers this process in contrast to the western practice of the same, which makes translation a postcolonial exercise. He emphasizes the need to focus on the pragmatic analysis of the process of translation and looking at the ‘Indo-English literature’, as ‘a limb of the body, the purusha, that is Indian literature’ which would help in decolonizing literary studies.

Translating literature into English in the twenty‐first century

AbstractSince the turn of the millennium, the translation community has initiated several projects aimed at increasing the visibility of contemporary international literature in English translation. This article is an overview and evaluation of these initiatives and will analyse several interlinked matters: (1) reports and manifestos on translation; (2) two projects that seek to collect and interpret data regarding translated literature available in English; (3) marketing tools developed by cultural institutions, foundations and small publishing houses with a major or exclusive focus on translated texts, and their use of new and old technologies aimed at attracting an audience for what still seems a niche market in the English‐speaking world. While the opportunities for promoting translation have been widely exploited, there has been little in the way of a systematic effort to generate and publish reliable data on the state of the market for translations into English. It is therefore timely to review those efforts that exist, to ask what light these fact‐finding initiatives shed on the market for literary translations into English, and to consider how these initiatives might be further developed or replaced in the decades to come.

“That Famous Wit and Cavaleer of France”: The English Translation of Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1650s

the mid-seventeenth century romance had become a worthwhile commodity for English booksellers. This essay focuses on the English translations of two works by Cyrano de Bergerac that were published in quick succession in London during the Interregnum in the context of this new interest in French literature.... This article proposes a study of the marketing strategies that booksellers, translators, and potential editors used to present the two works in In both instances, the translators’ own voices can be heard.... Yet Cyrano’s identity as a “Libertin erudit” with a scandalous reputation in France, whose works were submitted to censorship, seems not to have registered in the English context. The translatorial and editorial strategies tend to disregard the question of heterodoxy: as he crossed the Channel, Cyrano lost his aura of scandal to become the archetypal figure of the French “Wit” - a marketing strategy capitalizing on national stereotypes, but also catering to the demand for French literature in English translation.

Penguin Classics and the Canonization of Chinese Literature in English Translation

This article examines the process by which translated Chinese literature becomes ‘canonical’ in the anglophone literary system. Adopting a notion of the ‘classic’ that takes into account both essentialist and historical stances, it conducts a study of Penguin Classics originally written in Chinese under the aspects of choice of texts, translations, publishing, and literary-critical reception. It addresses the questions: What is the current canon of Chinese literature in English translation? What are the forces that certify some Chinese works as deserving canonical status in anglophone culture? And what consequences might the politics of recognition have for the understanding of world literature at large? It argues that translated texts are valorized by multiple mediators within institutional frameworks, and the status they are accorded reflects the structures of the global literary economy.

The ideological manipulation of Hebrew literature in English translation in the 1970s and 1980s

ABSTRACTIn the past two decades, the field of translation studies has increasingly focused on the role of ideology in literary translation and cross-cultural transfer. This paper presents findings from the close textual comparison of original works of Hebrew literature and their English translations published in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. I specify translation strategies that have had ideological effects on the source texts, and demonstrate how historically or ethically charged subject matter was manipulated so as to subdue “problematic” aspects of the text for the (largely Jewish) target audience. The two major categories of manipulations had to do with the moral dimension of the portrayal of Israel and Israeli society, particularly in subject matter related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; and with the relationship between Israel and other nations, and between Israel and Diaspora Jews. As stressed by recent sociological studies of translation, the translations can be seen both as reflective of contemporary socio-political trends of thought, and as practices playing an unseen role in strengthening these trends.

Reshaping the Japanese Novel in English Translation

The study of literature in translation has been a key component of Translation Studies since the field emerged more than half a century prior. One of the defining moments in the field was a shift in focus from comparing a source text with its translation to looking at the translation in a target culture. Another development that is growing in importance is a focus on the translator and how other individuals may use their agency to influence the final textual product as well as its packaging and reception. To this end, the theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly that of the habitus of the translator, and that of the Actor-network Theory have been applied to analyze and trace the development of translation products, the individuals involved the process, as well as the discourse which surrounds the reception of translations. This article sets out to apply these theoretical and methodological apparatus to the early titles of Japanese literature in English translation which appeared in the 1950s. The findings suggest the agency construct is supported by the concept of habitus and complimented by Actor-Network Theory. The articulation of new data provided by publisher archives in turn helps to clarify the historical place of these translations.

Writer-Translators of Ethnicity Translations and literatures written in English

The intercultural exchange that is inherent in acts of interlingual translation is not limited to translations alone but extends to original works written in languages other than the writer’s mother-tongue. Like interlingual translations, they also carry across one linguistic culture into another. In that sense, these writers can be termed writer-translators who are ambassadors of the source culture they translate from. The paper discusses Indian writing in English (Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things) in juxtaposition with Indian Literature in English Translation (English translations of two Malayalam novels from Kerala) to better understand the linguistic and cultural underpinnings of the process of translation. The author argues that the translation is invariably target oriented when it is from a minority language to a dominant language such as English and from a non-Western culture that is perceived to be an ethnic, exotic other.

"C'est une cata": Questions of the Translatability of Nathalie Sarraute's Ouvrez

The translation of a work from one language to another is always a delicate undertaking. Attention must be paid to register, rhythm, sonority, style, tone, etc., all while respecting the authors intentions and maintaining the original message. In the case of canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Baudelaire, several translations of their works exist with newer versions seeking to improve upon the older ones and better convey the text to a contemporary reader. When teaching French literature in English translation to undergraduates, I have found that examining two or three translations of Baudelaires Les Fleurs du Mal side by side can help create a more complete comprehension of the work for students, each interpretation highlighting different poetic aspects. A reader in a non-academic setting might similarly benefit from the variations and nuances afforded by multiple translations of canonical texts. Living authors are unlikely to see more than one translation of their work into a particular language, but they may play a role in the translation process. For example, in Experiences in Translation, Italian author Umberto Eco discusses several of the obstacles his texts have presented to his translators and the choices they have made, often in consultation with Eco himself. (1) Other authors, perhaps most famously Milan Kundera, have also chosen to actively collaborate with those translating into languages in which they are proficient. But what happens when an author, who has played a hand in the translating of all of her works into English, deems her final text untranslatable and dies before any English translations appear? This is the dilemma posed by French author Nathalie Sarraute and her book Ouvrez. Nathalie Sarraute, a twentieth-century French writer, devoted her literary career to the exploration of what she called tropisms: subconscious sensations manifesting themselves in infinitely small and almost imperceptible ways at sub-conversational levels of existence. Her work evolves as she pursues this quest, trading traditional narrative structures for dialogic forms and experimenting with genre, particularly the novel, play, and autobiography. Her final published text, Ouvrez (1997), holds a privileged position within her literary production. Returning to the dialogic structure of Enfance or Tu ne t'aimes pas, Ouvrez features words that carry on conversations with one another in a space separated from the outside by a barrier. When it is their turn to be used, they need to cross the boundary between the inner world of the self and the exterior world of interpersonal interaction. Once they have accomplished their task, they return to the other side. In both directions they cry Ouvrez! to be granted passage between these two worlds. As they wait in the wings, watching the scene outside, the words talk to each other, trying to determine the right time to intervene. Sometimes their request is granted, other times it is denied. Ouvrez defies genre; it is the most hybrid of Sarraute's texts, combining elements of prose and theater in its fifteen sketches that explore the dramatic potential of language. Though humor is certainly not absent from Sarraute's other works, Ouvrez is unabashedly playful in tone with its concentration on some of the humorous consequences of oral French. Finally, Ouvrez is Sarraute's last published work, though its appearance in 1997 prevented its inclusion in the original 1996 edition of her complete works in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. In addition to the ways in which Ouvrez is set apart from Sarraute's other texts with respect to its publication history, genre, and tone, there is one more unique characteristic: Ouvrez has never appeared in an English translation. (2) The recent publication of the second edition of Sarraute's Oeuvres completes (which includes Ouvrez) is an opportune moment for reflection on the nature of this enigmatic text. The highly theatrical and humorous sketches that compose Ouvrez should render it more readily accessible to non-specialist audiences than other Sarrautean texts which tend to mainly interest those passionate about the New Novel or experimental contemporary French fiction, yet there is only one translation to date (in German) despite the widespread availability of her other novels and plays in many languages including English. …

After Bolaño: Rethinking the Politics of Latin American Literature in Translation

On 25 november 2012, when the united states novelist jonathan franzen opened mexico's feria internacional del libro de guadalajara, he spoke of his experience of reading Latin American fiction. Asked about the region's representation through literature in English translation, Franzen stated that, magic realism having now “run its course,” Roberto Bolaño had become the “new face of Latin America.” Franzen's words echo what has almost become a commonplace in the United States over the last five years: naming Bolaño “the Gabriel García Márquez of our time” (Moore), after the publication by Farrar, Straus and Giroux of the translations of Los detectives salvajes (1998; The Savage Detectives [2007]) and his posthumous 2666 (2004; 2666 [2008]). Bolaño is also considered by many writers, critics, and readers in Latin America to be “reigning as the new paradigm” (Volpi, sec. 3). If in the United States market, through the synecdoche of literary commodification, García Márquez's revolutionary Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude [1970]) and, specifically, the magic realism of his fictional Macondo came to stand in for the diverse literary projects of Latin American authors in the 1960s, one must ask if a similar operation is taking place with Bolaño. While the number of translated Latin American literary works continues to be limited and most “go virtually unnoticed” (“Translation Database”), the significance of Bolaño's place at the center of a new canon in translation is magnified and necessitates inquiring into how his critical success in the United States market may be shifting the politics of translation of other texts. As a critic announced in 2011, “a second Latin American literature Boom is happening … [that] probably owes its existence to the explosion of the late-Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, whose popularity re-opened the door to North American publishing houses for Latin American authors” (Rosenthal).

Quis docebit ipsos doctores?: A Graduate Student Perspective on Learning to Teach Classics

Quis docebit ipsos doctores? A Graduate Student Perspective on Learning to Teach Classics Michael Goyette The field of classics has traditionally prepared many of its college- and university-level teachers by more or less directly plunging them into the classroom, having [End Page 104] them “learn on the fly.”1 Most professors enter their first full-time teaching positions having obtained teaching experience as graduate students, but rarely is this experience accompanied by formal training in pedagogy. As a current Ph.D. student who has taught various undergraduate courses in the fields of classics and English literature in the City University of New York system over the past five years, I would like to reflect upon some of the challenges that come with being cast into the teaching role with little to no prior formal educational training. By outlining some of my personal experiences as a classics instructor, I will provide a lens through which to examine some of the problems and growing pains a graduate student instructor might experience when trying to figure out how to teach, and I will also suggest that some aspects of my experience may reflect an ongoing shift (for the better) in how the profession is training new teachers. Many of the issues I will share are common to the general experience of graduate students or recent Ph.D.s teaching classics, while others are more specific to teaching in a large urban university system. In the fall of 2008, I started teaching my first undergraduate course in classics, a core-curriculum course called “Classical Cultures” intended to expose students to works of Greek and Roman literature in English translation. A couple of months before the course started, the department in which I would be teaching provided me with a sample syllabus that an instructor had used to teach the course previously. I was told that I had the freedom to adapt this syllabus as I saw fit, but I was not totally sure what to do with this information. Having never designed a syllabus and having never received any training in this, I was nervous about making too many alterations to the sample syllabus. To be sure, the department offered a three-hour orientation session a few days before classes for the semester started, and has continued to do so prior to each semester I have taught there, and these sessions have been very helpful in elucidating departmental policies and planting the seeds for certain teaching skills to be developed. At the same time, a three-hour session is perhaps not enough, especially for someone going into their first semester of teaching classics. To return to my first syllabus: I had never even selected or ordered textbooks for a course, making me still more hesitant to adopt sweeping changes. Regarding the course policies on the sample syllabus, I could see that expectations for aspects such as attendance, participation, and submitting work late were not specified, but I was not really sure how much specificity was necessary. Feeling as if in a state of aporia, I naturally turned to my own past learning experiences as a way of reflecting on these issues. Typically, the syllabi I had received for both my undergraduate and graduate courses gave little explanation about the criteria in question. While such ambiguity might suffice in certain learning environments, I quickly came to believe that the lack of a precise and detailed policy about such matters, at the school where I was now teaching, could unintentionally give rise to a set of problems and complications. [End Page 105] In fact, I soon realized that my entire learning experience had occurred in environments dramatically different from the one in which I was now employed. While I was greatly excited by the opportunity to work with students from a diverse range of backgrounds—in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, educational experience, age, and disability status—I was not sure how to handle myself as a teacher in such a dynamic situation. Since I had not yet established any practiced or favored teaching approaches, my first instinct was to emulate my favorite teachers, and to try to avoid being like the teachers I disliked...

The Epic of the Cid, with Related Texts (review)

Reviewed by: The Epic of the Cid, with Related Texts Bobby D. Nixon Michael Harney, ed. and trans. The Epic of the Cid, with Related Texts. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co ., 2011. xxvii+219 pp.: maps. ISBN: 978-1-60384-316-4 (cloth); 978-1-60384-315-7 (paperback) A new English translation of the Cantar de mio Cid could not have arrived in my life at a more opportune moment. After teaching the Song of Roland in an undergraduate course of medieval European literature in English translation, I decided that for next year I would choose the Cid. The original-language edition that I have always used in Spanish courses is that of Juan Carlos Conde. It includes the text established by Ramón Menéndez Pidal exactly [End Page 338] one hundred years ago, along with necessary explicatory footnotes. Opposite the medieval text is a modern prose rendering by Alfonso Reyes from 1919 that is intended to assist readers with the difficult vocabulary of the original. Conde’s informative introduction is aimed at students and nonspecialists, and the appendix includes other medieval Castilian epic texts such as Roncesvalles, Mocedades de Rodrigo, and the Poema de Fernán González, along with various Cidian texts from the Estoria de España and the Spanish ballad tradition. Upon opening Harney’s English-language edition, I was very pleased to find many of the same features as Conde’s volume. He chose to translate the Cantar de mio Cid as the “Epic of the Cid”, as opposed to “Poem” or “Song” because, as he states in the introduction, it is part of the epic tradition of “The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Beowulf, or The Song of Roland” (xviii). The chansons de geste are part of an epic tradition that was either sung or recited, so either Song or Epic is certainly preferable to Poem, which implies a literary rather than an oral tradition. The prose translation is easily readable for an undergraduate in the United States, allowing the reader to focus on the plot rather than the difficult vocabulary or the rhyme scheme. On the other hand, the reader does not get the sense of enjoying a medieval text that was part of a Castilian oral tradition. Extensive footnotes are no longer necessary in order to explain the linguistic complexities, but there is still much background information that could have appropriately found its place in this section. Fortunately, the tripartite division into cantares is maintained, but the division by tiradas or laisses is no longer present. Many scholars, such as Matthew Bailey, have stated that we should question the division by laisses and eliminate the caesura in each line, since these characteristics are not present in the medieval manuscript. Most editors have accepted this division based on shifts in assonance. The caesura represents a pause that is also present in the Spanish ballad tradition, an undeniable descendent of the medieval epic tradition. While a verse translation from a Romance language into modern English is always difficult to achieve, a noteworthy recent attempt has been made by Burton Raffel (Penguin, 2009) in a verse translation that maintains the tiradas without Menéndez Pidal’s headings and includes the original text on the opposite page. For this edition Raffel chose the title Song of the Cid. It is based on Colin Smith’s Spanish edition (1985), and includes endnotes instead of footnotes, which are likely to be overlooked since they are not indicated [End Page 339] within the text by superscript. This new translation has replaced the earlier prose translation by Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry. They also included the original epic on the opposite page using Menéndez Pidal’s text, maintaining the division by laisses, and eliminating the headings for each of these. Paul Blackburn’s 1966 edition is a much more literal verse translation that does not include the original text or other useful information for students or scholars. Although undergraduates will certainly find Harney’s text quite readable, it is a shame that they cannot see it in its original language with the division in tiradas. When we transform a text in such a way it is essential to...