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Translating India
by Rita KothariThe cultural universe of urban, English-speaking middle class in India shows signs of growing inclusiveness as far as English is concerned. This phenomenon manifests itself in increasing forms of bilingualism (combination of English and one Indian language) in everyday forms of speech - advertisement jingles, bilingual movies, signboards, and of course conversations. It is also evident in the startling prominence of Indian Writing in English and somewhat less visibly, but steadily rising, activity of English translation from Indian languages. Since the eighties this has led to a frenetic activity around English translation in India's academic and literary circles. Kothari makes this very current phenomenon her chief concern in Translating India. The study covers aspects such as the production, reception and marketability of English translation. Through an unusually multi-disciplinary approach, this study situates English translation in India amidst local and global debates on translation, representation and authenticity. The case of Gujarati - a case study of a relatively marginalized language - is a unique addition that demonstrates the micro-issues involved in translation and the politics of language. Rita Kothari teaches English at St. Xavier's College, Ahmedabad (Gujarat), where she runs a translation research centre on behalf of Katha. She has published widely on literary sociology, postcolonialism and translation issues. Kothari is one of the leading translators from Gujarat. Her first book (a collaboration with Suguna Ramanathan) was on English translation of Gujarati poetry (Modern Gujarati Poetry: A Selection, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1998). Her English translation of the path-breaking Gujarati Dalit novel Angaliyat is in press (The Stepchild, Oxford University Press). She is currently working on an English translation of Gujarati short stories by women of Gujarat, a study of the nineteenth-century narratives of Gujarat, and is also engaged in a project on the Sindhi identity in India.
Translating Indigenous Knowledges: Toward a Sensuous Translation
by Mª Carmen Vidal ClaramonteIn this book, Vidal presents a new way of translating indigenous epistemologies. For centuries, the Western world has ordained what knowledge is and what it should be and has also been responsible for transmitting that knowledge. This "universal" knowledge has traveled to the four corners of the globe.In recent decades, there has been a steadily growing interest in dialogical epistemologies. Disciplines ranging from historiography and philosophy to anthropology are calling for this universalist idea of knowledge to be modified. Thanks to this change of perspective, other forms of knowledge, which until now have been ignored, are gradually coming to light. Indigenous knowledges are not constructed with the scientific, binary, static, Cartesian, or univocal logic characteristic of Western societies. Non-Western types of knowledge incorporate senses, emotions, body, objects, and matter. It is impossible to reduce indigenous knowledges to Western conceptualizations. The types of translation covered in this book assume that knowledge is not transmitted only in the Western way and that there are world views that take into account the emotions and body, as well as the intellect. This includes all types of beings: human, non-human, and extrahuman. In the face of this plurality of epistemologies, this book affirms that the static Western conceptual traditions characterized by a binary logic are not useful and that there is a need to translate outside the scope of these traditions.The examples given in this book show that translation is not only a process involving Western and non-Western languages. Translation is not a mere substitution of one word for another because knowledge is not only transmitted through words. It also involves non-verbal elements. Knowledge is transmitted through objects, songs, sensations, and emotions, as well as through words. Moreover, many non-Western traditions do not translate with language systems but rather with other semiotic systems, such as knots, threads, colors, and bodies in movement. This is a timely, topical, and transdisciplinary reading, of interest to advanced students and researchers in translation studies, anthropology, and beyond.
Translating Institutions: An Ethnographic Study of EU Translation
by Kaisa KoskinenTranslating Institutions outlines a framework for research on translation in institutional settings, using the Finnish translation unit at the European Commission as a case study. Because of their foundational multilingualism, the institutions of the European Union could be described as both translating and translated institutions. The European Commission alone employs nearly two thousand translators, and it is translators who draft the vast majority of outgoing EU messages. Translating Institutions sets out to explore the organizational role and professional identity of this group of cultural mediators, a group that has remained relatively invisible despite its size and central institutional role, and to use the analysis of this data to elaborate broader methodological and theoretical issues. Translating Institutions adopts an ethnographic approach to explore the life and work of the translators at the centre of this study. In practice, this entails employing a number of different methods and interrogating various types of data. The three-level research design used covers the study of the institutional framework, the study of translators working in specific institutional settings, and the study of translated documents and their source texts. This is therefore a study of both texts and people in their institutional habitat. Given the methodological focus of the volume, the different methods and data are outlined in independent chapters: the institutional framework of translation (institutional ethnography), the physical location of the unit (observation), translators' own views of their role (focus group discussions), and a sociologically-oriented text analysis of a sample document (shifts analysis). Translating Institutions constitutes a valuable contribution to the sociology of translation. It opens up new avenues for research and offers a detailed framework for the study of institutional translation.
Translating Italy for the Eighteenth Century: British Women, Translation and Travel Writing (1739-1797)
by Mirella AgorniTranslating Italy in the Eighteenth Century offers a historical analysis of the role played by translation in that complex redefinition of women's writing that was taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. It investigates the ways in which women writers managed to appropriate images of Italy and adapt them to their own purposes in a period which covers the 'moral turn' in women's writing in the 1740s and foreshadows the Romantic interest in Italy at the end of the century. A brief survey of translations produced by women in the period 1730-1799 provides an overview of the genres favoured by women translators, such as the moral novel, sentimental play and a type of conduct literature of a distinctively 'proto-feminist' character. Elizabeth Carter's translation of Francesco Algarotti's II Newtonianesimo per le Dame (1739) is one of the best examples of the latter kind of texts. A close reading of the English translation indicates a 'proto-feminist' exploitation of the myth of Italian women's cultural prestige. Another genre increasingly accessible to women, namely travel writing, confirms this female interest in Italy. Female travellers who visited Italy in the second half of the century, such as Hester Piozzi, observed the state of women's education through the lenses provided by Carter. Piozzi's image of Italy, a paradoxical mixture of imagination and realistic observation, became a powerful symbolic source, which enabled the fictional image of a modern, relatively egalitarian British society to take shape.
Translating Law
by Deborah CaoThe translation of law has played an integral part in the interaction among nations in history and is playing a greater role in our increasingly interconnected world today. The book investigates legal translation in its many facets as an intellectual pursuit and a profession. It examines legal translation from an interdisciplinary perspective, covering theoretical and practical grounds and linguistic as well as legal issues. It analyses legal translation competence and various types of legal texts including contracts, statutes and multilateral legal instruments, presents a comparative analysis of the Common Law and the Civil Law and examines the case law from Canada, Hong Kong and the European Court of Justice. It attempts to demonstrate that translating law is a complex act that can enrich law, culture and human experience as a whole.
Translating Maternal Violence: The Discursive Construction of Maternal Filicide in 1970s Japan (Thinking Gender in Transnational Times)
by Alessandro CastelliniThis book provides the first full-length, English-language investigation of the multiple and often contradictory ways in which mothers who kill their children were portrayed in 1970s Japan. It offers a snapshot of a historical and social moment when motherhood was being renegotiated, and maternal violence was disrupting norms of acceptable maternal behaviour. <P><P>Drawing on a wide range of original archival materials, it explores three discursive sites where the image of the murderous mother assumed a distinctive visibility: media coverage of cases of maternal filicide; the rhetoric of a newly emerging women’s liberation movement known as ūman ribu; and fictional works by the Japanese writer Takahashi Takako. Using translation as a theoretical tool to decentre the West as the origin of (feminist) theorizations of the maternal, it enables a transnational dialogue for imagining mothers' potential for violence. This thought-provoking work will appeal to scholars of feminist theory, cultural studies and Japanese studies.
Translating Maternal Violence: The Discursive Construction of Maternal Filicide in 1970s Japan (Thinking Gender in Transnational Times)
by Alessandro CastelliniThis book provides the first full-length, English-language investigation of the multiple and often contradictory ways in which mothers who kill their children were portrayed in 1970s Japan. It offers a snapshot of a historical and social moment when motherhood was being renegotiated, and maternal violence was disrupting norms of acceptable maternal behaviour. Drawing on a wide range of original archival materials, it explores three discursive sites where the image of the murderous mother assumed a distinctive visibility: media coverage of cases of maternal filicide; the rhetoric of a newly emerging women’s liberation movement known as ūman ribu; and fictional works by the Japanese writer Takahashi Takako. Using translation as a theoretical tool to decentre the West as the origin of (feminist) theorizations of the maternal, it enables a transnational dialogue for imagining mothers' potential for violence. This thought-provoking work will appeal to scholars of feminist theory, cultural studies and Japanese studies.
Translating Memories of Violent Pasts: Memory Studies and Translation Studies in Dialogue (Creative, Social and Transnational Perspectives on Translation)
by Claudia Jünke Désirée SchynsThis collection brings together work from Memory Studies and Translation Studies to explore the role of interlingual and intercultural translation for unpacking transcultural memory dynamics, focusing on memories of violent pasts across different literary genres. The book explores the potential of a research agenda that links narrower definitions of translation with broader notions of transfer, transmission, and relocation across temporal and cultural borders, investigating the nuanced theoretical and conceptual dimensions at the intersection of memory and translation. The volume explores memories of violent pasts – legacies of war, genocide, dictatorship, and exile across different genres and media, including testimony, autobiography, novels, and graphic novels. The collection engages in central questions at the interface of Memory Studies and Translation Studies, including whether traumatic historical experiences that resist representation can be translated, what happens when texts that negotiate such memories are translated into other languages and cultures, and what role translation strategies, translators, and agents of translations play in memory across borders. The volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in Translation Studies, Memory Studies, and Comparative Literature.
Translating Molière for the English-speaking Stage: The Role of Verse and Rhyme (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies)
by Cédric PloixThis book critically analyzes the body of English language translations Moliere’s work for the stage, demonstrating the importance of rhyme and verse forms, the creative work of the translator, and the changing relationship with source texts in these translations and their reception. The volume questions prevailing notions about Moliere’s legacy on the stage and the prevalence of comedy in his works, pointing to the high volume of English language translations for the stage of his work that have emerged since the 1950s. Adopting a computer-aided method of analysis, Ploix illustrates the role prosody plays in verse translation for the stage more broadly, highlighting the implementation of self-consciously comic rhyme and conspicuous verse forms in translations of Moliere’s work by way of example. The book also addresses the question of the interplay between translation and source text in these works and the influence of the stage in overcoming formal infelicities in verse systems that may arise from the process of translation. In so doing, Ploix considers translations as texts in and of themselves in these works and the translator as a more visible, creative agent in shaping the voice of these texts independent of the source material, paving the way for similar methods of analysis to be applied to other canonical playwrights’ work. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in translation studies, adaptation studies, and theatre studies
Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity
by Dennis WashburnBy focusing on certain interconnected themes, Washburn illuminates the contradictory desires of a nation trapped between emulating the West and preserving the traditions of Asia.Washburn begins with Ueda's Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) and its preoccupation with the distant past, a sense of loss, and the connection between values and identity. He then considers the use of narrative realism and the metaphor of translation in Soseki's Sanshiro; the relationship between ideology and selfhood in Ogai's Seinen; Yokomitsu Riichi's attempt to synthesize the national and the cosmopolitan; Ooka Shohei's post-World War II representations of the ethical and spiritual crises confronting his age; and Mishima's innovative play with the aesthetics of the inauthentic and the artistry of kitsch. Washburn's brilliant analysis teases out common themes concerning the illustration of moral and aesthetic values, the crucial role of autonomy and authenticity in defining notions of culture, the impact of cultural translation on ideas of nation and subjectivity, the ethics of identity, and the hybrid quality of modern Japanese society. He pinpoints the persistent anxiety that influenced these authors' writings, a struggle to translate rhetorical forms of Western literature while preserving elements of the pre-Meiji tradition. A unique combination of intellectual history and critical literary analysis, Translating Mount Fuji recounts the evolution of a conflict that inspired remarkable literary experimentation and achievement.
Translating Myself and Others
by Jhumpa LahiriLuminous essays on translation and self-translation by the award-winning writer and literary translatorTranslating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages.With subtlety and emotional immediacy, Lahiri draws on Ovid’s myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle’s Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino’s popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question “Why Italian?,” and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers.Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiri’s most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator’s art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.
Translating Myth (Legenda)
by Ben Pestell Pietra Palazzolo Leon BurnettEver since Odysseus heard tales of his own exploits being retold among strangers, audiences and readers have been alive to the complications and questions arising from the translation of myth. How are myths taken and carried over into new languages, new civilizations, or new media? An international group of scholars is gathered in this volume to present diverse but connected case studies which address the artistic and political implications of the changing condition of myth – this most primal and malleable of forms. ‘Translation’ is treated broadly to encompass not only literary translation, but also the transfer of myth across cultures and epochs. In an age when the spiritual world is in crisis, Translating Myth constitutes a timely exploration of myth’s endurance, and represents a consolidation of the status of myth studies as a discipline in its own right.
Translating National Allegories: The Case of Crime Fiction
by Alistair Rolls, John West-Sooby and Marie-Laure Vuaille-BarcanThis book explores the intersection of a number of academic areas of study that are all, individually, of growing importance: translation studies, crime fiction and world literature. The scholars included here are leaders in one or more of these areas. The frame of this volume is imagological; its focus is on the ways in which national allegories are constructed and deconstructed, encompassing descriptions of national characteristics as they play out at the level of the local or the individual as well as broader, political analyses. Its corpus, crime fiction, is shown to be a privileged site for writing the national narrative, and often in ways that are more complex and dynamic than is suggested by the genre’s much-cited role as vehicle for a new realism. Finally, these two areas are problematised through the lens of translation, which is a crucial player in both the development of crime fiction and the formation, rather than simply the interlingual transfer, of national allegory. In this volume national allegories, and the crime novels in which they emerge, are shown to be eminently versatile, foundationally plural texts that promote critical rewriting as opposed to sites for fixing meaning. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Translator.
Translating National Identities Between China and the West: Diplomatic Political Discourse 1792–1867 (Routledge Studies in Empirical Translation and Multilingual Communication)
by Xinnian ZhengThis book explores the discursive construction of national identities in diplomatic political discourse, focusing on translation’s pivotal role. It examines diplomatic exchanges between China and the West from 1792 to 1867, a period marked by China’s national identity crisis. By combining Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) with Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), the book uncovers how translation shaped the national identities of both China and the West during a time of intercultural conflict and change.Through the analysis of 29 authentic historical documents, the book offers a groundbreaking analysis of how translators at the Qing court initially portrayed China as superior and the West as inferior. However, as China’s global position shifted, so did its translation strategies, gradually transforming China’s national identity to be seen as equal to the West. During diplomatic interactions, translators played a crucial role in shaping perceptions of both Chinese and Western identities, thereby influencing international relations.Essential for scholars and students of translation studies, political discourse, and Chinese history, this book goes beyond traditional analysis, offering a new perspective on the intricate relationship between translation, power, and identity. Its blend of qualitative and quantitative methods provides a comprehensive view of East-West relations during a pivotal period in world history.
Translating Nations: Culture, Soft Power, and the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies)
by Ye TianThis book critically examines the ways in which translation studies can offer a conceptual framework for understanding and researching international affairs, drawing on examples from China’s Belt and Road Initiative.The volume encourages new conceptualisations of our understanding of culture and communication through the lens of translation, re-envisioning translation beyond the scope of the global circulation of cultural products. Tian explores the case study of the Belt and Road Initiative to show how nation branding and soft power can be understood through a translational lens if we rethink of translation as the means by which cultures communicate and build relationships with each other while retaining their distinct dimensions. In focusing on intertwining concepts across translation studies, cultural studies, and international relations – universalism, power, identity, and development – the book showcases how it is a useful framework for understanding how translation studies can serve as a platform for multidisciplinary dialogue on a global scale.This book will be of interest to scholars in translation studies, cultural studies, international relations, and Asian studies.
Translating Official Documents (Translation Practices Explained)
by Roberto Mayoral AsensioOfficial translations are generally documents that serve as legally valid instruments. They include anything from certificates of birth, death or marriage through to academic transcripts or legal contracts. This field of translation is now as important as it is fraught with difficulties, for it is only in a few areas that the cultural differences are so acute and the consequences of failure so palpable. In a globalizing world, our official institutions increasingly depend on translations of official documents, but little has been done to elaborate the skills and dilemmas involved. Roberto Mayoral deals with the very practical problems of official translating. He points out the failings of traditional theories in this field and the need for revised concepts such as the virtual document, pragmatic constraints, and risk analysis. He details aspects of the social contexts, ethical norms, translation strategies, different formats, fees, legal formulas, and ways of solving the most frequent problems. Care is taken to address as wide a range of cultural contexts as possible and to stress the active role of the translator. This book is intended as a teaching text for the classroom, for self-learning, or for professionals who want to reflect on their practice. Activities and exercises are suggested for each chapter, and information is included on professional associations and societies across the globe.
Translating Others (Volume 1)
by Theo HermansBoth in the sheer breadth and in the detail of their coverage the essays in these two volumes challenge hegemonic thinking on the subject of translation. Engaging throughout with issues of representation in a postmodern and postcolonial world, Translating Others investigates the complex processes of projection, recognition, displacement and 'othering' effected not only by translation practices but also by translation studies as developed in the West. At the same time, the volumes document the increasing awareness the the world is peopled by others who also translate, often in ways radically different from and hitherto largely ignored by the modes of translating conceptualized in Western discourses. The languages covered in individual contributions include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Rajasthani, Somali, Swahili, Tamil, Tibetan and Turkish as well as the Europhone literatures of Africa, the tongues of medieval Europe, and some major languages of Egypt's five thousand year history. Neighbouring disciplines invoked include anthropology, semiotics, museum and folklore studies, librarianship and the history of writing systems. Contributors to Volume 1: Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cosima Bruno, Ovidi Carbonell, Martha Cheung, G. Gopinathan, Eva Hung, Alexandra Lianeri, Carol Maier, Christi Ann Marrill, Paolo Rambelli, Myriam Salama-Carr, Ubaldo Stecconi and Maria Tymoczko.
Translating Others (Volume 2)
by Theo HermansBoth in the sheer breadth and in the detail of their coverage the essays in these two volumes challenge hegemonic thinking on the subject of translation. Engaging throughout with issues of representation in a postmodern and postcolonial world, Translating Others investigates the complex processes of projection, recognition, displacement and 'othering' effected not only by translation practices but also by translation studies as developed in the West. At the same time, the volumes document the increasing awareness the the world is peopled by others who also translate, often in ways radically different from and hitherto largely ignored by the modes of translating conceptualized in Western discourses. The languages covered in individual contributions include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Rajasthani, Somali, Swahili, Tamil, Tibetan and Turkish as well as the Europhone literatures of Africa, the tongues of medieval Europe, and some major languages of Egypt's five thousand year history. Neighbouring disciplines invoked include anthropology, semiotics, museum and folklore studies, librarianship and the history of writing systems. Contributors to Volume 2: Paul Bandia, Red Chan, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Annmarie Drury, Ruth Evans, Fabrizio Ferrari, Daniel Gallimore, Hephzibah Israel, John Tszpang Lai, Kenneth Liu-Szu-han, Ibrahim Muhawi, Martin Orwin, Carol O'Sullivan, Saliha Parker, Stephen Quirke and Kate Sturge.
Translating Pain
by Madelaine HronIn the post-Cold War, post-9/11 era, the immigrant experience has changed dramatically. Despite the recent successes of immigrant and world literatures, there has been little scholarship on how the hardships of immigration are conveyed in immigrant narratives. Translating Pain fills this gap by examining literature from Muslim North Africa, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe to reveal the representation of immigrant suffering in fiction.Applying immigrant psychology to literary analysis, Madelaine Hron examines the ways in which different forms of physical and psychological pain are expressed in a wide variety of texts. She juxtaposes post-colonial and post-communist concerns about immigration, and contrasts Muslim world views with those of Caribbean creolité and post-Cold War ethics. Demonstrating how pain is translated into literature, she explores the ways in which it also shapes narrative, culture, history, and politics. A compelling and accessible study, Translating Pain is a groundbreaking work of literary and postcolonial studies.
Translating Picturebooks: Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies)
by Riitta Oittinen Anne Ketola Melissa GaraviniTranslating Picturebooks examines the role of illustration in the translation process of picturebooks and how the word-image interplay inherent in the medium can have an impact both on translation practice and the reading process itself. The book draws on a wide range of picturebooks published and translated in a number of languages to demonstrate the myriad ways in which information and meaning is conveyed in the translation of multimodal material and in turn, the impact of these interactions on the readers’ experiences of these books. The volume also analyzes strategies translators employ in translating picturebooks, including issues surrounding culturally-specific references and visual and verbal gaps, and features a chapter with excerpts from translators’ diaries written during the process. Highlighting the complex dynamics at work in the translation process of picturebooks and their implications for research on translation studies and multimodal material, this book is an indispensable resource for students and researchers in translation studies, multimodality, and children’s literature.
Translating Popular Film
by Carol O'Sullivan 2011A ground-breaking study of the roles played by foreign languages in film and television and their relationship to translation. The book covers areas such as subtitling and the homogenising use of English, and asks what are the devices used to represent foreign languages on screen?
Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts
by Ira TorresiPromotional and advertising texts come in different forms and account for a considerable share of the translation market. Advertisements, company brochures, websites, tourist guides, institutional information campaigns, and even personal CVs all share a common primary purpose: that of persuading the reader to buy something, be it a product or a lifestyle, or to act in a particular way, from taking preventive measures against health risks to employing one candidate in preference to another. Consequently, their translation requires the application of techniques which, although they vary depending on the specific text type, are all aimed at preserving that persuasive purpose. This often requires in-depth cultural adaptation and, on occasion, thorough rewriting. Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts covers different areas of personal promotion, business to business promotion, institutional and business to consumer promotion, including advertising. Numerous examples from a wide variety of languages and media, taken from the author's own professional experience and from real-life observation, are provided throughout. The volume is designed for use as a coursebook for classroom practice or as a handbook for self-learning. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, but also freelance and in-house translators, as well as other professionals working in sales, public relations or similar departments whose responsibilities include involvement in the management of multilingual advertising and promotion activities.
Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts (Translation Practices Explained)
by Ira TorresiThe translation of promotional and advertising texts requires the application of techniques which, although they vary depending on the specific text type, are all aimed at preserving their persuasive purpose. This often requires in-depth cultural adaptation and, on occasion, thorough rewriting. Translating Promotional and Advertising Texts covers the key types of promotional texts, including personal, business-to-business, institutional, business-to-consumer, and advertising. With numerous examples from a wide variety of languages and media, taken from the author's own professional experience and observations, this volume is designed for use as a coursebook for classroom practice or as a handbook for self-learning. It also provides insight for research into promotional and advertising translation. This second, updated edition offers entirely new sections on self-promotion in social media, text analysis, and tools for the cross-cultural appraisal of promotional texts. Revised with new examples, a glossary of terms, and activities and tasks on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal, this is the essential text for students, researchers, translators, and professionals working in copywriting, marketing, public relations, or related areas.
Translating Religion: What is Lost and Gained? (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by Michael DeJonge Christiane TietzTranslating Religion advances thinking about translation as a critical category in religious studies, combining theoretical reflection about processes of translation in religion with focused case studies that are international, interdisciplinary, and interreligious. By operating with broad conceptions of both religion and translation, this volume makes clear that processes of translation, broadly construed, are everywhere in both religious life and the study of religion; at the same time, the theory and practice of translation and the advancement of translation studies as a field has developed in the context of concerns about the possibility and propriety of translating religious texts. The nature of religions as living historical traditions depends on the translation of religion from the past into the present. Interreligious dialogue and the comparative study of religion require the translation of religion from one tradition to another. Understanding the historical diffusion of the world’s religions requires coming to terms with the success and failure of translating a religion from one cultural context into another. Contributors ask what it means to translate religion, both textually and conceptually, and how the translation of religious content might differ from the translation of other aspects of human culture. This volume proposes that questions on the nature of translation find particularly acute expression in the domains of religion, and argues that theoretical approaches from translation studies can be fruitfully brought to bear on contemporary religious studies.
Translating Rumi into the West: A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond (Iranian Studies)
by Amir SedaghatFocusing on Rumi, the best-selling Persian mystical poet of the 13th century, this book investigates the reception of his work and thought in North America and Europe – and the phenomenon of ‘Rumimania’ – to elucidate the complexities of intercultural communication between the West and the Iranian and Islamic worlds. Presenting tens of examples from the original and translated texts, the book is a critical analysis of various dimensions of this reception, outlining the difficulties of translating the text but also exploring how translators of various times and languages have performed, and explaining why the quality of reception varies. Topics analysed include the linguistic and pragmatic issues of translation, comparative stylistics and poetics, and non-textual factors like the translator’s beliefs and the political and ideological aspects of translation. Using a broad theoretical framework, the author highlights the difficulties of intercultural communication from linguistic, semiotic, stylistic, poetic, ethical, and sociocultural perspectives. Ultimately, the author shares his reflections on the semiotic specificities of Rumi’s mystical discourse and the ethics of translation generally. The book will be valuable to scholars and students of Islamic philosophy, Iranian studies, and translation studies, but will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural dichotomies of the West and Islam.