Review of Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature (original) (raw)

Translating Fictions: The Messenger Was a Medium

TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, 2009

In this article I will examine the ways in which the ethical gestures available to translators are inscribed in the etymologies of key terms and cognate pairs (especially in English and French) within the semantic field marked out by the category of translation: trade, transfer, transgress. translate / translater, traduire / traduce, betray / trahir. What emerges is a pattern dominated by themes of give and take, loss and gain, and above all, faithfulness and betrayal. Betrayal (like the French verb trahir) holds a pivotal position within this set, due to its two-faced character, given to both deceit and revelation. Juxtaposed on and rooted in these themes are the timeworn types in which translators have been chronically cast (when not simply ignored): the loser (mainly in the sense of the agent of loss) and the traitor. Such associations throw into stark relief the intrinsically political and ethical nature of the act of translation, which Lawrence Venuti and others have forcefully...

THE WORK OF LITERARY TRANSLATION

Offering an original reconceptualization of literary translation, Clive Scott argues against traditional approaches to the theory and practice of translation. Instead, he suggests that translation should attend more to the phenomenology of reading, triggering creative textual thinking in the responsive reader rather than testing the hermeneutic skills of the professional translator. In this new guise, translation enlists the reader as an active participant in the constant re-fashioning of the text's structural, associative, intertextual and inter-sensory possibilities, so that our larger understanding of ecology, anthropology, comparative literature and aesthetics is fundamentally transformed and our sense of the expressive resources of language is radically extended. Literary translation thus assumes an existential value which takes us beyond the text itself to how it situates us in the world, and what part it plays in the geography of human relationships.

Literary Translation: Old and New Challenges

2012

This paper discusses the main challenges that face literary translation and literary translators. These challenges have been divided into three main categories: Linguistic, cultural, and human. The first type of challenges comes from the nature of the discipline itself since it involves the difficult task of dealing with phonological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, stylistic and pragmatic issues occurring in literary texts whose language is additionally characterized by its linguistic deviation from the norm, especially in its use of figurative language. The second source of challenges stems from the fact that literary translation is primarily concerned with translating culture-bound expressions and concepts which pose one of the most difficult tasks for translators when trying to render them into a foreign language. The third type of challenges is related to the barriers facing literary translation including lack of government funding, poor literary translator training, language and...

Literary Translation and the Making of Originals

This book starts from one main premise: a literary translation makes an original. This is bolstered with a series of related ideas that are fleshed out in five interesting and detailed case studies, further cementing the argument that literary translation does not first and foremost transfer meaning or produce equivalence but stabilizes an unstable original. Karen Emmerich's argument runs counter to the conventional notions about source texts and target texts that have largely framed Anglo-American/European work in academic Translation Studies over the past half-century, and that underlie most non-academic ideas about translation as well – at least in the Anglo-American Eurozone. She states point blank that the binary view of source and target texts and the expectation of " equivalence " and " faithfulness " this brings with it, always condemn translation, to failure and to accusations of " loss " if not treachery.

Translation and the Exotic. Inventing the Other in Literature Call for Articles

In spite of all the century-long – theoretical, social, political, economic – noise about and around translation, which has tended to represent it as (just) replication, translators and editors, authors and other literary agents have always known that translation entails, must entail transformation. Languages, cultures, historical, political, social circumstances, and authorial idiolects are too diverse to allow for mere reproduction. While Venuti’s invisibility concept and discussion illustrate the translators’ status quo in the West rather aptly, highlighting the ways in which this obscures their presence in the public realm, there is still much work to do in order to document how translators have lived through this invisibility, i.e., how their being mostly invisible in Western world throughout time has, on the one hand, socially detracted from their rightful place in culture, and, on the other, how invisibility has made a set of practices possible that have helped shape the ways a given culture sees (and construes) its different Others. As ‘undercover agents’ (Cronin, 2003), translators were, in fact, allotted a not negligible degree of power: that of introducing and (re)presenting the other in a given culture. This has, more often than not, implied a sense of centeredness, a sense of a ‘we’ speaking about (translating) ‘them’. As Adrienne Rich (1985) reminds us, it may be fruitful to ask who ‘we’ are, inasmuch as ‘we’ have to be responsible for ‘our’ others, their presence but, to some extent, also their invention. As every piece of translation – literary, economic, political – can be both a decentering and a recentering practice, i.e., a window into the lives of others and/or a brick in the wall of self-perception, this special issue of Cadernos de Tradução aims at discussing processes of manipulation, (dis/re)figuration and (mis)understanding the Other/others. In short: the processes by which translation as creative transformation helps produce the imaginative fabric of a culture. Contributions focusing on translated children’s literature, travel writing, memoirs, migration literature, journalism are particularly welcome. The volume would like to provide tentative answers to questions such as: how have translation practices and patterns produced images of the other(s) for different audiences?, how have others been ‘exoticized’ throughout time and how has this been made part of the imaginings of different cultures?, how is fear of the other(s) construed in and through translation?, in what ways does children’s literature (as well as literature for adults) promote/detract from a cosmopolitan worldview?

Perspectives in Translation Studies

2009

Based on a great deal of recent research performed by academics investigating works translated from/into English, this book provides fresh perspectives to the field of translation studies. It combines theoretical and practical aspects of the translation process with a comprehensive set of thoroughly commented examples. Perspectives in Translation Studies is a structurally complex volume which: * Is especially designed to cover insights into a wide range of British and American literary products (novels, short stories and poetry) * Comparatively examines patterns of language use in English and other languages, referring both to pairs of verbs and phraseological constructions (collocations and idioms, pre-fabricated or ready-made phrases and proverbs) * Explores some of the globalization challenges in the translation of national films into English It is ideal for every person with an interest not only in the art or the making of a translation but also in the result of the translation ...

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF SPANISH TRANSLATION STUDIES

2019

Written by leading experts in the area, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies brings together original contributions representing a culmination of the extensive research to date within the field of Spanish Translation Studies. The Handbook covers a variety of translation related issues, both theoretical and practical, providing an overview of the field and establishing directions for future research. It starts by looking at the history of translation in Spain, the Americas during the colonial period and Latin America, and then moves on to discuss well-established areas of research such as literary translation and audiovisual translation, at which Spanish researchers have excelled. It also provides state-of-the-art information on new topics such as the interface between translation and humour on the one hand, and the translation of comics on the other. This Handbook is an indispensable resource for postgraduate students and researchers of translation studies. Roberto A. Valdeón is Professor in English Studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain. África Vidal is Professor of Translation at

Some Key Pitfalls in Literary Translation

2020

Literary translation is considered to be the most challenging type of translation despite the numerous rewards it offers both to translators themselves and the humanity in general. Research shows that numerous factors contribute to this state of affairs. The differences between the source and target language and culture surely account for a large portion of the challenges that arise in doing literary translation. In addition, literature abounds with diverse literary genres – the most predominant ones being prose , poetry and plays. Each of them features a set of specific traits which when transferred into the target language need to be addressed with special deliberation. Nevertheless, a plethora of issues that literary translators grapple with are common to all three literary genres. These encompass translating the title, the culture-specific terms, slang, expletives, subtext, style, etc. This paper is intended to shed some light on these common pitfalls that recur in translating d...