A Companion to Translation Studies

TOPICS IN TRANSLATION

Series Editors: Susan Bassnett, University of Warwick, UK

Edwin Gentzler, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

Editor for Translation in the Commercial Environment:

Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown, University of Surrey, UK

Other Books in the Series

‘Behind Inverted Commas’ Translation and Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century

Susanne Stark

The Rewriting of Njáls Saga: Translation, Ideology, and Icelandic Sagas

Jón Karl Helgason

Time Sharing on Stage: Drama Translation in Theatre and Society

Sirkku Aaltonen

Translation and Nation: A Cultural Politics of Englishness

Roger Ellis and Liz Oakley-Brown (eds)

The Interpreter’s Resource

Mary Phelan

Annotated Texts for Translation: English–German

Christina Schäffner with Uwe Wiesemann

Contemporary Translation Theories (2nd edn)

Edwin Gentzler

Literary Translation: A Practical Guide

Clifford E. Landers

Translation-mediated Communication in a Digital World

Minako O’Hagan and David Ashworth

Frae Ither Tongues: Essays on Modern Translations into Scots

Bill Findlay (ed.)

Practical Guide for Translators (4th edn)

Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown

Cultural Encounters in Translation from Arabic

Said Faiq (ed.)

Translation, Linguistics, Culture: A French-English Handbook

Nigel Armstrong

Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable?

Lynne Long (ed.)

Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation: A Practitioner’s View

Phyllis Zatlin

Translating Milan Kundera

Michelle Woods

The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader

Gillian Lathey (ed.)

Mmanaging Translation Services

Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown

Translating Law

Deborah Cao

For more details of these or any other of our publications, please contact:

Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall,

Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England

http://www.multilingual-matters.com

TOPICS IN TRANSLATION 34

Series Editors: Susan Bassnett, University of Warwick and

Edwin Gentzler, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A Companion to Translation Studies

Edited by

Piotr Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD

Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Companion to Translation Studies/Edited by Piotr Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau.

Topics in Translation: 34

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Translating and interpreting. I. Kuhiwczak, Piotr. II. Littau, Karin

P306.C655 2007

418’.02–dc22      2006031783

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-542-0

Multilingual Matters Ltd

UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH.

USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA.

Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada.

Copyright © 2007 Piotr Kuhiwczak, Karin Littau and the authors of individual chapters.

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Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Piotr Kuhiwczak and Karin Littau

1   Culture and Translation

Susan Bassnett

2   Philosophy and Translation

Anthony Pym

3   Linguistics and Translation

Gunilla Anderman

4   History and Translation

Lynne Long

5   Literary Translation

Theo Hermans

6   Gender and Translation

Luise von Flotow

7   Theatre and Opera Translation

Mary Snell-Hornby

8   Screen Translation

Eithne O’Connell

9   Politics and Translation

Christina Schäffner

Bibliography

Index

Notes on Contributors

Gunilla Anderman is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research interests include translation theory, drama translation and the translation of children’s literature. She is the author of Europe on Stage: Translation and Theatre (2005), and co-editor with Margaret Rogers of Words, Words, Words: The Translator and the Language Learner (1996), Word, Text, Translation: Liber Amicorum for Peter Newmark (1999), Translation Today: Trends and Perspectives (2003), and In and Out of English: For Better, For Worse (2005).

Susan Bassnett is Professor in the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University, UK. She is the author of over 20 books, including Translation Studies (3rd edn, 2002) which first appeared in 1980, and Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction (1993) which has been translated into several languages. Her more recent books include Sylvia Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry (2004), Constructing Cultures (1998) written with André Lefevere, and Post-Colonial Translation (1999) co-edited with Harish Trivedi.

Luise von Flotow is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include gender and other cultural issues in translation, audiovisual translation, translation and cultural diplomacy, and literary translation. She is the author of Translation and Gender: Translating in the Era of Feminism (1997), co-editor of The Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2001), and co-editor and translator of the anthology The Third Shore: Women’s Fiction from East Central Europe (2006).

Theo Hermans is Professor of Dutch and Comparative Literature at University College, London (UCL), and Director of the Centre for Intercultural Studies. He has published extensively on translation theory and history, and on Dutch and comparative literature, and his work has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German, Spanish and Turkish. He is the author of Translation in Systems (1999) and, amongst other books, editor of the seminal volume The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (1985), Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II (2002) and Translating Others (2006).

Piotr Kuhiwczak is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published extensively in the fields of comparative literature, cultural studies and translation studies, and is currently researching the impact of translation on Holocaust memoirs and testimonies. His book Successful Polish–English Translation: Tricks of the Trade published in 1994, is now in its third edition. He is on the Advisory Board of the British Centre for Literary Translation, and the Editorial Board of The Linguist, a journal published by the Institute of Linguists.

Karin Littau is Senior Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature, and Director of the Centre for Film Studies at the University of Essex, UK. She has published widely on translation, rewriting and adaptation; and is especially interested in the intermedial relations between literature and film, and the historical receptions of print and new media. She is the author of Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania (2006), and co-editor of a special issue on ‘Inventions: Literature and Science’ for Comparative Critical Studies (2005). Since 1998 she has been on the executive committee of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA).

Lynne Long is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies, and Director of the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published on Bible translation and on translation history, and is the author of Translating The Bible: From the 7th to the 17th Century (2001), and editor of Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? (2005). She is involved with American Bible Society projects, with the Arts and Humanities Research programme ‘Translation and Translation Theories East and West’ at the Centre for Asian and African Literatures. She is also a member of the ACUME European Research Project in Cultural Memory based in Bologna.

Eithne O’Connell is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. Her professional qualifications include the Final Translators’ Examination (Institute of Linguistics) and a Certificate in Teletext Subtitling from the S4C/University of Wales. In 2000, she completed her doctoral research on screen translation at DCU. She is the author of Minority Language Dubbing for Children (2003), and a founder member of both the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association, and the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation.

Anthony Pym is Director of Postgraduate Programs in Translation at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. He works on sociological approaches to translation and intercultural relations. His recent publications include Pour une éthique du traducteur (1997), Method in Translation History (1998), Negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History (2000), and The Moving Text: Localisation, Distribution, and Translation (2004). He is also the editor of L’Internationalité littéraire (1988) and Mites australians (1990) and the co-editor of Les formations en traduction et interprétation: Essai de recensement mondial (1995) and Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting (2006).

Christina Schäffner is Reader in German and Translation Studies, and Director of Postgraduate Studies at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. She has published numerous articles on text linguistics and critical discourse analysis, especially of political texts. She is the author of Translation Research and Interpreting Research (2004) and co-author with Uwe Wiesemann of Annotated Texts for Translation: English–German: Functionalist Approaches Illustrated (2001). She has edited numerous books: most recently, Translation and the Global Village (2000), The Role of Discourse Analysis for Translation and Translator Training (2002) and Translation Research and Interpreting Research (2004).

Mary Snell-Hornby taught at the Universities of Munich, Heidelberg and Zürich, before taking up a professorship at the University of Vienna. She is also Honorary Professor at the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at Warwick University, UK. She is the author of more than 100 essays, and has published numerous books on translation studies (as well as on lexicography, linguistics and literary studies), including the influential Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach (1988, 1995). Her most recent book is The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints (2006). She was a founding member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX).

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the contributors of this volume for their patience in seeing this project through, and express their gratitude to Tommi Grover at Multilingual Matter for his unfailing support. Finally, we would like to thank the series’ editors Susan Bassnett and Edwin Gentzler for asking us to put together this volume.

Introduction

PIOTR KUHIWCZAK AND KARIN LITTAU

In his introduction to the revised edition of Contemporary Translation Theory (2001) Edwin Gentzler wrote:

Ironically, when it was first published, this book was initially criticised for including too many theories; many scholars in the field felt that the proliferation in theory was a passing phenomenon. Today, the book may appear to be theoretically limited, covering, as it does, a mere five approaches. As the field continues to grow with new scholars from different countries and different linguistic and cultural traditions conducting research, additional theories will begin to emerge, further complicating the map. (Gentzler, 1993/2001: x)

Gentzler’s book, which first appeared in 1993, was written at a time when theorising about translation was changing fast. A fruitful exchange of views on what translation was and how it could, or should, be theorised and studied had taken place during the 1980s and early 1990s. Much of this debate had come in the aftermath of the ‘explosion of theory’ in the human sciences (see Bergonzi, 1990; Kreiswirth & Cheetham, 1990; Krieger, 1994). Susan Bassnett’s Translation Studies (1980) was written in the midst of these critical upheavals, which questioned the traditional boundaries by which disciplines had been divided in the academy since the 19th century. It was published as part of the New Accents series for Methuen (later Routledge). The series’ general editor, Terence Hawkes, claimed in the preface that each of its volumes was to ‘suggest the distinctive discourse of the future’ (in Bassnett, 1980: x). Thus, while Bassnett’s book had laid important groundwork for the discipline of translation studies as a discipline, Gentzler’s book by contrast was already looking back to systematise the knowledges belonging to this new discipline.

While both books were written in English, the upsurge in the academic interest in translation, of which the revised editions of both titles are an indicator, is by no means restricted to an Anglo-American context. The innovative thinking, which has characterised translation studies from its very inception, has come from several geographical directions simultaneously, as well as from diverse critical traditions. When the European Society for Translation Studies was formed in Vienna in 1992, multi-national links were being forged between scholars. Soon, a new wave of new translation studies periodicals was to emerge: Perspectives: Studies in Translatology in Copenhagen, The Translator in Manchester, Translation and Literature in Edinburgh, Across Languages and Cultures in Budapest, Forum in Paris and Seoul, and Przekladaniec in Krakow. This is only an indicative list, and does not include the countless on-line journals that also sprang up in the 1990s. In addition, well-established literary and linguistic journals, which had not shown much interest in translation before, began putting together special editions devoted to translation. For instance, the British journal Forum for Modern Language Studies (1997) devoted a whole issue to translation, as did the Italian journal of English Studies Textus (1999). There was also what can only be described as ‘frantic’ activity on the conference front. While in the 1980s each translation conference, held mainly in Europe or Canada, had constituted a major event that attracted often hundreds of participants, the 1990s saw an increase in conferences and seminars on such a scale that it was difficult to keep up with participation. But it is not only that the number of events increased dramatically; the events that traditionally had been located in Western Europe and North America were now common in Asia, the former Eastern Europe and South America. This internationalism signalled that translation studies had finally ‘arrived’.

While its status as a discipline was less and less in question, the sheer proliferation of discourses on translation made it necessary to take stock of that discipline. Thus, dictionaries, encyclopedias and anthologies began to appear with an astonishing frequency in an attempt to guide, but also channel, the reading in the field. Just as anthologists in the 18th and 19th centuries – faced with the multiplication of print in an ever-increasing literary marketplace – selected what they thought was worthy of reading, so editors in translation studies chose key texts for their readerships. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s John Biguenet’s and Rainer Schulte’s (1985, 1989) anthology, together with Andrew Chesterman’s (1989), served as the two basic standard teaching texts in English. Since then, Lawrence Venuti’s The Translation Studies Reader (2000) has appeared, as well as two anthologies of primary historical material on translation, one by André Lefevere (1992c), the other by Douglas Robinson (1997b/2001). Anthologies, or their modern-day equivalent, the ‘Reader’, are not just useful sources that save readers time, and even prevent readers ‘from reading all the editor did’ (Price, 2000: 2), but are also instruments of canon-formation insofar as they shape curriculum design. In this sense their ‘business’ is, as Matthew Arnold might well have said, to allow the reader ‘simply to know the best that is known and thought’ (1865/1907: 18–19) in a given field of study. Conversely, the encyclopedia does not select parts from an unmanageable whole, but tries to make the whole manageable by being as comprehensive and all-encompassing of all the parts as it can possibly be. Both forms of publication are designed, then, to help readers navigate amongst a proliferation of discourses on translation. The fact that the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium saw a mini explosion of such titles as Mona Baker’s Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998), Olive Classe’s Encyclopedia of Literary Translation (2000) and, in the same year, Peter France’s Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, will undoubtedly be of note for future book historians. At present all we can say is that all these publications have contributed towards legitimising the disciplinary status of translation.

A similar pattern can be discerned with textbooks. While in the 1980s and 1990s Peter Newmark’s (1981, 1987) and Mona Baker’s (1992) texts constituted the canon, the situation changed radically with a host of new publications in the field – notably, Jeremy Munday’s Introducing Translation Studies (2001), Basil Hatim’s and Jeremy Munday’s Translation: An Advanced Resource Book (2004), as well as the series of language specific textbooks regularly published by Multilingual Matters. The electronic bibliographical resources (such as those offered by the publishers John Benjamins and St Jerome) which complement print publications, have also helped research and placed translation studies firmly within 21st century humanities scholarship. Such a concentration of publishing projects was possible only because several well-established publishers (such as Routledge, Multilingual Matters and John Benjamins) expanded their translation studies lists considerably. The founding of St Jerome in Manchester as the first specialist translation studies publisher was also crucial in this respect, since its success sent out a signal that translation studies is not only an intellectually reputable subject but also a subject that can attract a substantial readership among students and academics.

In giving this necessarily short and schematic account of the institutional trajectory of translation studies, we are aware that we have not been able to do justice to the vast research, manifold publications and related developments in languages other than English. Nevertheless, we are convinced that certain paradigm shifts, largely due to theoretical debate instituted since the 1960s, have not left many departments untouched. Indeed, much of the influx of theory, which has so fundamentally influenced the ways in which we now think of language, approach literature or study culture, has come from outside an Anglo-American context. This is, of course, where the practice of translation has played a major role insofar as translation has been at the very heart of disseminating theory. For, without the translations of de Saussure from the French for instance, the ideas of structuralism would not have had the impact they have had. Similarly, without the translation of Anglo-American feminist theory into various European languages and, conversely, without the translation of French feminist theory into English, gender studies would not have developed as fast as it did. The rapidity of the spread of critical theory is therefore largely due to translation. This does not explain, however, why the development of translation studies was so rapid, and why it happened in the last two decades.

Gentzler (2001: x) attributes the rapid development of the discipline mainly to political and social change: the end of the Cold War, the re-awakening of China, the emergence of the developing world, and growing self-awareness among ethnic communities. With hindsight, one can also add to Gentzler’s list globalisation and its mixed effects, as well as the growing and fluctuating self-awareness of not only ethnic but also religious communities. If these are some of the major socio-political reasons for change, what is the explanation for the rapidity by which the discipline established itself? For one thing, new disciplines such as translation studies, or cultural studies or film studies, have had to define themselves against older disciplines, and therefore absorbed new ideas more readily. While English was openly hostile to theory, film studies is almost entirely dominated by theory, initially a mix of structuralism and ideology-critique, and more recently a mix of psychoanalysis and feminist theory. Similarly, cultural studies adopted Marxist, feminist, post-colonial theory – theories, in other words, that helped to explain the position of minorities in society, a concern at the very heart of the cultural studies project. Translation studies, unlike other new disciplines, was far more eclectic in its use of theory, not least because those academics who had an interest in translation were housed in a variety of different departments (modern languages, English, comparative literature, classics, philosophy, linguistics, schools of interpreting, etc.), and thus brought with them a host of different theoretical tools with which to analyse translation. Translation studies is therefore informed by a Babel of theories.

While this has not produced a new ‘theory’ of translation, the transfer (‘translatio’) of theories from different disciplines into the arena of translation has hastened the development of the field of translation studies. It has also made it far richer than many of the other new disciplines that in defining their boundaries as disciplines have adopted a much more circumscribed body of theories. Theory has now largely been absorbed into the curriculum of even the most theory-hostile literature department, and the heydays of high theory are over. Instead, the last few years have seen a gradual diversification of theory into particularised theoretical praxes that have given rise to strategies of reading (including strategies of translation) within what might be called cultural politics. Questions to do with textual difference, so pressing in the 1980s and early 1990s, have now become supplanted by questions to do with cultural difference, including racial, ethnic, gender or sexual difference. This is because the questions that are now asked by theory no longer have to do with a priori conditions of translatability, but with a posteriori ideological and cultural factors that affect, not just translation, but also the translator. Thus, rather than expect new theories of translation, we should perhaps expect a prolonged period of eclecticism (cf. Bassnett, 2005). Alternatively, and in alignment with current trends in literary studies, we might well be entering a period of gestation in which the discipline seeks a new understanding of itself by turning to history: be this its history as a discipline, the history of theories of translation, the role that translation has played in book and publishing history, or a social-cultural history of the translator.

Were any of these histories to be written, two things would be clear in all of them: translation studies has thrived on a variety of approaches from a whole range disciplines, and self-doubt rather than ideologically founded triumphalism has been its modus vivendi. The question ‘what is translation studies’ has been a central concern; and many an attempt at answering this question has been made. At times the answer came in the form of clear definitions like those provided by James Holmes and André Lefevere (both in Holmes et al., 1978). Then there was a period of less monolithic thinking, when the flexibility and interdisciplinarity of translation studies were seen as its major assets. This is reflected, for instance, in the title of Mary Snell-Hornby’s, Franz Pöchhacker’s and Klaus Kaindl’s edited volume Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline (Snell-Hornby et al., 1994), and their later Translation as Intercultural Communication (Snell-Hornby et al., 1997). Sometimes, reflecting the speed of change in thinking about translation, the same researcher presented different views in quick succession. Thus Bassnett, whose Translation Studies (Bassnett, 1980) undoubtedly helped to rescue the discipline from oblivion, elevated its status even further in 1993 by suggesting that translation studies could solve the ‘crisis’ in comparative literature. Recently, however, Bassnett admitted that her view was then intentionally provocative:

Today, looking back at that proposition, it appears fundamentally flawed: translation studies has not developed