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 Interpreting Studies , 2017

This article examines how translation practitioners might begin to develop a praxis that is based on an ontological polyvocality; one which allows for difficulty – even misconstrual and semantic breakdown – so that translations do not become mechanical reproductions, subsumed by systems of power, rather than machinic repetitions that allow for deterritorializations along lines of flight. Because, despite the fact that translations are regarded as relatively autonomous creations, they still conform; they are still produced in the socius which, in modern societies, aids the functioning of capitalism. The question arises: if translations – which are unavoidably a kind of literary repetition – are produced and constructed within capitalist societies, does this mean that they inevitably become mechanical reproductions rather than machinic repetitions? To answer this question, translation is investigated within the ethico-aesthetic framework developed by Félix Guattari and selected translations of passages in the oeuvre of the South African author Ingrid Winterbach are referenced.

Journal of Language Teaching and Research

Ameen Fares Rihani rewrote a few of his Arabic poems, such as “I am the East” and “New York” in English, to enable American and Arab readers to understand the poems within their cultural settings, to promote the Eastern culture in the West, and to introduce the West to the Easterners. This paper argues that in his translations of his own poetry, Rihani was a recreator rather than a translator. A comparative analysis of Rihani’s rewritten poems in English and the translations made by other translators of the same poems will prove that the author-translator’s choice of terms along with their cultural backgrounds, deep meanings and etymologies reveal his deep understanding of the source and target cultures, the Eastern and the Western ones. The study further analyzes Rihani’s literary recreations or in other terms transcreations and examines as well the other translators’ rendering of the same works. Comparative study shows how poetry transcends cultural barriers and understands the li...

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?

Babel, 2001

Repetition or reiteration is a phenomenon common in language, music, religion, and literature, and has been studied extensively by linguists and rhetoricians. Unfortunately, it has not been investigated in Translation Studies because repetition is essentially an aspect of comparative rhetoric, a burgeoning discipline that is still in an embryonic stage. Among other things, it deals with how a particular rhetorical device functions in a certain language, and whether that function is preserved, metamorphosed, or compromised in translation. A rhetorical device does not necessarily require verbatim translation, because one must take into consideration such factors as genre, discourse, and text.Rhetorical repetition is used for emphasis, exaggeration, or the creation of parallel structures. Sometimes, repetition is much more subtle, where it enhances the contents or the message of the literary work. Several translation examples are discussed within this context to show where and how tran...

Babel, 2005

This paper tries to discover the significance of rewriting. As we all know, translation plays a significant role not only in the communication of different people from different nations, but also in the development of a nation's politics, culture and society. However, for a long time, the studies of translation was confined to the linguistic approach. In the past, scholars attached great importance to the source text, considering it as positive and authoritative. Translation, however, was regarded as derivative and servile. In the 1980s, the appearance of " cultural turn " was a satisfying change. It drew attention to the issues that are beyond equivalence and fidelity, namely history, culture, ideology and poetics and the like. Among all the introduced theories at that time, Lefevere's theory of rewritings was a prominent one. It focused more on the differences between source and target texts as well as issues such as culture and ideology. It helped translation researchers expand their horizons from the linguistic level to a wider social context. From the research, it can be concluded that rewriting is of great significance in translation and exerts powerful influence on translation. It believes that translation is productive for cultural studies, translation can improve translators' status and it can help promote the integration of translation theory and practice as well.

Interpretation and regeneration of a text are the two facets of translation. This article explores the generative facet of translating a literary text. It draws commonalities and differences between literary writing and literary translation while exploring the linguistic dimensions of creativity manifested in the generation of a translated text.

İ. Ü. Çeviribilim Dergisi, 2010

The aim of this paper is to analyse the notion of "rewriting" in translation as introduced by André Lefevere and further developed by Maria Tymoczko. The basic research question to be dealt with is to what extent Lefevere"s notion of "rewriting" coincides with Tymoczko"s conception of "rewriting" with a view to questioning the role this notion has played in developing the post-colonial approach to translation. André Lefevere views "translation" as a process of "rewriting", as a result of which the translators of literary texts have played a significant role in terms of the acceptance or rejection, canonization or non-canonization of those works. According to him, the issues of power, ideology and manipulation are also related to the process of "rewriting", which is embedded in ideological as well as poetological motivations. Maria Tymoczko, who borrows the term from Lefevere, defines every writing as a "rewriting", every creation as a "re-creation", focusing on the metonymic dimensions of the texts to be translated. Tackling the notion from a more political point of view, Tymoczko provides a much broader perspective; in a sense, she takes up from where Lefevere left off. The broader influences of "rewriting" in terms of constructing the images of the "non-Western" cultures in the West and displaying the manipulation involved in the process of rewriting the texts of the "non-Western" cultures are most visible in the translations of the texts of post-colonial cultures, in which the impact of "power", "ideology" and "patronage" is particularly relevant.