The Translator as WriterSusan Bassnett, Peter Bush Over the last two decades, interest in translation around the world has increased beyond any predictions. International bestseller lists now contain large numbers of translated works, and writers from Latin America, Africa, India and China have joined the lists of eminent, bestselling European writers and those from the global English-speaking world. Despite this, translators tend to be invisible, as are the processes they follow and the strategies they employ when translating. The Translator as Writer bridges the divide between those who study translation and those who produce translations, through essays written by well-known translators talking about their own work as distinctive creative literary practice. The book emphasises this creativity, arguing that translators are effectively writers, or rewriters who produce works that can be read and enjoyed by an entirely new audience. The aim of the book is to give a proper prominence to the role of translators and in so doing to move attention back to the act of translating, away from more abstract speculation about what translation might involve. |
Contents
on a translators interventions | 9 |
CHAPTER TWO The writer of translations | 23 |
the translator as writer | 33 |
CHAPTER FOUR Motivation in a surrogate translation of Goldoni | 46 |
walking the tightrope of illusion | 58 |
Don Quixote | 71 |
CHAPTER SEVEN A Czech Shakespeare? | 84 |
on translating | 95 |
meditations | 137 |
the compact of writer | 149 |
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Rewriting childrens literature | 160 |
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Writing and translating | 173 |
CHAPTER FIFTEEN What comes next? Reconstructing the classics | 184 |
a dialogue on the importance | 196 |
EPILOGUE Metaphors for the translator | 208 |
225 | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. K. Ramanujan Alice Amos Oz avant-texte Balmer Baruffe Bassnett become Bill Findlay body Catullus Cervantes Chacel chapter characters Chinese classical translators comedy contemporary context creative critics culture Czech Dalit Desvelos dialect Don Quixote draft drama editor English equivalent essays example experience expression feel fiction French German Goldoni imaginative Indian Juan Goytisolo Kerstin Ekman kind Labarca language lation lator linguistic literal literary translation literature London meaning metaphor Miguel de Cervantes modern nature novel original pasodoble passage Pizarnik play poem poet poetry problem prose published Ramanujan reader reading references rewriting Romeo Rosa Chacel Scots Scottish sense sentence Shakespeare Sirius Black sometimes source text Spanish stage story style stylistic suggests Taiwan Tamil Tao Qian target textual theatre tradition trans translation studies translator's trying understand University Venetian voice W. G. Sebald Wilde Wilde's Wildean words writing written