The Translator as Writer

Front Cover
Susan Bassnett, Peter Bush
A&C Black, Apr 1, 2006 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 228 pages
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
Index
225

genetic criticism
106
CHAPTER TEN Translating modern Chinese literature
119

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About the author (2006)

Susan Bassnett is Professor in the Centre for Translation &Comparative Cultural Studies (University of Warwick) and author of Translation Studies. Peter Bush is vice-president, International Federation of Translators, former Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.

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