The Translator as Writer

by Susan Bassnett, Peter Bush

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826485755
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/01/2006
Series:	Textual Studies
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

SUSAN BASSNETT is Professor of Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

Peter Bush is vice-president, International Federation of Translators, former Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Peter Bush and Susan Bassnett
1. A Dialogue: On a Translator's Interventions; Ros Schwartz and Nicholas de Lange
Part I: The Politics of Writing Translations
2. The Writer of Translations; Peter Bush
3. Let Poetry Win: The Translator as Writer, an Indian Perspective; Lakshmi Holmstrom
4. Motivation in a Surrogate Translation of Goldoni; Bill Findlay
5. Translation: Walking the Tightrope of Illusion; Anthea Bell Part II: Re-discovery and Re-invention
6. Translating Fun: Don Quixote; John Rutherford
7. A Czech Shakespeare?; Jirí Josek
8. The Translator in Aliceland: On Translating Alice in Wonderland into Spanish; Juan Gabriel López
9. Translating the Literary: Genetic Criticism, Text Theory and Poetry; Clive Scott
10. Translating Modern Chinese Literature; John Balcom
Part III: Body, Blood and Mind
11. Translating from the Body: Meditations on Mediation Excerpts; Carol Maier
12. The Alien Made Known: The Compact of Writer and Translator in Kerstin Ekman's Writing About Nature; Anna Paterson
13. Re-writing Children's Literature; Jacok Kenda
Part IV: Translation and Creativity
14. The Translator as Writer; Susan Bassnett
15. What Comes Next? Reconstructing the Classics; Josephine Balmer
16. Being Wildean: A Dialogue on the Importance of Style in Translation; Alberto Mira
Epilogue: Metaphors for a Translator; Michael Hanne
Index

Editorial Reviews

'... the very thing that the ... Chinese translation researchers need and would like to read. For the last 20 years, translation theorists have been the favorites with the Chinese translation circles, and translators, in contrast, seem to have been marginal in the same field. There are too many translation theorists who theorise without solid background of translation practice. Translation theory in China is in the danger of being estranged more and more from studies of translation as an art. [This book] ... can be rightly a remedy to the unhealthy situation in which translators are slighted...' Professor Zhengkun Gu, Department of English, Peking University Chairman of Peking University Society for Translation and Culture” —Blurb from reviewer

From the Publisher