In het spoor van Vergilius

Translation - Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader, 2006

Translation - Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader responds to the need for a collection of primary texts on translation, in the English tradition, from the earliest times to the present day. Based on an exhaustive survey of the wealth of available materials, the Reader demonstrates throughout the link between theory and practice, with excerpts not only of significant theoretical writings but of actual translations, as well as excerpts on translation from letters, interviews, autobiographies, and fiction. The collection is intended as a teaching tool, but also as an encyclopaedia for the use of translators and writers on translation. It presents the full panoply of approaches to translation, without necessarily judging between them, but showing clearly what is to be gained or lost in each case. Translations of key texts, such as the Bible and the Homeric epic, are traced through the ages, with the same passages excerpted, making it possible for readers to construct their own map of the evolution of translation and to evaluate, in their historical contexts, the variety of approaches. The passages in question are also accompanied by ad verbum versions, to facilitate comparison. The bibliographies are likewise comprehensive. The editors have drawn on the expertise of leading scholars in the field, including the late James S. Holmes, Louis Kelly, Jonathan Wilcox, Jane Stevenson, David Hopkins, and many others. In addition, significant non-English texts, such as Martin Luther's 'Circular Letter on Translation', which may be said to have inaugurated the Reformation, are included, helping to set the English tradition in a wider context. Related items, such as the introductions to their work by Tudor and Jacobean translators or the work of women translators from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have been brought together in 'collages', marking particularly important moments or developments in the history of translation. This comprehensive reader provides an invaluable and illuminating resources for scholars and students of translation and English literature, as well as poets, cultural historians, and professional translators.

2021

wrote perhaps the most complex, most interesting essay on the process of translation under the title The Task of the Translator in 1923. This very complex work of literary and translation theory has been analysed and referred to by several literary scholars in the past almost 100 years, the Belgian-American literary scholar Paul de Man among them. The present research article makes an attempt to present a comparative analysis based on close reading of the texts between Benjamin's original essay and Paul de Man's commentary, figuring out the possible (and necessary) contradictions and ambiguities of the text, trying to find the answer to the question whether or not translation, at least in the successful sense of the word, exist at all. Deconstructionist way of reading literary and theoretical texts may give multiple answers to the questions about translation, and demonstrate the possibility and impossibility of translation at the same time. WALTER BENJAMIN: The task of the literary translator (Scanning the primary text) Right at the beginning of his well-known and paradigmatic essay, Walter Benjamin rejects the notion of the ideal recipient, as if he were to consider poetry as existing for its own sake rather than being addressed to the reader in particularhe calls it pure language (ReineSprache). According to his thesis, the translator must go beyond conveying the message of the literary work. A translation that only conveys the message of the work is not a good translation. Linguistic expressions are in some respects untranslatable, some works are essentially translatable, while others do not yield to the intention of translation. A translated text is a text that has a life of its own in relation to the original work, since it was written later than the original text. The translation owes its very existence to the glory of the original work, i.e. its exceptional aesthetic value, since the original work is a text that has been found worthy of being lifted out of its own linguistic and cultural environment and transplanted into a foreign culture by means of translation.

Shakespeare Survey 68

Translation and Medieval Documents, 2018