Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation

(Paperback)

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In recent years, scholarship on translation has moved well beyond the technicalities of converting one language into another and beyond conventional translation theory. With new technologies blurring distinctions between "the original" and its reproductions, and with globalization redefining national and cultural boundaries, "translation" is now emerging as a reformulated subject of lively, interdisciplinary debate. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation enters the heart of this debate. It covers an exceptional range of topics, from simultaneous translation to legal theory, from the language of exile to the language of new nations, from the press to the cinema; and cultures and languages from contemporary Bengal to ancient Japan, from translations of Homer to the work of Don DeLillo. All twenty-two essays, by leading voices including Gayatri Spivak and the late Edward Said, are provocative and persuasive.The book's four sections--"Translation as Medium and across Media," "The Ethics of Translation," "Translation and Difference," and "Beyond the Nation"--together provide a comprehensive view of current thinking on nationality and translation, one that will be widely consulted for years to come. The contributors are Jonathan E. Abel, Emily Apter, Sandra Bermann, Vilashini Cooppan, Stanley Corngold, David Damrosch, Robert Eaglestone, Stathis Gourgouris, Pierre Legrand, Jacques Lezra, Francoise Lionnet, Sylvia Molloy, Yopie Prins, Edward Said, Azade Seyhan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Henry Staten, Lawrence Venuti, Lynn Visson, Gauri Viswanathan, Samuel Weber, and Michael Wood.

Reviews

"Sure to become required reading for students and scholars of the subject, ... this new volume presents a well-balanced view of the current state of the profession and contains an unusually large percentage of essays (fully half) that can be considered significant contributions to the field."--Susan Bernofsky, Modern Language Notes

Author Bio

Sandra Bermann is Professor and Department Chair of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She is the author of Sonnet over Time: A Study in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire, and her translation of Allesandro Manzoni's Del romanzo storico appeared as On the Historical Novel. Michael Wood is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (Princeton) and other books on literature and film.