Translating Holocaust Lives

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For readers in the English-speaking world, almost all Holocaust writing is translated writing. Translation is indispensable for our understanding of the Holocaust because there is a need to tell others what happened in a way that makes events and experiences accessible if not, perhaps, comprehensible to other communities. Yet what this means is only beginning to be explored by Translation Studies scholars. This book aims to bring together the insights of Translation Studies and Holocaust Studies in order to show what a critical understanding of translation in practice and context can contribute to our knowledge of the legacy of the Holocaust. The role translation plays is not just as a facilitator of a semi-transparent transfer of information. Holocaust writing involves questions about language, truth and ethics, and a theoretically informed understanding of translation adds to these questions by drawing attention to processes of mediation and reception in cultural and historical context. It is important to examine how writing by Holocaust victims, which is closely tied to a specific language and reflects on the relationship between language, experience and thought, can (or cannot) be translated. This volume brings the disciplines of Holocaust and Translation Studies into an encounter with each other in order to explore the effects of translation on Holocaust writing. The individual pieces by Holocaust scholars explore general, theoretical questions and individual case studies, and are accompanied by commentaries by translation scholars.

Reviews

This book makes an important contribution to the long overdue analysis of the role of translation and translators in mediating the Holocaust. The contributors cover a wide range of genres and provide genuinely new insights into both Holocaust Studies and Translation Studies. The structure of the book, in which each chapter is followed by a short response from a Translation Studies scholar, opens up challenging questions of an epistemological and ethical nature and unlocks the potential for a productive dialogue between the two disciplines. A most welcome and thought-provoking volume. -- Jenny Williams, Professor Emeritus, Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University, Ireland
Translating Holocaust Lives is a worthwhile and insightful collection of chapters which expertly connects the disciplines of Translation Studies and Holocaust Studies. The book contains original contributions and responses to them by well-known international scholars. I can warmly recommend it to students in many different fields of study. -- Juliane House, Professor, Hamburg University, Germany
Translating Holocaust Lives inaugurates an important conversation between translation studies and Holocaust studies, and one hopes it will inspire further engagement between these interdisciplinary fields. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Jean Boase-Beier, Professor, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, UK Peter Davies, Professor in Division of European Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh, UK Andrea Hammel, Department of Modern Languages, Aberystwyth University, UK Marion Winters, Department of Language and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, UK