Article published In:
TargetVol. 29:3 (2017) ► pp.440–463
What kind of literature is a literary translation?
This paper is a kind of manifesto for a new conception of literary translation as a unique literary genre that is imitative but
qualitatively different from, and not necessarily worse than, the model it imitates. It explores this possibility by first interrogating
Gérard Genette’s model of literariness in Fiction and Diction – considering how literary translation as a unique genre
might fit that model – and then considering what the literary translator imitates, and the relationship between translation and the novel as
similar imitative genres. Key to this comparison is the novel’s early (and continuing) reliance on the “found-translation framing device,”
which is effectively what Gideon Toury calls a pseudotranslation but is not (necessarily) designed to hide original
creation – rather, to play with the illusion of reality. The paper ends with the suggestion that literature tout court might be reimagined
in terms of its transformative energies – and that translation might come to be seen as one of literature’s most definitive genres.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The different type of literature that is literary translation
- 3.Imitating what literary authors do in writing
- 3.1(Conditional) literary effects
- 3.2The found-translation framing device
- 4.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References (41)
References
Barth, John. (1967) 1984. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” In The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction, 62–76. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bloom, Harold. 1980. The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy. New York: Vintage.
Cohen, J. M., trans. (1532) 1955. François Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Delabastita, Dirk, and Rainer Grutman, eds. 2005. Fictionalising Translation and Multilingualism. Special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia. New Series 41.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1975) 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Esselborn, Karl. 2007. “Übersetzungen aus der Sprache, die es nicht gibt: Interkulturalität, Globalisierung und Postmoderne in den Texten Yoko Tawadas.” Arcadia 42 (2): 240–262.
Fowles, John. 1974. “Eliduc.” In The Ebony Tower. A Collection of Short Stories, 115–141. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Gabrakova, Dennitza. 2010. “‘Wound in the Alphabet’: The Punct(um) of the Text or the F(r)iction of Translation.” In Yoko Tawada. Poetik der Transformation: Beiträge zum Gesamtwerk, ed. by Christine Ivanovic, 385–393. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Geisel, Sieglinde. 2001. “Fremdkörper Sprache: Ein Spaziergang mit Yoko Tawada.” Neue Zürchner Zeitung 23 February 2001. Available at [URL].
Genette, Gérard. (1991) 1993. Fiction and Diction. Translated by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hermans, Theo. 2000. “Self-Reference, Self-Reflection and Re-entering Translation.” In Under Construction: Links for the Site of Literary Theory, ed. by Dirk de Geest, Ortwin de Graef, Dirk Delabastita, Koenraad Geldof, Rita Ghesquière, and José Lambert, 259–274. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Lefevere, André, ed. 1992. Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge.
Lewis, Philip E. 1985. “The Measure of Translation Effects.” In Difference in Translation, ed. by Joseph F. Graham, 31–62. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lindenberger, Herbert. 1979. Saul’s Fall: A Critical Fiction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lombez, Christine. 2005. “La ‘traduction supposée’ ou: de la place des pseudotraductions poétiques en France.” In Delabastita and Grutman 20051, 107–121.
Osman, Jena, Juliana Spahr, Thalia Field, and Cecilia Vicuna, eds. 2003. Translucinación. Special issue of Chain 101 (Summer).
Robinson, Douglas, trans. (1530) 1997. Martin Luther, “Circular Letter on Translation.” In Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche, ed. by Douglas Robinson, 84–89. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Robinson, Douglas. 1991. The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Robinson, Douglas. 1997. What Is Translation? Centrifugal Theories, Critical Interventions. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.
Robinson, Douglas. 2013. Schleiermacher’s Icoses: Social Ecologies of the Different Methods of Translating. Bucharest: Zeta.
Robinson, Douglas. 2015. The Dao of Translation: An East-West Dialogue. London: Routledge.
Robinson, Douglas. 2016. The Deep Ecology of Rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Robinson, Douglas. 2017a. Critical Translation Studies. London: Routledge.
Robinson, Douglas. 2017b. Exorcising Translation: Towards an Intercivilizational Turn. New York: Bloomsbury.
Robinson, Douglas. 2017c. Aleksis Kivi and/as World Literature. Leiden: Brill.
Sakai, Naoki. 1997. Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. (1813) 2002. “Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens.” In Akademievorträge, ed. by Martin Rößler, with the assistance of Lars Emersleben, 67–93. Part I of Schriften und Entwürfe. Vol. 11 of Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: BBAW.
Steiner, George. 1999. The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.: A Novel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Tawada Yōko. 2007. “St. George and the Translator.” In Facing the Bridge, 109–175. Translated by Margret Mitsutani. New York: New Directions.
Urquhart, Thomas, trans. (1532) 1994. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel. New York: Knopf.
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence, ed. 1998.
Translation and Minority
. Special issue of The Translator 4 (2).
Venuti, Lawrence. 2008. “Translation, Interpretation, Canon Formation.” In Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture, ed. by Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko, 27–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walpole, Horace. (1764) 1901. The Castle of Otranto. London: Cassell.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Zhang, Songzhu
2023.
English-Chinese and Chinese-English Translations of Literary Texts: The Influence of Stylistic Features on the Translation Process and Eyetracking Technology.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 52:6
► pp. 2919 ff.
Morini, Massimiliano
2020.
Luciano Bianciardi.
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 32:1
► pp. 122 ff.
Savchenko, Yevheniia & Anhelina Haishun
2020.
GRAMMATICAL PECULIARITIES OF BRITISH NOVEL TRANSLATION INTO UKRAINIAN.
Naukovy Visnyk of South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushynsky: Linguistic Sciences 2020:30
► pp. 135 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.