Article published in:
Heterolingualism in/and Translation
Edited by Reine Meylaerts
[Target 18:1] 2006
► pp. 121–137

Language politics, translation, and American literary history

| Faculty of Arts, K.U.Leuven
The article deals with the problem of linguistic alterity in American literary histories. The debate over the ‘foreignness’ or the ‘domesticity’ of a text or translation is usually conducted in a rather polarizing fashion, as in the case of Venuti (1995). Venuti’s conceptual framework fails to provide adequate criteria for differentiating domesticating and foreignizing translation strategies, which easily results in inflated claims about the linguistic hegemony of the Anglo-American world. In reaction to this, the article reconceptualizes the two translation strategies as part of the paradoxical internal logic of culture in order to highlight how every culture is continually in the process of (re-)translating itself. Therefore, the analysis is broadened to include the domesticating aspects of the foreignizing strategy, and vice versa, the foreignizing potential of domesticating translations. The domestication of the foreign is evident in the ambiguous inclusion of non-English or bilingual texts in American literary histories. The foreignization of the domestic, by contrast, appears from a persistent tendency on the part of literary historians to describe their forerunners or competitors as excessively Anglo- or Eurocentric. Through this reflexive application of Venuti’s strategies, the article draws attention to the paradoxical togetherness of the foreign and the domestic inside American literary culture.
Keywords: translation, domestication/foreignization, multilingualism, American literary history, Anglocentrism, language politics
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.Paradoxes of culture
  • 2.Domesticating the foreign
  • 3.Foreignizing the domestic
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 05 December 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18.1.07boy
References
Baym, Nina
1989 “Early histories of American literature: A chapter in the institution of New England”. American literary history 1:3. 459–488.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Duyckinck, Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck
1855 Cyclopaedia of American literature. 21 vols. New York: Charles Scribner.Google Scholar
Faust, Albert B.
1921 “Non-English writings I. 1. German”. William Peterfield Trent, ed. Cambridge history of American literature. 3rd vol. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press and Macmillan Company 1921 572–590.Google Scholar
Gonzalez, Cristina
1996 “Spanish is not a foreign language”. Publications of the modern language association 111:3. 475–476.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hollinger, David A.
2000 Postethnic America: Beyond multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Jay, Gregory S.
1997 American literature and the culture wars. Ithaca: Cornell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas and Eva Knodt
1995 Social systems. tr. John Jr. Bednarz and Dirk Baecker. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
McQuade, Donald
1988 “Intellectual life and public discourse”. Emory Elliot, gen. ed. Columbia literary history of the United States. Columbia: Columbia University Press 1988 715–732.Google Scholar
Matthews, Brander
1896 An Introduction to the Study of American literature. New York: American Book Company.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F.O.
1941 American renaissance: Art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Messmer, Marietta
2003 “Toward a declaration of interdependence; or, interrogating the boundaries in twentieth-century histories of North American literature”. Publications of the modern language association 118:1. 41–55.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nassehi, Armin
1999 Differenzierungsfolgen. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pease, Donald
1990 “New Americanists: Revisionist interventions into the canon”. Boundary 2 17:1. 1–37.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Charles Francis
1891 American literature 1607–1885. New York; London: Putnam/ The Nickerbocker Press.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W.
1994 Culture and imperialism. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Saldívar, José David
1991 The dialectics of our America: Genealogy, cultural critique, and literary history. Durham: Duke University Press.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schleiermacher, Friedrich
1838 “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens”.Sämmtliche Werke: Dritte Abteilung (Zur Philosophie). 2nd vol. Berlin: Georg Reimer.Google Scholar
Schurz, Carl
1906–1912 Lebenserinnerungen. 31 vols. Berlin: Georg Reimer.Google Scholar
1907–1908 The reminiscences of Carl Schurz. 31 vols. New York: McClure. Vol. 31 includes a “Sketch of Carl Schurz’s political carreer, 1869–1906” by Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning.Google Scholar
Sollors, Werner
1997 “For a multilingual turn in American Studies”. American Studies association newsletter 20:2.Google Scholar
Trefousse, Hans L.
1998 Carl Schurz: An autobiography. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria
2000 “Translation and political engagement”. The translator 6:1. 23–47.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1995 The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. London/New York: Routledge.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1998a The scandals of translation: Towards an ethics of difference. London/New York: Routledge.   CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1998b “Introduction”. The translator (Special issue on Translation and minority) 4:2. 135–144.Google Scholar
Wendell, Barrett
1900 Literary history of America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Wendell, Barrett, and Chester N. Greenough
1907 A History of literature in America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Hamada, Kay S.
2012. Domesticating Wild Sheep: Sociolinguistic Functions and Style in Translations of Haruki Murakami's Fiction. The Journal of Popular Culture 45:1 ► pp. 41 ff. Crossref logo
Huang, Qin & Xiaoli Liu
2017. Seruya, Teresa, and Justo, (eds) (2016). Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, Cognition and Culture . Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 63:2 ► pp. 285 ff. Crossref logo
Huang Qin & Liu Xiaoli
2017. Review of Seruya, Teresa & José Miranda Justo, (eds) (2016) Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, Cognition and Culture . Babel 63:2 ► pp. 285 ff. Crossref logo
Ožbot, Martina
2016.  In Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, Cognition and Culture [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 277 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2022. 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.