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Target
Vol. 35:2 (2023) ► pp.285–305

Translation as cultural technique

Constructing a translation history of media

ORCID logo | Ghent University
Even though studies at the intersection of translation and media are a burgeoning subfield within Translation Studies, the integration of media theory into the scholarship on translation remains underdeveloped. Joining a recent surge of interest in adapting media theory to a broad analysis of the impacts of the technologies that organise and support translation, this article takes up the concept of cultural technique to argue that, just as technological revolutions have reshaped translation practices, translations have structured media systems. Following its exploration of a medial methodology in Translation Studies and the benefits of a historicist perspective, the article turns to a set of case studies, all sourced from the Romantic period, which was characterised by a complex attitude to mediality and translation prefigurative of the current digital turn. The case studies demonstrate the benefits of a medial view in the study of translation.
Keywords: media, technology, translation history, Romanticism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Translation, technology, media
  • 2.Translation Studies and media theory
  • 3.Cultural technique
  • 4.A case for Romanticism
  • 5.Two contrasting cases
  • 6.A case of recursive translation
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20180.deg
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Cited by three other publications

de Groote, Brecht
2024. “Could you not translate me?” sociability and performativity in Romantic translation. The Translator ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Rozmysłowicz, Tomasz
2024. The politics of machine translation. Reprogramming translation studies. Perspectives 32:3 ► pp. 493 ff. DOI logo
Regniers, Gaëtan
2023. Tolstoy’s Happy Children of Peace. The Wartime Translation of 'Sebastopol in December' (1855). Vertimo studijos 16 ► pp. 112 ff. DOI logo

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