Book reviewTranslation and Geography (New Perspectives in Translation Studies). Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. viii, 181 pp. .
Publication history
Table of contents
Geography is not exactly a concept that has been used abundantly in translation studies, at least not explicitly. Translators encounter it while translating place names, for instance, and it is included as an item in models designed to identify and analyze realia in translation. A couple of publications have dealt with more complex conceptualizations of ‘place’ and translation, such as Kelly and Johnston (2007), where geo-political contexts and dislocated forms of translation play a prominent role. Xu (2010) also very explicitly links translation and geography in a Chinese book with extended English chapter summaries. Judging from those summaries as well as some reviews, Xu’s chapters on human geography, political geography and postcolonial translation theories touch upon topics similar to those covered in Federico Italiano’s book. In both cases, the authors study aspects of the interaction of translation with its (geographical) surroundings. The importance of geography as shown in locative approaches is also thematized in a collection edited by Alvstad, Helgesson and Watson (2011).