New books at a glance
Rainer Schulte & John Biguenet, eds. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. VI + 254 pp. ISBN 0-226-04871-3 $ 12.95

Reviewed by Lieven D’hulst
Antwerpen

Table of contents

    The low material availability of historical translation theories finds a correlate in time-honoured commonplaces supported by a small number of allegedly 'influential' [ p. 130 ]statements with regard to present or past theorizing. Both facts are legitimately deplorable in view of, say, the achievements of the last twenty years in the historical study of linguistics. When it comes to restoring the complexity which marked the history of our discipline, the first step would be the heuristic one of finding the texts. Next it becomes necessary to establish anthologies of texts; even if the choice and ordering principles are, to some extent, an expression of the researchers' views, they are an efficient though provisional means of overcoming the barriers of traditional historiography. The present book does not fit such a concept: why else would it offer reprints of parts of recently published books that are very probably not unavailable, such as Bonnefoy (1989), Schogt (1985), Riffaterre (1985) or Derrida (1985), and of texts that have become classics in the field (Jakobson 1959)? One might then expect selection and ordering to serve different purposes. In their introduction, the editors suggest a line of thought shared by the 21 authors, who "have focused in one way or another on the delicate changes and challenges that are inherent in the transformational process of translation" (p. 9). This trivial assumption follows a double set of "impressions":

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