1st Edition
Transfiction and Bordering Approaches to Theorizing Translation Essays in Dialogue with the Work of Rosemary Arrojo
This collection seeks to expand the centers from which scholars theorize translation, building on themes in Rosemary Arrojo’s pioneering work on transfiction and the influence of bordering disciplines in investigating and elucidating questions central to the field of translation studies.
Chapters by scholars around the world theorize translation from diverse perspectives, drawing on a wide range of literatures, genres, and media, including fiction, philosophy, drama, and film. Half the chapters explore the influence of Rosemary Arrojo’s work on transfiction and the ways in which fictional representations of translators and translation can shed new light on theoretical concerns. The other chapters look to fields outside translation studies, such as linguistics, media studies, and philosophy, to demonstrate the ways in which the key thinkers and theories that have influenced Arrojo’s work can be seen in other disciplines and in turn, encourage further cross-disciplinary research interrogating key questions in the field.
The collection makes the case for a multi-layered approach to theorizing translation, one which accounts for the rich possibilities in revisiting existing work and thinking outside disciplinary boundaries in order to advance the field. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies and comparative literature.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Bordering Approaches & Trans-Bordering Themes in Dialogue with the Work of Rosemary Arrojo
D. M. Spitzer
Rosemary Arrojo Career Bibliography
1. The Centrality of the Margins: The Translator’s Footnote as Parergon
Klaus Kaindl
2. Between Omnipotence and Humility: Scliar’s Fictional Translator and Borges’ Pierre Menard
Alice Leal
3. The Representation of the Translator in Chico Buarque de Holanda’s Essa gente: Impertinent Letter, Irony and Co-authorship
Leila Cristina de Melo Darin
4. The Sequestered Home: Translation and Counter-Families in Jane Eyre
Michelle Woods
5. Detours of Babel
D. M. Spitzer
6. Transfiction in Late Soviet Society: The Imaginary East in Semyon Lipkin’s Dekada
Brian James Baer
7. "Scrambled Tongues United in a Single Voice": Transfiction in Contemporary Colombian Literature
Juan G. Ramírez Giraldo and Laura Esperanza Venegas Piracón
8. Fidelity and Performability in Theater (Translation)
Ruth Bohunovsky
9. Translation Dilemmas in South Korea: Assessing the Translator’s Role in the Global Success of Parasite (2019), The Vegetarian (2016), and Please Look After Mom (2011)
Youn Soo Kim Goldstein
10. The Unfaithful Faithfulness: The Practice of Translation and Arrojo’s post-Nietzschean Insights
Lauro Maia Amorim
11. A Post-Therapeutic ‘*Translation’ Concept
Paulo Oliveira
12. Notes on Translation, Alterity, and Relationality: From the Regimes of Indistinction to the Disclosure of Relation
Mauricio Mendonça Cardozo
13. Towards a Grammatologically Informed Linguistics
Kanavillil Rajagopalan
14. "A Modest Proposal" for a Translation Theory
Lenita Maria Rimoli Pisetta
Index
List of Contributors
Lauro Maia Amorim is an Assistant Professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP) at São José do Rio Preto (Brazil). His books include Translation and Adaptation: The Crossroads of Textuality (UNESP); Translation, Blackness and the (In)Visible (Lambert), and Uninvented Colors: selected (translated) poems by Harryette Mullen (Dobra Editorial).
Brian Baer is Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University (USA) and Leading Research Fellow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His recent publications include Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature and Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire.
Ruth Bohunovsky teaches German Language, Austrian Literature and Translation Studies at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) in Curitiba (Brazil). She also coordinates the Austrian Centre at the same university. Her current research topics are Translation and Theatre and Teaching of German as a Foreign Language (especially Austrian topics).
Mauricio Mendonça Cardozo is Professor of Translation Theory and Literary Translation at Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) in Curitiba (Brazil). Cardozo has edited and co-edited A Escola Tradutológica de Leipzig (2009), Centro, Centro: Literatura e Literatura Comparada em discussão (2011) and Ética e Estética nos Estudos Literários (2013).
Leila Darin is full professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (Brazil). Her main research interests are Translation Theory and Practice, Translator Training, Comparative Literature, and Literary Translation.
Juan G. Ramírez Giraldo is an Associate Professor and researcher at Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín (Colombia). His current research focuses on historical discourses on translation in Colombia, and he is preparing an anthology on the matter. His research interests include translation historiography, translator training, and Latin American literature.
Youn Soo Kim Goldstein is Ambrose Amos Shaw Assistant Professor of Localization and Translation in the Department of Foreign Languages at Weber State University (USA), where she teaches translation and localization as well as Korean language. Her research interests include contemporary Korean literature, literature and society, translation theories, and decoloniality.
Klaus Kaindl is University Professor of Translation Studies at the Center for Translation Studies, University of Vienna (Austria).
Alice Leal is associate professor of translation and interpreting studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her main areas of research are the intersections between translation, philosophy and literature. Her recent publications include the monograph English and Translation in the European Union after Brexit (2021, Routledge).
Paulo Oliveira teaches German at the State University of Campinas, and Foreign Language Didactics and Translation at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). He currently works on an ‘Epistemology of translating’ of Wittgensteinian extraction and co-edits the Nachlass of Arley Ramos Moreno in Philosophy of Language.
Laura Esperanza Venegas Piracón holds degrees from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a Master’s degree in Translation from Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), where her thesis explored the relationship between language, culture, and politics as articulated in fiction about translation in Colombia. Her research interests revolve around language, discourse, and culture.
Lenita Maria Rimoli Pisetta teaches Translation Theory and Practice in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). At present, her main research topics are Translation and Ethics, Translation Historiography, and Translated Brazilian Literature.
Kanavillil Rajagopalan is Full Professor of Linguistics (retired) at the State University at Campinas (Brazil) and a senior researcher with CNPq (a funding agency maintained by Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology). Rajagopalan has published 6 books and over 650 research papers. Currently he is the review editor of Word.
D. M. Spitzer is an independent scholar and translator (USA) of early Greek thinking. His publications include A Heaven Wrought of Iron: Poems from the Odyssey (2016) and Philosophy’s Treason: Studies in Philosophy and Translation (2020), as well as articles in journals such as Epoché, Research in Phenomenology, and Diacritics.
Michelle Woods is Associate Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz (USA). Her publications include Translating Milan Kundera (2006), Censoring Translation (2012), Kafka Translated: How Translators Have Shaped Our Reading of Kafka (2014), and the collection Authorizing Translation (2017). She is currently writing a book on Tolstoy and his translators.
Biography
D. M. Spitzer is an independent scholar and translator of early Greek thinking (USA). Author of A Heaven Wrought of Iron: Poems from the Odyssey (2016) and editor of Philosophy’s Treason: Studies in Philosophy and Translation (2020), Spitzer’s work has appeared in journals such as Epoché, Research in Phenomenology, and Diacritics. Currently Dr. Spitzer is organizing Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus (Routledge) and writing a book exploring the ways trauma and migration shaped early Greek philosophy.
Paulo Oliveira teaches German at the State University of Campinas, and Translation Theory and Foreign Language Didactics at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Prior and parallel to teaching, he has also gained extensive experience in translating and especially interpreting, mostly in the Humanities. His research includes digital technologies and an interface with semiotics. He currently works on an ‘Epistemology of translating’ of Wittgensteinian extraction and co-edits the Nachlass of Arley Moreno in Philosophy of Language.
"As a tribute to the thought of Rosemary Arrojo on translation, this anthology dispenses with the laudatory gesture. [...] The reader will find in texts that cross several fields new critical and theoretical reflection, inspired from the original interweaving of language, fiction, theory and translation developed by the Brazilian scholar."
---Susana Kampff Lages, Professor of German Language and Literature,
Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
"Transfiction and Bordering Approaches to Theorizing Translation asks all the right impertinent questions—this volume is essential, anti-essential, reading [...] like Arrojo’s own work which built the house for the noisy ghosts of translation looming in these pages, this text serves as rightful homage and epistemic challenge."
--- Richard Kelly Washbourne, Professor of Spanish Translation, Kent State University (USA)
"In this enlightening volume, 15 emerging and established scholars travel through Rosemary Arrojo’s central research fields and dialogue with her under a transdisciplinary perspective. Covering a wide range of genres and media, the contributions expand and renegotiate some of Arrojo’s pivotal thoughts, suggesting new paths in Translation Studies research."
---Michaela Wolf, Professor of Translation Studies, Universität Graz (Austria)
