1st Edition
Unsettling Translation Studies in Honour of Theo Hermans
This collection engages with translation and interpreting from a diverse but complementary range of perspectives, in dialogue with the seminal work of Theo Hermans. A foundational figure in the field, Hermans’s scholarly engagement with translation spans several key areas, including history of translation, metaphor, norms, ethics, ideology, methodology, and the critical reconceptualization of the positioning of the translator and of translation itself as a social and hermeneutic practice. Those he has mentored or inspired through his lectures and pioneering publications over the years are now household names in the field, with many represented in this volume. They come together here both to critically re-examine translation as a social, political and conceptual site of negotiation and to celebrate his contributions to the field.
The volume opens with an extended introduction and personal tribute by the editor, which situates Hermans’s work within the broader development of critical thinking about translation from the 1970s onward. This is followed by five parts, each addressing a theme that has been broadly taken up by Theo Hermans in his own work: translational epistemologies; historicizing translation; performing translation; centres and peripheries; and digital encounters.
This is important reading for translation scholars, researchers and advanced students on courses covering key trends and theories in translation studies, and those engaging with the history of the discipline.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Acknowledgements & Credits
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Chapter 1: On the Folly of First Impressions
A journey with Theo Hermans
Mona Baker, University of Oslo, Norway
Part I: Translational Epistemologies
Chapter 2: Translation as Metaphor Revisited
On the promises and pitfalls of semantic and epistemological overflowing
Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
Chapter 3: The Translational in Transnational and Transdisciplinary Epistemologies
Reconstructing translational epistemologies in The Great Regression
Rafael Y. Schögler, University of Graz, Austria
Chapter 4: Translation as Commentary
Paratext, hypertext and metatext
Kathryn Batchelor, University College London
Part II: Historicizing Translation
Chapter 5: Challenging the Archive, ‘Present’-ing the Past
Translation history as historical ethnography
Hilary Footitt, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, UK
Chapter 6: Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s Tailor and Significance in Translation History
Christopher Rundle, University of Bologna, Italy
Part III: Performing Translation
Chapter 7: From Voice to Performance
The artistic agency of literary translators
Gabriela Saldanha, University of Oslo, Norway
Chapter 8: Gatekeepers and Stakeholders
Valorizing indirect translation in theatre
Geraldine Brodie, University College London, UK
Chapter 9: Media, Materiality and the Possibility of Reception
Anne Carson’s Catullus
Karin Littau, University of Essex, UK
Part IV: Centres and Peripheries
Chapter 10: Dissenting Laughter
Tamil Dalit literature and translation on the offensive
Hephzibah Israel, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Chapter 11: Gianni Rodari’s Adventures of Cipollino in Russian and Estonian
Translation and ideology in the USSR
Daniele Monticelli, Tallinn University, Estonia
Eda Ahi, Writer and Translator
Chapter 12: Retranslating ‘Kara Toprak’
Ecofeminism revisited through a canonical folk song
Şebnem Susam-Saraeva, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Part V: Digital Encounters
Chapter 13: Debating Buddhist Translations in Cyberspace
The Buddhist online discussion forum as a discursive and epitextual space
Robert Neather, Hong Kong Baptist University
Chapter 14: Intelligent Designs
A corpus-assisted study of creationist discourse
Jan Buts, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
Chapter 15: Subtitling Disinformation Narratives around COVID-19
‘Foreign’ vlogging in the construction of digital nationalism in Chinese social media
Luis Pérez-González, University of Agder, Norway
Name Index
Subject Index
Biography
Mona Baker is Affiliate Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education, University of Oslo, and co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network. She is Director of the Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at Shanghai International Studies University, and Adjunct Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She is author of In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation and Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account; editor of Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution; and co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media.
"This is a rich collection of interventions which speak to the most current and urgent questions in Translation Studies: from material culture to the question of agency, from ecotranslation to the role of transdisciplinary and transnational approaches in the Humanities. That contributors do all this while engaging with Theo Hermans’s work is the best possible testimony to the originality of his thinking and the legacy of his scholarship."
Loredana Polezzi, Stony Brook University, USA
"Theo Hermans is one of the most prominent figures in the disciplinary history of translation studies. He has been a key player in institutionalising the field but also an independent critical voice against excessive institutionalising, promoting a view of 'a splintered discipline, a de-centred and perhaps ex-centric field of study that must learn to speak several tongues, recognizes the contingency of theory and seeks to make its own uncertainties productive' (Hermans 2006:9). This collective volume edited by Mona Baker, another likeminded critical thinker, is a testament to this vision, and the many chapters by prominent TS scholars expand on Hermans's ideas and unleash productive uncertainties in ways that capture the reader's scientific imagination and create a desire to reread his entire oeuvre."
Kaisa Koskinen, Tampere University, Finland
