Douglas Robinson
I am a theorist of the somatics and performativity of social regulation, in translation, rhetoric, literature, and other communication channels. I'm interested in icosis and ecosis as socioaffective ecologies of human organization.
Biography
When I first arrived in Finland as a YFU exchange student, at the age of 16, in 1972, I said to myself: "I will never need Finnish, but I think I'll learn it anyway." And I set myself the modest goal of learning it so well during the 13 months I'd be on exchange there that when I left no one could tell I wasn't a Finn. I didn't quite make it, but almost: before I left a Finn I'd just met asked me how long I'd lived in the US--obviously thinking I was a Finn whose Finnish was slightly Americanized by living there. I then returned to Finland two years later and ended up staying 14 years, getting married and having kids there, becoming a Finnish>English translator, and eventually an Associate Professor of Finnish>English Translation Theory and Practice at the University of Tampere, where I wrote The Translator's Turn. I was wrong about never needing it: that decision to learn Finnish changed my life.Education
-
Ph.D. in English, University of Washington, Seattle, 1983
Ph.L. in English, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 1980
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
-
Translation theory, rhetorical theory, literary theory, language theory
Somaticity, performativity, icosis/ecosis
Mengzi, Laozi, Aristotle
Peirce, Bakhtin, Burke
Philosophy of mind/body/language
Websites
Books
Articles
“Embodied Translation: Henri Meschonnic on Translating For/Through the Ear and t
Published: Jun 07, 2016 by Parallèles 26 (2014): 38-52.
Authors: Douglas Robinson
And the Mouth. This form doesn't like long titles!
“The Inscience of Translation.”
Published: Jun 07, 2016 by International Journal of Society, Culture, and Language 2.2 (Fall 2014): 25-40.
Authors: Douglas Robinson
More riffing on Henri Meschonnic on translation.
“Rhythm as Knowledge-Translation, Knowledge as Rhythm-Translation”
Published: Jun 07, 2016 by Global Media Journal—Canadian Edition 5.1 (2012): 75-94.
Authors: Douglas Robinson
Translational thoughts on knowledge-transfer: translation AS knowledge-transfer, thought through Henri Meschonnic's embodied (rhythm-based) theory of translation.
“Liar Paradox Monism: A Wildean Solution to the Explanatory Gap between Material
Published: Jun 07, 2016 by Minerva 14 (2010): 66-106.
Authors: Douglas Robinson
Between Materialism and Qualia. A philosophical reading of Oscar Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" that proposes a paradoxical solution to the explanatory gap between materialism (which traditionally says that qualia can't exist) and qualia.
News
The Pushing Hands of Translation and its Theory published
By: Douglas Robinson
In 2012 Martha Cheung published an article proposing a pushing-hands (tuishou) approach to the study of translation history:
Cheung, Martha P.Y. (張佩瑤). 2012. “The Mediated Nature of Knowledge and the Pushing-hands Approach to Research on Translation History.” Translation Studies 5.2: 156-171.
The approach she proposed was so innovative and exciting that it inspired a strong response, and she planned to write a book-length study of it--but unfortunately she died of cancer just a year later, at the young age of 60. This volume offers the next best thing to the book she would have written: a collection of ten scholars' applications of her model to various historical and theoretical problems in Translation Studies (and also her original article).
https://www.routledge.com/The-Pushing-Hands-of-Translation-and-its-Theory-In-memoriam-Martha-Cheung/Robinson/p/book/9781138901759