Translation: Theory and Practice A Historical Reader

by Weissbort, Daniel; Eysteinsson, Astradur

• ISBN13: 9780198712008
• ISBN10: 0198712006
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-05
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Translation: Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader responds to the need for a collection of primary texts on translation, in the English tradition, from the earliest times to the present day. Based on an exhaustive survey of the wealth of available materials, the Reader demonstrates throughout the link between theory and practice, with excerpts not only of significant theoretical writings but of actual translations, as well as excerpts on translation from letters, interviews, autobiographies, and fiction. The collection is intended as a teaching tool, but also as an encyclopaedia for the use of translators and writers on translation. It presents the full panoply of approaches to translation, without necessarily judging between them, but showing clearly what is to be gained or lost in each case. Translations of key texts, such as the Bible and the Homeric epic, are traced through the ages, with the same passages excerpted, making it possible for readers to construct their own map of the evolution of translation and to evaluate, in their historical contexts, the variety of approaches. The passages in question are also accompanied by ad verbum versions, to facilitate comparison. The bibliographies are likewise comprehensive. The editors have drawn on the expertise of leading scholars in the field, including the late James S. Holmes, Louis Kelly, Jonathan Wilcox, Jane Stevenson, David Hopkins, and many others. In addition, significant non-English texts, such as Martin Luther's "Circular Letter on Translation," which may be said to have inaugurated the Reformation, are included, helping to set the English tradition in a wider context. Related items, such as the introductions to their work by Tudor and Jacobean translators or the work of women translators from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have been brought together in "collages," marking particularly important moments or developments in the history of translation. This comprehensive reader provides an invaluable and illuminating resource for scholars and students of translation and English literature, as well as poets, cultural historians, and professional translators.

Author Biography

Daniel Weissbort is Professor (Emeritus) of English and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa, Research Fellow in the English Department, King's College London, and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. With Ted Hughes he founded the journal Modern Poetry in Translation. Astradur Eysteinsson has been Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland, and Visiting Professor in Translation Studies at the universities of Iowa and Copenhagen.

Table of Contents

General Introduction	p. 1
Babel	p. 8
From Antiquity to Modern Times
From Cicero to Caxton	p. 17
Introduction	p. 17
Classical Latin and Early Christian Latin Translation	p. 20
Old English Translation	p. 34
John of Trevisa	p. 47
William Caxton	p. 51
From the Reformation and the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century	p. 55
Introduction	p. 55
Martin Luther	p. 57
William Tyndale	p. 68
Estienne Dolet	p. 73
Joachim du Bellay	p. 77
Late Tudor and Early Jacobean Translation	p. 81
Renaissance Latin Translation in England	p. 100
The Catholic Bible in England	p. 110
The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible	p. 115
Sir John Denham	p. 121
Abraham Cowley	p. 124
Women Translators from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century	p. 128
John Dryden	p. 144
Anne Dacier	p. 160
Alexander Pope	p. 166
Samuel Johnson	p. 174
William Cowper	p. 183
Alexander Fraser Tytler	p. 188
The Nineteenth Century	p. 195
Introduction	p. 195
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	p. 198
Friedrich Schleiermacher	p. 205
Victorian Translation and Criticism	p. 210
Six Nineteenth-Century Translators	p. 241
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly	p. 258
The Twentieth Century
From Pound to Nabokov	p. 271
Introduction	p. 271
Ezra Pound	p. 274
Constance Garnett	p. 290
Walter Benjamin	p. 297
Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig	p. 310
Jorge Luis Borges	p. 323
Roman Jakobson	p. 330
Jiri Levy	p. 337
Eugene A. Nida	p. 346
Robert Lowell	p. 352
Stanley Burnshaw	p. 360
Laura Bohannan	p. 366
Vladimir Nabokov	p. 376
Recent and Contemporary Writings	p. 393
Introduction	p. 393
George Steiner	p. 396
James S Holmes	p. 406
Itamar Even-Zohar	p. 429
Andre Lefevere	p. 435
Mary Snell-Hornby	p. 443
Ethnopoetics: Translation of the Oral and of Oral Performance	p. 452
Louis and Celia Zukofsky	p. 458
Translation of Verse Form	p. 460
A. K. Ramanujan	p. 476
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	p. 486
Talal Asad	p. 494
Eva Hoffman	p. 502
Gregory Rabassa	p. 507
Suzanne Jill Levine	p. 512
Ted Hughes	p. 521
Douglas Robinson	p. 534
Lawrence Venuti	p. 546
Susan Bassnett	p. 558
Everett Fox	p. 562
John Felstiner	p. 569
W. S. Merwin	p. 582
Edwin Morgan	p. 585
Seamus Heaney	p. 597
Postface	p. 609
Acknowledgements	p. 617
Select Bibliography	p. 625
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