IATIS News

This volume of 14 essays explores China-Africa relations from the perspective of cultural exchange and media representation and includes reflections on the role played by translation in international relations. The recent rapid growth in China’s involvement in Africa is being promoted by both Chinese and African leaders as being conducted in a spirit of cooperation, friendship and equality. In the media and informally, however, a different, less harmonious picture emerges. This book explores how China and Africa really regard each other, how official images are manufactured, and how informal images are nevertheless shaped and put forward. The book covers a wide range of areas where China-Africa exchange exists, including diplomacy, technological cooperation, sport, culture and arts exchange. The book also discusses the historical development of the relationship and how it is likely to develop going forward. https://www.routledge.com/China-Africa-Relations-Building-Images-through-Cultural-Co-operation/Batchelor-Zhang/p/book/9781138714953

This book investigates the political, social, cultural and economic implications of self-translation in multilingual spaces in Europe. Engaging with the ‘power turn’ in translation studies contexts, it offers innovative perspectives on the role of self-translators as cultural and ideological mediators. The authors explore the unequal power relations and centre-periphery dichotomies of Europe’s minorised languages, literatures and cultures. They recognise that the self-translator’s double affiliation as author and translator places them in a privileged position to challenge power, to negotiate the experiences of the subaltern and colonised, and to scrutinise conflicting minorised vs. hegemonic cultural identities. Three main themes are explored in relation to self-translation: hegemony and resistance; self-minorisation and self-censorship; and collaboration, hybridisation and invisibility. This edited collection will appeal to scholars and students working on translation, transnational and postcolonial studies, and multilingual and multicultural identities. http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137507808

Pub date: 1 November, 2017A slim half-memoir, half-philosophical treatise musing on translation's potential for humanist engagement by one of the great contemporary French translators. Hansel has lived her life as a risk-taker. Going back to her childhood in post-war France she reflects on her origins as a translator; then she evokes her encounters with banned German writers in 1960s East Berlin. During the Vietnam war, Gansel went to Hanoi to work on an anthology of Vietnamese poetry. With the city under bombardment, this section of the book is a fascinating account of wartime danger, hospitality and human kinship. 'In this beautiful memoir of a life lived in and through translation, Mireille Gansel defines the process of bringing words from one language to another as a kind of seeking, tied to the land. Transhumance refers to the seasonal movement of a shepherd and his flock to another land, or humus. It is the opposite of settling and farming: it is a form of nomadism, a search for richer grass, and it provides an apt image for her own trajectory as a translator.' – Lauren Elkin http://www.lesfugitives.com/books/#/translation-as-transhumance/

Translating for younger audiences is in need of critical investigation, as children’s and teenagers’ literature and media products are being increasingly globalized and glocalized, with translation playing an important role in the process. Media phenomena such as Harry Potter and animated Disney films travel across continents through hundreds of local cultures. These productions exert a homogenizing effect whilst at the same time undergoing transformation to adapt to new audiences. This book distinguishes between textual glocalization, anglophone foreignization and large-scale adaptation, illustrating them with examples of translations of animated films by Pixar/Disney and DreamWorks, locally produced versions of the Horrible Histories series, Harry Potter translations and transmedial adaptations as well as film tie-ins. The book argues that global exchanges largely depend on the creative efforts of local agents – professional translators, adapters, retellers, publishers, writers, editors – and sheds light on the initiatives of non-professional translators, including scanlators, fansubbers, hip-hop fans and harrypotterians. By examining globally distributed titles translated at the turn of the twenty-first century, the volume aims at filling a gap at the intersection of translation studies, globalization research and the study of children’s literature and culture. https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/81485#.WZgeVr11v6g.twitter

Written by translation practitioners, teachers and researchers, this edited volume is a much-needed contribution to the under-researched area of community translation. Its chapters outline the specific nature and challenges of community translation (e.g. language policies, language variation within target communities, literacy levels), quality standards, training and the relationship between community translation as a professional practice and volunteer or crowd-sourced translation. A number of chapters also provide insights into the situation of community translation and initiatives taking place in different countries (e.g. Australia, South Africa, Spain, the USA or the UK). The book is of interest to translation practitioners, researchers and trainers, particularly those working or interested in the specific field of community translation, as well as to translation students on undergraduate, postgraduate or further education courses covering translation in general or community translation in particular.   This book constitutes a timely addition to the literature on community translation. It provides an excellent introduction to the multifaceted role of community translators, which is vital in ensuring social justice for minority and marginalised groups. The contributions included in this book deal with a wide range of under-researched topics, and, therefore, it should become a key reference for future explorations of an activity that has become essential in our linguistically and culturally diverse societies. - Raquel de Pedro Ricoy, Heriot-Watt University, UK.Mustapha Taibi and his colleagues have combined incisive scrutiny and powerful evidence to outline the necessity of Public Service Translation to bridge the communication gap between public services and speakers of non-dominant languages in our linguistically diverse communities. This is the kind of work that inspires and energises its readers. - Pascal Rillof, President of ENPSIT – European Network for Public Service Interpreting and TranslationThis much-needed edition provides theoretical and practical perspectives on a wide range of topics that have posed challenges to various stakeholders involved in community translation including translators, public authorities, translator educators and researchers. This insightful coverage advances our understanding of the complexities of community translation, which has a critical role in narrowing down socio-cultural, socio-economic as well as socio-educational gaps in multilingual and multicultural societies. Many thanks to the editors and all the other authors for this great contribution! - Mira Kim, The University of New South Wales, Australia   Author Biography: Mustapha Taibi is Associate Professor in Interpreting and Translation at Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the leader of the International Community Translation Research Group and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Translation & Interpreting. Among his recent books is New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting (2016, Multilingual Matters).   http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=+9781783099122#.WZhzHdAXSqM.facebook

Through close readings of select stories and novels by well-known writers from different literary traditions, Fictional Translators invites readers to rethink the main clichés associated with translations. Rosemary Arrojo shines a light on the transformative character of the translator’s role and the relationships that can be established between originals and their reproductions, building her arguments on the basis of texts such as the following: Cortázar’s "Letter to a Young Lady in Paris" Walsh’s "Footnote" Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Poe’s "The Oval Portrait" Borges’s "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "Funes, His Memory," and "Death and the Compass" Kafka’s "The Burrow" and Kosztolányi’s Kornél Esti Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon and Babel’s "Guy de Maupassant" Scliar’s "Footnotes" and Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler Cervantes’s Don Quixote Fictional Translators provides stimulating material for reflection not only on the processes associated with translation as an activity that inevitably transforms meaning, but, also, on the common prejudices that have underestimated its productive role in the shaping of identities. This book is key reading for students and researchers of literary translation, comparative literature and translation theory. https://www.routledge.com/Fictional-Translators-Rethinking-Translation-through-Literature/Arrojo/p/book/9781138827141?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=170808099

From fansubbing, fan-generated translation, to user-generated translation, from amateur translation to social translation, non-professional subtitling has come a long way since its humble beginning in the 1980s. The prevailing technological affordance enables and mobilises the digital generation to turn subtitling into a method of self-expression and mediation, and their activities have made translation a more social and visible activity than ever before. This volume provides a comprehensive review of the current state of play of this user-generated subtitling phenomenon. It includes projects and research focusing on various aspects of non-professional subtitling, including the communities at work, the agents at play, the production conditions and the products. The perspectives in the book explore the role played by the agents involved in the emerging subtitling networks worldwide, and their impact on the communities is also discussed, based on empirical data generated from observations on active fansubbing communities. The collection demonstrates, from various viewpoints, the ways in which non-professional subtitling connects languages, cultures and communities in a global setting. Further details: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/non-professional-subtitling

Scholars have long highlighted the links between translating and (re)writing, increasingly blurring the line between translations and so-called 'original' works. Less emphasis has been placed on the work of writers who translate, and the ways in which they conceptualize, or even fictionalize, the task of translation. This book fills that gap and thus will be of interest to scholars in linguistics, translation studies and literary studies. Scrutinizing translation through a new lens, Judith Woodsworth reveals the sometimes problematic relations between author and translator, along with the evolution of the translator's voice and visibility. The book investigates the uses (and abuses) of translation at the hands of George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein and Paul Auster, prominent writers who bring into play assorted fictions as they tell their stories of translations. Each case is interesting in itself because of the new material analysed and the conclusions reached. Translation is seen not only as an exercise and fruitful starting point, it is also a way of paying tribute, repaying a debt and cementing a friendship. Taken together, the case studies point the way to a teleology of translation and raise the question: what is translation for? Shaw, Stein and Auster adopt an authorial posture that distinguishes them from other translators. They stretch the boundaries of the translation proper, their words spilling over into the liminal space of the text; in some cases they hijack the act of translation to serve their own ends. Through their tales of loss, counterfeit and hard labour, they cast an occasionally bleak glance at what it means to be a translator. Yet they also pay homage to translation and provide fresh insights that continue to manifest themselves in current works of literature. By engaging with translation as a literary act in its own right, these eminent writers confer greater prestige on what has traditionally been viewed as a subservient art. https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/telling-the-story-of-translation-9781474277082/

This book explores two strands of Audiovisual Translation referred to as "research" and "use". As their points of convergence and divergence are brought to light, the contributors show that the two tend to overlap and cross-pollinate. The volume’s inquiries of linguistic, cultural, sociological, computational, educational and historical nature give a comprehensive up-to-date account of AVT as an expanding and heterogeneous, yet internally coherent, field of scientific and professional endeavour. "The book offers a good balance of chapters dealing with new topics and chapters dealing with more established AVT topics from new angles. It is a must read for TS students and academics but also for practitioners and for translators from other domains, given the increased prominence and diversity of AVT modes both in TS research and translation practice." Professor Aline Remael University of Antwerp Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translators and Interpreters https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/80659

Translating for performance is a difficult – and hotly contested – activity. Adapting Translation for the Stage presents a sustained dialogue between scholars, actors, directors, writers, and those working across these boundaries, exploring common themes and issues encountered when writing, staging, and researching translated works. It is organised into four parts, each reflecting on a theatrical genre where translation is regularly practised: The Role of Translation in Rewriting Naturalist Theatre Adapting Classical Drama at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Translocating Political Activism in Contemporary Theatre Modernist Narratives of Translation in Performance A range of case studies from the National Theatre’s Medea to The Gate Theatre’s Dances of Deathand Emily Mann’s The House of Bernarda Alba shed new light on the creative processes inherent in translating for the theatre, destabilising the literal/performable binary to suggest that adaptation and translation can – and do – coexist on stage. Chronicling the many possible intersections between translation theory and practice, Adapting Translation for the Stage offers a unique exploration of the processes of translating, adapting, and relocating work for the theatre. https://www.routledge.com/Adapting-Translation-for-the-Stage/Brodie-Cole/p/book/9781138218871

This book focuses on the problematic issues arising when translating and interpreting classical Arabic texts, which represent a challenging business for many scholars, especially with regards to religious texts. Additionally, the reception of these interpretations and translations not only informs the perception of Muslims and their awareness of the outside world, but also impacts the vision and perception of non-Muslims of Islam and the Muslim world. Consequently, this book reconsiders the concepts of understanding and interpretation, and their nexus in the mechanism of translation, and proposes a novel, hermeneutic method of translating, interpreting, and understanding traditional and classical Arab texts. Handling the issues of understanding from a hermeneutical perspective is shown here to remove the possibility of translation and interpretation rendering a distorted translated text. Drawing on the powerful interpretive theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, the hermeneutic method of translation starts from a premise that the meaning of a classical text cannot be deduced solely by linguistic analysis of its words, but requires in-depth investigation of the invisible, contextual elements that control and shape its meaning. Traditional texts are seen in this model as ‘travelling texts’ whose meaning is transformed across time and space. The hermeneutic method of translation allows the translator to identify those elements from the real-world that informed a classical text at the time of its writing, so that it can be adapted and made relevant to its contemporary context. Traditional texts can enlighten our minds and cultivate our souls; religious texts can elevate our behavior and thinking, and help refine our confused contemporary lives. When texts become isolated from their world, they lose this lofty goal of enlightenment and elevation

Besides providing a thorough overview of advances in the concept of identity in Translation Studies, the book brings together a variety of approaches to identity as seen through the prism of translation. Individual chapters are united by the topic and their predominantly cultural approach, but they also supply dynamic impulses for the reader, since their methodologies, level of abstraction, and subject matter differ. The theoretical impulses brought together here include a call for the ecology of translational attention, a proposal of transcultural and farcical translation and a rethinking of Bourdieu’s habitus in terms of František Miko’s experiential complex. The book also offers first-hand insights into such topics as post-communist translation practices, provides sociological insights into the role politics played during state socialism in the creation of fields of translated fiction and the way imported fiction was able to subvert the intentions of the state, gives evidence of the struggles of small locales trying to be recognised though their literature, and draws links between local theory and more widely-known concepts. For further details, please visit http://www.cambridgescholars.com/identity-and-translation-trouble