Venuti and his Mémoires of Translation
http://exchanges.uiowa.edu/m-moires-of-translation/
Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second. Is translation a socially acceptable form of literary vandalism? Or does it just require a distinctively warped frame of mind, one that secretly nurtures a refusal to kowtow to the authority of a foreign writer or text, that prefers to deliver the kick beneath the table?
Comments
I was looking forward to getting all huffy about some inflated academic-talk on the subject of translation, but instead this was a very interesting article about how Venuti got into translation, with the words "gendered", "subversion", and "violence" soldered on afterwards.
I don't deny that it's pleasurable to think about Big Translation Questions, but in the end it is the quintessential practical art, and everyone, even Venuti, writes far more interestingly when dissecting concrete particulars than when engaged in theorizin'.
Eric Abrahamsen, May 23, 2010, 5:45a.m.
I don't agree.
His Translator's Invisibility was a brilliant mix of theory and great writing.
And one reason is that Venutti actually translates literature as well as theorizing about it, something that some others in the translation study field don't.
Bruce, May 23, 2010, 11:09a.m.