The Translation Studies Reader

by Lawrence Venuti (Editor)

The Translation Studies Reader provides a definitive survey of the most important and influential developments in translation theory and research, with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The introductory essays prefacing each section place a wide range of seminal and innovative readings within their various contexts, thematic and cultural, institutional and historical. The fourth edition of this classic reader has been substantially revised and updated. Notable features This carefully curated selection of key works, by leading scholar and translation theorist, Lawrence Venuti, is essential reading for students and scholars on courses such as the History of Translation Studies, Translation Theory, and Trends in Translation Studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, Linguistics, Essays, Reference, School, Academia

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Born in Philadelphia, Venuti graduated from Temple University. He has long lived in New York City. In 1980 he completed the Ph.D. in English at Columbia University. That year he received the Renato Poggioli Award for Italian Translation for his translation of Barbara Alberti's novel Delirium.

Venuti is currently professor of English at Temple University. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Trento, University of Mainz, Barnard College, and Queen's University Belfast.

He is a member of the editorial or advisory boards of Reformation: The Journal of the Tyndale Society, The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication, TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction, Translation Studies, Target: An International Journal of Translation Studies, and Palimpsestes. He has edited special journal issues devoted to translation and minority (The Translator in 1998) and poetry and translation (Translation Studies in 2011). His translation projects have won awards and grants from the PEN American Center (1980), the Italian government (1983), the National Endowment for the Arts (1983, 1999), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1989). In 1999 he held a Fulbright Senior Lectureship in translation studies at the University of Vic (Spain).

In 2007 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his translation of Giovanni Pascoli's poetry and prose.

In 2008 his translation of Ernest Farrés's Edward Hopper: Poems won the Robert Fagles Translation Prize.

Reviews

[Anna Hiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm mad because this edition of the TSR took out Ortega y Gasset's important essay "The Misery and Splendor of Translation." Other than that, though, very thorough.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Не исчерпывающая (поскольку охватывает только ХХ век, с 1900-х по 1990-е — но другого нам и не обещали) хрестоматия даже в таком виде затмевает любые русскоязычные учебники, а редакторские очерки самого Венути вполне инструментальны для тех, кто хочет хоть что-то узнать об истории переводо-прости-господи-ведения, но не утонуть в ней. Помимо хронологической схемы организации материала, там есть еще и историческая: в книге представлены тексты, знакомящие с немецкой романтико-национальной переводческой традицией, чешским и русским формализмом, семиотическим, лингвистическим и постструктуралистским подходами (и ни слова о «военном» или «машинном» переводе, потому что составляли сборник нормальные люди). Представленные в хрестоматии имена я, пожалуй, утаю, а то не будет интриги.
Но все равно понятно, что это хороший срез мира абстракций, который к нашей повседневной практике отношения имеет мало. Все это, разумеется, полезно знать, но все равно — никакое чтение (и тем паче цитирование вслух) никаких статей не заменит машинки распознавания образов в отдельно взятой голове переводчика: она либо есть, либо ее нет, а как она там работает — это уже вопрос другой. Лично у меня чтение теории вызывает умственный паралич, к счастью — быстро проходящий. Работать-то нужно каждый день, а такие статьи можно читать иногда для развлечения.

[Liam Guilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translation studies is a very recent academic speciality: the act of translation and the activity of arguing about translation have been an ongoing human process. This book is in some ways more about Translation Studies than translation...which sounds odd....but it is a text book with guidelines on how to use it in class. If you accept that it's about translation studies then the fact that the first section contains work from the 1900-1930s isn't really surprising. But it does give the odd impression that the twentieth century discovered translation, or suddenly woke up to the fact everyone was doing it.
That reservation aside, it's a good selection of essays in one place, which will provide anyone interested in translation with an introduction to what the editor thinks are the main issues.

[Donal · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's one of the standard textbooks. It'd be better without Venuti though.

[Arianna Mandorino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some texts are more interesting and more readable than others, but all in all a very interesting anthology for students of translation. I particularly enjoyed Jerome, Schleiermacher, Jakobson, Even-Zohar, Berman, Chamberlain, Spivak, Appiah, Harvey, Derrida.

[Melvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The decade summaries are very much appreciated, because there is just so much material to digest here. Ironically, I found a couple of the essays were quite poorly translated, which in combination with some pretty abstruse thinking can be torture to read. I also find it annoying that an awful lot of translation theory can be quite remote from the nuts and bolts of translation work, so it would have been useful to read more specific examples of translated texts and the comparative issues involved as one normally does in Peter Newmark's excellent work. But overall a worthwhile compilation that I will come back to again and again for reference.

Just a few random thought-provoking (but not necessarily very useful) quotes:

It is the situation that has been translated, rather than the actual grammatical structure.

Translation is not a duplicate of the original text; it is not—it shouldn’t try to be—the work itself with a different vocabulary. I would say translation doesn’t even belong to the same literary genre as the text that was translated. It would be appropriate to reiterate this and affirm that translation is a literary genre apart, different from the rest, with its own norms and own ends. The simple fact is that the translation is not the work, but a path toward the work.

Jiří Levý cites experiments to show that pragmatic translation involves a “gradual semantic shifting” as translators choose from a number of possible solutions. Modern translators, he asserts, intuitively apply the “minimax strategy,” choosing the solution “which promises a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort”

...the eclectic Levý, who synthesizes psycholinguistics, semantics, structural anthropology, literary criticism, and game theory.

Francis Storr (1909) goes so far as to classify translators into “the literalist and the spiritualist schools,” and in doing so takes his stand on the Biblical text, “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” As evidence for his thesis, Storr cites the difference between the Authorized Version, which he contends represents the spirit, and the English Revised Version, which sticks to the letter, with the result that the translation lacks a Sprachgefühl.

In most European literatures, there are several parallel translations of Shakespeare differing in their conception, and they are felt to be necessary. With Molière, the dispersion of interpretations is by far not so great. [sic]

Ortega y Gasset speaks of the sadness of the translator after failure. There is also a sadness after success, the Augustinian tristitia which follows on the cognate acts of erotic and of intellectual possession.

Unquestionably there is a dimension of loss, of breakage—hence, as we have seen, the fear of translation, the taboos on revelatory export which hedge sacred texts, ritual nominations, and formulas in many cultures.

The motion of transfer and paraphrase enlarges the stature of the original. Historically, in terms of cultural context, of the public it can reach, the latter is left more prestigious.

This view of translation as a hermeneutic of trust (élancement), of penetration, of embodiment, and of restitution, will allow us to overcome the sterile triadic model which has dominated the history and theory of the subject.

A given source text does not have one correct or best translation only - Vermeer

English tends to prefer fully formed, assertive clauses, whereas French is content with participial phrases or relatively elliptical expressions) and on aspect (English requires more, and more precise, aspectual markers).

Consonant with the tendencies Guillemin-Flescher ascribes to English, the translator takes the liberty of adding conjunctions, concessives, and adversatives that tie sentences together much more tightly than does the French, which often leaves them crisply separated. There are also instances where the translation adds substantial phrases so as to transform elliptical utterances into well-formed sentences with subject and verbal complement.

Exoticization may join up again with popularization by striving to render a foreign vernacular with a local one, using Parisian slang to translate the lunfardo of Buenos Aires, the Normandy dialect to translate the language of the Andes or Abruzzese. Unfortunately, a vernacular clings tightly to its soil and completely resists any direct translating into another vernacular.

Translation is the most intimate act of reading. I surrender to the text when I translate.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, includes the classics, but some real nonsense is in here, too.

[Mohammad Aboomar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reader collects various journal articles and book chapters that contributed to shaping the discipline of Translation Studies throughout the years. The topics are quite varied and the authors come from various backgrounds, which if anything is a testimony of how interdisciplinary the field is. The articles and chapters presented in chronological order also betrays the many turns and paradigms the field witnessed: rather than incrementally create knowledge, the scholars contributing to the literature of Translation Studies reinvent and refocus the field every decade or two.

[Francesca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for a university course. A quite nice reading

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the essays in this book, especially the way they are organized in chronological order. It gives a good picture of how translation theory has evolved over the years (and centuries). My main criticism is that I wish there was some sort of small introduction for each essay or even each time period that put the essays in context. Especially because some of these "essays" are actually transcribed speeches, I just didn't understand the context and had to look up a lot about them in order to really understand the message. For example, for the Derrida essay, it was much more useful to me after I read the original translator's introduction that was originally published with it.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely and academic text

[Lucila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Venuti offers an insightful and interesting reader on the relatively new discipline of Translation Studies.
Starting with Jerome's Letter to Pammachius and concluding with Venuti's Genealogies of Translation Theory, the 31 essays focus on the most important and influential developments in translation, how it has evolved, what translators aim at, how to get to the reader in the most effective manner, to just name a few.
Translators contributing to this reader have their own view, which of course may be different to that of others, and at times even contradicting. Fidelity, adequacy, acceptability, paraphrasis, literalism, foreignizing, domesticating are among the concepts that resonate the most in their essays, but in the end and in their own way, each essay shows that no matter what, translators always run towards the same goal and that is to have a faithful representation of a source text in a different target culture.
Also the essays dealing with notions of gender, linguistics, post-colonialism, feminism, solidarity between peoples, homosexuality, relevance, war and new technologies are a good starting point to delve deeper into these matters that are so contemporary to us.
One of my favorite translation books for sure! Recommended to all translation students and translators.

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, diverse book - not super useful for my purposes right now. Limited pre-modern material, although the Jerome translation is good.

[Maja Teref · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read many of the essays but not all. They’re foundational if you’re a literary translator.

[Mahmoud Haggui · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is somehow like a translation manifesto, if I may say so. it very fruitful book. it discussed so many theories. it actually added a lot to me. it even rich to the extent that I can't rise my pen to constitute a single opposing view. So I fully recommend it to my friends and classmates.

[Amir · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accumulation of papers on the field of translation studies with many theorist paper and unabridged. Recommended for MA students of Translation Studies

[Achraf]

good

[Bekka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Used for theory in a Masters English class on translation in literature.