CL919 Issues of Cultural Transfer (Term 2, Wednesdays 10:00-12:00, in H102)
The aim of this course is to introduce the notion of a cultural transfer in relation to
literary and cultural texts. Particular attention will be paid to the notions of influence,
translation, reception and power relations.
Preliminary reading:
Alvarez, R and M. Carmen-Africa. Translation, Power, Subversion (Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters, 1996)
Lefevere, André. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame
(London: Routledge, 1992)
Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation (London:
Routledge, 1995)
Wierzbicka, Anna. Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words (Oxford
University Press, 1997)
Week 1 - Translation and travel writing
Loredana Polezzi
Asad, Talal (1986) ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology’,
in James Clifford and George E. Marcus (eds) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics
of Ethnography, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 14164.
Bassnett, Susan (1993) ‘Constructing Cultures: The Politics of Traveller’s Tales’, in
Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 92-114.
Clifford, James (1997) ‘Traveling Cultures’, in Routes: Travel and Translation in the
Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997,
17-46.
Cronin, Michael (1995) ‘Altered States: Translation and Minority Languages’, TTR, 8:1,
85-103.
------, (2000) Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation, Cork: Cork University
Press.
Pfister, Manfred (ed.) (1996) The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers:
An Annotated Anthology, Amsterdam and Atlanta (GA): Rodopi.
Polezzi, Loredana (2000) ‘Reflections of Things Past: Building Italy through the Mirror
of Translation’, New Comparison, 29, 27-47.
Week 2 – Translation and migration
Loredana Polezzi
Apter, Emily (2004) ‘Global Translatio: The “Invention” of Comparative Literature,
Istanbul, 1933’, in Christopher Prendergast (ed.) Debating World Literature, London and
New York: Verso, 76-109.
Gentzler, Edwin (2006) ‘Translation and Border Writing in the Americas: Fiction,
Performance Art, and Film’, in Nigel Armstrong and Federico M. Federici (eds)
Translating Voices, Translating Regions, Rome: Aracne, 356-71 [or chapter on border
writing in E. Gentzler (2008), Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions
in Translation Theory, London and New York: Routledge].
Grutman, Rainier (2006) ‘Refraction and Recognition: Literary Multilingualism in
Translation’, Target, 18:1, 17-47.
Mehrez, Samia (1992) ‘Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The Francophone
North African Text’, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) Rethinking Translation: Discourse,
Subjectivity, Ideology, London and New York: Routledge, 120-138.
Tymoczko, Maria (1999) ‘Post-Colonial Writing and Literary Translation’, in Susan
Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (eds) Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice,
London and New York: Routledge, 19-40.
Week 3 - Translating the Caribbean
John Gilmore
Students are asked to read the following before the session, preferably in the order given
here:
•
Gilmore, John, Faces of the Caribbean (London: Latin America Bureau , 2000)
•
Bosch, Juan, “Encarnación Mendoza’s Christmas Eve” (trs. by John Gilmore), in
Brown, Stewart, and John Wickham, ed., The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 70-79
•
Craig, Ian, “Translation in the Shadow of the Giants: Anglophone Caribbean
Vernacular in a Translated Literary Text”, in The Translator, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2006), pp.
65-84
Please also read the extracts from Louise Bennett, Selected Poems, which will be posted
on the website.
Week 4 - Asia and cultural transfer: the case of Arthur Waley
John Gilmore
Students are particularly requested to read before the seminar the extracts from Waley’s
introductory material posted on the website. It would also be useful to have read at least
some of Waley’s translations of Chinese poems (A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems
is available in the Warwick library, and both this and his later Chinese Poems, which
includes much of the same material, as well as additional translations, are readily
available through Amazon and websites selling second-hand books, such as
www.abebooks.com).
Morris, Ivan, ed., Madly Singing in the Mountains: An appreciation and Anthology of
Arthur Waley (London : Allen & Unwin, 1970).
Waley, Arthur, A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (London: Constable, 1918)
Week 5 - Postcolonial Translation: Modernity and Counter-Modernity
Manav Ratti
"Gandhi's Counter-Modernity" (pp. 317 - 334) in
Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
Week 6 –Translating Secularism: Between India and the West
Manav Ratti
Ashis Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance” (pp.
321 - 344) in
Bhargava, Rajeev. ed. Secularism and Its Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Week 7 - Translation and feminism
Manav Ratti
Madhu Kishwar, "A Horror of 'Isms': Why I do Not Call Myself a Feminist" (pp. 26 - 52)
in
Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. ed. Feminism in India: Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Week 8 - Sociology of translation
Cristina Marinetti
Inghilleri, Moira "The sociology of Bourdieu and the construction of the 'object' in
Translation and Interpreting Studies' The Translator, 11 (2). 125-147.
Simeoni, Daniel. 1998. “The pivotal status of the translator’s habitus”. Target 10: 1
Simeoni, Daniel. 2007. “Translation and society: The emergence of a conceptual
relationship”. In Translation - Reflections, Refractions, Transformations, St-Pierre, Paul
and Prafulla C. Kar (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 13–26.
Tymoczko, Maria 2003 "Ideology and the position of the translator. In what sense is a
translator 'in-between'?" in Apropos of Ideology. Translation Studies on Ideology Ideologies in Translation Studies, Maria Calzada Pérez (ed.). Manchester: St. Jerome.
181-201
Wolf, Michaela & Fukari, Alexandra (eds.) Constructing a Sociology of Translation
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.
Week 9 – Translation and intercultural performance
Cristina Marinetti
Cameron, Derrick 'Tradaptation: Cultural Exchange and Black British Theatre'. In
Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation.Terry Hale & Carole-Ann
Upton (eds) Manchester: St. Jerome, 2000. 17-25.
Lo, Jacqueline& Gilbert, Helen 'Toward a topography of cross-cultural theatre praxis' The
Drama Review 46: 3. 31-53.
Pavis, Patrice (ed.) The Intercultural Performance Reader. London: Routledge, 1996.
Williams, David (ed.) Peter Brook and the Mahabharata: Critical Perspectives. London :
Routledge, 1991. (Part IV)
Week 10 - Translation, globalisation and new media
Cristina Marinetti
Bassnett, Susan & Bielsa, Esperança 2009 Translation in Global News. London:
Routledge.
Cronin, Michael 2003 Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Pym, Anthony 2005 'Localization: On its nature, virtues and dangers' & 'Localization,
training and the threat of linguistic fragmentation'. Online articles freely available at
http://www.tinet.cat/~apym/on-line/translation/Localization_bergen.doc