A study of the role of translation in bringing accounts of difficult circumstances to broader audiences.
In the Face of Adversity explores the dynamics of translating texts that articulate particular notions of adverse circumstances. The contributors show how literary records of painful experiences and dissenting voices are at risk of being stripped of their authenticity when not carefully handled by the translator, how cultural moments in which the translation of a text that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion instead gave rise to a translator who enabled its preservation while ultimately coming into their own as an author as a result, and how the difficulties the translator faces in intercultural or transnational constellations in which prejudice plays a role endangers projects meant to facilitate mutual understanding. The authors address translation as a project of making available and preserving a corpus of texts that would otherwise be in danger of becoming censored, misperceived, or ignored. They look at translation and adaptation as a project of curating textual models of personal, communal, or collective perseverance, and they offer insights into the dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion through a series of theoretical frameworks, as well as through a set of concrete case studies drawn from different cultural and historical contexts.
In the Face of Adversity explores the dynamics of translating texts that articulate particular notions of adverse circumstances. The contributors show how literary records of painful experiences and dissenting voices are at risk of being stripped of their authenticity when not carefully handled by the translator, how cultural moments in which the translation of a text that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion instead gave rise to a translator who enabled its preservation while ultimately coming into their own as an author as a result, and how the difficulties the translator faces in intercultural or transnational constellations in which prejudice plays a role endangers projects meant to facilitate mutual understanding. The authors address translation as a project of making available and preserving a corpus of texts that would otherwise be in danger of becoming censored, misperceived, or ignored. They look at translation and adaptation as a project of curating textual models of personal, communal, or collective perseverance, and they offer insights into the dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion through a series of theoretical frameworks, as well as through a set of concrete case studies drawn from different cultural and historical contexts.
272 pages | 2 halftones | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2023
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Thomas Nolden Part I: Modes of Perseverance: Translating the Jewish Tradition 1. Lamentations 3: A Four-Voiced Rendering Edward L. Greenstein2. Isaiah 1 in Translation and Contexts Everett Fox 3. Emma Lazarus, Heinrich Heine and the Splendid Galaxy of Jewish Poetry Abigail Gillman 4. City of the Dead or The Dead City? Yitskhok-Leybush Peretz as Self-Translator Efrat Gal-Ed Part II: Modes of Intervention: Translating Dissent and Diversity 5. How George Eliot Came to Write Gail Twersky Reimer 6. Venture, Courage, Ruin: Karin Michaëlis in Translation Across Genre and Time Katherine Hollander 7. Lu Xun’s Unfaithful Translation of Science Fiction: Rewriting Chinese Literary History Mingwei Song 8. Translating Chinese Science Fiction into English: Decolonization and Reconciliation on a Cultural Battlefield Emily Xueni Jin 9. Whose Voice(s)?: Authorship, Translation, and Diversity in Contemporary Children’s Literature Isabelle Chen Part III: Modes of Remedialization: Translating Beyond the Text 10. Seeing Images, Thinking of Words: Visual Art as Translation Werner Sollors 11. Theatre without Theatres: Performance Transmission as Translation Sarah Bay-Cheng 12. From Miami to Hong Kong: Sounding Transnational Queerness and Translation in Moonlight K. E. Goldschmitt 13. Crowd Noise: Collective Turbulence in Modern Opera Martin Brody 14. Creative Translation in Emerson’s Idealism Kenneth P. Winkler Index