Sunday, 15 December 2013

Translationstudiesforfree part 7, including fictions of translation

Continuing with the Translationstudiesforfree theme, here are a few bits and pieces which have crossed my path recently.

The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de littérature comparée is available online on open access up until 2008. It has plenty of translation-related content, including a special issue on translation in the Renaissance (volume 8, no. 2, spring 1981). This weekend I've read and found interesting George Lang's 1992 article 'La Belle Alterité: Towards a Dialogical Paradigm in Translation Theory?'

In our last MA Cultural Encounters class of the term we talked about narrative and fictions of translation, which reminded me to post a link to Borges' brilliant story 'Pierre Menard, Autor del Quijote'. There appear to be three translations at least into English. Here is a html version of the translation by James E. Irby. A copy of the translation by Anthony Bonner can be found on Columbia University's website here. A copy of the translation by Andrew Hurley can be downloaded via the CUNY website here (I think, though my browsers are being tedious about doing downloads of pdf files).

But really it's Borges, and it's ChristmasWinterval, so you should get someone to go to a proper, bricks-and-mortar bookshop and buy a paperback copy of Fictions for you.


For those of you looking for other stories about fictional translators, again, I direct you to your nearest b.&.m. bookshop where you will find lots of them (for some ideas, see here or here). Neither of these lists mentions my very favourite story featuring a translator, which is 'The Kleptomaniac Translator' by Dezső Kosztolányi, from the novel/story collection Kornél Esti. You can download a French translation of this story by Péter Adám and Maurice Regnault from the publisher's website. You'll find an English translation of the story in Bernard Adams's Kornél Esti published by New Directions (alas not online, but think, what a great way to start your new year's resolution about reading more fiction in translation).


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