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Humanities
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Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West
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Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Literature in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 July 2020) | Viewed by 12753

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Michael Bryson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of English, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA
Interests: medieval and renaissance literature (English, French, German, Italian); Shakespeare; Milton; biblical and classical literature; the history of European poetry and criticism; theology and philosophy in the medieval and early modern periods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In Comparative Literature, the increasingly contested field of “World Literature”, and Translation Studies, the notion of the “untranslatability” of literature has gained purchase in recent years, due in part to the work of Emily Apter and the continual rediscoveries of the work of Walter Benjamin. Literary translation is conceived of, in one view, as impossible, and in another view as an activity (even an art form) with infinite possibilities for the translator but minimal responsibilities toward that which is being translated.

In a larger sense, to “translate” a text (after the sense of the Latin translatio) is to relocate it, to move it from one context to another, almost in the sense of the German Aufheben—to leave behind and bring along. In this sense, scholarly translations of poetry and prose from one language into another are analogous (though not identical) to artistic projects in which authors who work in different languages, times, and contexts, relocate and rewrite/rework/reform/reinhabit each other’s texts.

But in the final analysis, translatio exists in two forms which are, though related, crucially different. The translator and the relocator have two different purviews: one to (re)present a text as best as one can in a different language, time, and context; the other to (re)turn to the themes, images, aspirations, conflicts, desires, and expressions of a different language, time, and place, and render them new again. The scholar who translates Chinese poetry into English, and the poet who relocates Latin poetry into Arabic are each pursuing important, though crucially different tasks.

This Special Issue of the journal Humanities invites contributions that address one, or the other, or both of these fundamental forms of translatio: the translation and the relocation of poetry and prose from one context to another, including contexts of language, time, culture, and issues of identity and embodiment.

Deadline for Proposal Submissions: 1 December 2019

Deadline for completed papers, if selected (5000–10,000 words): 1 July 2020

Submit a 250–500-word proposal for an original contribution and a 100-word biography (include selected publications) by 1 December 2019; please email both the Guest Editor ([email protected]), and the journal ([email protected]), and reference the title of the Special Issue (Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West) in your subject line.

Prof. Dr. Michael Bryson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Translation
  • Relocation
  • Language and Languages
  • Scholars and Authors
  • Fidelity in Translation
  • Impossibility of Translation
  • Visibility or Invisibility of the Translator
  • Criticism and Interpretation as Translation
  • Poetic Reuse and Relocation as Translation
  • Comparative Literature
  • World Literature
  • Emily Apter
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Zhang Longxi
  • David Damrosch
  • Lawrence Venuti

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 350 KiB  
Article
Finding Ovid in Kandahar: The Radical Pastoral as Resistance to Empire in the Classic and Contemporary Worlds
by Manija Said
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 146; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9040146 - 17 Dec 2020
Viewed by 2383
Abstract
Prevailing scholarship on pastoral literature often overlooks its political and radical dimensions, relegating the form to particular manifestations of the pastoral in Elizabethan England. World literature, however, exhibits a wider range of the pastoral in which poets contest social injustice and serve as [...] Read more.
Prevailing scholarship on pastoral literature often overlooks its political and radical dimensions, relegating the form to particular manifestations of the pastoral in Elizabethan England. World literature, however, exhibits a wider range of the pastoral in which poets contest social injustice and serve as voices of resistance against oppression. This paper explores the existence of and connection between the radical pastoral in both the East and West, as exemplified by the classical poetry of Ovid and Pashto pastoral poetry emanating from contemporary Afghanistan. It argues that, despite differences in time and space, both genres of poetry offer forceful criticisms of empire and consider pastoral values, aesthetics, and landscapes as a means of resistance against it. This paper thus examines pastoral poetics’ contribution to social commentary on empire in both imperial Rome and the imperialist present encapsulated by America’s post 9/11 political-military interventions in the Middle East. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West)
21 pages, 305 KiB  
Article
A Quixotic Endeavor: The Translator’s Role and Responsibility in Bridging Divides in the (Mis)handling of Translations
by Cesar Osuna
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 119; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9040119 - 15 Oct 2020
Viewed by 3706
Abstract
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha, one of the most translated works of literature, has seen over twenty different English translations in the 406 years since its first translation. Some translators remain more faithful than others. In a world where there [...] Read more.
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha, one of the most translated works of literature, has seen over twenty different English translations in the 406 years since its first translation. Some translators remain more faithful than others. In a world where there should be an erasure of the lines that separate cultures, the lines are, in fact, deepening. John Felstiner explains in his book, Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, that “a translation converts strangeness into likeness, and yet in doing so may bring home to us the strangeness of the original... Doing without translations, then, might confine us to a kind of solipsistic cultural prison” (Felstiner 5). By looking at translations of Don Quixote de la Mancha, this paper examines how the inaccuracies and misrepresentations by translators deepen the lines that divide cultures. Textual edits are made, plots are altered, and additions are made to the text. These differences might seem inconsequential to the reader, but the reverberations of such changes have tremendous consequences. While there may not be a perfect translation, editors and translators must aim towards that objective. Instead, the translators appropriate the work, often styling or rewriting it in order to mold it to fit their own visions of what the work should be. Thus, Don Quixote lives on through translation and is lost due to being an unwitting and unwilling participant of malpractice. The only way to bridge cultures is for the translator responsibly to present readers with translations that stay true to the original. By doing so, readers can be more empathetic towards cultures unfamiliar to them, and only then can we truly have an understanding of others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West)
15 pages, 422 KiB  
Article
The Poetics of Schism: Dostoevsky Translates Hamlet
by Arpi Movsesian
Humanities 2020, 9(3), 111; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9030111 - 12 Sep 2020
Viewed by 3530
Abstract
F.M. Dostoevsky (1821–1881) never translated Shakespeare’s works into Russian, at least not in the common sense. His fascination, however, with Hamlet and his choices, led him to interrogate the cult of Hamlet in his own culture to better understand the political and philosophical [...] Read more.
F.M. Dostoevsky (1821–1881) never translated Shakespeare’s works into Russian, at least not in the common sense. His fascination, however, with Hamlet and his choices, led him to interrogate the cult of Hamlet in his own culture to better understand the political and philosophical schism of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, torn between Western and Populist ideals. Translatio, in the broader sense of “carrying over” Hamlet’s character, caught on a threshold, into the Russian context represents an important aspect of Dostoevsky’s re-interpretation of modern ethics. More immediately, this translatio is a call to the “old morality” of the 1840s generation of Russian intellectuals, who rejected notions of rational egoism and of the means justifying the ends. Dostoevsky’s schismatic hero, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, is Dostoevsky’s reimagining of his own culture’s translation of Hamlet that produced extreme and radical forms of Hamlet. Raskolnikov mimics Hamlet’s conscience-stricken personality at war with itself but achieves a more ambiguous ending typical of Dostoevsky’s regenerative paradigm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West)
14 pages, 277 KiB  
Article
Asceticism in Old English and Syriac Soul and Body Narratives
by Katayoun Torabi
Humanities 2020, 9(3), 100; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9030100 - 31 Aug 2020
Viewed by 1985
Abstract
A great deal of scholarship on Old English soul-body poetry centers on whether or not the presence of dualist elements in the poems are unorthodox in their implication that the body, as a material object, is not only wicked but seems to possess [...] Read more.
A great deal of scholarship on Old English soul-body poetry centers on whether or not the presence of dualist elements in the poems are unorthodox in their implication that the body, as a material object, is not only wicked but seems to possess more agency in the world than the soul. I argue that the Old English soul-body poetry is not heterodox or dualist, but is best understood, as Allen J. Frantzen suggests, within the “context of penitential practice.” The seemingly unorthodox elements are resolved when read against the backdrop of pre-Conquest English monastic reform culture, which was very much concerned with penance, asceticism, death, and judgment. Focusing especially on two anonymous 10th-century Old English poems, Soul and Body I in the Vercelli Book and Soul and Body II in the Exeter Book, I argue that that both body and soul bear equal responsibility in achieving salvation and that the work of salvation must be performed before death, a position that was reinforced in early English monastic literature that was inspired, at least in part, by Eastern ascetics such as fourth-century Syrian hymnologist and theologian, St. Ephraim. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Translation and Relocation: Literary Encounters East and West)
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