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TRA4120 Translation Seminar: Home

Course Description

This course introduces the discipline and nature of Translation Studies through an overview of the major contemporary translation theories that originated and developed from the 1950’s onward. It adopts a diachronic perspective to the study of these modern theories, with a special focus on representative texts on the cultural, historical, and sociological perspectives on translation.

Recommended Books

Western Translation Theory: from Herodotus to Nietzsche

This is an anthology of translation theory. There are 124 texts by 90 authors in this anthology, ranging from the mid-5th century B.C.E. to the end of the nineteenth century. Some texts are originally in English; others are translated from Latin, French, German, Greek, Italian, etc. Through editing this anthology, Robinson displays a history of translation theory that is dialogically intertwined, and he chooses to cite both sides of the debate in most of the cases. Robinson points out that the 9 women authors out of the 90 authors in this anthology is a highlight of this book, though the primary research of women translators has not yet been done.

Translation Studies

This book is a systematic study of the discipline Translation Studies. The emphasis throughout is on literary translation. It is organized in three sections. Section One is concerned with the central issues of translation, with the problem of meaning, untranslatability and equivalence, and with the question of translation as a part of communication theory. Section Two traces lines through different time periods, to show how concepts of translation have differed through the ages and yet have been bound by common links. Section Three examines the specific problems of translating poetry, prose and drama.

The Translation Studies Reader

This reader aims at the audience group of advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, course instructors, and scholars in translation theory and history, as well as practitioners with a theoretical inclination. The reader is divided into 7 sections in a chronological order. While the first section Foundational Statements examines theories before the 1900s, the last section after the 2000s, all the other five sections in the middle looks into theories in the 1900s. Venuti suggests that readers not only read historically, but also thematically. Readers can group together theories with the same themes. Venuti also suggests that readers can use supplementary readings, and further readings are recommended in each section.

Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications

This book is designed as a coursebook for undergraduates and postgraduates in translation studies as well as an introductory book for students, researchers, instructors, and professional translators. There are altogether 12 chapters, covering Jakobson’s classification of translation, the Holmes/Toury conceptual map, the “literal vs. free” translation debate, Eugene Nida’s concepts of equivalence, Newmark’s categories of translation, Koller’s analysis of equivalence, Vinay and Darbelnet’s taxonomy, Catford’s linguistic model, the interpretive model of the Paris School, Bell’s psycholinguistic model, Gutt’s relevance theory, Reiss and Vermeer’s text-type and skopos theory, Nord’s text-linguistic approach, House’s register analysis model, Baker, Hatim and Mason’s discourse-oriented approaches, etc.

Translation, History & Culture

This book collates 12 articles on Translation studies from the perspective of culture rewriting. The 12 articles all testify to the fact that translation as an activity is always doubly contextualized, the culture of the source text, and the culture of the translated text. The practice of translation may serve for certain purpose, and the functions of translations may have also been shaped by culture. Bassnett and Lefevere fully adopt Mary Snell-Hornby’s theory of cultural turn, which calls for a transformation of translation studies from linguistic text translation to culture rewriting. In their opinion, the study of translation practice has turned to the larger issues of context, history and convention.

Exploring Translation Theories

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the core contemporary paradigms of Western translation theory since the 1960s. The book cover theories of equivalence, purpose, description, uncertainty, localization, and cultural translation. This second edition adds coverage particularly on new translation technologies, volunteer translators, non-lineal logic, mediation, Asian languages, and research on translators’ cognitive processes. The book concludes with a survey of the way translation is used as a model in postmodern cultural studies and sociologies, extending its scope beyond traditional Western notions. This book serves for self-study and as a textbook for translation theory courses within Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and Applied Linguistics.

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