Exorcising Translation: Towards an Intercivilizational Turn

Description

Exorcising Translation, a new volume in Bloomsbury's Literatures, Cultures, Translation series, makes critical contributions to translation as well as to comparative and postcolonial literary studies. The hot-button issue of Eurocentrism in translation studies has roiled the discipline in the past few years, with critiques followed by defenses and defenses followed by enhanced critiques. Douglas Robinson identifies Eurocentrism in translation studies as what Sakai Naoki calls a "civilizational spell." Exorcising Translation tracks two translation histories. In the first, moving from Friedrich Nietzsche to Harold Bloom, we find ourselves caught, trapped, cursed, haunted by the spell. In the second, focused on English translations and translators of Chinese literature, Robinson explores accusations against American translators not only for their inadequate (or even totally absent) knowledge of Chinese and Daoism, but for their Americanness, their trappedness in individualistic and secular Western thought. A closer look at that history shows that Western thought and Chinese thought are mutually shaped in fascinating ways. Exorcising Translation presents a major re-envisioning of translation studies, and indeed the literary relationship between East and West, by a pioneering scholar in the field.

Douglas Robinson is Chair Professor of English at Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, and is one of the world's leading experts on translation. He is the author of path-breaking publications in translation studies, including The Translator's Turn (1991), Translation and Taboo (1996), Translation and the Problem of Sway (2011), and The Dao of Translation (2015). He is also author of important works on postcoloniality, from Translation and Empire (1997) to Displacement and the Somatics of Postcolonial Culture (2013).

While the introduction and legitimation of CTS (Critical Translation Studies) to plain old TS (Translation Studies) frames Exorcising Translation, its significance for readers outside of Translation Studies is considerably deeper. In short, out of Sakai's notion of the "civilizational spell," Robinson builds a critical apparatus that can explain Orientalism and its less discursively-defined other Occidentalism, critiquing renowned scholars and philosophers for being spellbound to "ethnocentric misunderstandings of other cultures and other civilizations". ... [Robinson] builds a framework for a more ambitious Translation Studies. * symploke * Exorcising Translation is a cogent and innovative problematisation of the unnecessarily inevitable and highly influential dichotomy that confronts universalist and relativist ideologies in translation studies, in theory and in comparative cultural studies. Doug Robinson's work exemplifies maturing trends in postcolonial and postmodernist studies. * Sean Golden, Full Professor of East Asian Studies, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain * In his very compelling Exorcising Translation, Douglas Robinson draws heavily from the work of Sakai Naoki, a plethora of figures in translation studies, and several intriguing case studies from Chinese writing, to create a kind of dialogue between "East" and "West." He explores some of the conundrums that have arisen within translation studies and the impasse between the deconstruction of the many cliche oppositions still taken for granted and the labels of "ethnocentrism" and "appropriation" when theorists attempt to cross these oppositions. With the kind of creativity and novelty usually exhibited in Robinson's work, he provides a new kind of vocabulary to examine the borders between binary oppositions from the point of view of the "leakage" across them that, while not eliminating difference, at least help us "demystify" it. * Ben Van Wyke, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Translation Studies, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis, USA * This book presents a very thought-provoking critical exposition of the nature of translation by driving it into its crucial foundations in philosophies in East and West. From this powerful Exorcising, translation emerges beyond temporal and spatial boundaries not just as a bridge between cultures or ideologies but, most fundamentally, between human minds over the troubled water of (mis)understanding under the spell of civilizational biases - an insight meaningful for anyone interested in translation and cultural studies. * Chunshen Zhu, Professor of Translation Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong *