The Translator as Writer

Description

Over the last two decades, interest in translation around the world has increased beyond any predictions. International bestseller lists now contain large numbers of translated works, and writers from Latin America, Africa, India and China have joined the lists of eminent, bestselling European writers and those from the global English-speaking world. Despite this, translators tend to be invisible, as are the processes they follow and the strategies they employ when translating. The Translator as Writer bridges the divide between those who study translation and those who produce translations, through essays written by well-known translators talking about their own work as distinctive creative literary practice. The book emphasises this creativity, arguing that translators are effectively writers, or rewriters who produce works that can be read and enjoyed by an entirely new audience. The aim of the book is to give a proper prominence to the role of translators and in so doing to move attention back to the act of translating, away from more abstract speculation about what translation might involve.

SUSAN BASSNETT is Professor of Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Peter Bush is vice-president, International Federation of Translators, former Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.

'... the very thing that the ... Chinese translation researchers need and would like to read. For the last 20 years, translation theorists have been the favorites with the Chinese translation circles, and translators, in contrast, seem to have been marginal in the same field. There are too many translation theorists who theorise without solid background of translation practice. Translation theory in China is in the danger of being estranged more and more from studies of translation as an art. [This book] ... can be rightly a remedy to the unhealthy situation in which translators are slighted...' Professor Zhengkun Gu, Department of English, Peking University Chairman of Peking University Society for Translation and Culture * Blurb from reviewer *