Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Professor Douglas Robinson (Chair Professor English, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.386kg
ISBN: 9781501326059
ISBN 10: 1501326058
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 15 December 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
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
Author Information
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).
