Translation - Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader

Translation - Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader responds to the need for a collection of primary texts on translation, in the English tradition, from the earliest times to the present day. Based on an exhaustive survey of the wealth of available materials, the Reader demonstrates throughout the link between theory and practice, with excerpts not only of significant theoretical writings but of actual translations, as well as excerpts on translation from letters, interviews, autobiographies, and fiction. The collection is intended as a teaching tool, but also as an encyclopaedia for the use of translators and writers on translation. It presents the full panoply of approaches to translation, without necessarily judging between them, but showing clearly what is to be gained or lost in each case. Translations of key texts, such as the Bible and the Homeric epic, are traced through the ages, with the same passages excerpted, making it possible for readers to construct their own map of the evolution of translation and to evaluate, in their historical contexts, the variety of approaches. The passages in question are also accompanied by ad verbum versions, to facilitate comparison. The bibliographies are likewise comprehensive. The editors have drawn on the expertise of leading scholars in the field, including the late James S. Holmes, Louis Kelly, Jonathan Wilcox, Jane Stevenson, David Hopkins, and many others. In addition, significant non-English texts, such as Martin Luther's 'Circular Letter on Translation', which may be said to have inaugurated the Reformation, are included, helping to set the English tradition in a wider context. Related items, such as the introductions to their work by Tudor and Jacobean translators or the work of women translators from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have been brought together in 'collages', marking particularly important moments or developments in the history of translation. This comprehensive reader provides an invaluable and illuminating resources for scholars and students of translation and English literature, as well as poets, cultural historians, and professional translators.

Table of Contents:
1: Preface and Acknowledgements 2: General Introduction 3: Babel Part One: Section 1 4: Introduction 5: Classical Latin and Early Christian Latin Translation 6: Jonathan Wilcox: Old English Translation 7: John of Trevisa 8: William Caxton Part One: Section 2 9: Introduction 10: Martin Luther 11: William Tyndale 12: Estienne Dolet 13: Joachim du Bellay 14: Late Tudor and Early Jacobean Translation 15: Renaissance Latin Translation in England 16: The Catholic Bible in England 17: The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible 18: Sir John Denham 19: Abraham Cowley 20: Jane Stevenson: Women Translators from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century 21: David Hopkins: John Dryden 22: Anne Dacier 23: Alexander Pope 24: Samuel Johnson 25: William Cowper 26: Alexander Fraser Tytler Part One: Section 3 27: Introduction 28: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 29: Friedrich Schleiermacher 30: Victorian Translation and Criticism 31: Six Nineteenth-Century Translators 32: James Fitzmaurice-Kelly Part Two: Section 1 33: Introduction 34: Ronnie Apter: Ezra Pound 35: Constance Garnett 36: Walter Benjamin 37: Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig 38: Jorge Luis Borges 39: Roman Jakobson 40: Jiri Levý 41: Eugene A. Nida 41: Robert Lowell 43: Stanley Burnshaw 44: Laura Bohannan 45: Jenefer Coates: Vladimir Nabokov Part Two: Section 2 46: Introduction 47: George Steiner 48: James S. Holmes 49: Itamar Evan-Zohar 50: André Lefevere 51: Mary Snell-Hornby 52: Ethnopoetics: Translation of the Oral and of Oral Performance 53: Louis and Celia Zukofsky 54: Translation of Verse Form 55: Vinay Dharwadker: A.K. Ramanujan 56: Gayatri Spivak 57: Talal Asad 58: Eva Hoffman 59: Gregory Rabassa 60: Suzanne Jill Levine 61: Ted Hughes 62: Douglas Robinson 63: Lawrence Venuti 64: Susan Bassnett 65: Everett Fox 66: John Felstiner 67: W.S. Merwin 68: Edwin Morgan 69: Seamus Heaney Daniel Weissbort: Postface

About the Author :
Daniel Weissbort was educated at St. Paul's School, London and Cambridge University. With Ted Hughes he founded the journal Modern Poetry in Translation, now published by King's College London. In the early 1970s he went to America to direct the Translation Workshop and MFA Program in Translation at the University of Iowa. His anthologies of Russian and East European poetry are well known and he has also published many collections of his own poetry. He is or has been on various boards, including the Poetry International Committee (UK), the American Literary Translators Association board, the Columbia Translation Center board, the Stephen Spender Memorial Trust, and the British Centre for Literary Translation board. He is Professor (Emeritus) of English and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa, Research Fellow in the English Department, King's College London, and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Astradur Eysteinsson was born in Akranes, Iceland, in 1957. He studied at the universities of Iceland, Warwick, and Cologne, before completing a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. He has been Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland, and Visiting Professor in Translation Studies at the universities of Iowa and Copenhagen. He has been a practising translator since 1981.

Review :
A magnificently compendious volume...Translation - Theory and Practice is in many respects an essential volume: it is the fullest gathering we have of writing relating to literary translation into English, and it juxtaposes its material in thought-provoking ways. Matthew Reynolds, Translation and Literature a useful and wide-ranging anthology. Kenneth Haynes, The Review of English Studies Weissbort and Eysteinsson's collection is nothing less than magnificent - both in terms of its size and of its scope. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, Volume 14:2 ...the volume offers considerable riches, factoring in a number of European writers, and with a surprising amount of material that is relevant to earlier periods. Medium Aevum