Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiators: Mediating and Communicating Power from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era

This book reconsiders the intellectual, social and professional identity of translators and interpreters when their role involves an intercultural negotiation with institutional powers, be them medieval rulers, modern States, an army of invasion or a dominant culture. Surprisingly little is known of how historical mediations took place, how the mediators worked, and the ways in which transcultural mediations become implicit or explicit forms of power. The chapters seek to address how translators and interpreters can emerge in a position of power by presenting visions, methods, and case studies dealing with a wide thematic range of issues, such as historical concerns, cultural identity, and the role of translation in mediation and cultural transfer. With far-reaching analysis of history, politics, religion and literature, this book will appeal to researchers and students of translation, the history of communication, and institutional power.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiation; Dario Tessicini 1. Three Monks and a Philosopher: Religious Men Travelling and Translating in Medieval Serbia; Tatjana Djurin 2 Patterns of Translation: Contacts and Linguistic Variety in Italian Late Medieval Diplomacy (1380-1520 ca.); Isabella Lazzarini 3. Benedetto Varchi's Boezio (1551) and 'The Language of Florence'; Dario Brancato 4. 'Leo Africanus' and His Worlds of Translation; Natalie Zemon Davis 5. A Servant of Two Masters: Michel Angelo Corai as Tuscan Diplomat (1606-1613); Federico M. Federici 6. Translation and Adaptation in Original Composition: Lodowick Bryskett's Use of His Sources in A Discourse of Civill Life (1606); Sergio Portelli 7. Revisiting Malinche: A Study of her Role as an Interpreter; Maria Laura Spoturno 8. The Political and Diplomatic Significance of Interpreters/Translators in Seventeenth Century Colonial Taiwan; Pin-ling Chang 9. Hegel and the Latin Bhagavadgita (1823): Critique of Understanding and Translating the Foreign; Madhuvanti Chintamani Karyekar 10. Translating Modern Fiction into Persian: A Snowball Story; Mohammad Emami 11. Translating Aboriginal Siberian and Circumpolar Cultures in Russia; Veronica Razumovskaya

About the Author :
Federico M. Federici is Lecturer in Italian at University College London, UK. He founded and directed the MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK (2008-2014). He is Director of the Centre for Intercultural Mediation and member of the Board of the European Master's in Translation Network. His publications include he authored Translation as Stylistic Evolution (2009), Translating Regionalized Voices in Audiovisuals (editor, 2009), and Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities (editor, 2011) . His research focuses on the translators and interpreters as intercultural mediators and on reception of translated texts. Dario Tessicini is Senior Lecturer in Italian at Durham University, UK. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the early modern period, and it includes issues of transmission and translation of classical texts. Among his recent publications is 'Definitions of Cosmography and Geography in the Wake of Ptolemy's Geography', in a volume on Ptolemy's Geography in the Renaissance (2011). Dario's research has been funded by the Istituto Nazionale per gli Studi Filosofici, the Warburg Institute, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and Villa I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence.