The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature

Emily Apter

Published by Princeton University Press 2006

The Translation Zone

A New Comparative Literature

Emily Apter

Volume 16 in the series Translation/Transnation

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400841219

Overview
Contents

About this book

Translation, before 9/11, was deemed primarily an instrument of international relations, business, education, and culture. Today it seems, more than ever, a matter of war and peace. In The Translation Zone, Emily Apter argues that the field of translation studies, habitually confined to a framework of linguistic fidelity to an original, is ripe for expansion as the basis for a new comparative literature.

Organized around a series of propositions that range from the idea that nothing is translatable to the idea that everything is translatable, The Translation Zone examines the vital role of translation studies in the "invention" of comparative literature as a discipline. Apter emphasizes "language wars" (including the role of mistranslation in the art of war), linguistic incommensurability in translation studies, the tension between textual and cultural translation, the role of translation in shaping a global literary canon, the resistance to Anglophone dominance, and the impact of translation technologies on the very notion of how translation is defined. The book speaks to a range of disciplines and spans the globe.

Ultimately, The Translation Zone maintains that a new comparative literature must take stock of the political impact of translation technologies on the definition of foreign or symbolic languages in the humanities, while recognizing the complexity of language politics in a world at once more monolingual and more multilingual.

Author / Editor information

Emily Apter is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University. Her most recent book is Continental Drift: From National Characters to Virtual Subjects.

Reviews

"The Translation Zone offers a richly detailed history of Comparative Literature, a field volatile from the first, looking to contrary horizons, and never more so than at the present moment. Emily Apter explores the roads taken and not taken in the past, linking these to the new, cross-fertilized languages that constitute and energize the field in the future."—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep

"This is a terrific book and a great pleasure to read. At once creative and provocative, Apter's witty analyses of multilingual matters in literature makes a major contribution to a range of disciplines from translation studies, comparative literature and linguistics, postcolonial studies, to mainstream literary studies in French and English. What is so unusual is the impressive breadth and range of Apter's reading in literatures across the globe. This is a book that will make readers want to rethink the limits of their own disciplines, and retranslate the concepts that they employ."—Robert J. C. Young, Oxford University, author of Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Twenty Theses on Translations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Translation after 9/11: Mistranslating the Art of War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Part One. Translating Humanism
2. The Human in the Humanities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
3. Global Translatio: The “Invention” of Comparative Literature, Istanbul, 1933 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
4. Saidian Humanism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
Part Two. The Politics of Untranslatability
5. Nothing Is Translatable Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
6. “Untranslatable” Algeria: The Politics of Linguicide Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
7. Plurilingual Dogma: Translation by Numbers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Part Three. Language Wars
8. Balkan Babel: Language Zones, Military Zones Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
9. War and Speech Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
10. The Language of Damaged Experience Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
11. CNN Creole: Trademark Literacy and Global Language Travel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
12. Condé's Créolité in Literary History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Part Four. Technologies of Translation
13. Nature into Data Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
14. Translation with No Original: Scandals of Textual Reproduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
15. Everything Is Translatable Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
16. A New Comparative Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

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