Method in translation history

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Bibliographic Information

Method in translation history

Anthony Pym

St. Jerome, 1998

Available at  / 10 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. [203]-214

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Starting from the critical notion that we should be asking questions of contemporary importance - and that 'importance' itself must be defined - Anthony Pym sets about undoing many of the currently dominant models of translation history, positing, among much else, that the object of this history should be translators as people, that researchers are subjectively involved in their object, that cultural systems are based on social will, that translators work in intercultural spaces, and that a model of cooperation through negotiation may be applied to the way translators (and researchers!) work between cultures. At the same time, the proposed methodology is eminently constructive, showing how many empirical techniques can be developed and applied: clear illustrations are given of corpus selection, working definitions, deceptive statistics, and the construction of networks and regimes, incorporating elaborate examples drawn from medieval and modernist fields, as well as finding space for notes on practical problems like funding research. Finding its focus in historical debates, this book cannot help but create contemporary debate: its arguments seek not only to revitalize the historical study of translation but also to develop the wider concerns of intercultural studies.

Table of Contents

Method in Translation History: Contents Preface Acknowledgements 1. History History within translation studies The parts of translation history The interdependence and separateness of the parts A too-brief history of translation history Reasons for doing translation history 2. Importance What is importance? 5Against blithe empiricism Personal interests Research and client interests Subjective interests and humility 3. Lists Reasons for lists Getting data The difference between catalogues and corpora Shortcomings in bibliographies: four examples Completeness in history and geology Sources as shifting sands The historian as reader of indexes 4. Working definitions Why some information has to be thrown out In defence of definitions Inclusive definitions Defining translations from paratexts Corpora of limit cases How Wagner sneaked in How Salome danced out 5. Frequencies Statistics and importance Diachronic distribution Retranslations, reeditions and non-translations Retranslation and its reasons A general diachronic hypothesis 6. Networks Reconstructing networks from within Mapping networks Two cheap transfer maps Lines and symbols The spatial axis Cities as borders 7. Norms and systems Actually reading translations Norms? Systems? Leaps of faith The will to system Subjectless prose Where's the gold? 8. Regimes What are regimes? Starting from debates A regime for twelfth-century Toledo A regime for Castilian protohumanism A regime for early twentieth-century poetry anthologies Translation as a transaction cost 9. Causes Systemic and probabilistic causation Aristotle Transfer as material causation Final causes in theories of systems and actions Equivalence as formal cause Translators as efficient cause Multiple causation 10. Translators Translators, not 'the translator' Translators can do more than translate Translators have personal interests Translators can move Translators can go by several names 11. Intercultures Where intercultures are hidden Translations or translators? Strangers and trust Interculturality and its negation Intercultural professions as a social context An alternative basic link What is a culture? 12. Interdisciplinarity Personal reasons for pessimism A lacking discipline Cultural Studies Intercultural Studies References Index

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