The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between (Irvine Studies in the Humanities) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804724849 ISBN 13: 9780804724845

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

These essays-which consider a wide variety of cultures from ancient Egypt to contemporary Japan- describe the conditions under which cultures that do not dominate each other may yet achieve a limited translatability of cultures.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Translation between any two languages sets in motion a tug-of-war around those aspects of each language that are least accessible to agreed-upon equivalents, around those aspects of expression and understanding that are unique to a given culture. This struggle - between possession and dispossession, or between reinscription and obliteration - is necessarily perilous for the culture that has less power to retain the usages of its language. Since translation wields powerful forces of cultural change, it is an arena both of the global coercions of national cultures and of the local dominations of everyday others by everyday selves. Thus the ethics of translation are both the ethics of cross-cultural discourse and the unit problem of ethical discourse itself. The fourteen essays in this volume - which consider a wide variety of cultures from ancient Egypt to contemporary Japan - address both sorts of discourse and elucidate the two-way or mutual conditioning of cultural positions as well as the illusions and exclusions created by mutuality. In short, the essays describe the conditions under which cultures that do not dominate each other may yet achieve a limited translatability of cultures.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804724849
• ISBN 13: 9780804724845
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 364
• Editor: Budick Sanford, Iser Wolfgang