Cultural Functions of Translation (Current Issues in Language and Society Monographs) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1853593338 ISBN 13: 9781853593338

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 1995

Synopsis

This book discusses the far-reaching effects that translated texts may have in the target culture and illustrates that translation as a culture-transcending process is an important way of forming cultural identities and of positioning cultures. Lawrence Venuti discusses the enormous power translation wields in constructing representations of foreign cultures. The conservative or transgressive effects of translation are illustrated by several translation projects from different periods: novels, philosophical texts, and religious texts. Candace Seguinot focuses on effects of globalisation for translating advertising. She argues that the marketing of goods and services across cultural boundaries involves an understanding of culture and semiotics that goes well beyond both language and design. Translation is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture. The translator, as the expert communicator, is at the crucial centre of a long chain of communication from the original initiator to the ultimate receiver of a message. The papers and the debates take up important related issues: translation strategies (foreignising vs. domesticating strategies; translation and marketing strategies); the knowledge required of translators as interlingual and intercultural mediators; ethical responsibilities; and consequences for translator training. Contributors to the debates include Mona Baker, Terry Hale, Paul Kussmaul, Kirsten Malmkjaer, Peter Newmark and Douglas Robinson.

About this title

About the Authors

Christina Schäffner is Professor Emerita at Aston University, Birmingham. Until her retirement in September 2015 she was the Head of Translation Studies at Aston, teaching courses in translation studies, interpreting, and supervising Master dissertations and PhD students.  Her main research interests are: political discourse in translation, news translation, metaphor in translation, and translation didactics, and she has published widely on these topics. Major publications include Political Discourse, Media and Translation (edited with S. Bassnett 2010), Translation research and Interpreting research: Traditions, gaps and synergies (2004) and Politics as Text and Talk. Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse (edited with P. Chilton, 2002).

Helen Kelly-Holmes is Professor of Applied Languages at Ollscoil Luimnigh/University of Limerick. Helen’s work focuses on the interrelationship between media, markets, technologies and languages and the management of these relationships. She is particularly interested in the economic aspects of multilingualism in relation to minority languages and the global political economy of English, and she has published widely on these topics.  Recent books include: Language, Global Mobilities, Blue-Collar Workers and Blue-collar Workplaces (Edited with K. Gonçalves, Routledge, 2020); Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances (with S. Pietikainen, A. Jaffe & N. Coupland - Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1853593338
• ISBN 13: 9781853593338
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96
• Editor: Schäffner Christina, Kelly-Holmes Helen