Translation right or wrong
Susana Bayó Belenguer, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin & Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, editors
Translation was for centuries a locus of controversy, and the work of good translators has often been dismissed in an arbitrary, prescriptive manner. Today, such facile condemnations are less common; the pendulum has swung towards a more systematic approach, as advances in translation theory and scholarship have led to a broader understanding of the complex factors inherent in translation work, and the many legitimate choices that translators must face. Still, the ‘right or wrong’ question refuses to go away. There really is a link between translation and judgment. Should the text have been translated in the first place? Why was it chosen? What changes were needed to make it acceptable? Who decided? Was the translation itself done properly, by the right sort of person, for the right kind of audience? What methods should we use to investigate translation quality? And who are we to judge? The nineteen essays in the present volume take a sharp look at questions of critique and correction, across a wide variety of texts, nations, histories and technologies. From Norway to Peru, from Classical poetry to Japanese manga, from film subtitling to forensic analysis, from children’s fiction to Holocaust memoirs, Translation right or wrong shows how the compulsion to judge pervades the field of language interaction.
Contributors: Josephine Balmer, Susana Bayó Belenguer, Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, Bart Defrancq, Emer Delaney, Jane Dunnett†, Alberto Fuertes Puerta, Francisca García Luque, Annjo Klungervik Greenall, Virginia Jewiss, Carmen Mangiron, Anne Markey, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, Minako O’Hagan, Pilar Ordóñez López, Ilaria Parini, Mette Rudvin, Simone Schroth, Kathleen Shields, Sabine Strümper-Krobb, Michelle Woods, Giulia Zuodar.
Susana Bayó Belenguer, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin teach, respectively, Spanish, English and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. All three lecture on literary translation. Giulia Zuodar is a translator and recently completed a PhD at Trinity College Dublin.
