Literary Translation
Literary translation studies how poetry, fiction, drama, and other literary writing is rendered across languages, attending to style, voice, form, and cultural transmission.
Definition
The branch of translation studies concerned with the translation of literary works and the stylistic, formal, and interpretive choices it involves.
Scope
This area covers the theory and practice of translating literary texts: the special problems of poetic form, metaphor, and ambiguity; the translator's strategies along the spectrum from domestication to foreignization; the phenomenon of retranslation and the history of literary translation; and the question of the translator's authorship, voice, and style. It draws on stylistics, literary theory, and the cultural turn, treating literary translation as a creative and interpretive act as well as a linguistic one.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What is distinctive about translating literary as opposed to non-literary texts?
- How can poetic form and style be carried across languages?
- Should a translation read fluently in the target language or preserve foreignness?
- In what sense is a literary translator an author?
Key theories
- Domestication and foreignization
- Lawrence Venuti's pairing, developed from Schleiermacher, of fluent translation that assimilates a text to target norms (domestication) versus translation that registers the foreignness of the source (foreignization), framed as an ethical and political choice.
- The translator's task
- Walter Benjamin's influential essay arguing that translation serves the afterlife of a work and aims at a higher 'pure language' rather than mere transmission of meaning, a touchstone for literary and philosophical reflection on translation.
History
Reflection on literary translation runs from Cicero and Jerome through Dryden's tripartite scheme and Schleiermacher's 1813 lecture on the two methods of translating. In the modern discipline, the cultural turn and Venuti's history of fluency and invisibility brought literary translation to the centre of theoretical debate, while stylistics supplied tools for analysing literary translators' choices.
Debates
- Fluency and the invisibility of the translator
- Venuti argues that the dominance of fluent, domesticating translation in the English-speaking world renders translators invisible and effaces cultural difference, a claim that has generated extensive debate about visibility and ethics.
Key figures
- Lawrence Venuti
- Susan Bassnett
- André Lefevere
- Walter Benjamin
- Jean Boase-Beier
Related topics
Seminal works
- venuti2008
- benjamin1923
- bassnett2014
Frequently asked questions
- Why is literary translation considered especially difficult?
- Literary texts depend on form, sound, connotation, and ambiguity as much as on propositional content, so the translator must recreate aesthetic and interpretive effects, not just transfer information.
- Is a literary translation a new work?
- Many theorists treat literary translation as a creative act that produces a related but distinct work, which is why translators are increasingly named and credited as authors in their own right.