RESOURCES FOR TRANSLATION STUDIES
Included here is a selection of contemporary books and articles that are useful starting-points for the study of
translation. Most of these resources contain extensive bibliographies that can
be referenced for further study. Also recommended are the
"translator's prefaces" included in complete editions of the
translations that are listed in the "Works Cited" pages of each
module on the translation website. This list will be updated as additional
resources come to my attention.
Approaches to Teaching Beowulf.
Ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Robert F. Yeager. New
York:
MLA, 1984.
[All of the MLA "Approaches" texts
have sections discussing the translations most commonly used by college and
university teachers.]
Approaches
to Teaching Cervantes' Don Quixote. Ed. Richard Bjornson.
New York: The Modern Language
Association, 1984.
Approaches
to Teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy. Ed. Carol Slade. New York:
The Modern Language Association, 1982.
Approaches
to Teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Ed. Costas Myrsiades. New
York: The Modern Language Association, 1987.
Approaches
to Teaching Kafka's Short Fiction. Ed. Richard T. Gray. New York: The
Modern Language Association, 1995.
Approaches
to Teaching Moliere's Tartuffe and Other Plays. Ed. James F. Gaines
and Michael S. Koppisch. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1995.
Bassnett,
Susan. Translation Studies. Revised edition. London and New York:
Methuen & Co., 1988.
Biguenet,
John, and Rainer Schulte, eds. The Craft of Translation. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Damrosch, David. What Is World
Literature? Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Dante’s
Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets. Ed. Daniel Halpern.
Hopewell, N.J.: The Ecco Press, 1993. Contains translations of different
cantos of The Inferno by a number of well-known contemporary poets
(among them Seamus Heaney, Galway Kinnell, Charles Wright, Carolyn Forche,
and W.S. Merwin). Excellent introduction by James Merrill.
Encyclopedia
of Literary Translation into English. Ed. Olive Classe. 2 vols.
London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000.
Essays
in the Art and Theory of Translation. Ed. Lenore A. Grenoble and John M. Kopper. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le
ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. New York:
Basic Books, 1997.
Lefevere,
Andre. Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative
Literature Context. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1992.
The
Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Ed. Peter France.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Poulakis,
Victoria. "Translation and the Difference it Makes." Inquiry
Fall 2001: 7-16. Web site address for Inquiry is: <http://www.vccaedu.org/inquiry>
Click on <Indexes> link and then on <Fall 2001> edition.
Rabassa, Gregory. If This
Be Treason: Translation and Its Discontents. New York: New
Directions Books, 2005.
Raffel,
Burton. The Art of Translating Poetry. University Park, PA: Penn.
State University Press, 1988.
____________.
The Art of Translating Prose. University Park, PA: Penn. State
University Press, 1994.
Singleton,
Charles, tr. The
Divine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Singleton’s multi-volume prose translations of Dante’s work and his
accompanying commentary are acknowledged by most contemporary translators
to be the scholarly foundation for their own translations.
Steiner,
George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Third
Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Steiner,
George,ed. Homer in English. New
York: Penguin Books, 1996.
An excellent collection of excerpts from major translations and and
adaptations of Homer’s works into English from the fourteenth century
(Chaucer’s Troylus and Criseyde) through the late twentieth century.
Steiner’s introduction is especially useful.
The
Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.
London and New York: Routledge, 2000. A collection of essays by
major translation theorists from 1900 to the present.
Venuti,
Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference.
London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Thoughtful and provocative analysis
of the status of translation studies by a contemporary theorist and
translator.
Wechsler,
Robert. Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation.
North Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1998. Excellent and very readable
discussion of translation issues, especially useful for anyone thinking of
becoming a professional translator.
Young, Philip H. The
Printed Homer: A 3,000 Year Publishing and Translation History of the
Iliad and the Odyssey. Jefferson, N.C. and London: McFarland &
Company, 2003. Contains a "comprehensive list of all known
editions of the Homeric texts of the Iliad and Odyssey" as
well as very readable background information about the development of
the texts.
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comments to: vpoulakis@nvcc.edu
02/24/08
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