Translation Nation

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the smash hit Deep Down Dark, a definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States—a parallel nation, 35 million strong, that is changing the very notion of what it means to be an American in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Tobar begins on familiar terrain, in his native Los Angeles, with his family's story, along with that of two brothers of Mexican origin with very different interpretations of Americanismo, or American identity as seen through a Latin American lens—one headed for U.S. citizenship and the other for the wrong side of the law and the south side of the border. But this is just a jumping-off point. Soon we are in Dalton, Georgia, the most Spanish-speaking town in the Deep South, and in Rupert, Idaho, where the most popular radio DJ is known as "El Chupacabras." By the end of the book, we have traveled from the geographical extremes into the heartland, exploring the familiar complexities of Cuban Miami and the brand-new ones of a busy Omaha INS station. Sophisticated, provocative, and deeply human, Translation Nation uncovers the ways that Hispanic Americans are forging new identities, redefining the experience of the American immigrant, and reinventing the American community. It is a book that rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in American identity.

In recent years, scholarship on translation has moved well beyond the technicalities of converting one language into another and beyond conventional translation theory. With new technologies blurring distinctions between "the original" and its reproductions, and with globalization redefining national and cultural boundaries, "translation" is now emerging as a reformulated subject of lively, interdisciplinary debate. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation enters the heart of this debate. It covers an exceptional range of topics, from simultaneous translation to legal theory, from the language of exile to the language of new nations, from the press to the cinema; and cultures and languages from contemporary Bengal to ancient Japan, from translations of Homer to the work of Don DeLillo. All twenty-two essays, by leading voices including Gayatri Spivak and the late Edward Said, are provocative and persuasive. The book's four sections--"Translation as Medium and across Media," "The Ethics of Translation," "Translation and Difference," and "Beyond the Nation"--together provide a comprehensive view of current thinking on nationality and translation, one that will be widely consulted for years to come. The contributors are Jonathan E. Abel, Emily Apter, Sandra Bermann, Vilashini Cooppan, Stanley Corngold, David Damrosch, Robert Eaglestone, Stathis Gourgouris, Pierre Legrand, Jacques Lezra, Françoise Lionnet, Sylvia Molloy, Yopie Prins, Edward Said, Azade Seyhan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Henry Staten, Lawrence Venuti, Lynn Visson, Gauri Viswanathan, Samuel Weber, and Michael Wood.

The first printing of the First Nations Version: New Testament. A new translation in English, by First Nations People for First Nations People.

In the Middle East, translation movements and the debates they have unleashed on language, culture and the politics and practices of identity have historically been tied to processes of state formation and administration, in the form of patronage, policy and publishing. Whether one considers the age of regional empires centered in Baghdad or Istanbul, or that of the modern nation-state from Egypt to Iran, this relationship points to the historical role of translation as a powerful and flexible tool of cultural politics. "Nation and Translation in the Middle East" focuses on this important aspect of translation in the region, with special emphasis on translation movements and the production of modernity in a historical context defined by European imperialism, enlightenment universalism, and globalization. While the papers assembled in this special issue of "The Translator" each address specific translation histories and practices in the Middle East, the broader questions they raise regarding the location and the historicity of translation offer a fruitful intervention into contemporary debates in translation studies on difference, fidelity and the ethics of translation. The volume opens with two essays that situate translation at the intersection of national canons, post colonial cultural hegemonies and 'private' market or activist-based initiatives in Egypt and Turkey. Other contributions discuss the utility of translation paradigms as a counterweight to the dominant orientalist historiography of modern print culture in the Arab World; the role of the translator as political agent and social reformer in twentieth-century Egypt; and the relationship between language, translation and the politics of identity in the multi-ethnic and multilingual Islamicate contexts of the Abbasid and Mughal Empires. The volume also includes a general bibliography on translation and the Middle East.

Isn’t translation all about saying exactly the same thing in another language? Aren’t national images totally outdated in this era of globalization? Most people might agree but this book amply illustrates how persistent and multifaceted clichés on translation and nation can be. Time and again, translating involves making transfer choices and these choices are never neutral. Though globalization has seemingly all but erased national ideologies and cultural borders, such ideologies and borders continue to play a determining role in conflicts, identity politics and cultural profiles. The place where transfer choices and forms of national and cultural representation come together is also the place where Translation Studies and Imagology meet. This book offers a wealth of chapters showing how decisive selection and transfer processes can be in representing national images, both self-images and images of the other(s). It shows also how intensely the two disciplines can work together and mutually benefit from shared data and methodologies.

In Secular Translations, the anthropologist Talal Asad reflects on his lifelong engagement with secularism and its contradictions. He draws out the ambiguities in our concepts of the religious and the secular through a rich consideration of translatability and untranslatability, exploring the circuitous movements of ideas between histories and cultures. In search of meeting points between the language of Islam and the language of secular reason, Asad gives particular importance to the translations of religious ideas into nonreligious ones. He discusses the claim that liberal conceptions of equality represent earlier Christian ideas translated into secularism; explores the ways that the language and practice of religious ritual play an important but radically transformed role as they are translated into modern life; and considers the history of the idea of the self and its centrality to the project of the secular state. Secularism is not only an abstract principle that modern liberal democratic states espouse, he argues, but also a range of sensibilities. The shifting vocabularies associated with each of these sensibilities are fundamentally intertwined with different ways of life. In exploring these entanglements, Asad shows how translation opens the door for—or requires—the utter transformation of the translated. Drawing on a diverse set of thinkers ranging from al-Ghazālī to Walter Benjamin, Secular Translations points toward new possibilities for intercultural communication, seeking a language for our time beyond the language of the state.

As a meaningful manifestation of how institutionalized the discipline has become, the new Handbook of Translation Studies is most welcome. It joins the other signs of maturation such as Summer Schools, the development of academic curricula, historical surveys, journals, book series, textbooks, terminologies, bibliographies and encyclopedias. The HTS aims at disseminating knowledge about translation and interpreting and providing easy access to a large range of topics, traditions, and methods to a relatively broad audience: not only students who often adamantly prefer such user-friendliness, researchers and lecturers in Translation Studies, Translation & Interpreting professionals; but also scholars and experts from other disciplines (among which linguistics, sociology, history, psychology). In addition the HTS addresses any of those with a professional or personal interest in the problems of translation, interpreting, localization, editing, etc., such as communication specialists, journalists, literary critics, editors, public servants, business managers, (intercultural) organization specialists, media specialists, marketing professionals. The usability, accessibility and flexibility of the HTS depend on the commitment of people who agree that Translation Studies does matter. All users are therefore invited to share their feedback. Any questions, remarks and suggestions for improvement can be sent to the editorial team at [email protected]. Next to the book edition (in printed and electronic, PDF, format), HTS is also available as an online resource, connected with the Translation Studies Bibliography. For access to the Handbook of Translation Studies Online, please visit http://www.benjamins.com/online/hts/

As a growing number of contemporary novelists write for publication in multiple languages, the genre's form and aims are shifting. Born-translated novels include passages that appear to be written in different tongues, narrators who speak to foreign audiences, and other visual and formal techniques that treat translation as a medium rather than as an afterthought. These strategies challenge the global dominance of English, complicate "native" readership, and protect creative works against misinterpretation as they circulate. They have also given rise to a new form of writing that confounds traditional models of literary history and political community. Born Translated builds a much-needed framework for understanding translation's effect on fictional works, as well as digital art, avant-garde magazines, literary anthologies, and visual media. Artists and novelists discussed include J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mohsin Hamid, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamaica Kincaid, Ben Lerner, China Miéville, David Mitchell, Walter Mosley, Caryl Phillips, Adam Thirlwell, Amy Waldman, and Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. The book understands that contemporary literature begins at once in many places, engaging in a new type of social embeddedness and political solidarity. It recasts literary history as a series of convergences and departures and, by elevating the status of "born-translated" works, redefines common conceptions of author, reader, and nation.

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Education will present the state of the art of the place and role of translation in educational contexts worldwide. It lays a sound foundation for the future interdisciplinary cooperation between Translation Studies and Educational Linguistics. By adopting a transdisciplinary perspective, the handbook will bring together the various fields of scholarly enquiry and practice that make a valuable contribution to enlarging the notion of translation and diversifying its uses in education. Each contribution provides an overview of the historical background to a given educational setting. Focusing on current research approaches and empirical findings, this volume outlines the development of pedagogical approaches, methods, assessment and curriculum design. The handbook also examines examples of pedagogies that integrate translation in the curriculum, the teaching method’s approach, design and procedure as well as assessment. Based on a multilingual and applied-oriented approach, the handbook is essential reading for postgraduate students, researchers and advanced undergraduate students of Translation Studies, and educationalists and educators in the 21st century post-global era. Chapters 4, 25, and 26 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.