In the Face of Adversity

Translating difference and dissent

Edited by Thomas Nolden

£25.00

ISBN: 9781800083707

Publication: February 20, 2023

Series: Literature and Translation

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In the Face of Adversity explores the dynamics of translating texts that articulate particular notions of adverse circumstances. The chapters illustrate how literary records of often painful experiences and dissenting voices are at risk of being stripped of their authenticity when not carefully handled by the translator; how cultural moments in which the translation of a text that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion instead gave rise to a translator who enabled its preservation while ultimately coming into their own as an author as a result; and how the difficulties the translator faces in intercultural or transnational constellations in which prejudice plays a role endangers projects meant to facilitate mutual understanding.

The authors address translation as a project of making available and preserving a corpus of texts that would otherwise be in danger of becoming censored, misperceived or ignored. They look at translation and adaptation as a project of curating textual models of personal, communal or collective perseverance, and they offer insights into the dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion through a series of theoretical frameworks, as well as through a set of concrete case studies drawn from different cultural and historical contexts. The collection also explores some of the venues that artists have pursued by transferring artistic expressions from one medium into another in order to preserve and disseminate important experiences in different cultural settings, media and arts.

Thomas Nolden teaches in the Comparative Literary Studies Program at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.

Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Thomas Nolden

Part I: Modes of Perseverance: Translating the Jewish Tradition

1 Lamentations 3: A Four-Voiced Rendering
Edward L. Greenstein
2 Isaiah 1 in Translation and Contexts
Everett Fox
3 Emma Lazarus, Heinrich Heine and the Splendid Galaxy of Jewish Poetry
Abigail Gillman
4 City of the Dead or The Dead City? Yitskhok-Leybush Peretz as Self-Translator
Efrat Gal-Ed

Part II: Modes of Intervention: Translating Dissent and Diversity
5 How George Eliot Came to Write
Gail Twersky Reimer
6 Venture, Courage, Ruin: Karin Michaëlis in Translation Across Genre and Time Katherine Hollander
7 Lu Xun’s Unfaithful Translation of Science Fiction: Rewriting Chinese Literary History
Mingwei Song
8 Translating Chinese Science Fiction into English: Decolonization and Reconciliation on a Cultural Battlefield
Emily Xueni Jin
9 Whose Voice(s)?: Authorship, Translation, and Diversity in Contemporary Children’s Literature
Isabelle Chen

Part III: Modes of Remedialization: Translating Beyond the Text
10 Seeing Images, Thinking of Words: Visual Art as Translation Werner Sollors
11 Theatre without Theatres: Performance Transmission as Translation
Sarah Bay-Cheng
12 From Miami to Hong Kong: Sounding Transnational Queerness and Translation in Moonlight
K. E. Goldschmitt
13 Crowd Noise: Collective Turbulence in Modern Opera
Martin Brody
14 Creative Translation in Emerson’s Idealism
Kenneth P. Winkler

Index

Format: Paperback

Size: 234 × 156 mm

272 Pages

2 B&W illustrations

ISBN: 9781800083707

Publication: February 20, 2023

Series: Literature and Translation