The Translator as Writer [Paperback]

Over the last two decades, interest in translation around the world has increased beyond any predictions. International bestseller lists now contain large numbers of translated works, and writers from Latin America, Africa, India and China have joined the lists of eminent, bestselling European writers and those from the global English-speaking world. Despite this, translators tend to be invisible, as are the processes they follow and the strategies they employ when translating.
The Translator as Writer bridges the divide between those who study translation and those who produce translations, through essays written by well-known translators talking about their own work as distinctive creative literary practice. The book emphasises this creativity, arguing that translators are effectively writers, or rewriters who produce works that can be read and enjoyed by an entirely new audience. The aim of the book is to give a proper prominence to the role of translators and in so doing to move attention back to the act of translating, away from more abstract speculation about what translation might involve.

Introduction: Peter Bush and Susan Bassnett1. A Dialogue: On a Translator's Interventions; Ros Schwartz and Nicholas de Lange Part I: The Politics of Writing Translations 2. The Writer of Translations; Peter Bush 3. Let Poetry Win: The Translator as Writer, an Indian Perspective; Lakshmi Holmstrom 4. Motivation in a Surrogate Translation of Goldoni; Bill Findlay 5. Translation: Walking the Tightrope of Illusion; Anthea Bell Part II: Re-discovery and Re-invention6. Translating Fun: Don Quixote; John Rutherford 7. A Czech Shakespeare?; Jir? Josek 8. The Translator in Aliceland: On Translating Alice in Wonderland into Spanish; Juan Gabriel L?pez 9. Translating the Literary: Genetic Criticism, Text Theory and Poetry; Clive Scott 10. Translating Modern Chinese Literature; John Balcom Part III: Body, Blood and Mind 11. Translating from the Body: Meditations on Medl³g