Description
Book SynopsisOrganized around a series of propositions that range from the idea that nothing is translatable to the idea that everything is translatable, this book examines the vital role of translation studies in the "invention" of comparative literature as a discipline.
Trade Review"This is a terrific book and a great pleasure to read. At once creative and provocative, Apter's witty analyses of multilingual matters in literature makes a major contribution to a range of disciplines from translation studies, comparative literature and linguistics, postcolonial studies, to mainstream literary studies in French and English. What is so unusual is the impressive breadth and range of Apter's reading in literatures across the globe. This is a book that will make readers want to rethink the limits of their own disciplines, and retranslate the concepts that they employ."
—Robert J. C. Young, Oxford University, author of Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction"
The Translation Zone offers a richly detailed history of Comparative Literature, a field volatile from the first, looking to contrary horizons, and never more so than at the present moment. Emily Apter explores the roads taken and not taken in the past, linking these to the new, cross-fertilized languages that constitute and energize the field in the future."
—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Through Other Continents: American Literature Across DeepTable of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii TWENTY THESES ON TRANSLATION xi INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction 3 CHAPTER 1: Translation after 9/11: Mistranslating the Art of War 12 PART ONE: TRANSLATING HUMANISM 23 CHAPTER 2: The Human in the Humanities 25 CHAPTER 3: Global Translatio: The "Invention" of Comparative Literature, Istanbul, 1933 41 CHAPTER 4: Saidian Humanism 65 PART TWO: THE POLITICS OF UNTRANSLATABILITY 83 CHAPTER 5: Nothing Is Translatable 85 CHAPTER 6: "Untranslatable" Algeria: The Politics of Linguicide 94 CHAPTER 7: Plurilingual Dogma: Translation by Numbers 109 PART THREE :LANGUAGE WARS 127 CHAPTER 8: Balkan Babel: Language Zones, Military Zones 129 CHAPTER 9: War and Speech 139 CHAPTER 10: The Language of Damaged Experience 149 CHAPTER 11: CNN Creole: Trademark Literacy and Global Language Travel 160 CHAPTER 12: Conde's Creolite in Literary History 178 PART FOUR: TECHNOLOGIES OF TRANSLATION 191 CHAPTER 13: Nature into Data 193 CHAPTER 14: Translation with No Original: Scandals of Textual Reproduction 210 CHAPTER 15: Everything Is Translatable 226 CONCLUSION 241 CHAPTER 16: A New Comparative Literature 243 NOTES 253 INDEX 287
