Translation History And Culture Susan Bassnett Pdf [upd] -
The book asks: Who commissions a translation? Who funds it? Who censors it? For example, translating a Greek tragedy into 18th-century France required altering the text to fit French neoclassical rules. The PDF demonstrates that translation is never neutral; it is an act of . Dominant cultures translate "foreign" texts to assert supremacy, while marginalized cultures translate to reclaim voice.
and André Lefevere’s influential work, specifically focusing on the "cultural turn" presented in Translation, History, and Culture (1990).
Languages are not simple mirror images of each other. Every language contains unique idioms, historical baggage, and social nuances. Bassnett emphasized that translating literally often destroys the actual meaning of a text. To truly translate, one must transplant a text from its original cultural soil into an entirely new ecosystem. The Text as an Object translation history and culture susan bassnett pdf
Bassnett and Lefevere's concept of suggests that a translation is a reflection of a certain ideology or poetics. When a text is translated, it is rewritten to fit the constraints of the target culture’s literary and social norms.
Perhaps Bassnett's most significant contribution to the field is her co-founding, with André Lefevere, of the "cultural turn" in Translation Studies. In 1990, they were the first to suggest that the discipline should shift its focus and look toward the work of cultural studies scholars. This meant moving beyond the text itself to examine the broader forces that shape it. According to this view, translation is a "highly charged, transgressive activity" that rarely involves a relationship of equality between texts and cultures. The book asks: Who commissions a translation
The book argues that context is everything. "Translations are never produced in a vacuum," Bassnett argues, "and that they are also never received in a vacuum. The production and acceptance of translations happen in a context. One context is, of course, that of history. The other context is that of culture" [11†L16-L18]. By examining how translation has been used throughout history to develop literatures and cultures, the essays in Translation, History and Culture made a powerful case that translation commands a central position in the shaping of European literatures and cultures [15†L12-L14].
Her partnership with André Lefevere continued in Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (1998), which further developed the core themes of the cultural turn. Her collaborative work with Harish Trivedi on Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (1999) gave a sharper political edge to the cultural turn, exploring the specific power dynamics at play in the translation of formerly colonized literatures. For example, translating a Greek tragedy into 18th-century
Translation was once viewed as a purely mechanical exercise. Critics treated it as a linguistic matching game where words from one language were simply swapped for words in another.
: Examining how translation reinforced or challenged colonial power structures.
