TRANSLATION STUDIES

Translation studies is comprised of two distinctly different, but importantly related, components: translation theory and the practice of translation as a literary art. In the theoretical domain, students are expected to achieve conversance with the philosophy of translation as it has evolved in the West and in Asia, and to discover for themselves an understanding of, if not answers to, a number of abstract (theoretical) questions with significant implications: is an original text fixed and complete or incomplete and, in that sense, unstable? What is the relationship/s of a translation to an original? Is it inherently mimetic or can it be conceived as an interaction or even a collaboration? What, theoretically, should a translation achieve or aspire to achieve and what, as a corollary, is the translator’s task/s?  The contemplation of these and related “big questions” is facilitated by close reading of the “canon” of translation theory including post-structural linguistics, and, more broadly, the philosophy of language.

In the domain of translation as literary art, students labor to render artfully texts from a source language into English. This difficult enterprise confronts students with questions of its own about the nature of reading in a source language, about style, and about the impact on the reader of “technical” approaches that range from literalism to abusive fidelity. The translation specialization is designed to encourage and enable students to apply, or at least to relate, what they have understood from their theoretical study about the possibilities inherent in translation and about philosophical goals to approaches, techniques and choices they will make as actual translators.

FACULTY

Michael Berry
(Chinese fiction and cinema)
Ronald Egan
(Chinese literature & aesthetics)
Suzanne Jill Levine
(Spanish and Portuguese),
John Nathan
(Japanese fiction and cinema)
Katherine Saltzman-Li
(early modern Japanese literature)
Tu Kuo-ch’ing
(Taiwan literature, Comparative East Asian poetics)