Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

Argues for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

2001 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Translators have long claimed that their job is to "step aside and let the source author speak through them." In Who Translates? Douglas Robinson uses this adage to set up a series of "postrationalist" perspectives on translation, all based on the recognition that translation has always been thought of in terms of the translator's surrender to forces beyond his or her rational control. Exploring this theme, Robinson examines Plato's Ion, Philo Judaeus and Augustine on the Septuagint, Paul on inspired interpreters, Joseph Smith on the Book of Mormon, and Schleiermacher, Marx, and Heidegger on translation. He traces the imaginative and historical linkages between twentieth-century conceptions of ideology and ancient conceptions of spirit-channeling, and the performative inversion of power relations by which the "channel" (or translator) comes to wield the source author as his or her tool. And he argues throughout for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but rather on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

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Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

Argues for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

2001 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Translators have long claimed that their job is to "step aside and let the source author speak through them." In Who Translates? Douglas Robinson uses this adage to set up a series of "postrationalist" perspectives on translation, all based on the recognition that translation has always been thought of in terms of the translator's surrender to forces beyond his or her rational control. Exploring this theme, Robinson examines Plato's Ion, Philo Judaeus and Augustine on the Septuagint, Paul on inspired interpreters, Joseph Smith on the Book of Mormon, and Schleiermacher, Marx, and Heidegger on translation. He traces the imaginative and historical linkages between twentieth-century conceptions of ideology and ancient conceptions of spirit-channeling, and the performative inversion of power relations by which the "channel" (or translator) comes to wield the source author as his or her tool. And he argues throughout for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but rather on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

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Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

by Douglas Robinson
Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason

by Douglas Robinson

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$34.95 

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Overview

Argues for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.

2001 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Translators have long claimed that their job is to "step aside and let the source author speak through them." In Who Translates? Douglas Robinson uses this adage to set up a series of "postrationalist" perspectives on translation, all based on the recognition that translation has always been thought of in terms of the translator's surrender to forces beyond his or her rational control. Exploring this theme, Robinson examines Plato's Ion, Philo Judaeus and Augustine on the Septuagint, Paul on inspired interpreters, Joseph Smith on the Book of Mormon, and Schleiermacher, Marx, and Heidegger on translation. He traces the imaginative and historical linkages between twentieth-century conceptions of ideology and ancient conceptions of spirit-channeling, and the performative inversion of power relations by which the "channel" (or translator) comes to wield the source author as his or her tool. And he argues throughout for a postrationalist conception of translation based not on the translator's rational control of words and meanings but rather on a flowing through the translator of voices and textualities.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780791491171
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Publication date: 02/01/2001
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
File size: 651 KB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Douglas Robinson is Professor of English at the University of Mississippi and has written numerous books on translation and culture, including The Translator's Turn, Translation and Taboo, and Becoming a Translator: An Accelerated Course.


Douglas Robinson is Dean of Arts and Chair Professor of English at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the author of many books, including Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason, also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Who Translates?
Preliminary Questions Channeling Rationalism, Pre- and Post- Part One: The Spirit-channeling Model Part Two: Ideology Part Three: Transient Assemblies

PART ONE: THE SPIRIT-CHANNELING MODEL
1. Reason and Spirit
The Translator as Spirit-channel "Reason"? "Spirit"? Logologies of Reason and Spirit
2. The Divine Inspiration of Translation
A Short History of Spirit-channeling Socrates and the Art of the Rhapsode Philo and Augustine on the Legend of the Septuagint Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon Paul on Glossolalia and Interpreting

PART TWO: IDEOLOGY
3. Ideology and Cryptonymy
Logology of Ideology Heidegger on Spirit Cryptonymy: Abraham/Torok and Freud Heidegger's Crypt First Translation Second Translation Third Translation

4. The (Ideo)logic of Spectrality
Shakespeare's Permission (In)visibilizing Lear Marx and Schleiermacher on Spirits and Ghosts

PART THREE: TRANSIENT ASSEMBLIES
5. The Pandemonium Self
Rationalist and Postrationalist Theories of the Self Lacan's Schema L Pandemonium The Invisible Subject The Translator's Objects Fidus interpres and the Double Bind
6. The Invisible Hand
Invisible and Hidden Hands Translation Agencies
Conclusion: Beyond Reason

Works Cited
Index

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