Cover not available

Article published In: Target
Vol. 29:3 (2017) ► pp.440–463

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

What kind of literature is a literary translation?

ORCiD logo with link | Hong Kong Baptist University
Published online: 20 September 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.16064.rob
Abstract
This paper is a kind of manifesto for a new conception of literary translation as a unique literary genre that is imitative but qualitatively different from, and not necessarily worse than, the model it imitates. It explores this possibility by first interrogating Gérard Genette’s model of literariness in Fiction and Diction – considering how literary translation as a unique genre might fit that model – and then considering what the literary translator imitates, and the relationship between translation and the novel as similar imitative genres. Key to this comparison is the novel’s early (and continuing) reliance on the “found-translation framing device,” which is effectively what Gideon Toury calls a pseudotranslation but is not (necessarily) designed to hide original creation – rather, to play with the illusion of reality. The paper ends with the suggestion that literature tout court might be reimagined in terms of its transformative energies – and that translation might come to be seen as one of literature’s most definitive genres.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The different type of literature that is literary translation
  • 3.Imitating what literary authors do in writing
    • 3.1(Conditional) literary effects
    • 3.2The found-translation framing device
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (41)
References
Barth, John. (1967) 1984. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” In The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction, 62–76. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. 1980. The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cohen, J. M., trans. (1532) 1955. François Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk, and Rainer Grutman, eds. 2005. Fictionalising Translation and Multilingualism. Special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia. New Series 41.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1975) 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Esselborn, Karl. 2007. “Übersetzungen aus der Sprache, die es nicht gibt: Interkulturalität, Globalisierung und Postmoderne in den Texten Yoko Tawadas.” Arcadia 42 (2): 240–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fowles, John. 1974. “Eliduc.” In The Ebony Tower. A Collection of Short Stories, 115–141. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gabrakova, Dennitza. 2010. “‘Wound in the Alphabet’: The Punct(um) of the Text or the F(r)iction of Translation.” In Yoko Tawada. Poetik der Transformation: Beiträge zum Gesamtwerk, ed. by Christine Ivanovic, 385–393. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geisel, Sieglinde. 2001. “Fremdkörper Sprache: Ein Spaziergang mit Yoko Tawada.” Neue Zürchner Zeitung 23 February 2001. Available at [URL].
Genette, Gérard. (1991) 1993. Fiction and Diction. Translated by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “Self-Reference, Self-Reflection and Re-entering Translation.” In Under Construction: Links for the Site of Literary Theory, ed. by Dirk de Geest, Ortwin de Graef, Dirk Delabastita, Koenraad Geldof, Rita Ghesquière, and José Lambert, 259–274. Leuven: Leuven University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaindl, Klaus. 2014. “Of Dragons and Translators: Foreignness as a Principle of Life. Yoko Tawada’s ‘St. George and the Translator.’” In Transfiction: Research into the Realities of Translation Fiction, ed. by Klaus Kaindl and Karlheinz Spitzl, 87–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lefevere, André, ed. 1992. Translation/History/Culture: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, Philip E. 1985. “The Measure of Translation Effects.” In Difference in Translation, ed. by Joseph F. Graham, 31–62. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindenberger, Herbert. 1979. Saul’s Fall: A Critical Fiction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lombez, Christine. 2005. “La ‘traduction supposée’ ou: de la place des pseudotraductions poétiques en France.” In Delabastita and Grutman 20051, 107–121.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Osman, Jena, Juliana Spahr, Thalia Field, and Cecilia Vicuna, eds. 2003. Translucinación. Special issue of Chain 101 (Summer).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas, trans. (1530) 1997. Martin Luther, “Circular Letter on Translation.” In Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche, ed. by Douglas Robinson, 84–89. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. What Is Translation? Centrifugal Theories, Critical Interventions. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Schleiermacher’s Icoses: Social Ecologies of the Different Methods of Translating. Bucharest: Zeta. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. The Dao of Translation: An East-West Dialogue. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The Deep Ecology of Rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017a. Critical Translation Studies. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. Exorcising Translation: Towards an Intercivilizational Turn. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017c. Aleksis Kivi and/as World Literature. Leiden: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sakai, Naoki. 1997. Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schiavi, Giuliana. 1996. “There Is Always a Teller in a Tale.” Target 8 (1): 1–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. (1813) 2002. “Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens.” In Akademievorträge, ed. by Martin Rößler, with the assistance of Lars Emersleben, 67–93. Part I of Schriften und Entwürfe. Vol. 11 of Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: BBAW.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steiner, George. 1999. The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.: A Novel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tawada Yōko. 2007. “St. George and the Translator.” In Facing the Bridge, 109–175. Translated by Margret Mitsutani. New York: New Directions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “Enhancing Cultural Changes by Means of Fictitious Translations.” In Translation and Cultural Change: Studies in History, Norms and Image-Projection, ed. by Eva Hung, 3–17. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Urquhart, Thomas, trans. (1532) 1994. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
, ed. 1998. Translation and Minority . Special issue of The Translator 4 (2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “Translation, Interpretation, Canon Formation.” In Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture, ed. by Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko, 27–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walpole, Horace. (1764) 1901. The Castle of Otranto. London: Cassell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Kelbert, Eugenia
2025. Translation as Different: A View from Linguistic Relativity. Critical Inquiry 51:4 ► pp. 718 ff. DOI logo
Farghal, Mohammed & Ahmad S. Haider
2024. Translating classical Arabic verse: human translation vs. AI large language models (Gemini and ChatGPT). Cogent Social Sciences 10:1 DOI logo
Zhang, Songzhu
2023. English-Chinese and Chinese-English Translations of Literary Texts: The Influence of Stylistic Features on the Translation Process and Eyetracking Technology. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 52:6 ► pp. 2919 ff. DOI logo
Morini, Massimiliano
2020. Luciano Bianciardi. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 32:1 ► pp. 122 ff. DOI logo
Savchenko, Yevheniia & Anhelina Haishun
2020. GRAMMATICAL PECULIARITIES OF BRITISH NOVEL TRANSLATION INTO UKRAINIAN. Naukovy Visnyk of South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushynsky: Linguistic Sciences 2020:30 ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue