Cover not available

Article published In: Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 16:1 (2021) ► pp.61–79

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

The translator

Literary or performance artist?

ORCiD logo with link | University of Birmingham
Published online: 19 June 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.19067.sal
Abstract
This article proposes that in order to understand the nature of literary translation as an art form, we need to complement existing approaches drawing on literary, linguistic and sociological theories with insights derived from performance studies. As a way of exploring what the theorization of translation as performance art could contribute to our understanding of literary translation, I map four basic tenets of performance as restored behavior (Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre & Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) to two translators’ (Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush) accounts of their practice. The mapping is illustrated with writings by and interviews with the translators, focusing on four points of contact: the unresolved dialectal tension between self and other, the deliberate, rehearsed nature of decisions, the need for distance between original and performance/translation, and the role of the audience.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Style as fingerprints
  • Translator style from the perspective of literary stylistics
  • Translator style from the perspective of cognitive stylistics and sociology
  • Translation, performativity, performance
  • In the translators’ words
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (64)
References
Aldawsari, Hamad. 2019. Translator Style in an English-Arabic Context. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Birmingham.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allen, Esther and Susan Bernofsky (eds). 2013. In Translation: Translators on their Work and What It Means. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words, second edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. by Wern W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1989. “The death of the author.” In The Rustle of Language, trans. by Richard Howard. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 1974. “Verbal art as performance.” American Anthropologist 77(2): 290–311. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1989. “Performance.” International Encyclopedia of Communications, ed. by Erik Barnouw. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, Antoine. 1995. Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, Sandra. 2014. “Performing translation.” In A Companion to Translation Studies, ed. by Sandra Berman and Catherine Porter, 285–297. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benshalom, Yotam. 2010. “Performing translation.” In Thinking Through Translation with Metaphors, ed. by James St André, 47–74. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boase-Beier, J. 2019. Translation and Style, 2nd Edition. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosseaux, Charlotte. 2007. How Does it Feel? Point of View in Translation. The Case of Virginia Woolf into French. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burrows, John. 2002. “The Englishing of Juvenal: Computational stylistics and translated texts.” Style 36(4): 677–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bush, Peter. 2012. “Peter Bush.” An interview with Peter Bush by New Spanish Books. [URL]
. 2004. “Borges in Translation.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “The politics of a literary translator’s interventions: The case of Strawberry and Chocolate.” Traduire 1951: 53–67.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bush, Peter and Carol Maier. 1997. “The making of a translator: An interview with Peter Bush.” Translation Review 531: 5–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. 2004. Performance: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheetham, Dominic. 2016. “Literary translation and conceptual metaphors: From movement to performance.” Translation Studies 9(3): 241–255. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cockerill, Hiroko. 2006. Style and Narrative in Translations: The Contributions of Futabei Shimei. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Limited Inc. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gallie, Walter B. 1964. Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grossman, Edith. 2010. Why Translation Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guangjun, Wu and Liu Tingting. 2016. “The transformation of translatorial identity and the shift of translation style: A comparison of the three versions of the she king translated by James Legge.” Perspectives 24(1): 130–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmes, David. I. 1994. “Authorship attribution.” Computers and the Humanities 281: 87–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, Libo and Chiyu Chu. 2014. “Translator’s style or translational style? A corpus-based study of style in translated Chinese novels.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 1(2): 122–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jiang, Chengzhi. 2012. “Rethinking the translator’s voice.” Neohelicon 391: 365–381. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jull Costa, Margaret and Timothy Matthews. 2013. “Margaret Jull Costa – Translation and Reading.” Interview by Timothy Matthews. [URL]
Jull Costa, Margaret. 1999. “On translation and on translating Saramago in particular.” Portuguese Studies 151: 207–215.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. “What’s lost and what’s gained: Translating Luisa Valenzuela.” In Other Words 101: 20–23.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta. 2013. “Idiosyncratic features of interpreting style.” New Voices in Translation Studies 91: 38–52.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kennedy, Dennis. 2009. The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N. and Michael H. Short. 1981/2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Magalhães, Célia M. and Ariel Novodvorski. 2012. “A chavicidade na análise de estilo em tradução: um estudo baseado em corpora paralelos espanhol/português.” In Anais do X Encontro de Linguística de Corpus: aspectos metodológicos dos estudos de corpora, 294–313. Belo Horizonte: FALE/UFMG.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Magalhães, Célia M., M. C. de Castro and M. S. Montenegro. 2013. “Estilística tradutória: Um estudo de corpus paralelo de uma tradução brasileira e uma tradução portuguesa de Heart of Darkness.” Tradterm 211: 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. “Translational stylistics: Dulcken’s translations of Hans Christian Andersen.” Language and Literature 13(1): 13–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Translation and Creativity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mikkhailov, Mikhail and Miia Villikka. 2001. “Is there such a thing as a translator’s style?” Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2001 Conference, University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University, 378–385.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munday, Jeremy. 2008. Style and Ideology in Translation: Latin American Writing in English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olohan, Maeve and Mona Baker. 2000. “Reporting that in translated English: Evidence for subconscious processes of explicitation?” Across Languages and Cultures 1(2): 141–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Emer. 2003. “Narratology meets translation studies, or, the voice of the translator in children’s literature.” Meta 48(1–2): 197–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pekkanen, Hilkka. 2007. “The duet of the author and the translator: Looking at style through shifts in literary translation.” New Voices in Translation Studies 31: 1–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas. 2003. Performative Linguistics: Speaking and Translating as Doing Things with Words. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rybicki, Jan. 2012. “The great mystery of the (almost) invisible translator: Stylometry in translation.” In Quantitative Methods in Corpus-Based Translation Studies, ed. by Michael P. Oakes and Meng Ji, 231–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saldanha, Gabriela. 2014. “Style in, and of, translation.” In A Companion to Translation Studies, ed. by Sandra Berman and Catherine Porter, 95–106. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011a. “Translator style: Methodological considerations.” The Translator 17(1): 25–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011b. “Style of translation: The use of foreign words in translations by Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush.” In Corpus-Based Translation Studies: Research and Application, ed. A. Kruger, K. Wallmach, and Jeremy Munday, 237–58. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011c. “Emphatic italics in English translations: Stylistic failure or motivated stylistic resources?” Meta 56(2): 424–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “Explicitation revisited: Bringing the reader into the picture.” Trans-kom 1(1): 20–35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre & Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988/2003. Performance Theory. London: Routledge.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
Walder, Claudia. 2013. “A timbre of its own: Investigating style in translation and original writing.” New Voices in Translation Studies 91: 53–68.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wang, Qing and Defeng Li. 2012. “Looking for translator’s fingerprints: A corpus based study on Chinese translation of Ulysses.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 27(1): 81–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wechsler, Robert. 1998. Performing without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation. North Haven, CT: Catbird Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winters, Marion. 2007. “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Die Schönen und Verdammten: A corpus-based study of speech-act report verbs as a feature of translators’ style.” Meta 52(3): 412–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yannakopoulou, Vasso. 2014. “The influence of the habitus on translatorial style: The case of Yorgos Himona’s rendering of Hamlet into Greek.” In Remapping Habitus in Translation Studies, ed. by Gisella M. Vorderdobermeier, 162–182. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

He, He & Bing Xiong
2025. A Bibliometric Analysis of Translator’s Style in Translation Studies: A Chinese Perspective (1980–2022). Sage Open 15:1 DOI logo
Ping, Yuan
2023.  Investigating translation style in English translations of Chinese editorials and commentaries from the Hong Kong Economic Journal : a corpus stylistic analysis . Perspectives 31:6 ► pp. 1110 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 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