Post-colonial literatures and translation

Paul F. Bandia
Concordia University
Table of contents

It is now generally acknowledged that the “cultural turn” in the social sciences and the humanities that occurred in the 1990s changed Translation Studies (TS) forever. Culture had come to take center stage in translation analyses and discourses, rather than language viewed mainly in term of a system of linguistic exchange and communication. Language became subordinate to culture, both intertwined and often fused together in any serious discussion or analysis of translation. The ramifications were numerous for Translation Studies, as age-old notions and concepts such as equivalency, pure or standard language, distinctive binarisms and their implied hierarchy (original/translation; source-text/target text; word-for-word/sense-for-sense, etc.) were thrown into disarray. The study of post-colonial literatures is one of the fundamental areas through which the “cultural turn” made inroads into Translation Studies. By the very nature of this literature, written in colonial languages by post-colonial subjects, a host of issues often overlooked in the past, namely gender, ethnicity, sociology, linguistic alterity, identity, politics and ideology became prominent in translation research.

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References

Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth & Tiffin, Helen
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Further reading

Bassnett, Susan & Harish Trivedi
(eds) 1999 Post-colonial Translation. Theory and practice. London & New York: Routledge  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheyfitz, Eric
1991 The Poetics of Imperialism. Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.  TSBGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rafael, Vicente L
1988/1993 Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule. Rev. ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.  TSBGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simon, Sherry & Paul St-Pierre
(eds) 2000 Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.  TSBGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
 
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