New books at a glance. Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. 333 pp. ISBN 9780226745060 22 USD (Afterlives of the Bible).
Table of contents
Translation discourse in the past ten years or so have lead us to socio-political and philosophical venues that have supplied some fascinating ground for mental exercise. The post-structuralist discourse around issues such as the death of the author in the post-Borges-Foucault-Derrida era, questioning basic concepts such as ‘the original’, ‘meaning’, ‘equivalence’, or ‘translation’ vs. ‘re-writing’ has yielded invigorating ‘problematizations’ of translation theories. Yet the practice of examining the relevancy of such notions against a systematic array of test-cases has not been as intensive. The lack of such studies allows for a fruitful interpretation of the concepts and terms only, in which they become the aim of research instead of valuable [ p. 162 ]methodological tools. Outstanding in its “post-descriptive” tendency, as well as its daring and depth is Naomi Seidman’s discussion of the delicate mechanism and tactics involved in Jewish-Christian translation difference.