Three voices or one?
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Christina Gullin
Abstract
Translations are often treated as if they were identical to the source text – as if the translated text was written not by a translator but by the original author. This phenomenon, recently dubbed “the translation pact,” also informs the way literary reviewers talk about the works they review, as if such works provided access to the original author’s voice. In this chapter, I study the ways in which reviewers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, respectively, talk about the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish translations of Nadine Gordimer’s 2005 novel Get a Life as if they were talking about the original book, when they are in fact talking about three different books in closely related languages.
Abstract
Translations are often treated as if they were identical to the source text – as if the translated text was written not by a translator but by the original author. This phenomenon, recently dubbed “the translation pact,” also informs the way literary reviewers talk about the works they review, as if such works provided access to the original author’s voice. In this chapter, I study the ways in which reviewers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, respectively, talk about the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish translations of Nadine Gordimer’s 2005 novel Get a Life as if they were talking about the original book, when they are in fact talking about three different books in closely related languages.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
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Part I. Opening the field
- Introduction 3
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Part II. Charting the field
- The Scandinavian singer-translator’s multisemiotic voice as performance 21
- Translators, editors, publishers, and critics 39
- The making of a bestseller-in-translation 61
- Contextual factors when reading a translated academic text 81
- When poets translate poetry 101
- Translators in search of originals 119
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Part III. Traveling the field
- Unraveling multiple translatorship through an e-mail correspondence 133
- Silenced in translation 159
- The voice of the implied author in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe 181
- Three voices or one? 201
- The voices of Cieza de León in English 223
- References 241
- Index 263
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Part I. Opening the field
- Introduction 3
-
Part II. Charting the field
- The Scandinavian singer-translator’s multisemiotic voice as performance 21
- Translators, editors, publishers, and critics 39
- The making of a bestseller-in-translation 61
- Contextual factors when reading a translated academic text 81
- When poets translate poetry 101
- Translators in search of originals 119
-
Part III. Traveling the field
- Unraveling multiple translatorship through an e-mail correspondence 133
- Silenced in translation 159
- The voice of the implied author in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe 181
- Three voices or one? 201
- The voices of Cieza de León in English 223
- References 241
- Index 263
