The Translatability of cultures
Subtitle: figurations of the space between
By: edited by Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser.
Contributors: Budick, Sanford, 1942-; Iser, Wolfgang.
Series: Irvine studies in the humanities
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 348
Subjects: Translating and interpreting; Literature and anthropology; Literature, Comparative; Cross-cultural studies; Criticism
Description: Translation between any two languages sets in motion a tug-of-war around those aspects of each language that are least accessible to agreed-upon equivalents, around those aspects of expression and understanding that are unique to a given culture. This struggle - between possession and dispossession, or between reinscription and obliteration - is necessarily perilous for the culture that has less power to retain the usages of its language.

Since translation wields powerful forces of cultural change, it is an arena both of the global coercions of national cultures and of the local dominations of everyday others by everyday selves. Thus the ethics of translation are both the ethics of cross-cultural discourse and the unit problem of ethical discourse itself.

. The fourteen essays in this volume - which consider a wide variety of cultures from ancient Egypt to contemporary Japan - address both sorts of discourse and elucidate the two-way or mutual conditioning of cultural positions as well as the illusions and exclusions created by mutuality. In short, the essays describe the conditions under which cultures that do not dominate each other may yet achieve a limited translatability of cultures.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-344) and index.