Collaborator: Ezra Pound, Translation, and Appropriation

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Alex Davis

This article discusses a number of Pound's poetic works, including Homage to Sextus Propertius, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and selected cantos, in relation to the practice of collaborative translation undertaken by numerous modernist authors. In Pound's case, such collaboration takes the form, in the main, of a creative partnership with poets central to his conception of the ‘Tradition’, for example, Homer and Propertius. In Pound's hands, the source text is ‘made new’ for a modernist target culture by means of strategies allied to his development of a poetics of appropriation, beginning with his composition of the Malatesta Cantos, in 1922–23. Pound's collaborative engagement with pre-existing texts, or ‘found materials’, is compared in detail to the notion of ‘translation as displacement’ developed in the recent conceptual writing of Kenneth Goldsmith, in particular, his multi-lingual Against Translation. This comparative reading, it is argued, assists in an appraisal of aspects of the politics of The Cantos, specifically the growing anti-capitalism of Pound's epic in the inter-war years.

2011 ◽  
Vol 347-353 ◽  
pp. 426-430
Author(s):  
Da Lai Wang

This paper aims to account for sustainable development of different cultures in the context of globalization from the perspective of cultural functions of translation, which wield enormous power in constructing representations of the foreign culture and have far reaching effects in the target culture. According to cultural communication of translation, the major task of translation is to turn the cultural information in one language into another. Therefore, in the process of translating, the translator should try his utmost to allow his target language reader to acquire cultural information of the source text in order to promote mutual understanding between Western people and Eastern people and make different cultures co-exist peacefully and achieve sustainable development.


2016 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Reginaldo Francisco

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2014n16p91O teórico e crítico de tradução francês Antoine Berman afirma que as traduções literárias em suas formas tradicionais e dominantes representam um ato culturalmente etnocêntrico, isto é, que traz tudo à sua própria cultura, às suas normas e valores, buscando fazer com que se esqueça que se trata de uma tradução. Para se opor a essa prática dominante, o autor propõe uma tradução que não esconda o elemento estrangeiro na obra traduzida, e que para isso seja fiel à “letra” (lettre) do original. Essa oposição é muito conhecida também nos termos utilizados pelo teórico norte-americano Lawrence Venuti, que fala em “domesticação” (domestication) e “estrangeirização” (foreignization) para se referir respectivamente às práticas tradutórias que ocultam as diferenças culturais, adaptando tudo à cultura de chegada, e àquelas que mantêm a estranheza do texto original e da cultura de partida. Interpretações mais radicais das ideias desses autores podem levar a pensar a tradução como dividida nessas duas possibilidades, e muitas vezes à escolha de uma delas como ideal e a outra como condenável. Entretanto, assim como com dicotomias mais antigas (literal x livre, equivalência formal x equivalência dinâmica, etc.), também estas não são duas categorias estanques, podendo haver diferentes combinações de ambas na tradução de um mesmo texto, além de estratégias híbridas ou soluções que não representam nem uma nem outra posição. Neste trabalho discuto a problematização dessa dicotomia, incluindo exemplos de minha tradução do italiano para o português do livro infantojuvenil O diário de Gian Burrasca, de Luigi Bertelli (Vamba).ABSTRACTFrench translation theorist and critic Antoine Berman states that in their traditional and dominant forms literary translations represent a culturally ethnocentric act, which adapts everything to its own culture, standards and values, seeking to make readers forget that they are reading a translation. To oppose this dominant practice, the author suggests a kind of translation that would not hide the foreign element in the translated work, one that is faithful to the “letter” (lettre) of the original text. A similar opposition to that / to Berman’s is also well-known through the terms “domestication” and “foreignization” as defined by American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who uses them to refer to translation practices that on one hand conceal cultural differences, adapting everything to the target culture, and on the other keep the strangeness of both source text and culture in the translation. Radical interpretations of these authors’ ideas may lead to the misconception that translation is divided into those two possibilities, and often to the judgement that one of them is ideal and the other condemnable. Nevertheless, as with other older dichotomies (literal vs. free translation, formal vs. dynamic equivalence, etc.), these are not clearly distinguishable and opposed categories. There may be different combinations of them in the translation of a text, as well as hybrid strategies or solutions that do not represent either one of them. In this paper I discuss the problems of such dichotomy, drawing examples from my translation of Luigi Bertelli’s book Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca from Italian to Portuguese.Keywords: foreignization; domestication; dichotomy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Lingyan Zhu

<p>The first half of 20th century saw two translators coming from the west and east respectively choose the same translation strategy to carry out their syntactic experiments in their translation practice. The two renowned translators are Ezra Pound and Lu Xun. Staying in different historical contexts and encountered with the dominant target poetics they were dissatisfied with, both Pound and Lu Xun attempted to fulfill their syntactic experiments by signifying the syntactic differences of the source texts through the use of foreignization strategy. Although attracting many negative comments because of the unfluent translation resulting from them, Pound’ and Lu Xun’ syntactic experiments exert great influence on the development of their target languages, further contributing a lot to the development of their target culture. This paper will make a comparative study of Pound’s and Lu Xun’s syntactic experiments by exploring their motives, elaborating their translation principles and strategies, and analyzing their influence and significance.</p>


Author(s):  
Stephen Romer

This chapter examines in depth the deeply personal use of ‘talismanic’ fragments of non-translation in the work of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Viewed as a specialized branch of modernist allusion, examples are considered in detail, in particular, Eliot’s references to the Provençal of Arnaut Daniel in Ash-Wednesday and elsewhere, and Pound’s use of Cavalcanti in The Cantos, read as a complex double-gesture, highly personal and yet strange. The chapter closes by considering the development of Eliot’s poetic practices, including the deployment of allusion and relative absence of non-translation, in Four Quartets.


1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 311
Author(s):  
Robert Mayo ◽  
Lewis Leary
Keyword(s):  

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 (01) ◽  
pp. 28-0140-28-0140
Keyword(s):  

1964 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
L. S. Dembo ◽  
George Dekker
Keyword(s):  

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