The Dark Side of Translation

197 Pages·2020·2.656 MB·English

by  Federico Italiano (editor)

THE DARK SIDE OF TRANSLATION
We tend to consider translation as something good, virtuous and bright, but it
can also function as an instrument of concealment, silencing and misdirection—
as something that darkens and obscures. Propaganda, misinformation, narratives
of trauma and imagery of the enemy—to mention just a few of the negative
phenomena that shape our lives—show patterns of communication in which
translation either functions as a weapon or constitutes a space of conflict. But
what does this dark side of translation look like? How does it work?
Ground-breaking in its theoretical conception and pioneering in its thematic
approach, this book unites international scholars from a range of disciplines
including philosophy, translation studies, literary theory, ecocriticism, game stud-
ies, history and political science. With examples that illustrate complex theoret-
ical and philosophical issues, this book also has a major focus on the translational
dimension of ecology and climate change.
Transdisciplinary and topical, this book is key reading for researchers, scholars
and advanced students of translation studies, literature and related areas.
Federico Italiano is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies and
Theatre History, part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna; University
Lecturer in Comparative Literature at LMU Munich and at the University of
Innsbruck; and Visiting Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Graz.
His recent publications include Translation and Geography (2016) and an anthology
of young European poetry, Grand Tour (with Jan Wagner, 2019). An Italian poet
and translator, Federico Italiano has published five poetry collections.

THE DARK SIDE OF
TRANSLATION
Edited by Federico Italiano
Firstpublished2020
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Names:Italiano,Federico,1976-editor.
Title:Thedarksideoftranslation/editedbyFedericoItaliano.
Description:1.|NewYork:TaylorandFrancis,2020.|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2019045967|ISBN9780367337278(hardback)|
ISBN9780367337285(paperback)|ISBN9780429321528(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Translatingandinterpreting–Politicalaspects.|
Translatingandinterpreting–Errors.
Classification:LCCP306.97.P65D372020|DDC418/.02–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019045967
ISBN:978-0-367-33727-8(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-367-33728-5(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-429-32152-8(ebk)
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bySwales&Willis,Exeter,Devon,UK
CONTENTS
Listofcontributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Thedarkside:anintroduction 1
FedericoItaliano
PARTI
(Post-)colonialtranslationsandhegemonicpractices 17
1 Beyondatasteforthedarkside:theapparatusofareaandthe
modernregimeoftranslationunderPaxAmericana 19
JonSolomon
2 Thelanguageofthehegemon:migrationandtheviolenceof
translation 38
MonikaMokre
PARTII
TheHolocaustandthetranslator’sambiguity 57
3 PrimoLevi’sgreyzoneandtheambiguityoftranslationinNazi
concentrationcamps 59
MichaelaWolf
vi Contents
4 Translatingtheuncanny,uncannytranslation 75
ChristophLeitgeb
PARTIII
Thetranslationofclimatechangediscoursesandthe
ecologyofknowledge 93
5 Shadydealings:translation,climateandknowledge 95
MichaelCronin
6 Climatechangeandthedarksideoftranslatingscienceinto
popularculture 111
AlexaWeikvonMossner
7 Darkness,obscurity,opacity:ecologyintranslation 126
DanielGraziadei
PARTIV
Translationaszombification 143
8 Zombiehistory:theundeadintranslation 145
GudrunRath
9 ‘MmmRRRrrUrrRrRRrr!!’:translatingpoliticalanxieties
intozombielanguageindigitalgames 161
EugenPfister
Index 176
CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Cronin is 1776 Professor of French (Chair) in the Department of
French at Trinity College, Dublin, and Director of the Trinity Centre for Liter-
ary and Cultural Translation. He is the author of many works on translation,
language and culture, and his work has been translated into more than sixteen
languages. He is an elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Academia
Europeae/Academy of Europe and is an Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Acadé-
miques. He is an Honorary Member of the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’
Association.
Daniel Graziadei is Head of the Writing Centre and Assistant Professor at the
Institute of Romance Philology at LMU Munich, Germany. He is currently
working on a research project for his Habilitation, on intercultural misunder-
standings in literature. His doctoral thesis (Insel(n) im Archipel), on the nissopoie-
tical construction of islands and archipelagos in contemporary Caribbean
literatures, was published in 2017, and his MA thesis on literary neoavantgarde
groups in Latin America and the USA in 2008. When he isn’t reading or
researching, Daniel is translating poetry from Italian and Spanish to German, or
writing and performing his own poetry (danielgraziadei.de).
Federico Italiano is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies
and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Univer-
sity Lecturer in Comparative Literature at LMU Munich and at the Univer-
sity of Innsbruck, and Visiting Professor of Translation Studies at the
University of Graz. His recent publications include Translation and Geography
(2016) and an anthology of young European poetry, Grand Tour (with Jan
Wagner, 2019). An Italian poet and translator, Federico Italiano has published
five poetry collections.
viii Contributors
Christoph Leitgeb is a researcher in modern German literary studies at the
Institute for Cultural Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of
Science in Vienna. He publishes the scholarly magazine Sprachkunst and teaches
at the universities of Salzburg and Vienna. Previously, he was a literary critic for
the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, a university lecturer in Sheffield, Osaka
and Olomouc, and a visiting professor at Leiden.
Monika Mokre is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies and
Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. She is
a political scientist and political activist in the field of asylum and migration. Her
research fields include democratic theory, asylum and migration politics, cultural
politics, gender studies. She is the author of Solidarität als Übersetzung. Überlegun-
gen zum Refugee Protest Camp Vienna (2015) and, jointly with Cornelia Bruell, of
Postmarxistisches Staatsverständnis (2018).
Eugen Pfister is project manager of the SNF-Ambizione research project
‘Horror—Game—Politics’ at the Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB). Born in
1980 in Vienna, he studied History and Political Sciences at the University of
Vienna and the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). From 2008 to 2013, he
held a fellowship at the international research training group ‘The History of
Political Communication from the Antiquities to the 20th Century’ at the
Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. He completed his
PhD in co-tutelle at the Università degli Studi di Trento and the Johann-
Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität. He is a founding member of the research group
Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele (gespielt.hypotheses.org).
Gudrun Rath is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and
Design, Linz, Austria. She is a member of the Young Academy (Austrian Acad-
emy of Sciences, ÖAW) and holds a PhD from the University of Vienna. Her
publications include Zwischenzonen. Theorien und Fiktionen des Übersetzens (‘Inter-
stices of Translation’, 2013) and the edited volume Zombies (2014). At present,
she is working on her second monograph on narratives of zombification from
a historical and transatlantic perspective.
In a professional career covering Europe, East Asia and North America, Jon
Solomon has concentrated his research activities on the biopolitics of transla-
tion, focusing on the specificity of translational and linguistic labour in the con-
text of East Asia and East Asian studies. The modern regime of translation that
governs this crucial form of social labour is a privileged place for understanding
the relations among anthropological difference, geo-cultural area, areal divisions
in the humanities and the abstractions of capitalist accumulation. His recent pub-
lications include, ‘Logistical Species and Translational Process: A Critique of the
Colonial-Imperial Modernity’, Intermédialités 29 (2016).
Contributors ix
Alexa Weik von Mossner is Associate Professor of American Studies at the
University of Klagenfurt in Austria. Her research explores the theoretical inter-
sections of cognitive science, affective narratology and environmental literature
and film. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Minds: Literature, Emotion, and the
Transnational Imagination (2014) and Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and
Environmental Narrative (2017).
Michaela Wolf is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation Studies,
University of Graz. She is the author of The Habsburg Monarchy’s Many-
Languaged Soul: Translating and Interpreting, 1848–1918 (2015), and the editor of
Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps (2016). Her areas of teaching and
research interest include translation sociology, cultural studies and translation,
translation history, and translation and visual anthropology. Her present research
focus is on communication among the Interbrigades of the Spanish Civil War.