Skip to main content

Understanding Translated Authorship

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Examining Text and Authorship in Translation
  • 450 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter outlines a theoretical approach to the analysis of translated authorship, drawing on Foucault’s concept of the author-function, a discursively constructed category assigned to the writer. By extending this to the analysis of translated literature, the chapter demonstrates how a translated author’s various “functions” may differ and compete with one another. Borrowing from sociological studies of identity, it is possible to discuss how the struggle for control over the identity of the translated author is enacted by attempts to “narrate” it on various individual, societal and abstract levels. The chapter also identifies not only the narrative voice of the translated text but also its paratexts as sites where authorship is framed in such narratives.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

Secondary Sources and Paratexts

  • Al Sharif, Souhad. 2009. Translation in the Service of Advocacy: Narrating Palestine and Palestinian Women in Translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Unpublished thesis (PhD), Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, Guyda. 2007. Paratexts and their Function in Seventeenth-Century English Decamerons. Modern Language Review 102(1): 40–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ascherson, Neal. 2006. Even Now: The Silence of Günter Grass. London Review of Books, 6 November.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Mona. 2001. Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator. Target 12(2): 241–266.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Reframing Conflict in Translation. Social Semiotics 17(2): 151–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010a. Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone: Narrated and Narrators. The Translator 16(2): 197–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010b. Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community. In Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. Maria Tymoczko, 23–41. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holoquist, 2004 ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldo, Michela. 2008. Translation as Re-Narration in Italian-Canadian Writing. Codeswitching, Focalisation, Voice and Plot in Nino Ricci’s Trilogy and Its Italian Translation. Unpublished thesis (PhD), Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barthes, Roland. 1970. Historical Discourse. Trans. Peter Wexler. In Structuralism: A Reader, ed. Michael Lane, 145–155. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bassnett, Susan. 2011. The Translator as Writer. In The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation, eds. Claudia Buffagni, Beatrice Garzelli, and Serenella Zanotti, 91–102. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bathrick, David. 1995. The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. 2000. Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–639.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 1996. The Task of the Translator. Trans. Harry Zohn. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, 253–263. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, W. Lance, and Murray Edelman. 1985. Toward a New Political Narrative. Journal of Communication 35(4): 156–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biendarra, Anke S. 2012. Germans Going Global: Contemporary Literature and Cultural Globalization. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Boase-Beier, Jean. 2006. Stylistic Approaches to Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boase-Beier, Jean, and Michael Holman (eds). 1998. The Practice of Literary Translation: Constraints and Creativity. Manchester: St Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boéri, Julie. 2008. A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy: Competing Perspectives on Activism in Conference Interpreting. The Translator 14(1): 21–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Booth, Wayne. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyden, Michael, and Patrick Goethals. 2011. Translating the Watcher’s Voice: Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao into Spanish. Meta 56(1): 20–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruner, Jerome. 1991. The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry 18(1): 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buehler, George. 1984. The Death of Socialist Realism in the Novels of Christa Wolf. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bush, Peter. 2006. The Writer of Translations. In The Translator as Writer, eds. Susan Bassnett, and Peter Bush, 23–32. London and New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carr, David. 1997. Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity. In Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 7–25. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crites, Stephen. 1997. The Narrative Quality of Experience. In Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 26–50. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, Michael. 1996. Translating Ireland: Translations, Languages, Cultures. Cork: Cork University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunningham, David, and Barb Browning. 2004. The Emergence of Worthy Targets: Official Frames and Deviance Narratives Within the FBI. Sociological Forum 19(3): 347–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1985. Des Tours de Babel. In Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph F. Graham and Trans. Joseph F. Graham, 165–207. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenhaus, Peter. 1993. Cultural Narratives and the Therapeutic Motif: The Political Containment of Vietnam Veterans. In Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives, ed. Dennis K. Mumby, 77–118. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Emmerich, Wolfgang. 1991. ‘Affirmation—Utopie—Melancholie: Versuch einer Bilanz von vierzig Jahren DDR-Literatur’ [Affirmation—Utopia—Melancholy: Attempt to Account for Forty Years of GDR Literature]. German Studies Review 14(2): 325–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, Walter R. 1987. Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value and Action. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge, Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. Routledge Classics edn (2011). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1977. ‘What is an Author?’, translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, 113–138. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1981. The Order of Discourse. In Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader, ed. Robert Young and Trans. Ian McLeod, 48–78. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox, Thomas C. 1993. Germanistik and GDR Studies: (Re)Reading a Censored Literature. Monatshefte 85(3): 284–294.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fries, Marilyn Sibley. 1992. Christa Wolf’s “Ort” in Amerika [Christa Wolf’s ‘Place’ in America]. In Zwischen gestern und morgen: Schriftstellerinnen der DDR aus Amerikanischer Sicht [Between Yesterday and Today: Female Writers of the GDR from an American Perspective], ed. Ute Brandes, 169–182. Berlin: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • García Vizcaíno, María José. 2008. ‘Cisneros’ Code-Mixed Narrative and Its Implications for Translation. Mutatis Mutandis 1(2): 212–224.

    Google Scholar 

  • Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997a. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gergen, Kenneth J., and Mary M. Gergen. 1997. Narratives of the Self. In Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 161–184. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. 1986 ed. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grutman, Rainier. 2004. Multilingualism and Translation. In Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker, 157–160. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Refraction and Recognition. Literary Multilingualism in Translation. Target 18(1): 17–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harding, Sue-Ann. 2011. Translation and the Circulation of Competing Narratives from the Wars in Chechnya: A Case Study from the 2004 Beslan Hostage Disaster. Meta 56(1): 42–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. “How Do I Apply Narrative Theory?” Socio-narrative Theory in Translation Studies. Target 24(2): 286–309.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, Keith. 2003. “Events” and “Horizons”: Reading Ideology in the “Bindings” of Translations. In Apropos of Ideology. Translation Studies on Ideology—Ideologies in Translation Studies, ed. María Calzada Pérez, 43–70. Manchester: St. Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, Juliane. 1977. A Model For Translation Quality Assessment. Tübingen: Narr.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. Translation Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited. Tübingen: Narr.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katan, David. 1999. Translating Culture. An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. 2nd ed., 2004. Manchester: St. Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kindt, Tom, and Hans-Harald Müller. 2006. The Implied Author: Concept and Controversy. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kovala, Urpo. 1996. Translations, Paratextual Mediation, and Ideological Closure. Target 8(1): 119–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Love, Myra. 1983. “Das Spiel mit offenen Möglichkeiten”: Subjectivity and the Thematisation of Writing in the Works of Christa Wolf. Unpublished thesis (PhD), University of California, Berkeley.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1997. The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition. In Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, eds. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 241–263. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magenau, Jörg. 2002. Christa Wolf: eine Biographie [Christa Wolf: A Biography]. Berlin: Kindler.

    Google Scholar 

  • May, Rachel. 1994. The Translator in the Text: On Reading Russian Literature in English. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGann, Jerome. 1991. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meylaerts, Reine. 2006. Literary Heteroglossia in Translation: When the Language of Translation Is the Locus of Ideological Struggle. In Translation Studies at the Interface of Disciplines, eds. João Ferreira Duarte, Alexandra Assis Rosa, and Teresa Seruya, 85–98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munday, Jeremy. 2008. Style and Ideology in Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noakes, John. 2000. Official Frames in Social Movement Theory: The FBI, HUAC, and the Communist Threat in Hollywood. The Sociological Quarterly 41(4): 657–680.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nord, Christiane. 2011. Making the Source Text Grow: A Plea Against the Idea of Loss in Translation. In The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation, eds. Claudia Buffagni, Beatrice Garzelli, and Serenella Zanotti, 21–29. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Sullivan, Emer. 2003. Narratology Meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Children’s Literature. Meta 48(1–2): 197–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polletta, Francesca. 2006. It Was Like A Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Prager, Brad. 2004. The Erection of the Berlin Wall: Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir and the End of East Germany. Modern Language Review 99(4): 983–998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pym, Anthony. 2011. The Translator as Non-Author, and I am Sorry About That. In The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation, eds. Claudia Buffagni, Beatrice Garzelli, and Serenella Zanotti, 31–43. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rider, N. Ann. 1995. Reconceptualising Power and Resistance in the GDR: The Example of Günter de Bruyn and the Socialist Entwicklungsroman. The German Quarterly 68(4): 357–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Saldanha, Gabriela. 2011. Translator Style: Methodological Considerations. The Translator 17(1): 25–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schiavi, Giuliana. 1996. There Is Always a Teller in a Tale. Target 8(1): 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmid, Wolf. 2009. Implied Author. In Handbook of Narratology, eds. Peter Hühn et al., 161–173. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sievers, Wiebke. 2003. Otherness in Translation: Contemporary German Prose in Britain and France. unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

    Google Scholar 

  • Somers, Margaret R. 1992. Narrativity, Narrative Identity and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation. Social Science History 16(4): 591–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Somers, Margaret R., and Gloria D. Gibson. 1994. Reclaiming the Epistemological “Other”: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity. In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Craig Calhoun, 37–99. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanitzek, Georg. 2005. Texts and Paratexts in Media. Trans. Ellen Klein. Critical Inquiry 32(1): 27–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Summers, Caroline. 2014. Patterns of Authorship: The Translation of Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster. German Life and Letters 67: 378–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suominen, Marja. 2001. Heteroglot Soldiers. Helsinki English Studies: Electronic Journal 1. http://blogs.helsinki.fi/hes-eng/volumes/volume-1-special-issue-on-translation-studies/heteroglot-soldiers-marja-suominen/. Accessed 4 Feb 2013.

  • Tahir Gürçaglar, Şehnaz. 2002. What Texts Don’t Tell: The Use of Paratexts in Translation Research. In Crosscultural Transgressions. Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues, ed. Theo Hermans, 44–60. Manchester: St. Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Venuti, Lawrence. 1995a. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Watts, Richard. 2000. Translating Culture: Reading the Paratexts of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. TTR: Traduction, Terminologie Rédaction 13(2): 29–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Packaging Postcoloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World. Oxford: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, Michaela. 2002. Culture as Translation—And Beyond: Ethnographic Models of Representation in Translation Studies. In Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues, ed. Theo Hermans, 180–192. Manchester: St Jerome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Xu, Xumei. 2006. Style is the Relationship: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to the Translator’s Style. Babel 52(4): 334–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zuo, J., and R.D. Benford. 1995. Mobilization Processes and the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement. The Sociological Quarterly 36(1): 131–156.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Summers, C. (2017). Understanding Translated Authorship. In: Examining Text and Authorship in Translation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40183-6_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40183-6_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40182-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40183-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics