The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference [Paperback]

Lawrence Venuti (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415169305 | ISBN-13: 978-0415169301 | Publication Date: August 27, 1998 | Edition: 1

Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, deprecated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organizations.
Lawrence Venuti exposes what he refers to as the 'scandals of translation' by looking at the relationship between translation and those bodies - corporations, governments, religious organizations, publishers - who need the work of the translator yet marginalize it when it threatens their cultural values.
Venuti illustrates his arguments with a wealth of translations from The Bible, the works of Homer, Plato and Wittgenstein, Japanese and West African novels, advertisements and business journalism.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Over the past two decades, Lawrence Venuti has proven to be an elegant and extraordinarily nuanced translator of Italian literature. His version of I.U. Tarchetti's Fantastic Tales, for example, is a supremely readable take on that little-known master--and an interrogation of the Gothic style, with its reflexive hyperbole and near-invisible sense of humor. Now Venuti has fixed his sights on translation itself, arguing that it functions as a kind of cultural whipping boy. "Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing," he notes in his introduction, "discouraged by copyright law, depreciated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organizations. Translation is treated so disadvantageously, I want to suggest, partly because it occasions revelations that question the authority of dominant cultural values and institutions."

Only a lunatic would dispute the fact that translators are overworked, underpaid, and generally given the short end of the stick when it comes to kudos. But Venuti has much bigger fish to fry. In his second chapter, he documents the tug of war between translation and our romantic conception of authorship: "Whereas authorship is generally defined as originality, self-expression in a unique text, translation is derivative, neither self-expression nor unique: it imitates another text." Elsewhere he takes a whack at copyright law, or discusses the peculiar perils of translating philosophy. (His example, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, is real doozy, given Wittgenstein's own doubts about the mere possibility of human expression.) Venuti also provides an amusing deconstruction of Giovanni Guareschi's 1950 bestseller, The Little World of Don Camillo, in which the Italian author's Communist politics were methodically siphoned from the English translation.

The Scandals of Translation is intelligent, consistently provocative, and even includes moments of indignant humor. Why, though, did the author feel obliged to frame so many of his arguments in the elephantine style of contemporary academia? "Following Deleuze and Guattari (1987)," he writes, "I rather see language as a collective force, an assemblage of forms that constitute a semiotic regime." Yikes! Venuti must be aware that this particular sort of assemblage is virtually reader-proof. Perhaps he meant to fight scholarly fire with fire, torching the academy with its own instruments. But it's a shame that this fine study of translation seems occasionally to cry out for a translator of its own. --James Marcus

Review

....greatly contributes to the understanding of translation in many of its problematic features. This book is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in the practice of translation..
–Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, December 2002

...provides an extensive commentary about the practice of translation and its most problematic issues in the English-speaking world. The book's significance to scholars and non-scholars lies in the fact that Venuti is not afraid to criticize academia for marginalizing translation because it does not consider translation to be a legitimate mode of textual transformation..
–Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, December 2002

The fact is, this was a book that needed to be written...it hits the right target..
–Classical and Modern Literature

The book is well put together, and the different topics treated in each chapter build on one another to give the reader a better overall picture of the author's thesis. The book's well-defined structure and index make the content available to researchers in related fields as well as to translators. A comprehensive, up-to-date viewpoint on diverse issues related to ethics in translation. Highly recommended for graduate students, faculty and professional translators.
–Choice, 4/99

...this book speaks to both scholars and students with its broadly accessible but never simplistic readings. ...a reasonable, deft, and often brilliant treatment of the problematic gender elements of these most masculinist works. ...it makes them more teachable, accomplishing and important aim of her critical practice.
–Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1999

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 27, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415169305
• ISBN-13: 978-0415169301
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #495,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of a kind, March 19, 2006

By 

Josef Horacek (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (Paperback)

This book is a break-through in the field of translation studies. Venuti is outspoken, theory-savvy but accessible. He takes an important step toward a more interdisciplinary approach to translation studies. He tackles a range of problems that haunt translation: copyright, global publishing politics, but most importantly, the hegemony of the communicative approach (he calls it, in my view unfairly, the "linguistics" approach) in translation studies. The book has a good balance of theory, politics, and analysis of concrete literary translations.

While I may not agree with everything Venuti has to say, I see his main contribution in opening up an important debate. For this reason, I gave the book a full score.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical, July 4, 2001

By 

E. Merino "lamoira" (Mexico City, D.F. Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (Paperback)

This book is extramly practical for all translators touching on subjects like copyrights and globalization. The relationship Author-Translator- Culture is thoroghly covered. My immediate sensation after finishing reading this book was to take action, and to help improve the status of a translator who is usually seen as secondary to author.