Anderman Gunilla. Voices in Translation: Bridging Cultural Divides

Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2007. — xii, 160 p. — ISBN: 978-1-85359-983-5 (Translating Europe)In choosing to render dialect and vernacular speech into Scots, Bill Findlay, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, made a pioneering contribution in safeguarding the authenticity of voices in translation. The scene of the book is set by an overview of approaches to rendering foreign voices in English translation including those of the people to whom Findlay introduced us in his Scots dialect versions of European plays. Martin Bowman, his frequent co-translator follows with a discussion of their co-translation of playwright Jeanne-Mance Delisle. Different ways of bridging the cultural divide in the translation between English and a number of plays written in a number of European languages are then illustrated including the custom of creating English versions, an approach rejected by contributions that argue in favour of minimal intervention on the part of the translator. But transferring the social and cultural milieu that the speakers of other languages inhabit may also cause problems in translation, as discussed by some translators of fiction. In addition attention is drawn to the translators' own attitude and the influence of the time in which they live. In conclusion, stronger forces in the form of political events are highlighted that may also, adversely or positively, have a bearing on the translation process.Gunilla Anderman — Voices in Translation
Martin Bowman — From Rouyn to Lerwick: The Vernacular Journey of Jeanne-Mance Delisle’s ‘The Reel of the Hanged Man’
John Corbett — Speaking the World: Drama in Scots Translation
Stefania Taviano — Staging Italian Theatre: A Resistant Approach
Joseph Farrell — The Style of Translation: Dialogue with the Author
Helen Rappaport — Chekhov in the Theatre: The Role of the Translator in New Versions
David Johnston — The Cultural Engagements of Stage Translation: Federico García Lorca in Performance
Gunilla Anderman — To Be or Not To Be (Untranslatable): Strindberg in Swedish and English
Margaret Jull Costa — Mind the Gap: Translating the ‘Untranslatable’
Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen and Kirsten Nauja Andersen — Alice in Denmark
Niamh Chapelle and Jenny Williams —Little Snowdrop and The Magic Mirror: Two Approaches to Creating a ‘Suitable’ Translation in 19th-Century England
Piotr Kuhiwczak — From Dissidents to Bestsellers: Polish Literature in English Translation After the End of the Cold War