University of Exeter
College of Humanities Centre for Translating
Cultures
Inaugural Lecture
‘Adventures in Translation: the
attraction of impossibility’
Professor Michael
Wood
Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923
Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton
University
followed by a drinks
reception afterwards in the Senior Common Room.
Abstract:
The idea of the
untranslatable is fashionable in many circles these days, especially in
Continental philosophy and law, and held to be complete nonsense by lots of
other people. Many say we can always translate, however badly, and the
biographer and translator David Bellos, for example, argues amusingly that the
ineffable doesn't exist, in translation or anywhere else: 'everything is
effable'. The philosopher Barbara Cassin would not disagree, but has different
ideas about the effing. The untranslatable, for her, is 'what one never stops
(not) translating'; and even Bellos admits that the 'weight or familiarity or
perfection or mystery' of some poems cannot appear in
translation.
This lecture will explore this set of ideas in two
regions: a cluster of legal terms in French, German and Russian, with examples
taken from Proust, Kafka and Dostoevsky; and the particular case of poetry, and
what it is that gets lost or not in translation, especially in translations of
Rilke and Mallarmé. A large part of my argument in both instances is that much
of what is interesting and difficult about translation arises not from the
choices of individuals, writers or translators, but from broader and more
intricate cultural and linguistic determinations.
Speaker: Michael Wood is
Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative
Literature at Princeton University. He studied French and German at Cambridge
University, and has taught at Columbia University in the US and at the
University of Exeter in the UK. He has written books on Vladimir Nabokov, Luis
Buñuel, Franz Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez, as well as The Road to
Delphi, a study of the ancient and continuing allure of oracles. Among his
other books are America in the Movies and Children of Silence. A
member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, he is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books
and the New York Review of Books, and writes frequently for other
journals too. At Princeton he teaches mainly contemporary fiction, modern poetry
and the theory and history of criticism.
His most recent books are
Literature and the Taste of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press),
Film: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) and Yeats
and Violence (Oxford University Press). His selection of the letters of
Italo Calvino, translated by Martin McLaughlin, will appear in the spring from
Princeton University Press.
Professor
Adam Watt
Associate
Professor of French,
College
of Humanities, University of Exeter
Queen's
Building,
The
Queen's Drive,
Exeter EX4 4QH
Phone: 00 (44) 1392 722424
http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/modernlanguages/staff/watt/
This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All traffic including GCSx may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation
For the full disclaimer please access http://www.rctcbc.gov.uk/disclaimer
Mae'r neges ar gyfer y person(au) a enwyd yn unig a gall gynnwys deunydd sensitif neu ddeunydd sy wedi'i farcio hyd at 'CYFYNGEDIG' a dylid ei thrin yn unol a hynny. Os nad chi yw'r person a enwyd (neu os nad oes gyda chi'r awdurdod i'w derbyn ar ran y person a enwyd) chewch chi ddim ei chopio neu'i defnyddio, neu'i datgelu i berson arall. Os ydych wedi derbyn y neges ar gam a wnewch roi gwybod i'r sawl sy wedi anfon y neges ar unwaith. Mae modd cofnodi a/neu fonitro holl negeseuon GCSX yn unol a'r ddeddfwriaeth berthnasol.
I weld yr ymwadiad llawn ewch i http://www.rctcbc.gov.uk/ymwadiad