From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the smash hit Deep Down Dark, a definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States—a parallel nation, 35 million strong, that is changing the very notion of what it means to be an American in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Tobar begins on familiar terrain, in his native Los Angeles, with his family's story, along with that of two brothers of Mexican origin with very different interpretations of Americanismo, or American identity as seen through a Latin American lens—one headed for U.S. citizenship and the other for the wrong side of the law and the south side of the border. But this is just a jumping-off point. Soon we are in Dalton, Georgia, the most Spanish-speaking town in the Deep South, and in Rupert, Idaho, where the most popular radio DJ is known as "El Chupacabras." By the end of the book, we have traveled from the geographical extremes into the heartland, exploring the familiar complexities of Cuban Miami and the brand-new ones of a busy Omaha INS station. Sophisticated, provocative, and deeply human, Translation Nation uncovers the ways that Hispanic Americans are forging new identities, redefining the experience of the American immigrant, and reinventing the American community. It is a book that rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in American identity.

International politics often requires two or more languages. The resulting interlingual relations mean translation, either by interpreters who are quite literally in the middle of conversations, or by bilingual statesmen who negotiate internationally in one language and then legitimize domestically in another. Since no two languages are the same, what can be argued in one language may be impossible in another. Political concepts can thus be significantly reformulated in the translation process. State of Translation examines this phenomenon using the case of how 19th-century Ottoman and later Turkish statesmen struggled to reconcile their arguments in external languages (French, then English) with those in their internal language (Ottoman, later Turkish), and in the process further entangled them. Einar Wigen shows how this process structured social relations between the Ottoman state and its interlocutors, both domestically and internationally, and shaped the dynamics of Turkish relations with Europe.

"Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translator's role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, "My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented." For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: "Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable"."--Jacket.

An investigation into the state of translation studies which looks ahead at the direction in which the author sees the field moving. Included are reviews of the work of translation theorists. A volume in a series which aims to present a broad spectrum of thinking on translation.

Explores how translation in texts from Ælfric's Lives of the Saints to Chaucer imagines political, cultural, and linguistic communities.

This work examines the state of the art of translator training in Germany and Europe. It presents a survey of new approaches in translation teaching and a discussion of the contributions second language education theory and practice can make to translation education.

This book features the latest research on translation by a dozen leading scholars of translation studies in China. The themes discussed are diverse, and include: translation policy, literary translation, medical translation, corpus translation studies, teaching translation, translation technologies, media translation, interpreting studies and so on. The contributors are all respected experts on their respective topics. The book reflects the state-of-the-art of translation studies in China, and offers a unique window on the latest thoughts on translation there.

A fascinating collection of essays and conversations on the changing nature of language. From award-winning, internationally known scholar and translator Ilan Stavans comes On Self-Translation,a collection of essays and conversations on language in its multifaceted forms. Stavans discusses the way syntax is being restructured by texting and other technologies. He examines how the alphabet itself is being forgotten by the young, how finger snapping has taken on a new meaning, how the use of ellipses has lapsed, and how autocorrect is shaping the way we communicate. In an incisive meditation, he shows how translating one’s own work reinvents oneself in another tongue. The volume includes tête-à-têtes with Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Wilbur and short-fiction master Lydia Davis, as well as dialogues on silence, multilingualism, poetry, and the durability of the classics. Stavans’s explorations cover Spanish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and the hybrid lexicon of Spanglish. He muses on the meaning of foreignness and on living and dying in different languages. Among his primary concerns are the role and history of dictionaries and the extent to which the authority of language academies is less a reality than a delusion. He concludes with renditions into Spanglish of portions of Hamlet, Don Quixote, and The Little Prince. The wide range of themes and engaging yet informed style confirm Stavans’s status, in the words of the Washington Post, as “Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast.” “On Self-Translation is a beautiful and often profound work. Stavans, a superb stylist, offers erudite meditations on translation, and gives us new ways to think about language itself.” — Jack Lynch, author of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of' “Proper” English, from Shakespeare to South Park “Stavans carries his learning light, and has the gift of communicating the profoundest of insights in the simplest of ways. The book is delightfully free of unnecessary jargon and ponderous discourse, allowing the reader time and space for her own reflections without having to slow down in the reading of it. This is work born out of the deep confidence that complete and dedicated immersion in a chosen field of knowledge (and practice) can bring; it is further infused with original wisdom accrued from self-reflexive, lived experiences of multilinguality.” — Kavita Panjabi, Jadavpur University

Jirí Levý's seminal work, The Art of Translation, considered a timeless classic in Translation Studies, is now available in English. Having drawn on adjacent disciplines, the methodology of Czech functional sociosemiotic structuralism and the state-of-the art in the West, Levý synthesized his findings and experience in the field presenting them in a reader-friendly book, which combines the approaches of a theoretician, systemic analyst, historian, critic, teacher, practitioner and populariser. Although focused on literary translation from theoretical, descriptive and historical perspectives, it presents a conceptualization of a general theory, addressing a number of issues discussed today. The 'practical' mission of the book as a theory extending to practice is based on the same historical-dialectic affinity of methods, norms, functions and values, accounting for the translator's agency and other contextual agents involved in the communication process. The book will be useful to translators, researchers, students and teachers in Translation and Literary Studies.