Untranslatability

Duncan Large is Professor of European Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, and Academic Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His philosophy translations are published by OUP and Continuum; he is also joint General Editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Motoko Akashi completed her MA in Applied Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia in 2013 and is currently completing a PhD in Translation Studies there. Her research focuses on the phenomenon of celebrity translators, and asks how their existence problematises our understanding of translator visibility. Wanda Józwikowska completed her PhD in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2016, with a dissertation on "Polish-Jewish Fiction Before the Second World War: A Testing Ground for Polysystem Theory." She is currently working for SDI Media, a Warsaw-based localising company. Emily Rose finished her PhD in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2018. Her thesis explores the translation of trans identity from English, French and Spanish. Her work has been included in Queer in Translation (Routledge, 2017) and a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (November 2016).

Introduction

Duncan Large, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska and Emily Rose

Part I: Theory and Philosophy



1. Humboldt, Translation and the Dictionary of Untranslatables



Barbara Cassin



2. Untranslatability, Entanglement and Understanding

Theo Hermans



3. On the (Im)possibility of Untranslatability

Kirsten Malmkjær



4. The Untranslatable in Philosophy

Duncan Large



5. Against the "Un-" in Untranslatability: On the Obsession with Problems, Negativity and Uncertainty

Klaus Mundt



6. The Affront of Untranslatability: Ten Scenarios

David Gramling

Part II: Poetry and Prose



7. Translation and Mysticism: Demanding the Impossible?

Philip Wilson



8. Remembered Hills: Tonal Memory in English Translations of Chinese Regulated Verse Simon Everett



9. "An English that is Sometimes Strangely Interesting": Ciaran Carson Mining Linguistic Resources Using Translation

Helen Gibson



10. Surmounting the "Insurmountable" Challenges of Translating a Transgender Memoir Emily Rose



11. Is ‘Fajront’ in Sarajevo the Same as ‘Closing Time’ Elsewhere? On the Translatability of the Yugoslav Age of Rock and Roll into English

Andrea Stojilkov



12. Resistance to Translation as Cultural Untranslatability: Inter-War Polish-Jewish Fiction in English

Wanda Józwikowska

Envoi: Beyond Literature



13. Untranslatability in Practice: Challenges to Translation and Interpreting

Joanna Drugan