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Offering an original reconceptualization of literary translation, Clive Scott argues against traditional approaches to the theory and practice of translation. Instead he suggests that translation should attend more to the phenomenology of reading, triggering creative textual thinking in the responsive reader rather than testing the hermeneutic skills of the professional translator. In this new guise, translation enlists the reader as an active participant in the constant re-fashioning of the text's structural, associative, intertextual and intersensory possibilities, so that our larger understanding of ecology, anthropology, comparative literature and aesthetics is fundamentally transformed and our sense of the expressive resources of language radically extended. Literary translation thus assumes an existential value which takes us beyond the text itself to how it situates us in the world, and what part it plays in the geography of human relationships.
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THE WORK OF LITERARY TRANSLATION
Offering an original reconceptualization of literary translation, Clive Scott argues against traditional approaches to the theory and practice of translation. Instead, he suggests that translation should attend more to the phenomenology of reading, triggering creative textual thinking in the responsive reader rather than testing the hermeneutic skills of the professional translator. In this new guise, translation enlists the reader as an active participant in the constant refashioning of the text’s structural, associative, intertextual and intersensory possibilities, so that our larger understanding of ecology, anthropology, comparative literature and aesthetics is fundamentally transformed and our sense of the expressive resources of language is radically extended. Literary translation thus assumes an existential value which takes us beyond the text itself to how it situates us in the world, and what part it plays in the geography of human relationships. clive scott is Professor Emeritus of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy. His previous publications include Translating Baudelaire (2000), Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550–2000 (2002), Translating Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (2006), Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson (2007), Literary Translation and the Rediscovery of Reading (Cambridge, 2012), Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology (2012), and Translating Apollinaire (2014).
THE WORK OF LITERARY TRANSLATION CLIVE SCOTT University of East Anglia
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108426824 doi: 10.1017/9781108678162 © Clive Scott 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow, Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Scott, Clive, 1943– author. title: The work of literary translation / Clive Scott. description: Cambridge ; New York, NY