Translation Studies By Susan Bassnett
Verbena Reynoso
Leading translation theorist Susan Bassnett traces the history of translation, examining the ways translation is currently utilized as a burgeoning interdisciplinary activity and extending her analysis into developing areas such as developing technologies and new media forms.
Translation Studies, fourth edition displays the importance of translation across disciplines, and is essential reading for students and scholars of translation, literary studies, globalisation studies and ancient and modern languages.
In addition to translation, she has contributed to debates on British cultures, feminism, theatre studies, and poetry. She has published more than twenty books and several have become mainstays in the field of literature especially Translation Studies (In 1980 the first edition was published) and it has nine editions and it has remained in print ever since and has also become internationally renowned. Her Comparative Literature(1993) has also become internationally renowned and has translated into several languages. In 2008, she published a book(Translation and Global News)when she engages directly with the problems of translating news reports for newspapers and the media. Some other renowned textbooks are Reflection on Translation(2011), Translation(2013), Language through Literature(1993) etc.
Her focus was to make it accessible because according to her if theories are too abstract and inaccessible then few people can get access to but probably more important a group of people ends up talking to themselves. She always wanted to talk to a lot of people and it is sure that the book is still selling because it is accessible and comprehensible and telling something important to students and scholars as well. She doesn't believe in using an esoteric language in writing because she thinks that only a small number of people could get access to.
Translation Studies (one of her major works)
Her book Translation Studies gives an overview of studies in the field of translation. This book delineates key debates of translation theory. Exploring translation as a semiotic and cultural activity and not a linguistic process. According to Susan Bassnett, it is a relatively new field which has received little formal recognition. These books introduce the reader quickly into the scope of depth and complexity caused by the dilemmas of translation. She also discussed the role of translation in history and varying theories on translation, and whether translatability is possible at all or not. The book also examines the ways of translation which are now used as an expanding interdisciplinary activity and analysis into developing areas such as developing technologies and new media forms. The fourth edition of Translation studies displayed the importance of translation across disciplines and is essential reading for students and scholars of translation, literary studies, globalization studies, and ancient and modern languages. She believed while writing, whether anything said or written in one language can easily be transferred into another because different languages represent different worldviews which are not simply just rephrasing but formulating and rethinking. Along with this, accuracy is essential and must also that the text should not break the norms of the target culture.
She believed that Translation Studies is a book which acts as a different kind of translation, where the vast mass of literary linguistic theory and semiotic theory merge into a very accessible language and moreover this book bring more about the cultural turn in translation. She had a view of enlarging the boundaries of translation.
She agreed that translation is a skill and translation of many text types which could be taught and carried out effectively whereas literary texts are not considered as a skill. Here translation is effectively rewriting. According to her, translation has a dual responsibility: to the original text that the translator is seeking to translate and hence to that author, and to the readership. She firmly believes and thinks much more broadly about the understanding of translation and whether or not a translation always has to have its originality. She was sure about whatever happens in the future, the translation will grow not to diminish in importance.
Conclusion
In her collection, she depicted the importance of culture, history, religion and especially about the complex, multilayered relation among them in a human manner. Her view on translation enables us to have access to work that we would otherwise never be able to meet and it enables the writing of great figures from the past to survive and to continue reading by later generations. By her writing, she taught us that translation acts as a transaction between texts and cultures. Moreover, taught us that this is a primary duty of the translator is to create a text in the target language that readers should appreciate and at the same time demonstrates respect for the source. The translator needs a close relationship between the theory and the practice of translation. If the translator who makes no attempt to understand the theory that how the translation process is carried out is like the driver who has no idea what makes the car move. So, it is important to approach with close analysis and evaluation when it comes to translation.
The translation studies can be considered relevant as well as important because it displays the role of the translator in cultural mediation, aware us from the issues in literary translation, provides knowledge of intellectual capital, globalization and risk associated with it, mass media, training and, use of modern technology. Her studies are also important as it offers a fascinating and timely insight into the subject of translation and it represents the unique ability of the translator to look simultaneously in one's own culture.
Translation Studies is also important as the translation is diverse in many aspects of time such as education, mass communication, science and technology, literature, tourism, religion, and business as well. Translation is not only about the linguistic process, but also make a political and social impact.
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Author of over 20 books, her Translation Studies, which first appeared in 1980, has remained in print ever since and has become an important international textbook in this field. Her Comparative Literature (1993) has also become internationally renowned and has been translated into several languages. The Translator as Writer (2006) was co-edited with Peter Bush. Her book on Ted Hughes in the Writers and Their Work series, was published in 2008. Translation in Global News (2008) was written with Esperanca Bielsa.
Beside her academic research, and writing for several national newspapers, Susan Bassnett also writes poetry. Her collection of poems Exchanging Lives: Poems and Translations (2002) includes creative translations from Alejandra Pizarnik.
Translator, theorist, literary critic, poet and journalist, Bassnett is a versatile scholar and public intellectual with interests ranging from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, renaissance Italy to post-colonial India.
In Italy, burro, normally light coloured and unsalted, is used primarily for cooking, and carries no associations of high status, whilst in Britain butter, most often yellow and salted, is used for spreading on bread and less frequently in cooking. Because of the high status of butter, the phrase bread and butter is the accepted usage even where the product is actually margarine. So there is a distinction both between the objects signified by butter and burro, and between the function and value of those objects in their cultural context.
Developing this apparently mundane example into an ambitious theory of cultural translation, Bassnett has gone on during the course of her career to demonstrate the important implications of translation studies for comparative literature, postcolonial studies, and most recently issues of globalisation. For example, in a co-written book, Translation in Global News (2008), Bassnett examines how Arabic texts have been disseminated in the Western media in recent years in order to demonstrate the constitutive role of translation in the production of contemporary ideas of cultural and religious difference.
In addition to her groundbreaking work on translation, Bassnett has contributed to ongoing debates on British cultures, feminism, theatre studies and poetry. In terms of British culture, she has taken up the work of an earlier generation of postwar intellectuals, notably Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson. Where British cultural studies had worked to locate its project outside disciplinary and institutional boundaries, Studying British Cultures (1997) considers what this project might mean since its institutionalisation during the 1980s and 1990s, as an area of academic study. This edited collection also opens up the narrow focus on Englishness that characterised some of the work by the earlier generation, to consider Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as multicultural Britain:
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