A Matter of Trust

Abstract

Let me begin by suggesting an approach to studying translation that is distinguishable from, say, artistic approaches at one extreme (the art of translation à la Kornei Chukovsky or perhaps Gregory Rabassa) and theoretical approaches at another (the theory of translation, from George Steiner or Antoine Berman to J.C. Catford, Donald Davidson, or Emily Apter). A rhetorical approach makes questions of audience and effect the most central. Obviously political issues come into play as well, but so do questions of ethos, the positioning of the author within the target culture, the creation of literary personae, and also the positioning of the translator. This intersects with the business of translation, which is where I should probably have started, by noting the enormous quantities of books published in the U.S. in a given year (150,000 titles, perhaps more) and the simultaneous paucity of translations (maybe 450, most of those of the “classics”). I want to ask: is it any wonder that Americans tend to be insular in their thinking? How might translation have an impact on the way people perceive the world outside the borders of their own language territory?