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RR 2001/214
Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English Edited by Olive Classe Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers London and Chicago 2000 2 vols. xxxvii + 1,714 pp. ISBN 1884964 36 2 L150.00
Keywords Literature, Translation services, England
Translations are essential as a way of disseminating great literary works between cultures and across ages. Translations and translation studies, however, have often been seen as marginal and derivative, the translator invisible, unable to penetrate the meaning or metres of the original or the political and cultural context of it (above all where there is an agenda like imperialism or patriarchy, or where censorship prevents publication). The tension between these two perceptions about the status of translations is fast changing with the increasing awareness of the importance of the area for international communication and intercultural studies. Olive Classe (a former French lecturer at the University of Glasgow) has brought together a wide impressive international team of scholars and advisers for this project.
This work easily holds its own with - and often supersedes - forerunners and rivals in its field, and complements the substantial work from such commentators, compilers and translators like Bassnett, Baker, and France. It sits comfortably within its interdisciplinary niche, acknowledging and defining its place well vis-et-vis communication theory, linguistics, cultural studies, gender and feminism, semantics and metaphor. Readers will find a well-chosen historiographic guide to these topics (such as writers like Lefevere and Steiner, Venuti and Vieira, Bassnett and Duff and Godard). An entry on translation institutions and journals signposts readers, particularly new ones and/or collection managers building things up, to useful sources. Useful sources are to be found everywhere, however, in the many well-constructed entries, which contain a biographical note, comprehensive summaries of literary translations...