Böcker av Douglas Robinson

Extends the field of translation studies and theory by examining three radical science-fiction treatments of translation. The so-called "fictional turn" in translation studies has staked out territory previously unclaimed by translation scholars - territory in which translators are portrayed as full human beings in their social environments - but so far no one has looked to science fiction for truly radical explorations of translation. Translating the Nonhuman fills that gap, exploring speculative attempts to cross the yawning chasm between human and nonhuman languages and cultures. The book consists of three essays, each bringing a different theoretical orientation to bear on a different science-fiction work. The first studies Samuel R. Delany's 1966 novel, Babel-17, using Peircean semiotics; the second studies Suzette Haden Elgin's 1984 novel, Native Tongue, using Austinian performativity and Eve Sedwick's periperformative corrective; and the third studies Ted Chiang's 1998 novella, "Story of Your Life," and its 2016 screen adaptation, Arrival, using sustainability theory. Themes include the 1950s clash between Whorfian untranslatability and the possibility of unbounded (machine) translatability; the performative ability of a language to change reality and the reliance of that ability on the periperformativity of "witnesses"; and alienation from the familiar in space and time and its transformative effect on the biological and cultural sustainability of human life on earth. Through these close readings and varied theoretical approaches, Translating the Nonhuman provides a tentative mapping of science fiction's usefulness for the study of human-(non)human translation, with translators and interpreters acting as explorers of new ways to communicate.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, an almost-fourteen-year-old girl is attacked and exposed to vampyric blood. Tragically, the young man she loved has been killed and her own family is plagued by accidents until her father blames her and banishes her from her home in disgrace. Majken discovers her body is changing and she must now drink blood to survive. Alone, she adapts and makes her way to the coast and learns to survive in a tavern. Yet in a northern seaport town, the man who made her vampyric has spotted her again - and believes he must utterly destroy her to ensure his own safety. A man she remembers as a Beast.

Majken, a female vampyric person of indeterminate age, comes to Trenton seeking a new life. Appearing as a young woman, she chooses a college to live and a friendly young athlete to help her meet and select the people on whom she depends for fresh blood. Her boyfriend Thomas Kline does not know who or what she really is and falls in love with her student alias. But an obsessed blood donor, a killer vampyr in the city reigning terror, and an angry college professor trying to uncover her past makes it impossible for her to keep her secret and places her and Thomas in the crossfire where she must fight just to keep him alive.

Thomas, exposed once to Majken's blood during her fight with John to save his life, is becoming vampyric. Soon the symptoms are so bad he is unable to deny he is changing. As his naïve but brilliant sister Kimberly unearths what happened to him in Trenton, Jeanine, a young vampyric girl across the country, flees with the seven-year-old daughter of a blood cult leader to save her life; Nolan wishes to sacrifice his own daughter. Yet dangers abide in the darkness where Thomas is unaware. Once Thomas is entrapped with Jeanine and Alecia, Majken must pursue him into darkness itself to save him from the deadly blood cult leader.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, an almost-fourteen-year-old girl is attacked and exposed to vampyric blood. Tragically, the young man she loved has been killed and her own family is plagued by accidents until her father blames her and banishes her from her home in disgrace. Majken discovers her body is changing and she must now drink blood to survive. Alone, she adapts and makes her way to the coast and learns to survive in a tavern. Yet in a northern seaport town, the man who made her vampyric has spotted her again - and believes he must utterly destroy her to ensure his own safety. A man she remembers as a Beast.

One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of "strange loops," from Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation, perhaps most notably in his 1997 book Le Ton Beau de Marot, where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop.In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation, in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.

This book applies frameworks from behavioral economics to Western thinking about translation, mapping four approaches to eight keywords in translation studies to bring together divergent perspectives on the study of translation and interpreting.

From the time of the first written sacred texts in the West, taboo has proscribed the act and art of translation. So argues the author of this book, exploring the age-old prohibition of translation of sacred texts. He shows how similar taboos influence interculture exchange.

Both a comparative study of Russian and German literary-theoretical history and an insightful examination of the somatics of literature, this groundbreaking work provides a deeper understanding of how literature affects the reader and offers a new perspective on present-day problems in poststructuralist approaches to the human condition.

This title consolidates the many disparate action-approaches to language into a single coherent new paradigm for the study of language as speech act, as performance - as doing things with words.

An introduction to pragmatics exploring a range of approaches to this action-oriented study of language. This book includes discussion questions, an on-line teacher's guide and short biographies of key figures aid further study.