Translation and the Manipulation of Difference explores the question of difference in translation and offers an extended critique of the advocacy of foreignizing translation as a practice that does not minimize the alterity of the foreign text, and could therefore serve as an antidote to ethnocentrism and cultural insularity. Shamma examines the reception of Arabic literature - especially the Arabian Nights - in nineteenth-century England and offers a detailed analysis of the period's major translations from Arabic: by Edward Lane, Richard Burton and Wilfred Blunt. He demonstrates that the long, complicated history of interaction, often confrontation, between Europe and the Arab World, where (mis)representations of the Other were intricately embroiled with political struggles, provides a critical position from which to examine the crucial role of context, above and beyond the textual elements of the translation, in shaping the political effects of translation. Examining translation techniques and decisions in the context of the translators' own goals as well as the conditions that surrounded the reception of their work, the study shows how each translator 'manipulated' his original in line with political positions that ranged from (implicit) acquiescence to steadfast resistance to colonialism. In a carefully elaborated critique of totalizing positions, the author argues that the foreignizing-domesticating model is too limited to describe the social and political function of translation and calls for a more complex understanding of the sociopolitical dimensions of translation strategies.

This book explores the topic of ideological manipulation in the translation of children’s literature by addressing several crucial questions, including how target language norms and conventions affect the quality of a translation, how translations are selected on the basis of what is culturally accepted, who is involved in the selection of what should be translated for children in the target culture, and how this process takes place. The author presents different ways of looking at the translation of children’s books, focusing particularly on the practices of intralingual and interlingual translations as a form of rewriting across a selection of European languages. This book will be of interest to Translation Studies and children's literature scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the impact of ideology on culture.

The most provocative claim ever made about translation that «from the point of view of the target literature all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose» (Hermans 1985:11), known as the manipulation hypothesis, serves as the departure point for this study. Translation is manipulation! What does it mean? How can it be? Can it be trusted? And what about its sister activity interpreting? The book provides answers to all these questions and more. It investigates the allegedly manipulative side of translation and interpreting, and offers an overview of scholarly and practitioner stances on translation and interpreting as manipulation as well as a fine-grained typology of translational manipulation with examples. This study would appeal to translators, interpreters, scholars, and students alike.

Translation is intercultural communication par excellence. It has the power to form and/or deform cultures through sustained manipulation of the translation process and all that goes into it: from texts chosen for translation to the words used. But nowhere has manipulation through translation been more damaging than in the cultural exchange of goods between the Arab/Islamic worlds and the West. Drawing on this complex cultural relationship, the chapters in this volume address issues such as the rise of a master discourse of translation; pseudo-translation; self-translation; and the historiography of translation.

Translating for Children is not a book on translations of children's literature, but a book on translating for children. It concentrates on human action in translation and focuses on the translator, the translation process, and translating for children, in particular. Translators bring to the translation their cultural heritage, their reading experience, and in the case of children's books, their image of childhood and their own child image. In so doing, they enter into a dialogic relationship that ultimately involves readers, the author, the illustrator, the translator, and the publisher. What makes Translating for Children unique is the special attention it pays to issues like the illustrations of stories, the performance (like reading aloud) of the books in translation, and the problem of adaptation. It demonstrates how translation and its context takes precedence can take over efforts to discover and reproduce the original author's intentions. Rather than the authority of the author, the book concentrates on the intentions of the readers of a book in translation, both the translator and the target-language readers.

This volume invites us to revisit ideology, censorship and translation by adopting a variety of perspectives. It presents case studies and theoretical analyses from different chronological periods and focuses on a variety of genres, themes and audiences. Focusing on issues that have thus far not been addressed in a sufficiently connected way and from a variety of disciplines, they analyse authentic translation work, procedures and strategies. The book considers the ethical and ideological implications for the translator, re-examines the role of the ideologist or the censor—as a stand-alone individual, as representative of a group, or as part of a larger apparatus—and establishes the translator’s scope of action. The chapters presented here contribute new ideas that help to elucidate both the role of the translator throughout history, as well as current practices. Collectively, in demonstrating the role that ideology and censorship play in the act of translation, the authors help to establish a connection between the past and the present across different genres, cultural traditions and audiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice.

Since the “cultural turn” in the 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to ideological concerns and gender issues in relation to translation studies. This volume is a further illustration of this trend and focuses on the intersection of translation theory and practice with ideological constraints and gender issues in a variety of cross-cultural, geographical and historical contexts. The book is divided into three parts, with the first devoted to the health sciences, examining gender bias in medical textbooks, and the language and sociocultural barriers involved in obtaining health services in Morocco. The second part addresses the interaction of the three themes on the representation of gender and the construction of the female image both in diverse narrative texts and the presence of women in the translation of poetic works in Franco’s Spain. Finally, Part Three explores editorial policies and translator ethics in relation to feminist writing or translation in the context of Europe with special reference to Italy, and in the world of magazines aimed at a female readership.