
Translation as Collaboration
Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and S.S. Koteliansky
Claire Davison(Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 16. June 2014
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-7486-8281-2 (ISBN)
Description
The first book-length study of the poetics of co-translation in the context of British and European modernism
This study focuses on the considerable but neglected body of works translated by S. S. Koteliansky in collaboration with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. It provides close-readings and broad cross-cultural contextualisations to assess the influence that translating from Russian had on the individual writers, as well as its resonance within the dynamics of modernist writing. Claire Davison shows that, read as an oeuvre, their various co-translations shed light on how their own creative vision was evolving, particularly through explorations of voice, consciousness, gender and polyidentity. And their co-translating ventures enriched their responses to the great classics but also invited innovative dialogues with other genres: critical essays, biography and early-twentieth-century writing from Russia.
The focus here is on co-translation as praxis. Looking specifically at the immediate post-revolutionary and post-war years, when political, ideological and aesthetic interests were so intertwined, the book examines the cultural and historical dynamics of translation, which reveal a clear interface between literary creation, textual production, publishing networks and the literary translator.
This study focuses on the considerable but neglected body of works translated by S. S. Koteliansky in collaboration with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. It provides close-readings and broad cross-cultural contextualisations to assess the influence that translating from Russian had on the individual writers, as well as its resonance within the dynamics of modernist writing. Claire Davison shows that, read as an oeuvre, their various co-translations shed light on how their own creative vision was evolving, particularly through explorations of voice, consciousness, gender and polyidentity. And their co-translating ventures enriched their responses to the great classics but also invited innovative dialogues with other genres: critical essays, biography and early-twentieth-century writing from Russia.
The focus here is on co-translation as praxis. Looking specifically at the immediate post-revolutionary and post-war years, when political, ideological and aesthetic interests were so intertwined, the book examines the cultural and historical dynamics of translation, which reveal a clear interface between literary creation, textual production, publishing networks and the literary translator.
Reviews / Votes
Professor Davison looks with meticulous and brilliant attention into what joint literary translation involves, and how each party to a collaboration - one whose first language is that of the source book, the other that of the new text - contributes to, and is affected as a writer by, the process. A remarkable achievement. * C. K. Stead, Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland * Davison's compelling, impressively researched, and lucidly articulated book enables readers to appreciate both the significance of Woolf's and Mansfield's collaborative co-translations from the Russian and the poetics and politics of translation itself. -- Roberta Rubenstein, American University * Virginia Woolf Miscellany, #87 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
476 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7486-8281-2 (9780748682812)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
06/2014
Edinburgh University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Claire Davison is Professor of Modernist Studies at the Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.
Content
Acknowledgements; Note on Spelling and Transliteration; Abbreviations; Introduction: Reading the Russians, or Translation as Explanation; 1. Unknown languages and unruly selves: Thinking through Translation; 2. 'Representing by Means of Scenes': Translating Voices; 3. 'The queerest sense of echo': Translating Imprudent Movables; 4. Editors' Choice: Craftsmanship and the Marketplace; 5. Biographical Writing in Translation: Variations on the Meaning of 'Life'; Conclusion: Only inter-connect? Translation, transaction, inter-action; Bibliography