What remains: Pseudotranslation as salvage

Large, Duncan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6555-7334 (2018) What remains: Pseudotranslation as salvage. Comparative Critical Studies, 15 (Issue Supplement). pp. 5-16. ISSN 1744-1854

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Abstract

Pseudotranslations are literary works which purport to be translations of lost or suppressed originals, i.e. to be ‘salvaged’ from oblivion or obscurity. Pseudotranslation has attracted a good deal of attention within translation studies in recent years, but as a practice it can be traced back a long way. This article discusses a number of examples of the type, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote and modern works treating Shakespeare as pseudotranslated (Star Trek VI, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia) through notable eighteenth-century examples (Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, MacPherson’s Ossian) to non-fictional fictions The Book of Mormon and ‘Nietzsche’s’ fraudulent late autobiography My Sister and I. Readers of translations usually trust that an original exists, and pseudotranslations abuse that trust. But even when an original does exist, translation performs a kind of salvage operation, acting as a kind of lifeboat which rescues a text from the passing of time and keeps it afloat for posterity.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Research Group Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > British Centre for Literary Translation Research Group
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Aug 2018 11:30
Last Modified:	11 Jan 2024 01:32
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/68023
DOI:	10.3366/ccs.2018.0274

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