Joana Moura

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Petrey, Sandy | Harvey, Robert | Kaplan, E. Ann | Arrojo, Rosemary

Date

2017-12-01

Keywords

Mistranslation | Comparative literature | Peter Handke | Translation Narratives | Translation Studies | Translator's Body

Department

Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/78237

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationship between the body of the translator and the phenomenon of mistranslation; more specifically, through Peter Handke’s narratives about translation, it proposes that the translator’s body be acknowledged and welcomed in the process of translation. By examining the ways in which his aesthetic strategies of mistranslation challenge the dominant conception of the literary translator as a disembodied figure, this dissertation explores Handke’s understanding of translation as a phenomenological writing practice that enables the body of the translator to emerge as a productive resource in the translator’s experience. This project is structured in two parts: Part One aims to provide a theoretical underpinning to my exploration of Handke’s reflections on translation by discussing how the representation of the relationship between mistranslation and the figure of the translator was largely established according to two chief moments in the history of translation commentary. Chapter One examines how the dominant unease with the embodied translator in Translation Studies derives from the biblical and mythical roots of the discipline’s foundational texts. Chapter Two fast-forwards to the twentieth century to explore how Freudian psychoanalysis reversed this tendency, opening up space for more recent reflections on mistranslation as a productive mark of translator subjectivity. Part Two turns to Peter Handke’s phenomenological understanding of translation as a corporeal exploration in which the translator’s bodily perceptions influence the translator’s creative process. Chapter Three analyzes a selection of his translational metatexts (dedications, afterwords and letters); Chapter Four investigates Handke’s fictional representation of the translator’s body in relation to his literary strategies of mistranslation. Methodologically, by privileging the figure of the translator and treating (mis)translation as a process rather than a finished product, this project focuses on Handke’s narratives about translation that reflect on the translator’s bodily experience of reading and writing literary texts, avoiding the evaluative practice of comparing “original” and “translation.” Ultimately, this dissertation aims to counter the dominant tendency in Translation Studies to ignore the corporeal translator and his/her traces of mistranslation, in favor of a more accepting understanding of the translator as a creative presence in the construction of literary translations. | 267 pages

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