Reflections on Translation

Written for a general reader with an interest in language, the essays also nourish the scholarly mind.  Those familiar with translation will be stimulated by the fresh approaches to well-known questions from a personable guide.  To identify the subjects and themes of the essays is to capture only part of their richness.  The wealth of reflection lies in the examples that emerge, effortlessly it would seem, from Bassnett’s experience and learning.  It is her ability to engage with the casual and the serendipitous, to draw together moments across time and continents, that create a marvellous unity of tone, and drive home many important points about the exchange of cultures and languages.

 

-- Sherry Simon, Concordia University, Canada * Target, Vol. 27:1 (2015) *

Theoretically savvy and intellectually stimulating, this collection of essays, written in highly readable prose by Susan Bassnett over a period of thirty years, offers something for everyone. Professor Bassnett writes about culture, history, religion and translation, and especially about the complex, multilayered relations amongst them, in a thoughtful, deeply humane manner.

* Martha P. Y. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University *

Susan Bassnett has done as much as anyone to help establish Translation as a rewarding subject of academic study. Now, in the thirty-nine wide-ranging chapters of this new book, she offers meditations on the subject that are as acute as they are lucid, and as lively as they are wise.

* Harish Trivedi, University of Delhi *

In this highly readable, stimulating and challenging collection of essays Susan Bassnett shows the incisive intelligence, humane engagement and breadth of knowledge that have been a constant in her writings over the years. The book is a must read for anyone who cares about the present and future of translation on our planet.

* Michael Cronin, Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University *

This collection offers a fascinating and timely insight into the subject of one woman who is 'engaged in translation'…At times scholarly, at times resolutely practical, this book represents the unique ability of the translatior 'to shift perspective, to look simultaneously from within and from without, to question oneself and one's own culture as much as one questions the other'.

* Caroline Williamson in the ITI Bulletin, November-December 20