Literary Back-Translation

The first book to theorise literary back-translation, distinguishing it from retranslation and indirect translation, and delineating its aesthetic, ethical, political and philosophical implications.

Walter Benjamin famously warned against translating translations. Yet, literary back-translations are increasingly being published: whether commissioned by publishers to make celebrated translations of literary works accessible to their original audience, or sponsored by nations and feminist groups working for the cultural reappropriation of texts that first appeared in translation, back-translations are becoming more common. This book argues that the malaise they still generate are their very promise: literary back-translation transforms our conception of translation itself, through the recognition that translations are literary works in their own right, and as such also worthy of an afterlife. It thereby responds to the call of Maria Timoczko’s call for new approaches enlarging translation, conceptually as well as ideologically. Literary back-translation reveals translation as much less teleological a process than assumed, a process that should no longer be understood as a balance of forces seeking ''restitution'' – as if it were possible – but as a way to enable literary works to travel in both directions, with no preconceived trajectory.