Transfiction - by Marko Miletich (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book explores the uses of translation, translators, and interpreters in fiction as a gateway to introduce issues related to Translation Studies. The volume follows recent scholarship on Transfiction, a term used to describe the portrayal of translation (both a topic and a motif), as well as translators and interpreters in fiction and film. It expands on the research by Kalus Kaindl, Karleheinz Splitzl, Michael Cronin, and Rosemary Arrojo, among others.

Although the volume reflects the preoccupation with translator visibility, it concentrates on the importance of power struggles within the translatorial task. The volume could be an invaluable tool to be used for pedagogical purposes to discuss theoretical aspects within Translation and Interpreting Studies.

Review Quotes

Miletich and colleagues have provided translation studies with a unique and canonical contribution, particularly in matters of interpreter and translator (in)visibility as well in its valuable insights into the elusive nature of language and subjectivities. It is in the latter distinction that we discern an emergent transglobal and transdisciplinary strand that is of paramount importance to humanities scholarship.

Reading these well-crafted investigations of authors' aestheticized accounts of translators and interpreters, one is transfixed by the possibility that all that we are and say ultimately owes a debt to translated and interpreted language that precedes and follows us.

Dr. Mark K. Warford

Associate Professor, Spanish

Modern and Classical Languages

Open SUNY Fellow, Research and Innovation

Buffalo State University (SUNY)

This carefully assembled collection of articles explores the intricacies of transfiction and its reach both as a literary genre and translation theory. The six chapters comprising the series, masterfully selected by Marko Miletich from a NeMLA conference panel he organized in 2022, serve as useful reference points to start a fruitful critical conversation spanning multiple disciplines in the Humanities, all bound together by an intrinsic awareness of the levels of intersectionality present in translation, fiction, and beyond. By expanding the geographical scope of the source materials, the book offers an inclusive cultural spectrum not often found in similar publications. Tensions such as north and south of the border, Eastern and Western representations, self and otherness are explored from multiple perspectives. Scholars and students interested in transfiction as a subdiscipline in translation studies will find here an important contribution to the field.

Dr. Raúl A. Galoppe

Professor, Spanish and Latino Studies

Montclaire State University