Seminar: 1 November 2006
Dr. Kate Sturge, German and Translation Studies, Aston University
Abstract: "Primitive Poetry?” Native American Texts in Ethnographic Translation
The large-scale collection of Native American oral literature as an ethnographic resource began in the late nineteenth century, most famously with Franz Boas’s transcriptions and interlinear translations. The aim then was ‘salvage ethnography’: gathering records from dying language-cultures for later scientific analysis. Today the collection and translation of such texts flourishes in a new context. It is informed by the critical turn in ethnography, which focuses on the power relations involved in representation and makes a key term of ‘translation’ (whether in a practical or a metaphorical sense). This paper will investigate the intersection of issues raised by Translation Studies in recent decades – such as the poles of estranging and assimilative translation, the visibility of the translator, and the impact of translations on their geopolitical settings – with the concerns of ethnographically oriented translations of Native American verbal art.
Kate Sturge is the author of studies of translation in Nazi Germany, including ‘The Alien Within’: Translation into German during the Nazi Regime (iudicium 2004) and on translation and ethnography. Her book Representing Others: Translation, Ethnography and the Museum is forthcoming with St Jerome Press. She teaches translation at Aston University, Birminghamm
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