The Light of the Gods: The Role of Light in Archaic and Classical Greek Cult: The Role of Light in Archaic and Classical Greek Culture [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Is the literary work as a form of cultural production translatable? And if so, how its possible methods and practices might be? The book explores the answer to these questions, focusing in particular on the translation of the ancient Greek and Latin works into modern languages and genres. At any rate, the author, Lorna Hardwick, is not primarily concerned with the methodology based upon what Roman Jakobson calls �ginterlingual translation�h or translation proper to interpret verbal signs by means of the target language. According to the author, in translating such remote works as the Iliad or the Odyssey, the translator�fs �gpurpose�h is the crucial factor which determines his or her interpretation of the source text. The translator�fs aim further affects the ways in which the ancient text communicates with the reader through the target language and the transposition to the new genre, and the reader�fs relation to the translation ultimately gives a new meaning to the source text.

Hardwick�fs approach to the ancient text stimulates the reader to rethink how wide the range of translation activities can be. As she implicitly suggests, the translation is a mode of communication, as the translator needs not only to mediate two languages but also to consider the socio-cultural correspondences (or differences) and their relevance to the reader�fs time. Each chapter is an exploration of these multiple tasks of translation and the analysis of experimental practices done by scholars, poets, and playwrights. While eschewing hasty theorization, the book demonstrates concrete cases of translation through the ways in which the ancient texts are revitalized and thereby �gvalue and idea�h are made accessible to the target reader. The author�fs critical standpoint invests translation with a chameleonic virtue: a good translation is necessarily an opportunistic one, as it appeals to its designated beneficiaries, that is the readers of different social and political context. Differences of history, politics, and aesthetics are thus transmuted into a new specific context. Despite the wide spectrum of translation considered by the author, her underpinning thesis never drifts away. She reminds us throughout the book, that the translator�fs aim is an impetus to shift the work from the remote past and change our perception of it to what is �gdevastatingly familiar and magically transformative�h (144), regardless of any political or aesthetical implications. What the book empirically attempts to show in this regard is the fact that the act of translation is tantamount to a kind of defamiliarization. The jargon-free, non-pedantic writing of the author makes the book pleasurably accessible to any reader who is interested in the translation of literary works.