Translation and Ethnography: The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0816523037 ISBN 13: 9780816523030

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2003

Synopsis

To most people, translation means making the words of one language understandable in another; but translation in a broader sense-seeing strangeness and incorporating it into one's understanding-is perhaps the earliest task of the human brain. This book illustrates the translation process in less-common contexts: cultural, religious, even the translation of pain. Its original contributions seek to trace human understanding of the self, of the other, and of the stranger by discovering how we bridge gaps within or between semiotic systems. Translation and Ethnography focuses on issues that arise when we attempt to make significant thematic or symbolic elements of one culture meaningful in terms of another. Its chapters cover a wide range of topics, all stressing the interpretive practices that enable the approximation of meaning: the role of differential power, of language and so-called world view, and of translation itself as a metaphor of many contemporary cross-cultural processes. The topics covered here represent a global sample of translation, ranging from Papua New Guinea to South America to Europe. Some of the issues addressed include postcolonial translation/transculturation from the perspective of colonized languages, as in the Mexican Zapatista movement; mis-translations of Amerindian conceptions and practices in the Amazon, illustrating the subversive potential of anthropology as a science of translation; Ethiopian oracles translating divine messages for the interpretation of believers; and dreams and clowns as translation media among the Gamk of Sudan. Anthropologists have long been accustomed to handling translation chains; in this book they open their diaries and show the steps they take toward knowledge. Translation and Ethnography raises issues that will shake up the most obdurate, objectivist translators and stimulate scholars in sociolinguistics, communication, ethnography, and other fields who face the challenges of conveying meaning across human boundaries.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Contributors: Ellen B. Basso / Vincent Crapanzano / Volker Heeschen / Jean Jackson / Tullio Maranhão / Walter D. Mignolo / Mark Münzel / Akira Okazaki / Antonio Luigi Palmisano / Richard Rottenburg / Freya Schiwy / Bernhard Streck

About the Author:

The late Tullio Maranhão was Professor of Anthropology and Education at the University of St. Thomas.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0816523037
• ISBN 13: 9780816523030
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220
• Editor: Maranhão Tullio, Streck Bernhard