Albert Branchadell and Lovell Margaret West (eds):Less Translated Languages Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2005, ISBN 90 272 1664 9 (Eur.) / 1 58811 480 5 (US)

摘要

For the impartial observer it is fair to say that the relationship between translation and minority languages has been a relatively neglected topic for much of the existence of translation studies. Translation theory anthologies rarely included contributions from minority language perspectives and little or no allowance was made for the fact that attitudes towards translation might significantly alter depending on whether the source or target language was in a majority or minority position. Although a number of the significant theorists in translation studies in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, came from smaller countries such as Belgium, Israel and the Netherlands, this did not translate into a specific concern with the position of minority languages. It was in the areas of anthropology, area studies, literary and cultural studies rather than in translation studies per se that questions began to asked about the relationship between the role of translation for communities in a subordinate position. A signal irony of the neglect or oversight as pointed out by many contributors to the collection under review is that minority-language cultures are of course translation cultures par excellence as they are heavily dependent on translation to supply informational needs in the language. Translation is a central and unescapable fact of the economic, scientific and cultural life of a minority language.