Cultural Translation: Theory and Practice

Across a range of disciplines, "cultural translation" today stands for the dynamic interactions among cultures. Derived from cultural anthropology and linguistic translation, the metaphor of translation (already a metaphor: trans+latere, to bear across) is used increasingly to analyze how cultures are transmitted through the operations of colonial expansion, diaspora and immigration. Though cultural globalization is assumed to be a 20th century phenomenon, the result of an expansion and acceleration in the movement and exchange of ideas, commodities and capital, this seminar considers a longer historical frame for understanding cultural competition. Theoretical texts including Schleiermacher, Jakobson, Benjamin, Derrida, Spivak, and a "case study," Shakespeare.