Reading a Different Way

The Center for Translation Studies was founded on the idea that translation studies is both the study of textual translation and the study of cultural translation, which is to say, the process of creating intelligibility across temporal, linguistic, and cultural borders. By reconceptualizing the process of creating literature as essentially a process of cultural translation, translation emerges as a way to rethink both the cultural specificity of literary texts and their relation to other periods, cultures, languages, and traditions. Graduate students in the Center for Translation Studies thus integrate the study and practice of the art and craft of textual translation with the study of literary texts as translations.

Essay 1

Translation and Reading
By Rainer Schulte

Any time we are confronted with a text we are involved in the act of reading and interpretation. We know that there are various ways of reading and no two people will read a text the exact same way. Naturally, we cannot escape our cultural and social background, which in turn influences our approaches to the reading of texts. In an age of scholarly jargon, the act of reading needs to be rethought in some fundamental ways. The methodologies derived from the art and craft of translation could serve as one possible mode to revitalize the reading of literary works.

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