MCLC: Sandalwood Death review (5)

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Mon Jan 6 09:27:20 EST 2014


MCLC LIST
From: Stalling, Jonathan C. <stalling at ou.edu>
Subject: Sandalwood Death review (5)
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I am grateful for yesterday¹s responses to my ³review review² as both were
helpful in clarifying a few things, and I suppose it would be possible to
go on with my day now, but I am not sure if the main point of my post was
really taken up yet. The basic question is pretty straight-forward: What
is at stake when we conflate target and source texts in a book review or
in other contexts (classrooms, criticism, etc). As Larwence Venuti
popularly lamented, the ³translator¹s invisibility² reflects important
sociological, cultural, ideological, hermeneutic, and even epistemological
issues and the reasons he and others use the term ³invisibility² to
demarcate them lies in the way they are systematically rendered
³invisible.² So when an opportunity comes along to discuss these issues (a
situation that renders them visible) I feel like it is important to
activate it as a catalyst for further discussion. So while there is a
specific question in this case about whether it is ok to review one book
featuring its cover and citing its language while actually reviewing
another, the larger point is one about the status of translation more
generally in Sinology and the larger public cultural sphere and I did not
want these let these pass by us by in their invisible robes.

Jonathan Stalling 










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