Finding Literary Works in Translation
To find translations of specific works, search WorldCat Discovery by author and/or title of the original work. Limit search to the desired language. If available at Boston University Libraries, results should display near the top of the results list. For titles not available at BU, use our interlibrary loan service to request.
Additional translation indexing resources:
- Index Translationum Index of translations published since 1979
- Translation Database The only resource of its kind, the Translation Database was founded in 2008 by Three Percent and Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester to track all original publications of fiction and poetry published in the U.S. in English translation. With more than ten years of data, it is a robust tool for identifying what books are available, from which countries and languages, published by which publishers, and more
- Project Gutenberg Over 50,000 books available for free. Has links to Gutenberg sites in other countries that also provide free online books.
- HathiTrust Digital Library HathiTrust provides access to works in the public domain from research libraries across the country
Browse Books and eBooks
Browse books and ebooks on:
Reflections on Translation by
This collection of essays brings together a decade of writings on translation by leading international translation studies expert, Susan Bassnett. The essays cover a range of topics and will be useful to anyone with an interest in how different cultures communicate. Bassnett draws upon her personal experience to explore issues such as why the same things cannot be expressed in all languages, why translators in war zones risk their lives for their work, whether humour can travel across cultures, why translated menus are often so bad and whether poetry does indeed get lost in translation.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011-06-17
Literary Translation and the Making of Originals by
Literary Translation and the Making of Originals engages such issues as the politics and ethics of translation; how aesthetic categories and market forces contribute to the establishment and promotion of particular "originals"; and the role translation plays in the formation, re-formation, and deformation of national and international literary canons. By challenging the assumption that stable originals even exist, Karen Emmerich also calls into question the tropes of ideal equivalence and unavoidable loss that contribute to the low status of translation, translations, and translators in the current literary and academic marketplaces.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2017
Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice by
In Translation Changes Everything leading theorist Lawrence Venuti gathers fourteen of his incisive essays since 2000. The selection sketches the trajectory of his thinking about translation while engaging with the main trends in research and commentary. The issues covered include basic concepts like equivalence, retranslation, and reader reception; sociological topics like the impact of translations in the academy and the global cultural economy; and philosophical problems such as the translator's unconscious and translation ethics. Every essay presents case studies that include Venuti's own translation projects, illuminating the connections between theoretical concepts and verbal choices. The texts, drawn from a broad variety of languages, are both humanistic and pragmatic, encompassing such forms as poems and novels, religious and philosophical works, travel guidebooks and advertisements. The discussions all explore practical applications, whether writing, publishing, reviewing, teaching or studying translations. Venuti's aim is to conceive of translation as an interpretive act with far-reaching social effects, at once enabled and constrained by specific cultural situations. This latest chapter in his developing work is essential reading for translators and students of translation alike.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2012
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages--as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why? But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says--in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.
Location: Mugar Stacks P306 .B394 2011Publication Date: 2011
