Category Archives: Issue 4

Academic Business as Usual: A Reply to My Critics

Issue 4
February 1, 2023
By Lawrence Venuti Issue 4 February 1, 2023 Download PDF To read through the “counter-provocations” to Contra Instrumentalism, each statement bristling with criticisms, is a bracing experience. But it is also somewhat discouraging to see that, among the respondents, my book has not provoked reactions that would develop in some productive direction the project I...
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Contra Polemic

Issue 4
March 11, 2021
By V. Joshua Adams Issue 4 March 11, 2021 Download PDF In the 1997 film directed and co-written by Roberto Benigni, La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful), the main characters, including Guido (played by Benigni himself) and his five-year-old son Giosué, are deported from Tuscany to a Nazi concentration camp. To protect his son...
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Where Is Your Desire?

Issue 4
November 12, 2020
By Lisa Foran Issue 4 November 12, 2020 Download PDF “Where is your desire?” asks Lawrence Venuti in his polemic Contra Instrumentalism. Do you want to uphold the status quo by seeing translation as the mere technical transfer of an invariant meaning or effect from one language to another? Or, are you ready to understand...
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The Invariance Effect: A Response to Lawrence Venuti

Issue 4
May 12, 2020
By Stefan Helgesson Issue 4 May 12, 2020 Download PDF The hard question is this: Are some translations better than others? People certainly seem to think so—at least in the world of publishing, reviewing, and prize-giving. In the UK, the British Comparative Literature Association runs the John Dryden Competition to honor particularly deserving translation achievements....
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Where Is My Desire?

Issue 4
February 13, 2020
By Chantal Wright Issue 4 February 13, 2020 Download PDF Translators [are] the jazz musicians of the literary world. They are there because they love the music and because they like playing together and improvising. — Maureen Freely [1] 1. Blue Train, Yellow Car OR Translation as jazz It is a provocation, I know, to...
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