Dreaming across Languages and Cultures

Dreaming across Languages and Cultures
Author: Laurence Wong
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 551
Release: 2014-10-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1443868280

Dreaming across Languages and Cultures: A Study of the Literary Translations of the Hong lou meng (also called The Dream of the Red Chamber, Red Chamber Dream, or The Story of the Stone) is a groundbreaking monograph in translation studies. Integrating theory with practice, it examines, analyses, compares, and evaluates 14 versions of the greatest Chinese novel in five major European languages, namely, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In this study, translation, linguistic, literary, and semiotic theories, as well as the author’s own experience of translating Dante and Shakespeare, are drawn on. Though primarily aimed at scholars specializing in translation and in Hong lou meng studies, the book also introduces students of Chinese literature, comparative literature, and cultural studies to new interdisciplinary perspectives. By illustrating salient points with lively and interesting examples, too, it enables the non-specialist to see the fascinating intricacies of language and translation, as well as the complex relationship between translation and culture. In view of its new approach to a new topic, of its many impressive insights, and, above all, of the amazing depth and breadth of its investigation, Dreaming across Languages and Cultures is truly monumental.

Where Theory and Practice Meet

Where Theory and Practice Meet
Author: Laurence Wong
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 655
Release: 2016-08-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1443899127

Where Theory and Practice Meet is a collection of nineteen papers in translation studies. Unlike many similar books published in recent decades, which are mostly non-translation-oriented, veering to issues with little or no relevance to translation, this book focuses on the translation process, on theory formulation with reference to actual translation, on getting to grips with translation problems, and on explaining translation in language which can be understood by the general reader. Perceptive and wide-ranging, the book covers language pairs that include Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Classical Greek, and discusses, among other things, translations of Dante’s La Divina Commedia; translations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Goethe’s “Prometheus” as a case of untranslatability; the challenge of translating Garcilaso de la Vega’s “Primera Égloga” into Chinese; John Minford’s translation of martial arts fiction; and Lin Shu’s translation of Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux camélias.

Thus Burst Hippocrene

Thus Burst Hippocrene
Author: Laurence Wong
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1527526151

Thus Burst Hippocrene: Studies in the Olympian Imagination is a collection of nine papers in comparative literature. Discussing the greatest Olympians in world literature, including Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Li Bo, Du Fu, and the Bible authors, it is both daring in conception and wide-ranging in scope. Freely drawing on the author’s knowledge of Classical Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, and Chinese as well as on his conversance with the literatures of these languages, the papers are truly comparative, making discoveries unique to the author’s characteristic multi-lingual, multi-cultural approach. In going through the book, the reader will be pleasantly surprised by its originality, by its amazing depth and breadth, and by the new light it sheds on topics that are of interest to scholars and students of comparative literature. Written in lucid language with no pretentious jargon, it will also appeal to the general reader who picks up a book simply for the joy of reading or for horizon-broadening without tears.