ABSTRACT

Translation and Geography investigates how translation has radically shaped the way the West has mapped the world.

Groundbreaking in its approach and relevant across a range of disciplines from translation studies and comparative literature to geography and history, this book makes a compelling case for a form of cultural translation that reframes the contributions of language-based translation analysis.

Focusing on the different yet intertwined translation processes involved in the development of the Western spatial imaginary, Federico Italiano examines a series of literary works and their translations across languages, media, and epochs, encompassing:

  • poems
  • travel narratives
  • nautical fictions
  • colonial discourse
  • exilic visions.

Drawing on case studies and readings ranging from the Latin of the Middle Ages to twentieth-century Latin American poetry, this is key reading for translation theory and comparative/world literature courses.

chapter |14 pages

Orientation

An introduction

chapter 1|17 pages

“Navegar ver ponente”

The Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis and its Venetian translation

chapter 2|19 pages

Translating the map

Carticity and transmediation in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

chapter 3|22 pages

Translating the territory

Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios

chapter 4|20 pages

The fiction of translation

Abbé Prévost's nautical writing

chapter 5|21 pages

Translating the sea

Jules Verne, Nemo, and nineteenth-century oceanography

chapter 6|19 pages

Translational mimesis

Tabucchi, the Azores, and cartographic writing

chapter 7|17 pages

The redress of (self-)translation

Juan Gelman's Dibaxu and the cartography of Sepharad