ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an upper-level course, Lost and Found in Translation: Introduction to Comparative Cultural Studies. It explores the idea and practice of translation as cultural translation. In addition to reflections and observations of professional translators, texts and examples are drawn from cultural anthropology, semiotics, imagology, cognitive linguistics, cultural semantics, cultural theory, poetry, memoirs, detective and other fiction, music, cinema, and the role of translation in the construction of Canadian identity in multiple contexts. Examples of assignments and exercises include hands-on translation; a comparison of several different translations of a very short story by Isaak Babel; using Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film Arrival to examine the Sapir Whorf hypothesis; and reading transnational detective fiction (e.g., Kwei Quartey’s Wife of the Gods, set in Ghana). Students begin to appreciate the necessity of translation in almost all aspects of our interconnected lives and develop a heightened appreciation of what lies behind translation’s otherwise seemingly invisible sheen as they seek to make more meaningful connections across linguistic and cultural borders.
