ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a number of theorists who have questioned key pillars of translation theory. Steiner draws upon the German hermeneutic tradition in After Babel (1975/1998), his monumental description of literary translation. Ezra Pound’s translations and criticisms emphasize the way language can energize a text in translation, while Walter Benjamin’s ‘The task of the translator’ talks poetically about the release of a ‘pure’ language through ‘literal’ translation. Derrida ‘deconstructs’ some of the long-held certainties of translation, including the opposition between source and target languages, the stability of the linguistic sign and the possibility of equivalence. Among the experimental translation techniques which have emerged are (1) Haroldo de Campos’s ‘transcreation’, which has echoes in contemporary videogame localization, and (2) Lewis’s ‘abusive affinity’, taken over to subtitling by Nornes. In tune with and responding to the ST, the translator openly flouts standard norms and conventions of translation to produce a stronger, more energetic TT. The biggest difference between these and earlier theories of equivalence is the lack of a shared theoretical framework. The ground has moved. Derrida anticipates Venuti’s claim that there is no stable transference of meaning in translation.
