The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

was established at the Heinrich-Heine-
Universitat in Diisseldorf, Germany, in
1987. In this four-year-programme students
study three subjects: two foreign languages
(English, French, Italian, or Spanish) and
their target language German. The volume
provides information about areas of study
and current research within the subject of
English. It should be noted, however, that
only one contribution is actually written in
English. The text is aimed at those interested
in the transfer of literature and culture
and is meant to give a representative
idea of what the training and work of the
translator entails. Unfortunately, Klaus
Peter Miiller's informative and crucial
introduction to the programme is buried in
the third section of the collection ("Ûbersetzerausbildung-Ubersetzerwissen:
Facetten einer Einfuhrung in die
Literaturiibersetzung"). This overview,
develops a useful framework addressing
issues such as the interdisciplinary nature
of translation, the role and status of the
translator in society, and the theory and
history of translation in the context of language
philosophy.
From a wide range of topics representing
the areas of linguistics/ literary studies, theory
and practice of translation, and professional
issues, let me mention only a few.
Christa Buschendorf's paper on the
German translations of Walt Whitman and
Hans Peter Heinrich's study on recent
translations of Shakespeare's sonnet no. 2
are fascinating in their attempts to reconstruct
the problems of translation and the
processes of finding solutions. In comparison,
Charlotte Franke's description of the
difficulties she encountered in translating
Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye is somewhat
disappointing. She convincingly introduces
some of the characteristics of Atwood's
style that are difficult to translate into
German but then leaves the reader with
fourteen pages of examples without further
comment. The passages from the original
and from the translation are interesting to
compare, but some explanation of her
choices and preferences could have made
this an intriguing contribution. Worth noting
is also the final section related to professional
concerns. It comments on the
practical training week at the European
Translator College in Straelen and Barbel
Flad makes many practical suggestions
concerning work opportunities, contracts,
negotiations and so on.
Rainer Schulte's "Translation Methodologies:
Re-creative Dynamics in Literature
and the Humanities," the volume's only
contribution in English, develops the idea
of "translation thinking" that sees all acts of
communication as acts of translation.
Schulte suggests that translation studies
may be "an essential field of scholarship to
revitalize literary and humanistic studies in
the 1990s". For Schulte, translation thinking
could enact a paradigm shift by moving to
a systemic view of the world that emphasizes
integration, interactivity, and interconnectedness.
Translation aims at the
reconstruction of the totality of the text in
its human and historical context, which
Schulte sees as a possible solution to the
mechanistic outlook on the world, to "any
reductionist approach to the interpretation
of literary works", and the fragmentation of
literary criticism in general.
The problematics of translation, of language
in general, and of seeing "writing
itself becoming an act of translation" are
also among the recurring issues discussed
in Acts of Concealment, a collection of
essays, poetry, and short stories that chronicles
the May 1990 Waterloo conference on
Mennonite/s Writing in Canada. As Hildi
Froese Tiessen says in her acknowledgments,
this volume draws to a close the
activities connected with the conference,
while at the same time opening the way for
"new perspectives on and approaches to the
literature of Mennonites in Canada". I
expect that readers both with or without