• Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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    - Sir Richard J. Roberts, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology

Translating the European House: Discourse, Ideology and Politics – Selected Papers by Christina Schäffner

This anthology of papers, written by Christina Schäffner, brings together a selection of articles on the theme of translation and politics. Written from the perspective of translation studies and critical discourse analysis, it provides an overview of the textual and ideological factors that determine processes of translation within the arena of international politics. The selected articles afford a fascinating insight into the dynamics of intercultural exchange against the backdrop of European politics from the fall of the Berlin Wall to debates on EU enlargement. By taking a context-sensitive approach to linguistic description, this book will be of interest to scholars in various adjacent fields of research, such as (applied) linguistics, (intercultural) communication studies, media studies, political science and the sociology of globalisation, as well as to relevant higher education programmes around the world.

The discipline of translation studies has made its mark by conceptualising translation as a form of cross-cultural communication that transcends asymmetrical relations of power, foregrounding issues such as (colonial) domination, (cultural) hegemony, and ideology. To date, however, there has been no compelling evidence of the linguistic implications of transnational political communication, and little research has been done to help us to understand how political discourse at the international level presupposes translation. Featuring a wealth of examples from political text and talk, each article here links contextual features to the linguistic choices of political actors. By moving beyond national and cultural boundaries, these analyses help the reader to get to grips with the discursive implications of power politics, and to open up a new debate for a novel area of studies that might be termed cross-cultural political discourse analysis.


Dr Stefan Baumgarten works as a Lecturer in German and Translation Studies at Bangor University in North Wales, UK. His research interests include the relationship between translation studies and critical theory, and the role of translation as an ideological practice, specifically as shaped through processes of globalization and the resulting impact on political and philosophical discourse. His research stands in close connection to globalised political discourse as expressed in the rise of activist, post-anarchist and pro-democratic movements that challenge the dominant and hegemonic orthodoxy of neoliberal regimes.

Dr Chantal Gagnon is Assistant Professor at Université de Montréal in Québec, Canada, where she teaches business and economic translation at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has published articles on political speeches, news translation and revision in publications such as Target, Meta, and Across. She particularly specialises in translation shifts in Canadian political speeches and also investigates ideological issues in institutional translation. Some of her recent research deals with financial discourse in translation, using a critical discourse analysis perspective based on a French-Canadian and English-Canadian news translation corpus.

"this volume does much to contribute to the discussion on political discourse analysis from the perspective of translation studies. It should be of interest not only to those translation studies scholars working on translation and ideology but to those in politicsrelated quarters, where, as Schäffner argues, translation studies should be taken rather more seriously."

Mrai Calzada Perez, Universitat Jaume I Revue Meta, 62/3 (2017)

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-9539-3

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-9539-2

Release Date: 1st August 2016

Pages: 398

Price: £52.99

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