{"product_id":"if-babel-had-a-form-translating-equivalence-in-the-twentieth-century-transpacific-paperback","title":"If Babel Had a Form: Translating Equivalence in the Twentieth-Century Transpacific - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eTze-Yin Teo\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The likeness of form between Chinese and English sentences,\" writes the American Sinologist Ernest Fenollosa around 1906, \"renders translation from one to the other exceptionally easy.\" \u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form\u003c\/i\u003e asks not if his claim may be true, but what its phantasmic surprise may yet do. In twentieth-century intersections of China and Asia with the United States, translations did more than communicate meaning across politicized and racializing differences of language and nation. Transpacific translation breached the regulative protocols that created those very differences of human value and cultural meaning. The result, Tze-Yin Teo argues, saw translators cleaving to the sounds and shapes of poetry to imagine a translingual \"likeness of form\" but not of meaning or kind. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt stake in this form without meaning is a startling new task of equivalence. As a concept, equivalence has been rejected for its colonizing epistemology of value, naming a broken promise of translation and false premise of comparison. Yet the writers studied in this book veered from those ways of knowing to theorize a \u003ci\u003epoetic\u003c\/i\u003e equivalence: negating the colonial foundations of the concept, they ignited aporias of meaning into flashpoints for a radical literary translation. The book's transpacific readings glean those forms of equivalence from the writing of Fenollosa, the vernacular experiments of Boxer Scholar Hu Shi, the trilingual musings of Shanghai-born Los Angeles novelist Eileen Chang, the minor work of the Bay Area Korean American transmedial artist Theresa Cha, and a post-Tiananmen elegy by the exiled dissident Yang Lian. The conclusion returns to the deconstructive genealogy of recent debates on translation and untranslatability, displacing the axiom of radical alterity for a no less radical equivalence that remains--\u003ci\u003epace\u003c\/i\u003e Fenollosa--far from easy or exceptional. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUltimately, \u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates the demanding force of even the slightest sameness entangled in the translator's work of remaking our differences.\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The story of Babel--a tale of all the world's languages fallen into mutual unintelligibility--reminds us of meaning's precarity and the manifold obstacles to linguistic transparency that exist within a plurality of tongues. \u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form \u003c\/i\u003etakes theories of untranslatability into new territory. Unpacking epistemologies of value, equivalence, and abstraction in transpacific contexts, it debunks binary paradigms of East-West linguistic and cultural difference even as it elucidates the complex and sometimes violent processes of social differentiation. Translation as a poetic praxis of 'concrete abstraction' is fully in play. A go-to book for comparatists of every stripe.\"--\u003cb\u003eEmily Apter\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eAgainst World Literature\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form\u003c\/i\u003e is lucid, yet theoretically sophisticated. Its attention to granular details yields a degree of abstraction lying in the heartbeat of the transpacific.\"--\u003cb\u003eYunte Huang\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eTranspacific Imaginations\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"The likeness of form between Chinese and English sentences,\" writes the American Sinologist Ernest Fenollosa around 1906, \"renders translation from one to the other exceptionally easy.\" \u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form\u003c\/i\u003e asks not if his claim may be true, but what its phantasmic surprise may yet do. In twentieth-century intersections of China and Asia with the United States, translations did more than communicate meaning across politicized and racializing differences of language and nation. Transpacific translation breached the regulative protocols that created those very differences of human value and cultural meaning. The result, Tze-Yin Teo argues, saw translators cleaving to the sounds and shapes of poetry to imagine a translingual \"likeness of form\" but not of meaning or kind. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt stake in this form without meaning is a startling new task of equivalence. As a concept, equivalence has been rejected for its colonizing epistemology of value. Yet the writers studied in this book veered from those ways of knowing to theorize a \u003ci\u003epoetic\u003c\/i\u003e equivalence: negating the colonial foundations of the concept, they ignited aporias of meaning into flashpoints for a radical literary translation. \u003ci\u003eIf Babel Had a Form \u003c\/i\u003eilluminates the demanding force of even the slightest sameness entangled in the translator's work of remaking our differences. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eTze-Yin Teo\u003c\/b\u003e is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Oregon.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTze-Yin Teo\u003c\/b\u003e is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Oregon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 256\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.54 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e April 05, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52636191883571,"sku":"9781531500191","price":66.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0300\/5595\/6612\/files\/azoNvboeM9781531500191.webp?v=1762267962","url":"https:\/\/www.vysn.com\/products\/if-babel-had-a-form-translating-equivalence-in-the-twentieth-century-transpacific-paperback","provider":"VYSN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}