The Translator as Author

Annika Sterrenberg

The Translator as Author. Data mining as a creative process in rewriting an American success story

ISBN 978-3-86821-277-8, 573 pp., 360 illustrations, 17 charts, € 29,50 (CD-ROM, 2010)

(Cultural Studies in the Heartland of America, Vol. 25)

This case study from the practice of translation takes a macro-level approach to analyzing the translation process by outlining the various steps necessary for developing a background understanding during the reception phase of the translation process, and thereby demonstrating the complexity of translation. The study focuses on everyday written texts associated with an American dairy processor, the Dixie Dairy Company of Beecher, Illinois and Gary, Indiana. Translation is approached as a holistic process that comprises elements of both an empirical cultural studies-based analysis and an empirical linguistic analysis. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this case study introduces a third dimension as a means of healing breaches in source text coherence and cohesion: translation evolves into a form of reconstruction. Translation as a form of reconstruction provides new analyses to the process of translation from various scientific disciplines, including translation-related genealogical research, content analysis, and statistical text analysis. In this new paradigm, the translator serves two roles, both as author and translator, rewriting deficient source texts and thereby creating a reliable basis for a translation project.