In Translation Sites, leading theorist Sherry Simon shows how the processes and effects of translation pervade contemporary life. This field guide is an invitation to explore hotels, markets, museums, checkpoints, gardens, bridges, towers and streets as sites of translation. These are spaces whose meanings are shaped by language traffic and by a clash of memories.

Touching on a host of issues from migration to the future of Indigenous cultures, from the politics of architecture to contemporary metrolingualism, Translation Sites powerfully illuminates questions of public interest. Abundantly illustrated, the guidebook creates new connections between translation studies and memory studies, urban geography, architecture and history. This ground-breaking book is both an engaging read for a wide-ranging audience and an important text in broadening the scope of translation studies.

About the Author

Sherry Simon is a professor in the French Department at Concordia University. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Academie des lettres du Quebec.

Reviews

"A novel genre - a translation 'guidebook' - part travelogue, part diary, part meditation on sites of memory, this poignant study uses translation as a medium to communicate the affective charge of linguistic encounters and political conflicts past and present. Hotels, markets, churches, museums, checkpoints, gardens, bridges and streets - each location is mobilized as a zone of polyphonic expression and cultural difference. A must-read for those interested in translation, urbanism and cartographies of memory."

Emily Apter, Silver Professor of French and Comparative Literature, New York University, USA. Author of The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature

"In her very compelling volume, Sherry Simon guides us through a fascinating range of sites where different forms of translation speak in both an unsettling and emotionally inspiring manner. The book listens patiently to voices ranging from writers and artists to Holocaust survivors and political activists. Simon thus strikingly extends the frontiers of translation, investigating questions of diversity and accommodation, identity and community."

Michaela Wolf, University of Graz, Austria

"A novel genre - a translation 'guidebook' - part travelogue, part diary, part meditation on sites of memory, this poignant study uses translation as a medium to communicate the affective charge of linguistic encounters and political conflicts past and present. Hotels, markets, churches, museums, checkpoints, gardens, bridges and streets - each location is mobilized as a zone of polyphonic expression and cultural difference. A must-read for those interested in translation, urbanism and cartographies of memory."

Emily Apter, Silver Professor of French and Comparative Literature, New York University, USA. Author of The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature

"In her very compelling volume, Sherry Simon guides us through a fascinating range of sites where different forms of translation speak in both an unsettling and emotionally inspiring manner. The book listens patiently to voices ranging from writers and artists to Holocaust survivors and political activists. Simon thus strikingly extends the frontiers of translation, investigating questions of diversity and accommodation, identity and community."

Michaela Wolf, University of Graz, Austria

"By translating testimonies from the past, the memorial introduces information into a new place, in time as well as across the city - reviving memories that 'have been barred from their past by the imposition of histories and languages' (25)." - Christophe Declercq, KU Leuven, Ulrecht University

Book Information
ISBN 9781138232860
Author Sherry Simon
Format Paperback
Page Count 282
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 540g