Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies

ongoing

Interlinear translation – a bilingual genre that includes an original text and its word-for-word ‘equivalents’ in translation written in alternating lines on a single page – has been practiced in diverse societies over many centuries, yet has been little studied. Because it prioritizes detail and precision, the interlinear translation paradigm tells us more than any other about the workings of translation and the unavoidable choices inherent in every translation act. This project employs the interlinear text as a theoretical and methodological framework to study inter- and intra-cultural contacts, intersections and divergences. Approaching such texts as “textual microcosms,” it will explore a host of religious, intellectual, literary and linguistic processes and encounters as expressed and reflected on the interlinear page. The study’s focus is on interlinear translations produced between the late 16th and 20th centuries in the Indonesian-Malay world, a historically and culturally linked region now encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. One of the world’s most linguistically diverse regions, it has seen Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Christian, and Islamic textual traditions locally adopted and adapted over the centuries, often through the interlinear model. Five themes will be examined and combined in researching multiple texts to produce a holistic study of the interlinear phenomenon: local terminologies; religio-cultural aspects; script choice and use; standardization, untranslatability and mistranslation; visual elements. The study will expand our understanding of the nature of translation’s manifestations worldwide and offer new conceptual and methodological tools for studies of other regions and cultures. The findings will be of relevance to linguists studying language change, historians of culture and of religious pedagogy, and scholars in manuscript studies and art history.