Gentzler, Edwin (2017): Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies. New York: Routledge, 245 p.

With his new book Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies, Gentzler calls for a “post-translation studies” turn in translation studies. Changes and developments in translation and translation studies urge academia to think about new directions for the field. Following the “cultural turn” proposed by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, and the “sociological turn” in the late 1990s Gentzler endeavors to push translation studies into a new phase. The term “post-translation” in the book title refers to more than the literal meaning of “post.” Susan Bassnett offers a philosophical explanation of “post,” which signifies both the past and the new life from the past. And in the Introduction, Gentzler presents the research subject of “post-translation study” in two directions: pre-translation culture and post-translation effects. The book has six chapters, including an important introduction, a conclusion, and four numbered chapters dealing with four case studies relative to post-translation analysis. The introduction presents the necessity for and research objects of post-translation studies. The term “post-translation studies” coined by Siri Nwegaard and Stephano Arduini in Translation: A New Paradigm (2011), in the introduction to the first issue of a new journal called Translation, reflects the need to expand the research field of translation studies. Post-translation studies can be fruitful in exploring pre-translation conditions and post-translation effects, thus explaining why one translates in a certain way, and how new ideas are introduced to other cultures via translation. On the one hand, post-translation studies should analyze “both the initial reception of the translated text and the post-translation repercussions generated in the receiving culture over subsequent years” (p. 3). On the other hand, post-translation studies should also look at “pre-translation culture… those socio-political and linguistic conditions that create an environment in which highly innovative, original writing can flourish” (p. 4, emphasis in the original). In this process, researchers need to bring in perspectives from other disciplines and break the boundaries between original, translation, and rewriting. Post-translation studies owe a great deal to deconstructionist ideas, postmodern theory, Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere’s discussion on translation and rewriting, Gérard Genette’s study of rewriting, and Linda Hutcheon’s research on translation and rewriting in a new age, which Gentzler frequently refers to in the ensuing chapters. Chapter 1 first discusses the relationship between translation and world literature. Their relationship is just as David Damrosch states: “World literature is an elliptical refraction of national literature” (Damrosch 2003: 281) and “World literature is writing that gains in translation” (Damrosch 2003: 22). Then, the six sub-sections investigate the translational nature of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) and the ways in which this play travels across cultural borders to become a work of world literature. The first section makes a historical and social analysis of the translational culture of Elizabethan England. The second section, entitled Shakespeare as a translating author, offers a detailed text analysis of the translational markers found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The translational culture of Elizabethan England and Shakespeare’s rewriting lend to the original of A Midsummer Night’s Dream a translational feature. Then, section three looks at A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s journey to Germany by way of traveling English actors, and shows that the play, instead of being popular at that time in England, remains alive in Germany and then in Europe through “intersemiotic means” (p. 47). Section four looks at the vibrant changes in translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 18^th century Germany and Europe. At the time in Germany, prominent scholars such as Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Tieck, and the Schlegel brothers were “translating, editing, or staging Shakespeare” (p. …