Event Details

Li Wenshuang, PhD candidate at Nankai University (China) shares her research on back-translation in the LUCC PhD Seminar Series

A LUCC PhD Seminar and Li Wenshuang

The untranslatability inherent in literary back-translation offers pivotal insights into translation ontology. Grounded in the bidirectional and iterative practice of back-translation, this study draws on Derrida’s concept of testimony and his deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence to trace untranslatability via textual deviation. In doing so, it validates the hypothesis that literary back-translation operates as a dual entropy increase, one that not only deepens untranslatability, but also operationalizes it as a generative threshold for interpretation. Through a multi-layered fusion of horizons and creative imagination, this process endows literary classics with renewed vitality, ultimately subverting Benjamin’s assertion that “a translation proves to be untranslatable”.

Speaker Bio: Li Wenshuang is a PhD candidate at Nankai University (China). Her research interests are literary back translation, corpus-based translation, and discourse analysis.