Modern Way

I paid a visit to Campus Nord today. More out of necessity than Neugier but the experience wasn't actually bad at all. I spent two hours between two shelves, going through books of theory and history of translation in English and auf Deutsch. I found all the must-haves such as Venuti's The Translation Studies Reader and Translator's Invisibility, Bassnett & Lefevere's Constructing Cultures and Lefevere's Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. I guess it's about time I read some of them. I also discovered some gems previously unknown to me such as Kultur und Übersetzung - Methodologische Probleme des Kulturtransfers, which includes a delightful little article by David Horton entitled Describing intercultural transfer in literary translation: Alice in 'Wunderland' - and that's exactly what the doctor ordered.

I also ordered Sirkku Aaltonen's book on drama translation as an e-book - something I hadn't yet done before. It's a pity that my awesome Kindle wasn't posted to Finland in time for Christmas, otherwise I would've been able to test it now. The day included other technical peculiarities as well, such as lockers at the library (in Germany you're not allowed to take any bags or coats into the library proper, so you need to leave your things in the lockers in the foyer) which had no mechanical locks, only electronic ones. To open and close the lockers you needed to use your activated Mensa card (for those who don't know, Mensa (latin for table) is the German name for student cafeteria/food court). Very fancy.