Offering an original reconceptualization of literary translation, Clive Scott argues against traditional approaches to the theory and practice of translation. Instead he suggests that translation should attend more to the phenomenology of reading, triggering creative textual thinking in the responsive reader rather than testing the hermeneutic skills of the professional translator. In this new guise, translation enlists the reader as an active participant in the constant re-fashioning of the text's structural, associative, intertextual and intersensory possibilities, so that our larger understanding of ecology, anthropology, comparative literature and aesthetics is fundamentally transformed and our sense of the expressive resources of language radically extended. Literary translation thus assumes an existential value which takes us beyond the text itself to how it situates us in the world, and what part it plays in the geography of human relationships.

'For Clive Scott, the new proximities and the new estrangements wrought by global flows of people, goods, finance, communications - have given literary translators a more urgent part to play than ever before.'

Marina Warner Source: London Review of Books

'… formidable and eloquently argued philosophy of translation, which richly rewards the readerly attention of all those interested in the art, practice, and work of translation.'

Thomas O. Beebee Source: Translation and Literature

'… this work is a stimulating and thought-provoking exploration of the open-ended potential of literary translation. Fascinating reading for practitioners, scholars and - perhaps with a dictionary to hand - the lay reader.'

Source: Forum for Modern Language Studies