Translation or Transcreation? Discourses, Texts and Visuals

This wide-ranging collection brings together essays on a recent approach to translation known as transcreation. Together with new modes of translation, such as fansubbing, fandubbing, and crowdsourcing, transcreation has challenged the traditional structure of the translation market, the agency and ethics of the discipline, and encouraged new research in translation studies. A debate has emerged around the two concepts of translation and transcreation, mostly in terms of differences between the two practices and issues such as creativity, abusive translation and appropriation.

Originally applied to commercial translation, transcreation is now gaining momentum among translation scholars in broader areas of application, going beyond the early focus of promotional and advertising products where it was initially practiced. In the specific context of this volume, transcreation is discussed in relation to a variety of textual and visual genres that range from poetry, prose, theatre, film and television to tourism and highly specialized legal texts.

This volume provides scholars interested in translation studies with a detailed insight into the dichotomies between translators and transcreators from various research perspectives, and with a system of differences based on contrasting tasks, scopes, and norms. By bringing together a variety of text typologies, this collection emphasises the extent to which the metaphor of transcreation can be deployed within disparate forms of discourses, texts and visuals, and also challenges established methodological and theoretical frameworks rooted in the expanding field of translation studies.