Pseudotranslation

In literature, a pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language, even though no foreign language original exists. The concept of a pseudotranslation was initially proposed by Israeli scholar Gideon Toury.^{[Notes 1]} The technique allows authors to provide more insight into the culture of the work's setting by presupposing that the reader is unfamiliar with the work's cultural setting, opening the work to a wider world audience.^[1]

Notable examples

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• The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1880), by Richard Francis Burton
• The Songs of Bilitis (1894), by Piere Louÿs

Notes

1. Although the concept was first expounded by Toury, the texts he examined to develop the concept go back as far as Montesquieu's 1721 Persian Letters.

References

1. Rath, Brigitte (1 April 2014). "Pseudotranslation". State of the Art Report: The 2014 - 2015 Report on the State of the Discipline of Comparative Literature. American Comparative Literature Association.