Irony is a salient feature of common discourse and of some of contemporary art's more sophisticated representations. An intriguing characteristic of art and speech, irony's power and relevance reaches well beyond the enclaves of academic research and reflection. Translating irony involves a series of interpretative gestures which are not solely provoked by or confined to the act of translation as such. Even when one does not move between languages, reading irony always involves an act of interpretation which 'translates' a meaning out of a text that is not 'given'. The case studies and in depth analyses in "Translating irony" aim to monitor and explain the techniques and challenges involved in the translation of irony.

This book challenges entrenched literary views that promote the impracticality of linguistic, stylistic and functional approaches to the analysis and translation of irony. It considers these scientific fields of enquiry as the building blocks on which ironic devices in English and Arabic are grounded, and according to which the appropriateness of the methods of translation in the literature is assessed in a quest to pin down an interactive model for the interpretation and translation of irony. The book ventures into contrastive linguistic and stylistic analyses of irony in Arabic and English from literary, linguistic and discourse perspectives. It sheds light on the interpretation and the linguistic realisation of irony in Arabic and English through an interdisciplinary approach, and, consequently, identifies similarities and discrepancies in the form and function of ironic devices between these languages. As such, it will appeal to professional translators, instructors and students of translation, as well as language learners, language teachers and researchers in cross-cultural and inter-pragmatic disciplines.

While many professional translators believe the ability to translate is a gift that one either has or does not have, Allison Beeby Lonsdale questions this view. In her innovative book, Beeby Lonsdale demonstrates how teachers can guide their students by showing them how insights from communication theory, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and semiotics can illuminate the translation process. Using Spanish to English translation as her example, she presents the basic principles of translation through 29 teaching units, which are prefaced by objectives, tasks, and commentaries for the teacher, and through 48 task sheets, which show how to present the material to students. Published in English.

It is all too often assumed that humour is the very effect of a text. But humour is not a perlocutionary effect in its own right, nor is laughter. The humour of a text may be as general a characteristic as a serious text's seriousness. Like serious texts, humorous texts have many different purposes and effects. They can be subdivided into specific subgenres, with their own perlocutionary effects, their own types of laughter (or even other reactions). Translation scholars need to be able to distinguish between various kinds of humour (or humorous effect) when comparing source and target texts, especially since the notion of "effect" pops up so frequently in the evaluation of humorous texts and their translations. In this special issue of The Translator, an attempt is made to delineate types of humorous effect, through careful linguistic and cultural analyses of specific examples and/or the introduction of new analytical tools. For a translator, who is both a receiver of the source text and sender of the target text, such analyses and tools may prove useful in grasping and pinning down the perlocutionary effect of a source text and devising strategies for producing comparable effects in the target text. For a translation scholar, who is a receiver of both source and target texts, the contributions in this issue will hopefully provide an analytical framework for the comparison of source and target perlocutionary effects.

Sholem Aleichem, whose 150th anniversary was commemorated in March 2009, remains one of the most popular Yiddish authors. But few people today are able to read the original. Since the 1910s, however, Sholem Aleichem's works have been known to a wider international audience through numerous translations, and through film and theatre adaptations, most famouslyFiddler on the Roof. This volume examines those translations published in Europe, with the aim of investigating how the specific European contexts might have shaped translations of Yiddish literature. With the contributions: Olga Litvak- Found in Translation: Sholem Aleichem and the Myth of the Ideal Yiddish Reader Alexander Frenkel- Sholem Aleichem as a Self-Translator Eugenia Prokop-Janiec- Sholem Aleichem and the Polish-Jewish Literary Audience Gennady Estraikh- Soviet Sholem Aleichem Roland Gruschka- 'Du host zikh a denkmol af eybik geshtelt': The Sovietization and Heroization of Sholem Aleichem in the 1939 Jubilee Poems Mikhail Krutikov- A Man for All Seasons: Translating Sholem Aleichem into Soviet Ideological Idiom Gabriella Safran- Four English Pots and the Evolving Translatability of Sholem Aleichem Sabine Koller- On (Un)Translatability: Sholem Aleichem's Ayznban-geshikhtes (Railroad Stories) in German Translation Alexandra Hoffman- Laughing Matters: Translation and Irony in 'Der gliklekhster in Kodne' Kerstin Hoge- Lost in Marienbad: On the Literary Use of the Linguistic Openness of Yiddish Anna Verschik- Sholem Aleichem in Estonian: Creating a Tradition Jan Schwarz- Speaking Tevye der milkhiker in Translation: Performance, Humour, and World Literature

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation provides an accessible, diverse and extensive overview of literary translation today. This next-generation volume brings together principles, case studies, precepts, histories and process knowledge from practitioners in sixteen different countries. Divided into four parts, the book covers many of literary translation’s most pressing concerns today, from teaching, to theorising, to translation techniques, to new tools and resources. Featuring genre studies, in which graphic novels, crime fiction, and ethnopoetry have pride of place alongside classics and sacred texts, The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation represents a vital resource for students and researchers of both translation studies and comparative literature.

Translating Classical Plays is a selection of edited papers by J. Michael Walton published and delivered between 1997 and 2014. Of the four sections, each with a new introduction, the first two cover the history of translating classical drama into English and specific issues relating to translation for stage performance. The latter two are concerned with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The volume is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in staging or translating classical drama.