Translation and Geography investigates how translation has radically shaped the way the West has mapped the world. Groundbreaking in its approach and relevant across a range of disciplines from translation studies and comparative literature to geography and history, this book makes a compelling case for a form of cultural translation that reframes the contributions of language-based translation analysis. Focusing on the different yet intertwined translation processes involved in the development of the Western spatial imaginary, Federico Italiano examines a series of literary works and their translations across languages, media, and epochs, encompassing: poems travel narratives nautical fictions colonial discourse exilic visions. Drawing on case studies and readings ranging from the Latin of the Middle Ages to twentieth-century Latin American poetry, this is key reading for translation theory and comparative/world literature courses.

Ptolemy's Geography is the only book on cartography to have survived from the classical period and one of the most influential scientific works of all time. Written in the second century AD, for more than fifteen centuries it was the most detailed topography of Europe and Asia available and the best reference on how to gather data and draw maps. Ptolemy championed the use of astronomical observation and applied mathematics in determining geographical locations. But more importantly, he introduced the practice of writing down coordinates of latitude and longitude for every feature drawn on a world map, so that someone else possessing only the text of the Geography could reproduce Ptolemy's map at any time, in whole or in part, at any scale. Here Berggren and Jones render an exemplary translation of the Geography and provide a thorough introduction, which treats the historical and technical background of Ptolemy's work, the contents of the Geography, and the later history of the work.

The present volume connects three academic fields that share central concerns but remain surprisingly isolated from each other: world literature studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies. It approaches translation not as a vague metaphor but as a distinct and socially embedded practice that connects literatures. In similar vein, it interrogates the smoothness of many versions of “global” theory by insisting on the specificity of place and the resistance to translatibility among languages, oeuvres and genres. The topics covered in the chapters include the formation of world literature as a progamme of study, the French concept of littérature-monde, the rise of English in nineteenth-century Sweden, the translation of Arabic literature in Europe, and the transnationalism of the avant-garde. Through such case studies, and by drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Édouard Glissant, Pierre Bourdieu and David Damrosch, among others, the international group of contributors add substantially to the theoretical and methodological consolidation of world literature as a field of research.

This study introduces the reader to the complex problems translators face. It also shows how methods derived from the theory and practice of translation can be used to revitalize the interpretation of literary and humanistic texts. One of the major tools to achieve a thorough reading of a text is the use of multiple translations. The chapter on the discussion of multiple translations is the first of its kind to study the nature of interpretive perspectives.

For the first time in English, a key work of critical geography Originally published in 1978 in Portuguese, For a New Geography is a milestone in the history of critical geography, and it marked the emergence of its author, Milton Santos (1926–2001), as a major interpreter of geographical thought, a prominent Afro-Brazilian public intellectual, and one of the foremost global theorists of space. Published in the midst of a crisis in geographical thought, For a New Geography functioned as a bridge between geography’s past and its future. In advancing his vision of a geography of action and liberation, Santos begins by turning to the roots of modern geography and its colonial legacies. Moving from a critique of the shortcomings of geography from the field’s foundations as a modern science to the outline of a new field of critical geography, he sets forth both an ontology of space and a methodology for geography. In so doing, he introduces novel theoretical categories to the analysis of space. It is, in short, both a critique of the Northern, Anglo-centric discipline from within and a systematic critique of its flaws and assumptions from outside. Critical geography has developed in the past four decades into a heterogenous and creative field of enquiry. Though accruing a set of theoretical touchstones in the process, it has become detached from a longer and broader history of geographical thought. For a New Geography reconciles these divergent histories. Arriving in English at a time of renewed interest in alternative geographical traditions and the history of radical geography, it takes its place in the canonical works of critical geography.

This is the first modern edition and first English translation of one of the earliest and most important works in the history of geography, the third-century Geographika of Eratosthenes. In this work, which for the first time described the geography of the entire inhabited world as it was then known, Eratosthenes of Kyrene (ca. 285-205 BC) invented the discipline of geography as we understand it. A polymath who served as librarian at Alexandria and tutor to the future King Ptolemy IV, Eratosthenes created the terminology of geography, probably including the word geographia itself. Building on his previous work, in which he determined the size and shape of the earth, Eratosthenes in the Geographika created a grid of parallels and meridians that linked together every place in the world: for the first time one could figure out the relationship and distance between remote localities, such as northwest Africa and the Caspian Sea. The Geographika also identified some four hundred places, more than ever before, from Thoule (probably Iceland) to Taprobane (Sri Lanka), and from well down the coast of Africa to Central Asia. This is the first collation of the more than 150 fragments of the Geographika in more than a century. Each fragment is accompanied by an English translation, a summary, and commentary. Duane W. Roller provides a rich background, including a history of the text and its reception, a biography of Eratosthenes, and a comprehensive account of ancient Greek geographical thought and of Eratosthenes' pioneering contribution to it. This edition also includes maps that show all of the known places named in the Geographika, appendixes, a bibliography, and indexes.

This book brings together international research on the quantitative revolution in geography. It offers perspectives from a wide range of contexts and national traditions that decenter the Anglo-centric discussions. The mid-20th-century quantitative revolution is frequently regarded as a decisive moment in the history of geography, transforming it into a modern and applied spatial science. This book highlights the different temporalities and spatialities of local geographies laying the ground for a global history of a specific mode of geographical thought. It contributes to the contemporary discussions around the geographies and mobilities of knowledge, notions of worlding, linguistic privilege, decolonizing and internationalizing of geographic knowledge. This book will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates and advance students in geography and those interested in the spatial sciences.