Cover not available
Article published In:
Text and Context Revisited Within a Multimodal Framework
Edited by Yves Gambier and Olli Philippe Lautenbacher
[Babel 70:1/2] 2024
► pp. 234–250

Images that translate

| University of Salamanca
The connection between translation and contemporary art is a hitherto under-researched avenue. Some scholars have analyzed the translation of exhibition catalogue essays (Krein-Kühle 2021) or the museum as a translation site (Sturge 2007; Neather 2008, 2012, 2021; Liao 2018, 2021). Although these are important and necessary research avenues, my aim here is different. I intend to study translation beyond the verb-centric tradition, looking at how artworks have been using translation for decades and how the images used by artists communicate through nonverbal semiotic systems. This will be done by (1) examining the artworks that use words as images (with special emphasis on John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, and Robert Barry), (2) by studying how many contemporary artists use translation in their artworks (Ghada Amer, Danica Dakić, Nalini Malani, Mona Hatoum, among others) and (3) by concentrating on exhibitions which deal with translation as a way of looking at the world.
Keywords: translation, contemporary art, conceptual art, images
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translating outwards
  • 3.Translating with contemporary art
    • 3.1The artist translator’s gaze: Images as texts/texts as images
    • 3.2Artworks that translate
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00378.vid
References (71)
References
Apter, Emily. 2007. “Untranslatable? The ‘Reading’ versus the ‘Looking.’” Journal of Visual Culture 6 (1): 149–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arduini, Stefano, and Siri Nergaard. 2011. “Translation: A New Paradigm.” translation. A transdisciplinary journal. (inaugural issue): 8–17.Google Scholar
Auricchio, Laura. 2001. “Works in Translation: Ghada Amer’s Hybrid Pleasures.” Art Journal 60 (4): 26–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2009. “Introduction: The Translational Turn.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bal, Mieke. 2005. “The Commitment to Look.” Journal of Visual Culture 4 (2): 145–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Visiting Nalini Malani’s Retrospective Exhibition, New Delhi, 2014.” Qui Parle 24 (1): 31–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bal, Mieke, and Joanne Morra. 2007. “Acts of Translation.” Journal of Visual Culture 6 (1): 5–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bassnett, Susan. 2012. “Translation Studies at a Cross-Roads.” Target 24 (1): 15–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Foreword.” In Translation and Re-Writing in the Age of Post-Translation Studies, edited by Edwin Gentzler, viii–x. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan, and David Johnston, eds. 2019. Special issue on “The Outward Turn” In The Translator 25 (3).Google Scholar
Bennett, Karen. 2022. “The Unsustainable Lightness of Meaning: Reflections on the Material Turn in Translation Studies and Its Intradisciplinary Implications.” In Recharting Territories: Intradisciplinarity in Translation Studies, edited by Gisele Dionísio da Silva and Maura Radicioni, 49–74. Leuven: Leuven University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benthien, Claudia. 2019. “Fragile Translations: Languages of/in Media Art.” In Situated in Translations: Cultural Communities and Media Practices, edited by Michaela Ott and Thomas Weber, 39–59. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benthien, Claudia, Jordis Lau, and Maraike M. Marxsen, eds. 2019. The Literariness of Media Art. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Blumczynski, Piotr. 2016. Ubiquitous Translation. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2023. Experiencing Translationality: Material and Metaphorical Journeys. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bonito Oliva, Achille. 2010. Encyclopedia of the Word. Milano: Skira Editore.Google Scholar
Boria, Monica, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, eds. 2020. Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brems, Elke, Reine Meylaerts, and Luc van Doorslaer. 2014. “Translation Studies Looking Back and Looking Forward.” In The Known Unknowns of Translation Studies, edited by Elke Brems, Reine Meylaerts, and Luc van Doorslaer, 1–16. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butler, Emily. 2020. “How Can We Listen Better?.” In Nalini Malani: Can You Hear Me?, 61–68. London: Whitechapel Gallery.Google Scholar
Campbell, Madeleine, and Ricarda Vidal, eds. 2019. Translating Across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Iain. 2017. Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael. 2010. “The Translation Crowd.” Revista Tradumàtica, 81. [URL] DOI logo
Dam, Helle V., Matilde Nisbeth Brogger, and Karen Korning Zethsen, eds. 2019. Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Di Paola, Modesta. 2018. “‘Re-belle et infidèle’. El feminismo canadiense y sus reflejos en las narrativas artísticas del in-betweenness: Mona Hatoum, Chantal Akerman y Ghada Amer.” Anales de Historia del Arte 281: 133–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dot, Anna. 2019. “Art i Posttraducció. De teories i practiques artístiques digitals.” Ph.D. diss., Universitat de Vic.
Elkins, James. 2000. How to Use Your Eyes. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2011. “Introduction.” In What Is an Image?, edited by James Elkins and Maya Naef, 1–18. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.Google Scholar
Ellëstrom, Lars. 2010. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, edited by Lars Elleström, 11–50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “The Modalities of Media II: An Expanded Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” In Beyond Media Borders, Volume 1: Intermedial Relations among Multimodal Media, edited by Lars Elleström, 3–91. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Farrell, Laurie Ann, and Francesca Minini. 2007. “Out of Darkness to the Light: Meaning, Context and Movement in the Works of Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh.” Le Salon Courbé, Exhibition Catalog.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les Mots et les Choses. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves. 2006. “Multimodality and Audiovisual Translation.” In MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios, edited by Mary Carroll, Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast, and Sandra Nauert, 91–98. Saarland: Advanced Translation Research Centre.Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves, and Luc van Doorslaer, eds. 2016. Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
, eds. 2021. Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 51. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin. 2015. “Translation without Borders.” Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal 41: 1–15.Google Scholar
. 2017. Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo. 2000. Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, and Saúl García-López. 2021. La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Guralnik, Orna. 2010. “Love Has No End: Ghada Amer,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 11 (2): 101–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holtaway, Jessica. 2021. World-Forming and Contemporary Art. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Keating, Ana Louise, ed. 2009. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Durham and London, Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kotz, Liz. 2007. Words to Be Looked At: Language in the 1960s Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kinna, Ruth, and Gillian Whiteley, eds. 2020. Cultures of Violence. Visual Arts and Political Violence. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krein-Kühle, Monika. 2021. “Translating Contemporary Art: Challenges and Implications.” In Translation – Kunstkommunikation – Museum / Translation – Art Communication – Museum, edited by Barbara Ahrens, Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Krein-Kühle, Michael Schreiber, and Ursula Wienen, 23–60. Berlin: Frank & Timme.Google Scholar
Liao, Min-Hsiu. 2018. “Museums and Creative Industries: The Contribution of Translation Studies,” JoSTrans 291: 45–62.Google Scholar
. 2021. “A Journey Home? Cultural Back-Translation of Ethnographic Artifacts in Museums.” In Translation – Kunstkommunikation – Museum / Translation – Art Communication – Museum, edited by Barbara Ahrens, Silvia Hansen-Schirra, Krein-Kühle, Michael Schreiber, and Ursula Wienen, 99–115. Berlin: Frank & Timme.Google Scholar
Marais, Kobus. 2019. A (Bio) Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Social-Cultural Reality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine, and Kobus Marais, eds. 2023. The Routledge Handbook of Translation Theory and Concepts. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mitchell, William John T. 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Neather, Robert. 2008. “Translating Tea: On the Semiotics of Interlingual Practice in the Hong Kong Museum of Tea Ware.” Meta: Translators’ Journal 53 (1): 218–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “‘Non-Expert’ Translators in a Professional Community. Identity, Anxiety and the Perceptions of Translator Expertise in the Chinese Museum Community.” The Translator 18 (2): 245–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “Museums as Translation Zones.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization, edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis, 306–320. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ott, Michaela, and Thomas Weber, eds. 2019. Situated in Translations: Cultural Communities and Media Practices. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Parker, Rozsika. 1994. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s Press.Google Scholar
Pârlog, Aba-Carina. 2019. Intersemiotic Translation: Literary and Linguistic Multimodality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petrilli, Susan, and Margherita Zanoletti. 2023. “Intersemiotic Approaches.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Theory and Concepts, edited by Reine Meylaerts and Kobus Marais, 340–368. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rahtz, Dominic. 2004. “Literality and Absence of Self in the Work of Carl Andre.” Oxford Art Journal 27 (1): 61–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. Metaphorical Materialism: Art in New York in the Late 1960s. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reilly, Maura. 2009. “Writing the Body: The Art of Ghada Amer.” In Ghada Amer, edited by Maura Reilly, 6–49. New York: G. R. Miller.Google Scholar
Rider, Alistair. 2011. Carl Andre: Things in Their Elements. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Rizzo, Alexandra. 2017. “Translation as Artistic Communication in the Aesthetics of Migration: From Nonfiction to the Visual Arts.” Ars Aeterna 9 (2): 53–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. “Translating Migration in the Visual Arts: Calais Children and Project #Refugee Cameras as Collaborative Aesthetic Counter Narratives.” In I-LanD Journal – Special Issue: Translating and Interpreting Linguistic and Cultural Differences in a Migrant Era, edited by Eleonora Federici, Rosario Martín, and África Vidal, 21 (December): 94–116.Google Scholar
Rose, Gillian, and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, eds. 2012. Visuality/Materiality: Images, Objects and Practices. Surrey: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Serafini, Paula. 2018. Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Sherry. 2023. “Foreword: Thinking Translationally.” In Time, Space, Matter in Translation, edited by Pamela Beattie, Simona Bertacco, and Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, xii–xv. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stephens, Paul. 2020. Absence of Clutter. Minimal Writing as Art and Literature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sturge, Kate. 2007. Representing Others. Translation, Ethnography and the Museum. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Vidal Claramonte, Mª Carmen África. 2022. “Translating Fear in Border Spaces: Antoni Muntadas’ On Translation: Fear/Miedo/Jauf,” Cráter. Arte e Historia 11: 72–97.Google Scholar
Washburne, Kelly, and Ben Van Wyke, eds. 2021. The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar