Douglas Robinson (born September 30, 1954) is an American academic scholar, translator, and fiction-writer who is best known for his work in translation studies,[1] but has published widely on various aspects of human communication and social interaction (American literature, literary theory, linguistic theory, gender theory, writing theory, rhetorical theory). He has translated several Finnish novels, plays, and monographs into English,[2] and his own novel was written in English but first published in Finnish translation.[3]
In 2010 Robinson was appointed Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of English and Head of the English Department at Lingnan University,[7] and in 2012 as Chair Professor of English and Dean of Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University.[8] He stepped down from the Deanship at the end of his first three-year term, August 31, 2015, but continued as Chair Professor of English until August 31, 2020, when he became Professor of Translating and Interpreting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Emeritus Professor of Translation, Interpreting, and Intercultural Studies at HKBU.
Workedit
Research fieldsedit
Robinson has published in a number of fields related generally to human communication: literary studies, language studies, translation studies, postcolonial studies, rhetoric, and philosophy of mind/philosophy of language.[9] He has also published translations from Finnish to English,[10] a novel in Finnish translation,[11] and several textbooks, two for Finnish students of English[12] and one each for students of translation, linguistic pragmatics, and writing.[13] In 1989 he and Ilkka Rekiaro also coauthored a Finnish-English-Finnish dictionary, with 25,000 entries in each direction.[14]
Thoughtedit
The two scarlet threads running all through Robinson's work since The Translator's Turn (1991) are somaticity and performativity—the imperfect social regulation of human communicative and other interaction as inwardly felt (the somatic) and outwardly staged (the performative).[15] In his more recent work he has begun to theorize "icosis" as the becoming-true or becoming-real of group opinion, through a mass persuasion/plausibilization process[16] channeled through the somatic exchange, and "ecosis" as the becoming-good of the community, or the becoming-communal of goodness.
While Robinson's influence on the field of translation studies in particular is global, his work has been especially enthusiastically received in China. Lin Zhu's book on his work, The Translator-Centered Multidisciplinary Construction,[22] was originally written as a doctoral dissertation at Nankai University, in Tianjin, PRC; and as Robinson himself notes in his foreword to that book,[23] Chinese responses to his work[24] almost always seem to display a complex appreciation of the middle ground he explores between thinking and feeling—whereas there is a tendency in the West to binarize the two, so that any talk of feeling gets read as implying a complete exclusion of both analytical thought and collective social regulation. In her book Dr. Zhu responds extensively to this Chinese reception of Robinson's thought, noting problems of emphasis and focus, identifying nuance errors in both Chinese translations and paraphrases of his work; but, perhaps because of the "ecological" tendencies of ancient Chinese thought in the Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions,[25] and the focus in Confucius and Mencius on feeling as the root of all human ethical growth, Chinese scholars typically lack the inclination often found in Western scholars to relegate feeling to pure random idiosyncratic body states.
No Less a Man: Masculist Art in a Feminist Age. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994.
Translation and Taboo. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Approaches Explained. A volume in the Translation Theories Explored series. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 1997.
What Is Translation? Centrifugal Theories, Critical Interventions. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997.
Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.
Translationality: Essays in the Translational-Medical Humanities. London and Singapore: Routledge, 2017.
Transgender, Translation, Translingual Address. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Priming Translation: Cognitive, Affective, and Social Factors. London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2021.
Anthologyedit
Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 1997. Revised paperback edition, 2002. Reprint, Routledge, 2015.
Essay collectionedit
The Pushing-Hands of Translation and its Theory: In Memoriam Martha Cheung, 1953–2013. London and Singapore: Routledge, 2016.
Textbooksedit
With Diana Webster, Liisa Elonen, Leena Kirveskari, Seppo Tella, and Thelma Wiik. Jet Set 9. Helsinki: Otava, 1982.
With Vesa Häggblom: The Light Fantastic. Helsinki: Otava, 1983.
Becoming a Translator: An Accelerated Course. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Second ed., Becoming a Translator: An Introduction to the theory and Practice of Translation, 2003. Third ed., 2012. Fourth ed., 2020.
Introducing Performative Pragmatics. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
With Svetlana Ilinskaya: Writing as Drama. Custom-published by McGraw–Hill Learning Solutions for the University of Mississippi, 2007–2010.
Lifewriting as Drama. An e-textbook adapted from Writing as Drama for the iPad, 2011.
Selected translations from Finnishedit
Yrjö Varpio, The History of Finnish Literary Criticism, 1808–1918 (Finnish original: Suomalaisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen historia, 1808–1918). Tampere: Hermes, 1990.
Aleksis Kivi, Heath Cobblers (Finnish original: Nummisuutarit) and Kullervo. St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press of St. Cloud, 1993.
Maaria Koskiluoma, Tottering House (Finnish original: Huojuva talo, 1983), stage adaptation of Maria Jotuni, Huojuva talo (1930s, published posthumously, 1963). Produced at the Frank Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, March–April 1994.
Elina Hirvonen, When I Forgot (Finnish original: Että hän muistaisi saman). UK edition, London: Portobello Books, 2007. US edition, Portland: Tin House, 2009.
Mia Kankimäki, The Women I Think About At Night (Finnish original: Naiset joita ajattelen öisin). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.
Volter Kilpi, Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia (Finnish original: Gulliverin matka Fantomimian mantereelle, 1944). Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2020.
Noveledit
Pentinpeijaiset ("Pentti's Wake"). Translated into Finnish by Kimmo Lilja from Robinson's English original ("Saarikoski's Spirits"). Helsinki: Avain, 2007.
Dictionaryedit
With Ilkka Rekiaro: Suomi/englanti/suomi-sanakirja (Finnish-English-Finnish Dictionary). Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 1989–present.
Blogsedit
Mullah Billdoug, 2004–2005
Red State Rah Rah, 2004
Referencesedit
^See Lin Zhu, The Translator-Centered Multidisciplinary Construction: Douglas Robinson's Translation Theories Explored (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012), 13, 28.
^Schillinger, Liesl (2009-05-08). "Hush, Memory". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-08-15.
^For published reviews, see e.g. Helsingin Sanomat Archived 2014-07-14 at the Wayback Machine and Ylioppilaslehti; English translations of excerpts from those reviews can be found here.
^Pentinpeijaiset ("Pentti's Wake"; for reviews, see note 3).
^The first coauthored with Diana Webster, Liisa Elonen, Leena Kirveskari, Seppo Tella, and Thelma Wiik (Jet Set 9. Helsinki: Otava, 1982), the second coauthored with Vesa Häggblom (The Light Fantastic. Helsinki: Otava, 1983).
^For students of translation: Becoming a Translator: An Accelerated Course (London and New York: Routledge, editions in 1997, 2003, 2012); for students of linguistic pragmatics: Introducing Performative Pragmatics (London and New York: Routledge, 2006); for students of writing: Writing as Drama, coauthored with Svetlana Ilinskaya (custom-published by McGraw–Hill Learning Solutions for the University of Mississippi, 2007–2010).
^Suomi/englanti/suomi-sanakirja (Jyväskylä: Gummerus, with new editions from 1989 to the present).
^See Zhu (2012: chs. 4–5), and "An Interview with Professor Douglas Robinson Archived July 14, 2014, at the Wayback Machine," Chinese Translators Journal 2 (2009): 39–44.
^Robinson coined "icosis" from Aristotle's eikos "plausible" and ta eikota "the plausibilities," and his insistence that, given a choice between a story that is true but implausible and a story that is plausible but untrue, we will tend to choose the latter, because plausibility is organized by the group.
^Published as American Apocalypses (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985)
^See The Translator's Turn (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), chapter 2, and Translation and Taboo (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), chapter 2.