%0 Journal Article
%T T lkelugu ja kultuurim lu / Translation History and Cultural Memory
%A Elin S¨¹tiste
%J Methis : Studia humaniora Estonica
%D 2012
%I University of Tartu and Estonian Literary Museum
%X In Estonian culture, the past has value, and efforts are continuously being made to commit to memory that which is considered worth remembering. While there exist a number of histories (national history, literary history, art history, etc.), so far no comprehensive and systematic translation history has been written on Estonian culture. At the same time it cannot be said that there is lack of intere st in translation histor y: on the contrar y, many studies have been and are being made in relation to this topic. To use the terminology employed by Aleida Assmann to explain the areas and operation of cultural memory, the recent developments in the attitudes towards translation history in Estonia seem to show that translation history is something that should be remembered and brought out of the archives, transferred from states of passive remembrance and passive forgetting to the sphere of active remembrance.In comparison with many other areas, the idea that a history of translation is something desirable and necessary for a culture is a relatively recent phenomenon; in any case, younger than the idea of the indispensability of literary history, for example. One of the reasons for this may lie in the way translation has been perceived in Western culture and what its relation to ¡®original¡¯ literature has been. Susan Bassnett has estimated that the boundary between originals and translations began to be drawn in the seventeenth century, when the idea of an ¡®original¡¯ began to acquire currency, and that by the nineteenth century, the status of a translation was generally considered to be lower than that of an ¡®original¡¯. This kind of distinction between originals and translations has been noticeable in Estonian culture also, especially since the formation of the influential group ¡°Young Estonia¡± at the beginning of the 20th century. Additionally, in Estonia as well as in many other countries, literature has been instrumental in shaping the identity of the nation and the concept of national culture. This has lead to a situation in which most translation histories composed to date have focused on the history of literary translation from the viewpoint, to a large extent, of national literary and cultural history.On the other hand, for some time already there have been calls to reconsider the national model of literary history, which has been premised on ethnic and often linguistic singularity. While Estonian traditional histories, such as linguistic, national, etc. have indeed often emphasised the quality of national selfhood, the history of cultural life in the
%U http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/methis/article/view/574