Translations of Cuba
Fernando Ortiz, Alexander von Humboldt, and the curious case of John Sidney Thrasher
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12737756 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vera M Kutzinski (Vanderbilt Health, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 303-326 |
| Publication date | 2009-11-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Atlantic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1478-8810 • E-ISSN: 1740-4649 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14788810903264779 |
| OpenAlex | W1984731145 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 6 |
This essay combines a critical assessment of Fernando Ortiz's writings on Alexander von Humboldt with an inquiry into the challenges of carrying Humboldt's writing and thinking into another idiom. My focus is on how Humboldt's Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba (1826), a text that was banned in Cuba because of its anti-slavery sentiments, has fared at the hands of different translators since the early nineteenth-century. I follow Ortiz's lead in scrutinizing John Thrasher's infamous defacement of Humboldt's writing in The Island of Cuba (1856), situating Thrasher's version in relation to other English, Spanish, and German translations of this text. I argue that Thrasher's case, while no doubt extreme, represents a difference in degree but not in kind when compared to how other translators have handled Humboldt to make him more “readable.”
Art · Art history · German · Linguistics · Literature · Relation (database · Alexander von Humboldt Studies · History · Philosophy
Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America, during the year 1799-1804
Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America during the years 1799 - 1804 /
Comparing or interlinking? Economic comparisons of early nineteenth-century slave systems in the Americas in historical perspective
The Scandals of Translation
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.38 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2021 (12) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |