Sunday, 1 May 2016

After using the example of Edward Fitzgerald's enormously popular rewriting of OMar Khayyam's 'Rubayyat', Lefevere explains that:

Whether they produce translations, literary histories or their more compact spin-offs, reference works, anthologies, criticism or editions, rewriters adapt, manipulate the originals they work with to some extent, usually to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant ideologicl and poetological currents of their time. Again, this may be most obvious in totalitarian societies, but different "interpretive communities" that exist in more open societies will influence the production of rewritings in similar ways.

So there is a motivation here: making works of literature - or, in a more general sense, translation objects - fit its market and its target culture. In the most extreme cases, to get it past the official censor without risking a prison sentence.

But let's apply that in the Jewish/Christian arena. Are Jewish believers in messiah 'rewritten' to fit in the way the church thinks of itself. On a wider basis, are Jews in general rewritten to fit the traditional view of Jewish people, the classic stereotypes?