translation memes in text production

Exploring the traces of translation

Translation traces embrace a wide range of inheritance forms in cultural production practices. Pseudo-originals unveil a kind of literary creation pattern which is a partial or full cross-lingual plagiarism of a text by a predecessor or a contemporary from another language-culture. Well-known quotations in a foreign language are frequently employed by speakers or writers via impromptu translating or memory-based appropriation from a translation available. These translated quotations may well be imitated by text producers to derive a large number of variations in the target culture. Plagiarisms or borrowings are also seen in retranslations of great world classics. As two largely uncharted territories, indirect translation and back translation make translation traces too weak to locate them. The inheritance of translation beliefs indicates various genealogies, such as husband-wife genealogy, father-daughter genealogy and so on. Research on the origins of translative memes, their morphology and typology of transmission as well as their mutative reasons may create a new area for Translation Studies.