Final Words

Abstract

In this monograph my aim was to show how the fields of translation studies and memory studies can be linked, and I have ambitiously called the work a map of this endeavour. I defined memory as both memory of past events and people, and practices passed down to us from the past. Thus, one chapter was devoted to the topic of traditions. Various types of memory were delineated: personal memory, group memory, electronic memory, textual memory, national memory, transnational memory, institutional memory and cosmopolitan connective memory. I stressed that these memory divisions are constructs, but nevertheless have a basis in everyday thinking and experience, and importantly support feelings of identity. Rather than being ‘distributed’ (Sutton et al. 2010), it was suggested that the different kinds of memory may be conceived as being in an intertwined relationship, whether contributive to one another or mutually influencing. Among the various concepts from memory studies that were explained in the Preface and in Chapter 1, those that I have found the most useful in reflecting on translation and that have been referred to throughout this work are memory archive and canon (Assmann 2010), remediation and memory site (Erll 2009), multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) and futuristic memory (Bickford & Sodaro 2010).