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Literary Translation
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Translation of “Matti ki Mona Liza” Into “Mona Liza Made of Clay”
Translation is a process of conveying a source text into a target text which should reflect the contents of the original text. Translation is a practice in which the translator tries to find out the closest equivalent meaning of a source text into the target text language…
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Two New Chinese Translations of Hamlet
Introduced and Compared
The two new Chinese translations of Hamlet by Wang and Huang represent
continued efforts in the new century by Chinese scholars in studying
and translating Shakespeare. In a display of creative artistry,
both translators break new ground in translating principles, language
use, and textual construction. Their main differences…
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The Transposition of Form
A derivative describes a work that is related to a previously existing
original. We currently have two common types of derivatives: adaptation
and translation. Adaptation uses the original as a rough template
for a new text. Translation is more or less a direct copy of the
original in a different language. Somewhere between these two types
is transposition…
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The Art of Poetry and its Translation
According to Oxford English Dictionary poetry is “The art or work
of poet”. Another depiction of it is given by John Ruskin in his
“Lectures on Art” (1870), “What is poetry? The suggestion, by the
imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions”. According
to T. S. Eliot “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an
escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but
an escape from personality”. Percy Bysshe Shelly describes poetry
as the eternal truth...
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The Problems in Translating ‘Literary Prose’
Although there is a large body of work debating the issues that
surround the translation of poetry, far less time has been spent
studying the specific problems of translating literary prose. One
explanation of this could be the higher status that poetry holds,
but it is more probably due to the well-known wrong idea that a
novel is somehow a simpler structure than a poem and is consequently
easier to translate. Moreover, whilst we have a number of detailed
statements by poet-translators regarding their methodology, we have
fewer statements from prose-translators. Yet there is a lot to be
learnt from shaping the principles for undertaking a ‘translation’...
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The
Art of Poetry and its Translation
According to Oxford English Dictionary poetry is “The art or work
of poet”. Another depiction of it is given by John Ruskin in his
“Lectures on Art” (1870), “What is poetry? The suggestion, by the
imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions”. According
to T. S. Eliot “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an
escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but
an escape from personality”...
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the full article...
A
Snapshot of Literary Translation and its Practitioners
It has sometimes been said that “the translation of literary works
is considered by many [to be] one of the highest forms of translation
as it involves so much more than simply translating text.” It has
also been said that “the very concept of translation tends to be
restricted to literary translation in comparison with other types
of translation and other texts.” The concept of different types
of translation is directly related to Katherina Weiss’ functional
approach on a textual level, which calls for a different translation
strategy to be employed for different text types and the situation
in which they will be used...
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the full article...
La
Traduction d’une oeuvre littéraire : Le
cas de Chroniques de Mvoutessi 2 : Na Mongô
ou Le Voyage à Ebolowa de Guillaume Oyônô-Mbia
Literary translation may be said to have the greatest
number of peculiar problems and these problems largely depend on
who is translating and what he knows. This paper is an attempt to
examine the problems that literary translators confront when translating
from one language into another. These problems include structural,
linguistic, psychological cultural and even style...
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the full article...
A
Corpus-based Study of Units of Translation in English-Persian Literary
Translations
In the present study, the notion of ‘unit of translation’ as a challenging
issue in Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) is addressed. Considering
this notion from a product-oriented point of view as "the TT
unit that can be mapped onto a ST unit" (Baker, 2001: 286),
the researcher's main concern is to investigate a hierarchy of units
of translation (UTs) proposed by Newmark (1991: 66-68) including
word, phrase, clause, sentence, and paragraph in the literary translations...
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Literary
Translation Quality Assessment - Review
This work, made by Ph.D. Mª Beatriz Rodríguez Rodríguez, lecturer
of literary translation in the University of Vigo, Spain, provides
with a comprehensive view of the principal approaches to literary
translation quality assessment and its current challenges. Published
by LINCOM GmbH in 2007, Literary Translation Quality Assessment
offers a practical approach to state-of-the-art translation
criticism and evaluation...
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Corpus-based
Study of Differences in Explicitation Between Literature Translations
for Children and for Adults
This article investigates the differences in explicitation between
English-to-Chinese literature translations for children and for
adults using the corpus-based analysis method. Explicitation is
the overall tendency to explicate implicit messages in translation.
The assumption is that literature translation for children shows
a higher percentage of explicitation than for adults because children
readers require the explicitly-presented logical context and repetitive
lexical items for easy comprehension and easy memorization...
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Pinning
Down Creativity in Translation: The Case of Literary Texts
Creativity and translation (or better translating) are inseparable,
especially in literary rendition. A translator should always be
resourceful in terms of vocabulary and syntactic structures in order
to handle repetitions in the ST. Literary translators in particular
need to be also creative in translating the 'formalities' of the
ST. In this paper, creativity in literary translation will be tackled
through three genres: poetry, rhyming prose and short stories...
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the full article...
Performatives
in Ying Ruocheng's Translation of Teahouse
As the major part of drama, dramatic dialogue serves to push on
the development of the story and guarantee performability of the
drama on the stage, with stress on the gestic (undertext) features
of the utterances. This paper explores the feasibility of performatives
in dramatic dialogue translation, by comparing Ying Ruocheng's English
version Teahouse with Howard's...
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Tyndale’s
editors: The KJV and the mysterious sound patterns of translation
Walter Benjamin, in The Task of the Translator, says: “But
do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary
work what it contains in addition to information— as even a poor
translator will admit—the unfathomable, the mysterious, the ‘poetic,’
something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet?”
I would like try to make this “unfathomable” and “mysterious” a
bit less mysterious, at least in a small way...
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English
Translations of the Bible
There are so many translations available today that it can be quite
confusing? Which are the best ones? Are some inaccurate? Is "older"
always better?" Or maybe "newer" is preferred! I've
tried to summarize twenty-one of the most popular ones below. (There
are many others out there.) I've also included some editorial comments
from time to time that may point out strengths and weaknesses. I
hope this is a help to you. God bless you as you study His Word!...
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Chinese
Translation of Literary Black Dialect and Translation Strategy Reconsidered:
The Case of Alice Walker's The Color Purple
This paper aims to adopt corpus-based research to the translation
of seven unique syntactic categories of African-American Vernacular
English (AAVE) into Chinese. In this study, the parallel corpus
consists of Celie's use of black dialect in The Color Purple and
its three Chinese translations produced in Taiwan by Hui-quian Chang,
Zu-wei Lan and Ji-qing Shi. To avoid subjective speculation, corpus-processing
tools are used as an aid to spot linguistic patterns or creative
renderings in their translations...
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Review
of "The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary"
by Robert Alter
Robert Alter's recent translation of the Psalms ought to be taken
as asking us: what are we achieving when we translate the Bible,
and what devices can we use to achieve our goals? Comparing Alter
to the King James nicely points out a set of ways in which a translator
can make meaning through patterning. Mr. Bloom thus will be proven
right, if one accepts his definition of Protestantism, that The
KJV is a Protestant fever of sound and meaning—of, as Bloom calls
it "eloquence"—consistent eloquence...
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The
Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine
Reading Jean de La Fontaine's fables is a double pleasure. These
short moralistic narrative poems are not only witty, but they also
evince a wonderful (I was going to say "fabulous") poetic
skill. And reading Norman Shapiro's translation doubles the pleasure
one more time...
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the full article...
Translation
of Proper Names in Children’s Literature
Translation of Children's literature is a significant area of study,
due to the fact that books for children have always been written
by real authors at real places in different languages, and they
have been and still are read, in translations into other languages,
in all over the world. As a result of internationalism and multiculturalism,
children's literature is translated into languages more increasingly,
which means that the translated works need to be adapted to the
young reader's language in every instance...
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Transformation
of Literary Imagery in Translation
History is probably the field where one can find most parallels
between modern and ancient concepts of life and world. Why history?
Because history is a continuous sequence of events, where context
provides images of different individuals that we can imitate or,
on the contrary, try to not imitate. For the value of history is
measured by the possibility for deducting morals to be applied in
every context...
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Caveat
Translator - Let the Translator Beware
Although the focus of this article is primarily on translating dramas,
in particular those of the Viennese master Arthur Schnitzler, a
considerable portion of the following observations likewise applies
to translations of short stories and novels. Too many translations
of German dramas, even those in print from major publishers, as
well as university presses, are virtually, if not totally unworkable
on the American stage: they just do not play well...
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Poetry
Translation
From time immemorial, poetry has been part and parcel of people’s
lives. It immortalized ancient civilizations through epics such
as Gilgamesh, the Illiad, the Iniad, Beowolf, pre-Islamic poetry,
especially The Mu, alaqat, etc. Poets, however, gained special dignified
status. What is poetry, then? What makes it so highly evaluated?...
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A
New Approach to Translation: The transposition or transcription
system of Sub-Saharan African writers
Contacts with the West encouraged written African literature which
had been eminently oral. The European languages became the means
of expression and communication for African writers whom some classified
as creative artists and others as translators. Even though there
are traces of translation in the work of African writers, this study
aims at explaining that there is not enough evidence to address
them as translators...
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The
Philosophy and Economics of Translation: Myth and Reality
Works are being translated throughout the world, but the way they
are chosen and translated show that there are certain uncomfortable
facts regarding translation we cannot afford to ignore or sidetrack.
We have to probe questions like is there really a need for translation,
and, if yes, why, who decides what is to be translated and when,
can the market and the reading habit of the public influence translation...
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Translating
Turgenev’s Prose: Unveiling The Invisible
Translating literary works is always challenging and controversial
due to aesthetic and expressive values such as figurative language,
metaphors, and difference in cultural and historical contexts. From
the semiotic view point, certain elements involved in the process
of literary translation go beyond this conventional area and are
focused on semantic and expressive equipoise between different semiotic
systems...
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Translation
of Charactonyms from English into Russian
The article tackles a topical problem of translation of charactonyms
from English into Russian. Normally charactonyms are transcribed
or transliterated but if their stems contain additional information
of their bearer or even create in a literary work a system of its
own their transcription deprives a foreign reader a lot of nuances
and vividness of description. The author of the article suggests
to find characteristics codified in the name by means of the elements
of context called motivators...
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Réflexions sur la littérature africaine et sa traduction
Dans son article au titre significatif, « Littéralité et littérarité
: Essai sur la spécificité de la traduction littéraire », Akakuru
(2005), expose une partie essentielle de la problématique de la
traduction littéraire. En effet, tout traducteur-praticien sait
que le texte littéraire relève d'une catégorie textuelle que l'on
pourrait qualifier de « texte-comme-production » et que partant,
sa traduction obligerait à prendre en compte la dynamique culturelle
qui fait partie de sa construction...
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De la retraduction de Les Damnés de la terre de Frantz Fanon
Traduire une œuvre ou un ouvrage, d’une langue donnée à une autre,
relève du besoin que le traducteur sent. Ce besoin peut être celui
de construire un pont entre les deux cultures que représentent les
langues impliquées dans la traduction. Le pont peut être celui qui
vise la compréhension entre, l’entente interculturelle, l’acceptation
de la différence (accepter l’autre tel qu’il ou elle est). Le pont
en question ici peut également servir de moyen de subjugation...
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Manual de documentación para la traducción literaria
Consuelo Gonzalo García y Valentín García Yebra aúnan sus esfuerzos,
una vez más, para presentar al público lector los resultados de
las investigaciones de un nutrido grupo de especialistas en el campo
de la documentación, en este caso concreto, de la documentación
para la traducción literaria. Los orígenes de este manual se sitúan
en el seminario Instrumentos documentales y terminológicos del
traductor literario celebrado en la Facultad de Traducción e
Interpretación de la Universidad de Valladolid en 1999...
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Traduire Les Chansons Traditionnelles: Defis Et Ideologies
Certains peuples d’Afrique colonises par l’Europe impérialiste ont
été accusés par les penseurs, qui ont porte main forte à cette entreprise
ignominieuse de spoliation et d’humiliation fallacieusement appelée
la mission civilisatrice, comme des peuples sans cultures, sans
raison. Le soi-disant manque de raison parmi les Noirs d’Afrique,
aussi colonise par l’Europe a pousse un Africain, non des moindre
à alléguer que « l’émotion est nègre »...
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Camões's Sonnets in English - A Review
Discussing the translation of poetry before his reading at the Brazilian
Embassy in Rome, in 2001, Haroldo de Campos quoted Novalis: "The
translator of poetry is a poet's poet." An internationally
acclaimed, renowned poet and translator himself, he knew exactly
what he was talking about...
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Proper
Names in Translation of Fiction (on the Material of Translation
into English of The History of a Town by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin)
The article tackles the system of proper names and charactonyms
from the book the Story of a Town by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in
a translation by Susan Brownsberger. Charactonym is a name expressing
the characteristics of the bearer. So in the book where the names
are part of the writer's intention they are rendered according to
their inner form, which is placed in the common stem of the character's
name. The paper studies different types of names relevant in traslation:
charactonyms, expressive names, names with veiled significance and
names of famous persons and fictitious characters...
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Censorship and self-censorship. Political constraints and cultural
roots
The danger of telling the truth and its aftermath nightmare has
always been a big question mark in man's mind. Truth is an independent
entity. It does not care about the consequences and its existence
is free from any obligation and considerations. To worship truth
and reality and condemn evils and hypocrisy has always played an
important role in mankind's mythology and religions...
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Documentation as Ethics in Postcolonial Translation
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the documentation challenges—mostly
in cultural terms—put forward by the translation of postcolonial
literature. The new technologies on the documentary scene have been
a revolution mainly in relation to the accessibility of diverse
sources. Nonetheless, the translation of postcolonial literature
entails very specific documentary needs, of ethical and political
nature, for which sometimes neither the libraries nor the new technologies
are ready...
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Fate: The Inevitable Betrayal in Translating
One day I receive a small envelope in the mail; it's been sent by
Miguel Ángel Montezanti. Miguel is a professor of Literary Translation
at the University of La Plata. We've already corresponded several
times, mainly about his magnificent version of Shakespeare's sonnets.
This time, however, what I receive doesn't seem to be very related
with his activities and interests...
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the full article...
Steps in Translating Poetry
In general, there are two main stages taken in translating a poem:
reading and writing. In reading stage the translator reads the original
poem to get the message as well as the feel of the text. The translator
must be able to get the real message and wish the poet wants to
convey through the poem. This stage is similar to "tuning"
step proposed by Bathgate (in Widyamartaya, 1989: 48). In this stage
the translator has to understand the basic elements of a poem such
as rhyme, meter (if any), metaphor, choice of words, figurative
language, etc. in order to get the poet's style...
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Problems in Translating Poetry
Basically, poetry translation should be semantic translation for
a poem is typically rich with aesthetic and expressive values. The
translator may face the linguistic, literary and aesthetic, and
socio-cultural problems in translating it. The linguistic problems
include the collocation and obscured syntactic structure...
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Methods in Translating Poetry
Translating literary works is, perhaps, always more difficult than
translating other types of text because literary works have specific
values called the aesthetic and expressive values. The aesthetic
function of the work shall emphasize the beauty of the words (diction),
figurative language, metaphors, etc...
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Translation & Rainfall
Consider an ocean, deep and blue. The sun shines bright. The water
in the ocean evaporates up into the sky. Gradually, clouds are formed
and winds take them away, far into another territory. Once the vapor
is cold and dense, it falls down in the form of rain. Some of the
droplets fall over the salty rocks. Some go deep into the earth.
Some fall directly into the sea. Among those that flow on the ground,
some-raindrops unite to form streams; streams unite to form rivers,
and rivers finally join another ocean with different characteristics,
but the same essence.
The first ocean is analogous to the whole knowledge of the source-text
nation (or linguistic territory/language)...
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Übersetzen als Neuschreiben: die Macht des Übersetzers
The translator, in addition to having an in-depth understanding
of the source text, must decide whether to translate only „what
is there” or whether to look deeper, into the external links of
the text, the time and place it reflects, and whether or not, and
how, to rewrite it when transplanting it into the target culture.
The translator must often also decide how to handle quotes in the
source text if those quotes, or their sources as indicated, are
inaccurate. In this respect, the translator often functions as a
critic, philologist, and editor of the translated work...
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Sense Transferring Through Poetry Translation
One of the features found in translation of poetry is interpretation.
It may lead translator to go far from the real meaning to interpret
the poem and in many cases it brings about some changes of the original
concepts completely. In such cases the output is not a comparable
work with the original text. Another important factor is translator's
knowledge about the target language. Sometimes, translator's writing
is different from the source text and he is not that faithful to
it. But many believe that the translation should transfer sense
of the poem without considering the fact that the translator properly
understands the poet's intention or not ...
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Ideological Manipulation in Translation in a Chinese Context: Su
Manshu's Translation of Les Misérables
Su Manshu (1884-1918), whose original name was Xuanying and his
Buddhist name Manshu, was born in Yokohama, Japan, of a Cantonese
merchant and a Japanese woman. At the age of six, he was sent back
to Xiangshan, Guangdong Province, China, the birthplace of his father.
He was a poet, writer, painter, translator, dictionary and Sanskrit
grammar book compiler, anthologist and Buddhist monk...
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Literary Translation: Recent Theoretical Developments
Literary studies have always, explicitly or implicitly, presupposed
a certain notion of `literariness' with which it has been able to
delimit its domain, specify, and sanction its methodologies and
approaches to its subject. This notion of `literariness' is crucial
for the theoretical thinking about literary translation...
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Translation of Poetry:
Sa`di’s Oneness of Mankind Revisited
Language is the central subject of any discussion about translation.
However, there are certain elements involved in the process of translation
which go beyond this conventional area. This is especially true
for literary translation in general and translation of poetry in
particular...
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Poetry Translation
Here are a few thoughts about the process and product of translation
of poetry, based on a Spanish original (Mi Amiga La Foca) and English
translation (Eating Disorder). A literal translation is included
for those who don’t read Spanish...
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A Little Conversation about Tone
and Translation
Homer, who composed in Greek—and
who as far as we know never translated, or according to some, even
wrote—was, nevertheless, also the first great translator in the
West. Pseudo-Longino bears witness to this fact. The author of On
the sublime at one point tells us that in the Iliad the blind
bard made men seem like Gods, and vice-versa. Or to put it another
way, Longinus understands Homer's task as a sort of translation:
translating divine behavior into human, and human behavior into
divine: "he made the men who went to Troy gods, to the extent
that he could, and the gods he made men. But for us, in our unhappiness,
there is a refuge, which is death; while it was not much the gods'
nature as their misery which Homer made eternal"...
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Language and Choice for Learning/Translating
English
Communication
is basic to all human communities and, according to McEldowney,
can be broadly defined as the process by which information is
exchanged. She indicates that there are many ways in which communication
takes place—through spoken language, through written language, through
signs, through sound, through gesture, through facial expression
and so on. It is, however, language which is the central concern
of this study...
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