scholarly journals What is Gained in Subtitling: How Film Subtitles Can Expand the Source Text

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Tom Kabara
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Poetic Function ◽  
Considerable Loss

The problem of translation and loss is a cardinal concern in translation studies. Conventional wisdom tells us that translation must necessarily entail loss. However, some translation studies scholars have argued that translation can yield significant originality in the target text. Christiane Nord, for one, argues that literary translators can claim authorial presence by actually causing the source text to “grow” in a way that is quantitative and qualitative. Although Nord’s idea applies mainly to literary translation, it raises questions about how this could apply to translations of other types of creative source texts, such as audio/visual translation. The format of interlingual subtitling between two disparate languages, such as English and Japanese, burdens translation with severe constraints and considerable loss text is taken for granted. But what is lost? Meaning? Nuance? This paper argues that these need not be lost in subtitling. In fact, by applying Nord’s model of source text growth to subtitling, we can see how subtitling produces new value to the source text. Through a close analysis of the Japanese subtitles of the 2007 film, There Will Be Blood, this paper will demonstrate that despite the severe constraints placed on the translation found in film subtitling, subtitles can promote “qualitative growth” by transferring the poetic function of the source text into new configurations in the target text, prompting target text viewers to interpret content in new ways.

Taming iconicity in the Spanish and Italian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gonzálvez-García
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Selected Lines ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Secondary Predication

Abstract Building on Tabakowska’s (1993, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2013) full-blown defense of a cognitive linguistic approach to literary translation as well as on previous research dealing with the implementations of Construction Grammar(s) for translation studies (Szymańska 2011a, 2011b; Serbina 2015), this paper critically examines the role of iconicity in selected lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnets capitalizing on the passage of Time-Death and their corresponding translations in present-day Spanish and Italian. Specifically, drawing on Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006) and Contrastive Construction Grammar (Boas 2010a; Boas & Gonzálvez-García 2014), I focus on instances of secondary predication with verbs of sensory perception, causative constructions and aspectual constructions iconically connected with the above-mentioned motif and demonstrate that iconicity emerges as a very useful communicative ‘filter’ that can help to minimize any undesirable arbitrariness which may obscure the semantico-pragmatic interpretation of the source text and/or its rendering into the target text.

scholarly journals Corpus Methodologies in Literary Translation Studies: An Analysis of Speech Verbs in Four Spanish Translations of Hard Times

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Ruano
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Original Novel ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

In this article, speech verbs in Dickens’sHard Times(1854) and their translation into Spanish are analyzed. Apart from their basic function of introducing speech, these verbs can also contribute to characterization. The regular occurrence of a particular speech verb to report the direct speech of a particular character helps to create a fictional personality. Given the important role they may play, the rendering of such verbs in four Spanish versions of this novel is assessed. To do so, a corpus-based methodology has been employed. A concordancing software was used to retrieve speech verbs from the original novel, allowing their close analysis in context. Then, using an aligned parallel corpus containing the four versions, a comparison was carried out to see how they have been rendered. Evidence is provided that none of the four translations entirely preserves the characterizing value of the verbs, which may affect the way readers form impressions of characters in their minds. The use of this corpus metholodogy is thus seen to contribute to the field of literary translation studies.

scholarly journals ПО НЯТТЯ КУЛЬТУРИ В ПЕРЕКЛАДІ ТА ПЕРЕКЛАДОЗНАВСТВІ: ДО ПИТАННЯ ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Тетяна Ляшенко
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Systematic Description ◽  
Empirical Level

In the paper, we off er the translatological defi nition of the concept of culture, relevant for literary translation as a culturological phenomenon. We believe that the given defi nition combines the main aspects of its interpretation in culturology, socio-cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Such an approach allows outlining cultural background knowledge of the translator, which is necessary, on the one hand, for understanding of the text and, on the other, for the adequate translation of cultural information. The article analyses various theories of the understanding of culture and the tradition of its research in the translation studies, particularly in German translatology. The combination of interpretive, linguistic and translational turns in the cultural sciences is identifi ed as a perspective for translation studies. The attention focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of common interpretations. The paper considers the issues of meaningful and spatial defi nition of the concept of culture. The study characterizes the understanding of culture in the process of intercultural communication and the role of literary translation in it as well as clarifi es the peculiarities of the refl ection of culture in the literary text. The elements of culture that constitute translation problems are both extralinguistic concepts, i.e. phenomena and events that take place in a particular linguocultural community (the culture described by language), and “culturally conditioned” units of language as markers of a particular culture (the culture in language). In this research, we exemplify the possible ways of solving the problem of identifi cation and translation of cultural information in literary translation. It is important to complete a systematic description of culture in literary texts to enable its identifi cation at the macro- and microstructural levels. The article points out the need to consider the issue of identifi cation and translation of cultural information not only at the stage of implementation of the message in the language of translation, but also at the stages of decoding the source text and its recoding. The prospects for further research are outlined, which consist in the operationalization of the concept of culture at the empirical level, a systematic description of cultural manifestations in the source text, and a systematic approach to the reproduction of cultural information in the translated text. Key words: culture, translation studies, intercultural communication, literary translation, literary text.

READDRESSING TRANSLATION STRATEGY IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (31) ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Natalya Zhmayeva ◽  
Iaroslav Petrunenko
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Compensation Technique

Modern translation studies which are of descriptive nature mainly presuppose the opportunity of altering the function of the source text in translation, reconstruction of sense and structure in correspondence with the aim of translation. The investigation has been carried out in the framework of the communicativefunctional approach to translation which accounts for the entire spectrum of linguistic and extra linguistic factors influencing translation in the broad sense. This fact proves the relevance of the article. The translations of both narrations intended for the children’s audience exclusively conform to the ideology of the children’s fiction aimed at socialization and attraction of young addressees. It results in the loss of the worldview reflection by the originals and focusing on reproducing their fairy–tale plots. The applied readdressing translation strategy has been implemented by the following tactics: the tactic of relevant information rendering, the tactic of pragmatic adaptation of the source text, the tactic of stylistic features rendering, the tactic of the source text formal and structural features rendering. Common operations for the applied tactics have proved to be as following: search for a variant equivalent, omission, restructuring and compensation. The compensation technique has turned out to be the most universal operation within the applied translation tactics. This fact can be explained by the complex nature of transformations the source text is subjected to, the need to omit, rearrange amounts of information and to preserve the chosen genre along with its adaptation for the potential addressee.

Reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the explicitation of cohesive chains

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Xi Li ◽  
Long Li
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Hong Lou Meng ◽  
Different Types ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Chinese Classic ◽  
Logical Links

Abstract Explicitation is a key concept in translation studies referring to turning what is implicitly narrated in a source text into explicit narration in a target text; it has been widely studied from different aspects across language pairs and genres. However, while most previous studies investigate explicitation through a few indicators of explicitness, most of which are specific logical links and connectives, textual explicitness encompasses far beyond these. To date, little attention has been paid, especially in literary translation, to semantic explicitation, which is realized through cohesive chains in textual development. Since cohesive chains represent the development of events and characters throughout the text, it is assumed the more there are of them, the more tangible a text is in realizing its meaning within its context. This research, therefore, sets out to investigate the cohesive chains in a Chinese classic novel, Hong Lou Meng, and in its two English translations, The Dream of the Red Mansions and A Story of the Stone, with an emphasis on how the texts are manifested as narratives in the respective contexts with different readers. It has found a trend of explicitation in translation from Chinese source text to English target texts in terms of the numbers of cohesive chains and the lexical items forming the chains. It has also found differences in the distribution of different types of cohesive chains (identity chains and similarity chains), which represent distinctive patterns of realizing the context in each text. The interpretation of these different stylistic features in narrative reflects both typological differences and translators’ choices.

scholarly journals Retranslations of Faulkner’s Sanctuary in Turkish Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gülsüm Canlı ◽  
Ayşe Banu Karadağ
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
William Faulkner ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Original Version ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Translational Process

This study is based on a comparative analysis of Turkish translations of Sanctuary (1931) by William Faulkner and aims to review the assumptions of literary translation by Antoine Berman’s “retranslation hypothesis” and “deforming tendencies”. The novel was exposed to an obligatory rewriting process by the editor and was reworded by Faulkner who acted as a self-translator to make the original version acceptable. The rewritten version, which can be regarded as an intralingual translation, became the source text for interlingual translations. The novel was first translated by Ender Gürol as Kutsal Sığınak (1961); then by Özar Sunar as Lekeli Günler (1967) and finally by Necla Aytür as Tapınak (2007). Among Faulkner’s fifteen books which have been translated into Turkish thus far, Sanctuary is the only one with three translations in total. The translational process will be described to understand the rationale behind translators’ decisions within the context of translation studies.

scholarly journals Domestication in the Translation of D. Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (29) ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Gintarė Aleknavičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Da Vinci ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Cooperative Principle ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The One

Literary translation is one of the most widely discussed topics in Translation Studies. There are different opinions and approaches to literary translation. On the one hand, some theorists and translators suggest that linguistic aspects such as syntax, lexis, etc., are of great importance to literary translation; one must keep to the rules of the target language without digression from the original meaning, after all. On the other hand, some scholars believe these factors are insignificant, because turning translation into a linguistic exercise undermines the more important textual, cultural, and situational factors (Leonardi 2000). However, the application of Grice’s Cooperative Principle to literary translation allows the mixture of both the linguistic aspects and all that is left beyond the meaning. The study was inspired by Kirsten Malmkjaer, Gideon Toury and Kristina Shaffner’s debate on Norms, Maxims and Conventions in Translation Studies and Pragmatics (Shaffner 1999). The aim of the article is to analyse the Lithuanian translation of D. Brown’s The Da Vinci Code within the framework of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the strategy of domestication by reviewing domestication and foreignization and introducing Grice’s Cooperative Principle. The research proves that even though it is virtually impossible for a translator to convey the meaning of the source text exactly as it is given, the insufficient use of domestication in the Lithuanian translation of The Da Vinci Code emphasises the presence of the translator and disrupts the ease of reading.

scholarly journals Translation Studies Today: Old Problems and New Challenges

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-327
Author(s):  
Vadim V Sdobnikov
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Interdisciplinary Science ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Cultural Turn

The article presents a review of the key trends in modern Translation Studies (TS) made after thorough analysis of the most fundamental works written in various fields of TS. The review proves that not only the range of problems within TS is now more diversified, which is related to many changes in the nature of translation activity, but Translation Studies are an interdisciplinary science now and uses data from neighboring disciplines. Specific “turns” have occurred in Translation Studies, and new paradigms of translation investigation have emerged. The most important phenomena in Translation Studies include “cultural turn” and the so called “anthropocentric turn” that has given birth to communicative-functional approach to translation. This approach implies “plunging” into the communicative situation of translation, and its analysis aimed at realizing the goal of translation by the translator/interpreter. It allows a more precise formulation of tasks solved by translators in both traditional types of translation (literary translation, religious translation, interpreting) and relatively new kinds of translation activity (audiovisual translation, localization). The article proves that translation proper is the main element of any activity performed by translators while any translation activity implies cultural adaptation of the text to the perception of the source text audience. The principal feature of Translation Studies is being practice-oriented, and their focus on the study of objective laws of translation activity. It enables translation scholars to understand peculiarities of various types of translation and to realize the essence of translation as a human activity.

Benjamin and Borges

Babel ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Rasool Moradi Joz ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Bear Witness

Abstract Borges’ works deconstruct the time lag conceived in the binaries such as the work’s production vs. its criticism, the original text vs. its translation, the source text vs. the derivative nature of the target text, and reality vs. fiction. Benjamin, as Borges’ near contemporary, echoes rather the same idea in his post-Nietzschean philosophy of translation. Focusing on the similarities between the views of Benjamin on translation and those of Borges as reflected in his stories as well as his essays, particularly in his well-received essay on translations of Thousand and One Nights and in his meta-fictional short story ‘Pierre Menard’: Author of the Quixote, this paper aims at bringing the two scholars together in the context of literary translation studies in the postmodern era, where intersemiotic and intertextual collage (in Eco’s terminology) and mimicry bear witness to the claim that translation, like other intertextual enterprises, is neither inferior to the other intertextual undertakings such as writing, nor is it detached from language as post-structurally conceived. Furthermore, another core objective of this study is to show how Borges’ ‘Menard’ heralds and truly represents the translation theories built upon the underlying assumptions of deconstructionism since the 1980s. It is concluded that as far as postmodern and poststructuralist theories are concerned, both Borges’ and Benjamin’s works had predicted the future of literary and translation theories in which the decisive role of translation and translator in the construction of culture and identities cannot be denied.

Understanding translation universals

Babel ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhii Zasiekin
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
The Status ◽  
Series Of Experiments

Translation S- and T-universals have been widely discussed in Translation Studies and their psycholinguistic study has been among the priority topics today. The article is focused on the study of translation ‘S- universals’ (Chesterman 2004) and is based both on the psycholinguistic model of literary translation, which combines today’s neuroscience theories of cognitivism and connectionism, and on the experimental data that demonstrate its validity. The model is resulted in a series of experiments held with undergraduate students of translation department. The results of the study proved the idea of existing specific procedural and discursive S-universals in literary translation. As the empirical data showed, these universals maintain the status of common strategies depending on translator’s cognitive style (analytical or synthetic) and his dominant channel (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) of source text perception.

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