scholarly journals Information flow in excerpts of two translations of Mme Bovary

Author(s):  
Alexandre Sévigny

This article explores how information is accumulated and collated in a cog-nitively realistic fashion in two very short excerpts of translations of Flaubert ’s ‘Mme Bovary’. The approach taken is a formal cognitive linguistic one using Discourse Information Grammar (DIG), a theory of grammar based on the intuitive idea that texts are understood by the reader incrementally, in a left-to-right fashion. Thus, a cognitive pragmatic approach is taken to the study of the excerpts, highlighting how much information is accumulated as the reader develops an understanding of the text in question. The analysis discusses the differences in the build-up of information in the source text and in its translations. The conclusion indicates that translation studies contribute much to the development of formal linear cognitive linguistic theories.

2019 ◽  

The paper, in its first part, outlines the Slovak research into audiovisual translation (AVT) from the 1950s up to the present, paying attention to the most important scholars as well as publications that helped to shape and establish the discipline within Slovak translation studies. It is based on the ongoing bibliographical research and the historical explanation mapping the development of AVT research in Slovakia by I. Tyšš – e.g. his publication Myslenie o audiovizuálnom preklade na Slovensku: 1952 – 2017 (Thinking on Audiovisual Translation in Slovakia: 1952 – 2017, 2018) – as well as on own findings covering the last two years. In more detail, the first part of the paper highlights that it was primarily thanks to a younger generation of translation studies scholars – especially E. Perez (née Janecová), L. Paulínyová (née Kozáková) and J. Želonka – that in 2012 the Slovak research into AVT finally became systematic. The second part of the paper is devoted to the phenomenon of the so-called second-hand translation of originally Russian audiovisual works that may be observed in Slovakia in recent years. The questionable nature of this phenomenon is stressed since the Russian language is not a language of limited diffusion and definitely not remote in relation to the Slovak cultural space. On the example of two documentary films – Под властью мусора (Held Captive by Rubbish, 2013) and Дух в движении (Spirit in Motion, 2015), the author discusses and analyses the problems that occur when translating originally Russian AV works into Slovak through the English language, i.e. the negative shifts resulting from mis-/overinterpretation of the source text, translation by omission, wrong order of dialogues, cultural specifics and incorrect transcription.


2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahid Medhat ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin ◽  
Pyeaam Abbasi

This article applies the theory of possible worlds to the field of translation studies by examining the narrative worlds of original and translated texts. Specifically, Marie-Laure Ryan’s characterization of possible worlds provides an account of the internal structure of the textual universe and the progression of the plot. Based on this account, one of the stories from Rumi’s Masnavi is compared to Coleman Barks’s English translation. The possible worlds of the characters and the unfolding of the plots in both texts are examined to assess the degree of compatibility between the textual universes of the original and the translated texts and how significant this might be. It also examines how readers reconstruct the narrative worlds projected by the two texts. The analysis reveals some inconsistencies in the way the textual universes of the original and translated texts are furnished and in the way readers reconstruct the narrative worlds of the two texts. The inability of translation to fully render the main character results in some loss in terms of the pungency and pithiness of the original text. It is also shown that the source text presents a richer domain of the virtual in comparison, suggesting a higher degree of tellability in the textual universe of the Masnavi’s narrative.


Author(s):  
Ulrike Oster

The understanding of ‘term’ in traditional terminology theory reduces the lexical problems of technical translation to a mere substitution of the source-text term by a target-text term. In translation studies however , a number of issues have been highlighted which are not covered by traditional terminology theory, e.g. cultural specificity or the importance of textual and pragmatic considerations. This paper first analyses how the new communication and cognition-oriented approaches to terminology account for these aspects of technical translation. Then it briefly presents results of a language-pair and domain-specific study which allows us to exemplify some of the issues that have been discussed and to reach some specific conclusions for the translator of this linguistic combination.


Author(s):  
Nadejda Zubareva ◽  
◽  
Iroda Siddikova

The present paper reports on a study that aims to explore the cognitive and pragmatic potential of leveraging phraseological intensifiers in English political discourse. The authors argue that the phraseological intensifiers of political discourse could not be discussed without any contribution to the extra-linguistic context. Therefore, the present study works with a cognitive linguistic explanation of the phraseological intensifiers used by English politicians and journalists as well as performed pragmatic impact that aimed to foster the relevant conceptualization process. The suggestion of phraseological intensifiers depends on context linguistic meaning in the employed by the authors cognitive-pragmatic paradigm. This paper also denotes a wide range of relative to intensity categories, which should be distinguished from it. Such an analysis allows the authors to account for the wide distribution of intensifiers and their co-occurrence with categories that do not encode degree variables. The results of the study show that phraseological intensifiers significantly outperformed in the degree of pragmatic suggestion in political discourse and made use of them in a more appropriate way.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gonzálvez-García

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.


Tekstualia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (36) ◽  
pp. 47-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Crickmar

The discourse of translation has always seemed to lean towards the negative. Over the years translation scholars have discussed refractions and deformities in translation, as well as losses that need to be compensated for and infi delities committed by unwary representatives of this treacherous craft. Regardless of the specifi c subject of research, there usually is some sense of implied failure on the part of the target text. The situation becomes even more complex, when the source text itself exhibits a failure of some kind, as is the case with Dorota Masłowska’s debut novel. The young Polish author in question intentionally breaks the rules of her native language and challenges Polish literary conventions, thus causing a translational dilemma. The article poses the question, whether the translator should carry the said failure into the target text or should (s)he ‘correct’ it and, as a result, conventionalize (domesticate) the translation. In other words, is the translator always bound to fail… to fail?


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorit Ravid ◽  
Yehudit Chen-Djemal

The study is premised on speech and writing relying on differently coordinated temporal frames of communication, aiming to pinpoint the conceptual and linguistic differences between spoken and written Hebrew narration. This is a case study presenting in-depth psycholinguistic analyses of the oral and written versions of a personal-experience story produced by the same adult narrator in Hebrew, taking into account discursive functions, discourse stance, linguistic expression, and information flow, processing, and cohesion. Findings of parallel spoken and written content units presenting the same narrative information point to the interface of the narrative genre with the spoken and written modalities, together with the mature cognitive, linguistic, and social skills and experience of adulthood. Both spoken and written personal-experience adult narrative versions have a non-personal, non-specific, detached stance, though the written units are more abstract and syntactically complex. Adult narrating skill encompasses both modalities, recruiting different devices for the expression of cohesion.


Babel ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Díaz Cintas

Abstract Este artículo se centra en el análisis y valoración de una serie de presupuestos teóricos aportados por eminentes estudiosos de la traducción, que en un intento de sentar unas bases de trabajo firmes y operativas que permitan una aproximación científica a la realidad del hecho traductor, proponen lo que se conoce como 'Translation Studies'. Esta escuela basa sus presupuestos teóricos en una metodología funcionalista que se articula en torno a la función que el texto traducido cumple en el sisterna semiótico de llegada. La gran originalidad de esta aproximación radica en el cambio de énfasis que se aplica a la hora de observar la realidad traductora: si tradicionalmente el dogmatismo marcaba cualquier tipo de análisis contrastivo entre un texto origen y otro meta, de acuerdo a estas recientes propuestas el estudio se lleva a cabo sobre el texto meta en tanto que producto independiente que se ha incorporado a una determinada sociedad, denomi-nada polisistema. Esta articulación empírica y pragmática permite superar la sempiterna dicotomía que enfrentaba conceptos tales como traducción literal y traducción libre. Dentro de la taxonomía translémica, la labor subtituladora se corresponde a lo que se viene definiendo como "traducción subordinada", y teniendo presente esta categorización propondré como colofón a mi artículo un modelo de análisis descriptivo que tiene cuenta de las caracterís-ticas propias e inherentes al fenómeno de la traducción de subtítulos. Abstract This article deals with the analysis and evaluation of a series of theoretical assumptions put forward by renowned translation specialists, who set down solid and operational bases for a scientific assessment of the translator's function, often referred to as 'Translation Studies". The hypotheses are based on functional methodology which focuses on the function achieved by the translated text in a semiotic system. The originality of this approach lies in the change of emphasis placed on the observation of the reality of translation; if, traditionally, dogmatism marked any kind of analysis by underlining the contrasts between the original text and another final text, this study focuses on the final text considered as an independent product being integrated in a particular social system known as the "plurisystem". This empirical and pragmatic approach allows us to go beyond the eternal dichotomy inherent in concepts such as literal and free translation. In terms of translation taxonomies, the work of subtitling corresponds to the task classified as 'constrained translation', and if we keep in mind this division into categories, the article introduces a model of descriptive analysis which takes into account the actual and inherent characteristics of the phenomenon of subtitling. Résumé Cet article traite de l'analyse et de l'évaluation d'une série d'hypothèses théoriques, posées par d'éminents spécialistes en matière de traduction, qui ont établi des bases solides et operationelles permettant une estimation scientifique de la fonction de traducteur, désignée souvent comme "Translation Studies" ou "Traductologie". Ces hypothèses sont basées sur une méthodologie fonctionnelle qui s'articule autour de la fonction que le texte traduit réalise dans un système semiotique. L'originalité de cette approche se trouve dans le changement d'accentuation qui s'applique dès que l'on observe la traduction dans sa réalité. Si, traditionnellement, le dogmatisme marquait tout type d'analyse en soulignant les contrastes entre un texte de départ et un autre texte d'arrivée, cette étude porte sur le texte d'arrivée, considéré comme un produit indépendant, qu'on intègre dans une société déterminée, dénommée polisystème. Cette approche empirique et pragmatique permet de dominer l'éternelle dichotomie inhérente aux concepts, tels que la traduction littérale et la traduction libre. Au sein de la taxonomie translative, le travail de sous-titrage correspond à celui qui s'intitule "traduction subordonnée'. En gardant en tête cette catégorisation, l'article introduit un modèle d'analyse descriptive qui tient compte des caractéristiques propres et inhérentes au phénomène du sous-titrage.


Author(s):  
Norbert Bachleitner

AbstractThe English translation of Aichinger’s novel appeared in 1963, that is at a time when her writing did not yet seem appropriate for a wider public. The American translator Cornelia Schaeffer therefore adapted the novel by ›clarifying‹ opaque phrases and ›normalizing‹ unusual expressions or by simply omitting them. She tries to provide her readers with a more or less realistic story of children trying to escape from Nazi terror. Furthermore, she does not adequately render leitmotifs such as Aichinger’s variations of the word »nachweisen « referring to the notorious (Arier-)Nachweis. Sometimes it is clear that deviations from the meaning of the source text are due to the lack of the translator’s command of German. Most interesting for comparative translation studies are passages that are open to interpretation in the German version, e.g. Ellen’s striving for the »Allererste«.


2021 ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Тетяна Ляшенко

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.


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