The current study aims to make an overall semiotic analysis of translation strategies used to reproduce the imagery and relevant cultural features in John Fowles’ “The Collector.” Regarding literary translation as a cross-cultural dialogue aimed to achieve both artistic and aesthetic effects contributes much to analyzing the semiotic features of the translated discourse and deciphering the relevant socio-cultural information decoded in the source language text. Therefore, it has been decided that translation is a communicative act that (...) facilitates the transfer of meaning in a cross-cultural perspective and focuses on reproducing the source language semiosphere. The semiotic approach is well-established in translation studies with the subtlety of methods and criteria. Therefore, it was considered that the analysis of lexico-semantic, grammatical and stylistic translation strategies would usefully supplement and extend the scope of literary text research. In the current study, comparing the source and target language texts has shown that the translator employs various translation transformations to transmit the author’s pragmatic intent and socially relevant information in the target language. (shrink)

This study correlates argumentation, translation, and literature to construct a new model for assessing the quality of translated literature. Literary translation is described as being compatible with the rhetorical stream of argumentation studies, while the study rests on the overriding notion of ethics of difference in argumentative cross-cultural and translational encounters. The model incorporates ethics of difference and interpretive act, pragma-dialectical contributions of scheme/structure and rhetorical/dialectical situations, and aesthetic features including figures of speech and genres of literature. (...) Application of the model to an English translation of a classical poem shows that the model can be systematically applied to quality assessment of translated literature. Considering the implications and suggestions for further research, the study can progressively develop into a literary or cross-linguistic subgenre of argumentation theory, with implications for comparative literature, philosophy of meaning, translation theory, and dialectical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Resumen: La variación lingüística es un fenómeno presente en casi todos los idiomas. Su interés para los estudios traductológicos es incuestionable. En el presente trabajo pretendemos investigar cómo se resuelven los problemas que plantea la variación lingüística para la traducción literaria chino-español. Con tal objetivo, hemos elegido la obra La casa de té y sus dos versiones de español como corpus de análisis. Partiendo de la hipótesis de que en la traducción de los elementos de la variación lingüística de esta (...) obra se recurre a la estandarización como solución traductora preferente, hemos analizado el corpus para obtener datos tanto cualitativos como cuantitativos. Los resultados nos permiten confirmar la hipótesis general, así como identificar las características específicas y problemas que presenta la traducción de la variación lingüística del chino al español. Abstract: Linguistic variation is a phenomenon present in almost all languages. Its importance for translation studies is unquestionable. In this paper, we intend to investigate how the problems posed by linguistic variation are solved for Chinese-Spanish literary translation. To this end, we have chosen the work Teahouse and its two Spanish versions as the corpus of analysis. Based on the hypothesis that in the translation of the elements of linguistic variation in this work, standardization is used as the preferred translation solution, we analyzed the corpus to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data. The results allow us to confirm the general hypothesis, as well as to identify the specific characteristics and problems presented by the translation of linguistic variation from Chinese into Spanish. (shrink)

Translation often proceeds as if languages already existed, as if the task of the translator were to make an appropriate selection from available resources. Clive Scott challenges this tacit assumption. If the translator is to do justice to himself/herself as a reader, if the translator is to become the creative writer of his/her reading, then the language of translation must be equal to the translators perceptual experience of, and bodily responses to, source texts. Each renewal of perceptual and (...) physiological contact with a text involves a renewal of the ways we think language and use our expressive faculties (listening, speaking, writing). Phenomenology and particularly the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty underpins this new approach to translation. The task of the translator is tirelessly to develop new translational languages, ever to move beyond the bilingual into the multilingual, and always to remember that language is as much an active instrument of perception as an object of perception. Clive Scott is Professor Emeritus of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the British Academy. (shrink)

This paper examines the translation of literary terminology as cultural sign in the selected versions of the History of Chinese Literature in the Anglophone world. It argues that classical Chinese literary terminology with its rich connotations and strong prescriptiveness as „symbol‟ in semiotics, holds great difficulty for translators and scholars. Its inherent social and cultural elements in determining the meaning of these terms cannot be transferred across cultures, thus causing problems such as „neutralization‟ either in free or (...) literally translation or transliteration of these terms. The paper points out that an ideal way out for translation of classical Chinese literary terms should be transliteration coupled with proper notes. Although not qualified as translation in the strict sense, transliteration could, in some way, remind the readers of the heterogeneity of the term, thus offsetting the negative effect by the “neutralization” of the term. It could also guarantee the term‟s independency with the ultimate aim to make the term accepted by and integrated into the culture of the new land. (shrink)

A less often remarked fact is that a work’s composition can overshoot its completion. It is the description apt for these cases that is the topic of this chapter. But before I get to that, it is useful to describe some of the signs that show a work to be finished.

This paper discusses translation practices from a historicist viewpoint, contextualizing them in their emerging “episode.” The latter is a concept drawn from sociology of literature and accounts for the rise of certain discourses and ideologies in a society. On the basis of the argument that translation practices are informed by the general literary and socio-cultural milieu in which they are produced and consumed, the paper studies the translators’ prefaces to three translations published between 1953 and 1978—a period (...) dominated by Leftist and Marxist discourse in Iran. Drawing on a historically oriented model which holds that the translator’s ideology is revealed at the moment in which he/she chooses a text, and continues through the discourse he/she develops to translate that text, the research embarks on studying translation practices on two levels of choice mechanism and prefaces. Prefaces are discussed in the light of the dominant ideology of representation that is characterized by a revolutionary discourse. The research demonstrates that these translators opted for a strategy that incorporates the translations in the Persian cultural setting with minor changes in a way that politicizes the foreign literature. (shrink)

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i'jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory ('ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study of literary meaning. Finally, I show how Islamic aesthetics conceptualizes the translatability of literary texts along lines kindred to Walter Benjamin. -/- .

Translating the Bible into Arabic: Historical, Text-Critical and Literary Aspects. Edited by Sara Binay and Stefan Leder. Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 131. Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2012; distributed by Ergon Verlag, Würzburg. Pp. 150 + 127. €59.

Inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of philology and William Gass's concept of transreading, Huiwen (Helen) Zhang employs “transreader” to suggest the integration of four roles in one: reader, translator, writer, and scholar. “Transreader” recognizes that close reading, literary translation, creative writing, and cultural hermeneutics are interdependent activities with intertwined goals: to transfer, transvalue, transform, and transcend the canon. From this perspective, Lu Xun, China's Nietzsche, is a twentieth-century transreader of the canon, and his prose poem “Revenge (The Second)” (...) delivers a self-referential ethics of transreading. Zhang's transreading of this poem shows why slow reading is today more necessary than ever, in what sense translation is a universal dilemma, how humanity grows when its expression grows more subtle, and that transreading opens a space for genuine communication. (shrink)

A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah. Edited and translated by Emilie Savage-Smith, Simon Swain, and Geert Jan van Gelder. Handbuch für Orientalistik, 1: The Near and Middle East, vol. 134. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2020. $865. Open access: https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/lhom/.

Literary translation, especially poetic translation, is one of the rare domains where aesthetic, literary, and technical fields meet. This characteristic makes it the sort of work where a number of theoretical and practical problems converge. It is necessary to approach the issue on three essential planes. The first is theoretical: translation is an operation defined by rules; the second, functional: translation is a practical procedure, which is to say an a posteriori task; the third, (...) specific: poetic translation is itself a poetic activity.Let us begin with the last. From the point of view of literary creation, there is actually no specific difference between the original text and that of the translation. For poet and translator alike take part in a creative act, each laboring according to his means and tastes. For each of them linguistic competence and poetic competence are essential. Indeed, the act of translating is based on a “task of purification of words and ideas” which requires the application of mental effort on the one hand to the problems and the constraints of the poetic art as such, and on the other hand, to the descriptive and analytic nature of language, which is also music. Which is to say that one should not see translation as a simple operation of a lexical order. Nor should one forget that each language requires a specific lexical classification. (shrink)

Does translation of the literary text really need a theory? If yes which one among so many, which complicate more than simplify the matter? Which strategy do we adopt to at least communicate something of the original to a target reader, who does not know anything of the source language? The key problem is the meaning. Is it really grasped? If yes, is it of the text, or of the author, or of the reader? Meaning is not restricted (...) to linguistic parameters; it is more cognitive and essentially based on the interpreter’s own world knowledge. The text is not only a product but essentially an on-going process of meaning. Though it has precise time and space when produced, it is, nonetheless, timeless and spaceless. When we animate it, through reading, it becomes a text within the scope of a new space and a new time. That is, the meaning in the process of translation becomes anew. The text is autonomous and its autonomy makes it have its own specificity and existence. And so, the meaning in/of the text is ever-changing: there is no one meaning in/of the text, as there is no one reader of the text. (shrink)

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. The Tale of Genji is the probably the earliest prose fiction in the world that still lives today as a masterpiece since the first decade of the 11th century. This 1200-page Japanese classic was written by a noble court woman, Murasaki Shikibu, and it spans almost three quarters of a century. The first part has to do with the life and loves of the nobleman known as “The Shining Genji”, and the final chapters follow the fate (...) and fortunes of the characters that survived after Genji’s death. There have been four English translations of the novel: one partial translation by a Japanese translator and three other complete translations by different English native speakers in the 20th century. This paper studies the Turkish translation process of The Tale of Genji from Edward G. Seidensticker’s English version. It points out the plentitude of potential translation choices and tries to explore the reasons of translators for their decisions. It compares the translators’ strategies and assesses their impact on the meanings and functions of the allusions and the connections between the adopted strategies. (shrink)

The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) is the probably the earliest prose fiction in the world that still lives today as a masterpiece since the first decade of the 11th century. This 1200-page Japanese classic was written by a noble court woman, Murasaki Shikibu, and it spans almost three quarters of a century. The first part has to do with the life and loves of the nobleman known as “The Shining Genji”, and the final chapters follow the fate and fortunes (...) of the characters that survived after Genji’s death. There have been four English translations of the novel: one partial translation (1882) by a Japanese translator and three other complete translations by different English native speakers in the 20th century. This paper studies the Turkish translation process of The Tale of Genji from Edward G. Seidensticker’s English version. It points out the plentitude of potential translation choices and tries to explore the reasons of translators for their decisions. It compares the translators’ strategies and assesses their impact on the meanings and functions of the allusions and the connections between the adopted strategies. (shrink)

The study of film adaptations, particularly those coming from literature, has been growing at a rapid rate during the last years due to the amount of adaptations coming from both mainstream and independent film industries. The focus of these studies though is generally addressed to best sellers where the literary style is clearly adaptable to the screen; however, there are cases where the adaptive process has resulted in an entirely different outcome. Naked Lunch, written by William Burroughs and adapted (...) to screen by David Cronenberg, represents a bold change if compared with other novels turned into films. The purpose of this article is to descriptively analyse the literary style in order to understand how it has been represented and adapted into Cronenberg’s film. The analysis will be performed helped with computer-based tools to support statements, using the novel itself as corpus and adding theoretical ideas from Leech and Short’s perspectives. The results suggest that the author’s corrosive, sexually-fuelled claustrophobic style has been translated following three patterns in terms of adaptation theory, although Burroughs, in the hands of Cronenberg, becomes an almost new classification of adaptation, not only adding literary features to the film, but also distinguishable core moments of the writer’s life to the final product. The analysis conducted encourages the study of other uncommon adaptations from literary authors in order to understand the adaptive process followed by filmmakers. (shrink)

Behind the superficial obscurity of what fragments we have of Heraclitus' thought, Professor Kahn claims that it is possible to detect a systematic view of human existence, a theory of language which sees ambiguity as a device for the expression of multiple meaning, and a vision of human life and death within the larger order of nature. The fragments are presented here in a readable order; translation and commentary aim to make accessible the power and originality of a systematic (...) thinker and a great master of artistic prose. The commentary locates Heraclitus within the tradition of early Greek thought, but stresses the importance of his ideas for topical theories of language, literature and philosophy. (shrink)

The exchange of ideas between nations during the Enlightenment was greatly facilitated by cultural ventures, commercial enterprise and scientific collaboration. But how were they exchanged? What were the effects of these exchanges on the idea or artefact being transferred? Focussing on contact between England, France and Ireland, a team of specialists explores the translation, appropriation and circulation of cultural products and scientific ideas during the Enlightenment. Through analysis of literary and artistic works, periodicals and official writings contributors uncover: (...) the key role played by literary translators and how they adapted, naturalized and sometimes distorted plays and novels to conform to new cultural norms; the effects of eighteenth-century anglomania, and how this was manifested in French art; how the vagaries of international politics and conflict affected both the cultural products themselves and the modes of dissemination; how religious censorship engendered new Irish Catholic and French Huguenot diasporas, with their particular intellectual pursuits and networks of exchan≥ the significance of newspapers and periodicals in disseminating new knowledge and often radical philosophical ideas. By exploring both broad areas of cultural activity and precise examples of cultural transfer, contributors to Intellectual journeys reveal the range and complexity of intellectual exchange and its role in the formation of a truly transnational Enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the appropriation of Deleuzian literary theory in the Chinese context and its potential for mapping a new global poetics. The purpose of this treatment is thus twofold: first, it will redefine the East–West literary relationship, and second, it will seek a new ethics of life, as endorsed by Deleuze's philosophy of immanence. One finds an affinity between literature and life in Deleuze's philosophy: in short, literature appears as the passage of life and an (...) enterprise of health and thus seeks new possibilities of life, which consists in the invention of a new language and a new people. But what kind of health may such a view provide for a non-Western individual, people, literature and culture? This investigation further appeals to the medium of translation. This paper argues that the act of translation functions as a means of deterritorialisation that displays continuing variations of a language, and through translation, Deleuze's clinical and critical aspects of literature promote a transversal poetics that transcends the binary, oppositional conception of East–West and an immanent ethics of life that overcomes the sentiment of ressentiment. (shrink)

This article is concerned with writing in Poland since the collapse of Communism. It focuses mainly on the generation of Polish writers who made their debut around the time of the collapse of Communism and whose work has since begun to appear in English translation. It considers the changing focus of the post-Communist generation of writers, asks how the translations of their work represent Poland to the world and what these works might indicate about changes within contemporary Polish (...) class='Hi'>literary and political culture. In particular the article looks at recent fiction from Polish Women Writers and themes in recent writing including the ideas of Poland as Post-Communist, Post-nationalist, Post-Jewish and Post-German. (shrink)

The Times Literary Supplement of Thursday, June 19, 1969 reports that "Mr. A. V. Miller has Just produced a new version of the Science of Logic which is intended to replace that of the American translators Johnston and Struthers issued in 1929. It is clearly a most painstaking piece of work, and. it certainly succeeds in presenting Hegel in an idiom which is intelligible, if not exactly elegant..." The work contains a foreword by J. N. Findlay of Yale University, (...) and was recently published by Allen & Unwin in Britain. It is available in this country through the Humanities Press, New York. The extensive T. L. S. article also reviews the tradition of Hegelian scholarship, particularly in England and France. (shrink)

I consider Ralph Waldo Emerson’s creative appropriation of a philosophical doctrine that helps to make sense of an attitude towards life, its gifts and its burdens, that is often expressed in Puritan diaries. The doctrine, now known as the doctrine of continuous creation, holds that in conserving the world, God re-creates it at every moment, making the same creative effort at each ever-advancing now that God made at the very beginning. Continuous creation was explicitly endorsed by at least one Puritan (...) diarist, Jonathan Edwards, and it helps to explain the intense self-inspection and valiant response to life to which other Puritan diarists (including Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody Emerson) testify. Continuous creation was an important ingredient in the idealism of Edwards and, once translated, it became an important ingredient in the idealism of Emerson. My primary aim to describe Emerson’s creative translation of the doctrine as Edwards understood it, but I also discuss Emerson's relation to the Puritan diary, considered as a literary form. I close by suggesting that for us, a version of the doctrine of continuous creation can perhaps be a source of optimism and an incentive to action, as I believe it was for Emerson. I also comment briefly on Emerson's grateful reliance on text-to-text translations. When Emerson studied translations of sacred texts from around the world, what he heard was not difference and dissent, but agreement: agreement on the very points that united him with Edwards, different as they were in other ways. (shrink)

In contemporary literary Hindi there is an abundance of Perso-Arabic loanwords which often function similarly to words of Sanskrit origin. Despite their semantic proximity, each of them can have different connotational meanings and cultural associations. Furthermore, depending on the context, one of them will be preferred to the other. This situation can become an issue when translating from Hindi into Polish. In this paper, I will investigate whether these loanwords should be considered as a third language in translation. (...) If this is the case, they make the text a multicultural one, and, thus, raise the question of how to translate them into Polish, being at the same time focused on a monolingual recipient and their cognitive comfort while not impoverishing and distorting the process of translation. Moreover, I will propose an approach which can be of assistance in achieving this goal, relying on French and Latin loanwords used in the Polish language. (shrink)

This long-awaited translation of Das literarische Kunstwerk makes available for the first time in English Roman Ingarden's influential study. Though it is inter-disciplinary in scope, situated as it is on the borderlines of ontology and logic, philosophy of literature and theory of language, Ingarden's work has a deliberately narrow focus: the literary work, its structure and mode of existence. The Literary Word of Art establishes the groundwork for a philosophy of literature, i.e., an ontology in terms of (...) which the basic general structure of all lliterary works can be determined. This "essential anatomy" makes basic tools and concepts available for rigorous and subtle aesthetic analysis. (shrink)

Translation is a fundamental part of cultural dissemination. Based on an empirical qualitative research, the first part of this article presents the effects that thewave of translations after 2005, the first of utmost importance in the Romanian cultural environment, engaged in the local literary field, and in the second part there are brought into discussion some important intercultural barriers in translation and promotion of literature abroad, such as defining literature in a different way, new forms of censorship (...) or problematic semiotic codes of literature of revolt. (shrink)