June
2006
MA theses
CAI, Luhong. 2006. On the Role of the Liaison
Interpreter. MA thesis,
DAI, Le. 2006. Escort Interpreting: a Medium for
Culture-Oriented Communication. MA thesis, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen
University.
HE,
Jing. 2006. Medical Interpreting. MA thesis,
* * *
COLLECTIVE VOLUMES
GU Zhengkun & SHI Zhongyi (eds). 2006. West and East: Developments in Translation Studies (in Chinese). Tianjin, China: Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House. (Volume Four of New perspectives in Humanities).
* A collection of
essays on TS, mostly Western and translated into Chinese. Abstracts are only in
Chinese. The list below only indicated the titles of the essays in English or
French.
Transation :
theory and metatheory
Nida, Eugene. Theories of Translation. 3-8.
Xu, Yuanchong. A theory of creative literary translation. 9-27.
Gu, Zhengkun. An introduction to metatranslatology.28-51.
Toury, Gideon. Assumed translation : a methodological concept an dits implications. 52-66.
Tan, Taixi. A study of metaphors of translation. 67-84.
Zheng, Hailing. Nouveau discours sur les concepts de base de la traduction littéraire. 85-92.
Ballard, Michel. La théorisation comme structuration de l’action du traducteur. 93-106.
Ivekovic, Rada. De la traduction permanente (nous sommes en traduction). 107-124.
Wolf, Michaela. Social dimensions of translation. 125-138.
Translation : Genres and strategies
Guo, Hong’an. De la traduction littéraire. 141-154.
Bassnett, Susan. Bringing the news back home : Strategies of acculturation and foreignization. 155-166.
Venuti, Lawrence. Translating humour : equivalence, compensation, discourse. 167-183.
Fu, hao. Sur la traduction des poèmes chinois classiques. 184-199.
Amselle, Jean-Loup. Transcription/trahison des cultures orales. 200-208.
Tatilon, Claude. Traduction : une perspective fonctionnaliste. 209-217.
Singy, Pascal. 218-229.
Translation :
Criticism and teaching
Hermans, Theo. Paradoxes and aporia in translation and Translation Studies. 233-247.
House, Juliane. Translation criticism : Analysis and evaluation. 248-267.
Ye, Zinan. Translation teaching : Inheritance and invention. 268-280.
Translation :
Oral interpretation
Gile, Daniel. Interpreting Studies as an academic discipline : sociological and scientific aspects. 283-301.
* * *
Van Coillie, Jan & Walter P. Verschueren (eds).
2006. Children’s Literature in
Translation. Challenges and Strategies. Manchester : StJerome.
Children’s classics from Alice in Wonderland to the works of Astrid Lindgren, Roald Dahl,
J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman are now generally recognized as literary achievements
that from a translator’s point of view are no less demanding than ‘serious’
(adult) literature. The present volume attempts to explore the various
challenges posed by the translation of children’s literature and at the same
time highlight some of the strategies that translators can and do follow when
facing these challenges. A variety of translation theories and concepts are put
to critical use, including Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, Toury’s concept of
norms, Venuti’s views on foreignizing and domesticating translations and on the
translator’s (in)visibility, and
Chesterman’s prototypical approach.
Topics include the ethics of translating for children, the importance of child(hood) images, the ‘revelation’ of the translator in prefaces, the role of translated children’s books in the establishment of literary canons, the status of translations in the former East Germany; questions of taboo and censorship in the translation of adolescent novels, the collision of norms in different translations of a Swedish children’s classic, the handling of ‘cultural intertextuality’ in the Spanish translations of contemporary British fantasy books, strategies for translating cultural markers such as juvenile expressions, functional shifts caused by different translation strategies dealing with character names, and complex translation strategies used in dealing with the dual audience in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
- The Translator
Revealed: Didacticism, Cultural Mediation and Visions of the Child Reader in
Translators’ Prefaces, Gillian
Lathey, pp. 1-18
The translator takes centre stage in this review of selected examples of historical and contemporary prefaces to translated children’s books published in the UK. Viewed historically, translators’ prefaces offer rare insights into the selection of texts for translation, developments in translation practices and changes in the image of the child reader. Mary Wollstonecraft, radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, addresses adults in the ‘Advertisement’ to her 1790 translation of Christian Gotthilf Salzmann’s Elements of Morality for the Use of Children; she expresses a didactic, moral purpose that necessitates wholesale cultural context adaptation. Over half a century later, the emphasis is on entertainment in the fey little poem ‘To English Children’ written by Mary Howitt to mediate her translation of Otto Speckter’s fables (1844). In more recent times, prolific children’s author Joan Aiken uses the art of the storyteller to beguile her young reader into understanding cultural difference in the lengthy introduction to her translation of the Comtesse de Ségur’s L’Auberge de l’Ange-Gardien (1976), whereas the preface to Ann Lawson Lucas’s admirable, scholarly retranslation of Collodi’s Pinocchio (1996) reveals the dilemma inherent in a translation of a children’s classic by an academic. When the translator becomes visible, metatextual comment highlights the particular demands of translating for children.
- Why Does
Children’s Literature Need Translation?, Rita Ghesquiere, pp. 19-33
Children’s literature is not just a peripheral
literary phenomenon: in the dynamics of the literary field it fulfils a basic
role in the establishment of canon(s). History teaches us that this basic role
specifically is heavily influenced by translation, since the repertoire of
children’s books and children’s (narrative/literary) discourse are
systematically developed on the basis of international traditions. In addition,
this article addresses questions such as the status of this international
tradition and the role of commercial factors in a globalized world community.
Can the import of Western children’s literature be a hindrance for the
development of native (non-Western) children’s literature? The traditions of
the
- No Innocent Act:
On the Ethics of Translating for Children, Riitta Oittinen, pp. 35-45
Translating may be defined as rereading and rewriting for target-language audiences, which makes translations uniquely different from their originals: every time texts are translated they take on a new language, a new culture, new readers, and a new point of view. In this sense translation of children’s literature is very similar to that of other literary texts. Yet translating children’s literature has its own special features: children’s books are often illustrated and often meant to be read aloud; the books also have a dual audience, children and adults. This article focuses on the process of translating children’s literature from the angle of child images and their influence on the translation strategies (domestication and foreignization) chosen. Moreover, the article deals with ethics, values and norms as well as manipulation, ideology and reading. Translating for children is mirrored against the total situation of language, culture and translators as professionals and human beings acting within specific societies with specific types of child image.
- Flying High –
Translation of Children’s Literature in East Germany, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemut, pp. 47-59
Fiction for children, on the whole, was firmly rooted within the East German social system and enjoyed a remarkably high status, yet at the same time was much guided and monitored. One of the main reasons was the regime’s endeavour to create a new kind of society, a socialist society that, in the long run, would bring the country to communism. In this process, any literary production had a considerable role to play in educating the masses. Therefore, it can be assumed that the need for close control and guidance also held true for children’s books, which were translated from other cultures. This paper examines different areas of the East German publishing industry with respect to children’s books selected for translation and contrasts them with the respective sphere of their counterpart of ‘home-grown’ books. This hopefully serves to shed light on the situation in the East German translation industry as well as on the contents, function, importance and prestige of translated children’s books.
- From Breaktime to Postcards: How Aidan Chambers Goes (Or Does Not Go) Dutch, Vanessa Joosen, pp. 61-78
Aidan Chambers is one of the most popular translated authors of adolescent fiction in Belgium and the Netherlands. This success is, without a doubt, due to the work of the translators who accepted the challenge of rendering Chambers’ linguistic creativity in a different language. Translation difficulties are numerous in Chambers’ novels, ranging from explicit and implicit intertextual references and puns to a complex mixture of discourses. Moreover, Chambers does not shy away from taboo topics, which he addresses in a direct style that is not acceptable to all audiences. This article focuses on two aspects of Aidan Chambers’ young adult fiction: its stylistic complexity on the one hand, and his use of taboo on the other. With reference to the development of young adult fiction in Belgium and the Netherlands, the article explores how attention has shifted from Chambers’ use of taboo to a greater awareness of his stylistic complexity. The Dutch translations of two novels are analysed in depth to illustrate this hypothesis: Breaktime (1978) and Postcards From No Man’s Land (1999), the first and penultimate book of Chambers’ so-called Dance series.
In the field of Descriptive Translation
Studies, a definition of translation should not prescribe what features a
translation needs to have in order to be labelled as such; instead a definition
should be descriptive and account for all texts that have ever been labelled
translation. As a result, many descriptive definitions have not only proved to
be too general, but their failure to distinguish translation from other forms
of rewriting (such as adaptation) has continued to fuel the equivalence debate.
This article investigates to what extent a prototypical approach may help to
define translation in an adequate way (i.e., both descriptive and specific),
departing from the Default Prototype Concept as presented in Chesterman
(1998:201-230). More specifically, attention is given to the extent to which
the translation of children's literature, which is characterized by a collision
of several norms (source-text related, literary, business, didactical,
pedagogical and technical norms), meets Chesterman’s standard constellation,
i.e., the contemporary folk view of what prototypical translation is. Is
children’s literature translated in a specific way, thus calling for an
adjustment or refinement of Chesterman’s standard constellation? Examples are
taken from translated Nordic children’s literature (Sofies Verden, Nils
Holgersson, Pippi Långstrump, Pettson
och Findus).
- Translating Cultural Intertextuality in
Children’s Literature, Belén González-Cascallana, pp. 97-110
Interest in the
cultural dimension of translation arises from the recognition that both the
original and the translation are not simply samples of linguistic material but
are embedded in a network of both source and target cultural signs. Indeed,
decoding these cultural signs can be more problematic for the translator than
the semantic or syntactic difficulties of a text. If the translation is then
intended for children, the complexity increases. This paper explores
culture-bound problems in translating children’s literature. The main focus is
on the description of translations, establishing where important shifts occur
and analysing them in order to determine the relationship between source text
and target text, the meaning acquired by the translated text, and its reception
in the target culture. The data consists of Spanish translations of
contemporary British children’s fantasy fiction. The comparison of texts is
based on the translators’ handling of the reworked concept of ‘cultural
intertextuality’. Attention is drawn to the translators’ choice of strategies,
determining whether the overall import of the text has been modified and how
relevant changes might have influenced the target audience.
- Translating Cultural References: The Language
of Young People in Literary Texts, Isabel Pascua, 111-121
The present article offers some of the results of a
comparative analysis of the English and Spanish translations of a juvenile
novel originally written in German: Greg,
Eine ratselhafte Verwandlung. Drawing on polysystem theory,
the article investigates how the two target texts shape the construction of an
identical world. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of preliminary norms
for the translator of literary texts written for children or young people: the
different social and educational conventions followed in those target languages
(English and Spanish), and the different focus on the young reader on the part
of the translators. This is achieved through the study and analysis of the
different strategies put into practice by the translators, notably the use of
cultural markers such as anthroponyms and hypocorisms, diastratic and diaphasic
varieties, and juvenile expressions in language.
- Character Names in Translation: A Functional
Approach, Jan Van Coillie, pp. 123-139
Names are sacred, but not so in children’s books, where there seems to be a widespread habit of adapting names to the target culture. This article investigates the translation of personal names from a functional perspective. Starting from a categorization of the various strategies a translator can apply when confronted with a personal name in the source text, each strategy is examined in the light of how it can affect the functioning of the names in the text. Examples from different languages, genres and periods then demonstrate how shifts may occur in the informative, formative, emotional, creative, divertive and aesthetic functions. The second part of the article offers a survey of the translator’s motives and classifies the factors determining the translator’s strategies into four categories: the nature of the name, textual factors, the translator’s frame of reference, and ‘external’ factors other than text and translator. Finally, the question of the concrete effects of specific strategies vis-à-vis a young readership is raised.
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in
Translation, Anette Øster, pp. 141-155
This article opens with a short presentation of Andersen’s entrance onto the national and international literary stage and with a brief overview of earlier studies of English translations of Andersen’s work. Subsequently there is a description of the English translations. The approach is descriptive rather than normative as the intention is not to judge the quality of translation, but to describe the style of the fairy tales. This is because the most significant differences are to be found in the style and not the content. Rather than analyzing one specific fairy tale, this paper offers an overview of the predominant features of the translations of a number of Andersen’s fairy tales. Erik Haugaard’s translations, entitled Hans Andersen – His Classic Fairy Tales (1974), are the main reference point. The argument is that many of the changes undertaken and differences between the source and target texts are a result of the translator’s conflicting view of the child reader and understanding of the writer’s genre. The article attempts to demonstrate that Andersen’s fairy tales in translation are much closer to the folk tale in their mode of expression than was the case with the original stories and that traditional thinking about genres and about what children’s literature can and should do may have determined this transformation.
- Dual Readership
and Hidden Subtexts in Children’s Literature: The Case of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun
and the Sea of Stories, Mette
Rudvin & Francesca Orlati, pp. 157-184
This paper investigates the translations of
Salman Rushdie’s children’s book Haroun
and the Sea of Stories (1990) into Italian and Norwegian. As Rushdie’s
first book after the publication of The
Satanic Verses and the fatwa
pronounced against him by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, it was initially presented as an
‘unthreatening children’s book’ despite its politically potent subtext. Thanks
to the ambivalent status of its dual target readership and the metaphorical
structuring of the attack on censorship, the text managed to communicate with
its readership, bypassing the censors. This paper examines the strategies used
by the translators to solve textual and subtextual translational challenges and
discusses how they influence the text’s more oblique political subtext. It also
examines how the translators address the characteristically Rushdian technique
of the ‘literalization of metaphor’. Given that translators’ strategies mirror
the societal, literary and publishing norms of the target culture, a series of
interesting translation issues emerge here: the micro-structural co-ordination
of culture specificities, the macro-structural marketing policies dictating the
translating strategies of the political subtext through metaphor, the
positioning of the target reader as child or adult, and the place of
translators and translations within the literary polysystem and the wider
social system.
* * *
Articles in journals and on the Web
Foley,
Tony. 2006. Lawyers
and legal interpreters. Different clients, different
cultures. Interpreting 8:1. 97-104.
* In the context of court interpreting, a paper
written by a lawyer focusing on the concepts of client and loyalty in the mind
of lawyers on one hand, and of Australian court interpreters on the other.
Ko,
Leong. 2006.
Teaching interpreting by distance mode. Possibilities and
constraints. Interpreting 8:1. 67-96.
* On
distance teaching of community interpreting. Includes a description of existing
programs
Valero-Garces, Carmen. 2006. Mediation as translation or translation as
mediation? Widening the translator’s role in a new multicultural society.
* An essay in favor of extending the
translator's role into that of a helper. A look into the literature on
sign-language interpreting might have provided more references for a richer
discussion, as sign-language interpreters are rather advanced on the topic (see
for instance Janzen, Terry (ed). 2005. Topics in
Signed Language Interpreting. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins)
SKASE Journal of Translation
and Interpretation Vol 1. No.1 (2005) www.skase.sk/Volumes/JT101/index.htm
* This is the first volume of this new
journal of the Slovak Association for the Studies of English an is devoted to
papers from the Symposium on Translation and Interpreting at the Hub of
Disciplines, apparently guest-edited by Carol Sykes and Robin Warner of the
university of Sheffield and includes 7 papers beside the introduction by Sykes
and Warner.
Baker, Mona. Narratives in and of Translation. 4-13.
* Baker makes the point that the
Translators’ work can be used not only for ‘good’, lofty causes, but also for
less than laudable action. An ideological more than scholarly paper.
Warner, Robin. Parallel paradigms and parallel problems
in translation and interpreting and discourse pragmatics. 14-24.
Hudson, Richard. Interpreting in linguistics. 25-36.
Corsellis, Anne. Interpreters at the hub of disciplines.
37-46.
Round, Nicholas. Translation and its Metaphors : the
(N+1) wise men and the elephant. 47-69.
Setton, Robin. So what is so interesting about
simultaneous interpreting ? 70-84.
* See a review in the CIRIN Bulletin n°32.