the Translator

AbstractThe analysis of ‘The Vision’, H. F. Cary’s rewriting (1888) of Dante’s ‘Comedy’, focuses on the problem of the translator being confronted with different editions of a source text. Cary chooses to take on the function of textual critic: he does not adhere to a single edition but makes his choices from a number of versions by different editors. Significantly, Dante’s translator foregrounds his acts of textual criticism: he presents the reader with various (often equally plausible) alternatives in his explanatory footnotes, thereby casting serious doubts on the belief that he – or any other translator for that matter – can be absolutely ‘faithful’. Not only do Cary’s choices as a textual critic emphasize the elusive nature of textual meaning, but they also introduce a dissociative element in his translation project: by achieving readability in the text proper Cary complies with the expectation of the reading public that he will recover the original meaning; on the other hand, he takes great pains to...

ABSTRACT In this article I explore the way Italian crime fiction is presented to prospective Anglophone readers through paratextual bindings: titles, cover images and blurbs. I focus in particular on the way Italian settings are – variously – described, elucidated, emphasised and promoted, as publishers and their marketing teams seek to place a text within a space of familiarity or exoticism. Through the very act of circulation across cultures and languages, new forms of national allegory are attributed to these crime novels, on the basis of the perceived needs and prior associations of their new readership.

ABSTRACT Modern Orientalism is seen with suspicion and mistrust by many critics. It is widely perceived as a hegemonic discourse with mischievous agendas. In this regard, Edward Said argues that Orientalism is ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’. Bernard Lewis, an expert in contemporary Islam as well as its history, is one of the most controversial Orientalists nowadays. In 2003, he published a very controversial work entitled: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. This publication is contested by many critics, especially in the Arab World. Hence, its Arabic translation may be subject to narrative (re)framing as it is accused of being ideologically driven. In this paper, I draw on narrative theory to examine the different ways in which Lewis’s narrative may be (re)framed in its Arabic translation. I examine the geopolitical and cultural contexts in which the source and the target texts appeared, and how these contexts shaped their production. I also identify the different possible narrative (re)framing strategies employed in the translation and the way they relate to the larger meta-narrative in which they are embedded.

ABSTRACT This article builds on Annie Brisset’s chapter ‘Clémence Royer, ou Darwin en colère’ (2002:173–203), in which she argues that Clémence Royer’s French translation (1861) of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) was adapted to the French positivistic style, that Royer’s own voice was injected into the translation and that the French translation conveyed a higher degree of certainty than the English original. The comparative study presented here investigates whether two Dutch translations (Winkler 1860 and Hellemans 2000) show similar shifts in certainty or epistemic stance (Kärkkäinen 2003). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted of Darwin’s chapter four on ‘Natural Selection’ and its two translations, focusing on a set of modal words and using an adapted version of Martin and White’s epistemic scale of ranking (2005). Comparisons between Darwin’s text and its translations reveal a positivistic voice, similar to Royer’s, in Winkler’s nineteenth-century translation but not in the contemporary translation by Hellemans. The findings are discussed in terms of target audiences, language-inherent characteristics and general translation tendencies.

Based on a thorough analysis of policies regulating the publishing industry and interviews with translators and editors, this paper attempts to uncover the power dynamics among social actors who engage in and shape the translation of sexually explicit language in mainland China. It starts with an in-depth analysis of the workings of the mainland Chinese publishing industry, and centres on the representation of various sociopolitical actors in the translation of sex. It uses interviews with translators to uncover how their ideology influences the translation of sex and the extent to which the translators exercise their agency to negotiate with editors and/or publishing houses. It then analyses the interviews with editors, whilst also drawing on policy regulations, to shed light on how publishing houses shape the translation of sexually explicit language under the overshadowing pressure of state censorship and censure. The interviews with translators are compared against those with editors to reveal the differences between how the translators perceive their own roles and how their roles are perceived by the editors. All in all, this paper hopes to uncover how different sociopolitical actors shape the translation of sexually explicit language under the interplay of power, ideology and different forms of censorship.

... Record Details. Record ID, 1172401. Record Type, journalArticle. Author, Sonia Vandepitte [801000548008] - Ghent University Sonia.Vandepitte@UGent.be; Liselotte Vandenbussche [801001678359] - Ghent University Liselotte.Vandenbussche@UGent.be. ...

ABSTRACT Fernando Pessoa devoted part of his prolific creative life to the practice of literary translation, mostly from his native Portuguese and English. He also wrote about this craft, as loose posthumous unfinished essays and scattered notes in his archive attest. Reading this material closely alongside a metrical analysis of selected published and unpublished poetry translations, we aim to: (1) understand the extent to which his thoughts on literary translation align with his poetry translation practice, primarily defined by his approach to poetic rhythm; (2) revisit some key ideas proposed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Walter Benjamin on translation, as well as Plato's concept of anamnesis, all of which, arguably, resonate with Pessoa’s poetry translation theory and practice. The article also includes critical transcriptions of unpublished material from Pessoa’s Archives held at the National Library of Portugal (Pessoa’s Papers) and the Fernando Pessoa House (Pessoa’s Private Library), both located in Lisbon.

This special issue on translation and music was conceived as an opportunity to take stock of what has been done on the topic so far and to explore future research possibilities. A bibliography covering existing research in the field is therefore indispensable. The following bibliography is not genre-specific. Although it includes several references that focus on opera translation, it mainly covers research on or in relation to the translation of other noncanonized musical genres.1 The languages covered are mainly English, and to some extent French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Italian and Spanish. The majority of the works covered appeared in the last two decades, although a few texts date back to the first half of the 20th century.

Subtitling practices in game localisation remain, to date, largely unexplored, and the existing standards as widely applied to subtitling for TV, DVD and cinema have not been adopted by the game industry. This can pose an accessibility barrier for deaf and hard of hearing players as there are, on occasion, no subtitles provided for audio game components, such as sound effects. This article presents a small-scale exploratory study concerning the reception of subtitles in video games by means of user tests with eye tracking technology and a questionnaire. The purpose of the study was to determine what type of subtitles would be most suitable for video games, given their interactive and ludic nature, based not only on users’ preferences but also on quantitative data obtained with an eye tracking technology. The article also highlights the need for the development of best practice and standards in subtitling for this emerging digital medium, which would enhance game accessibility and the gaming experience not only for deaf and hard of hearing players but for all players.

The role of the interpreter as subject and agent and the dependence of his or her performance on various linguistic and extra-linguistic parameters have been discussed in various areas of interpreting for some years now. However, it seems that the myth of the simultaneous conference interpreter as a neutral and invisible conduit still prevails in practice, in research and in teaching. For a long time the main focus of interpreting research has been on cognitive, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic factors of simultaneous conference interpreting, a paradigm which epistemologically did not allow a holistic view of the interpreting action. Although the sociological aspect of interpreting has been insufficiently explored in the mainstream of interpreting studies, a number of researchers have recognized the importance of both social contexts and the individual influence of the agents in interpreting situations. One example would be Bruce W. Anderson, whose pioneering paper appeared as early as 1976. While the majority of the interpreting research community concentrated on questions connected with mental processes, another group of interpreters and researchers, based mainly in the US, started to explore not just linguistic and cognitive issues, but also the social role of signed language interpreters in actual interpreting situations. The focus on social aspects of interpreting gained solid ground in the academic community with the appearance firstly of teleologically motivated descriptions of community interpreting which were primarily aimed at professionalization and then, soon afterwards, of empirical microand meso studies on different factors influencing the interpreting process. It is therefore not surprising that at a 2003 conference on translation and interpreting in Prague, Franz Pöchhacker’s plenary paper was entitled ‘Interpreting Studies – Going Social?’. Ebru Diriker’s study focuses on the under-explored area of the interdependency between the presence and performance of conference interpreters and the socio-cultural and interactional contexts at macro, meso and micro levels. She investigates simultaneous conference interpreting in relation to the broader social context at the macro level by investigating the metadiscourse on conference interpreting; in the narrower context of the conference itself on a meso level by observation and interviews, and the habitus of the interpreters on the micro level by analyzing transcripts of their performances.

ABSTRACT More than half of the world’s displaced population has moved to urban or peri-urban areas, and in Brussels, the superdiverse Belgian and European capital, the emergency care sector provides an important setting for analysing the multilingual challenges faced by health practitioners. To gain a better insight in the interactional dynamics of emergency department consultations with immigrant patients, this paper focuses on multilingual strategies that include ‘ad hoc’ communicative solutions used in the absence of professional interpreters (lingua franca use, non-verbal communication, medical translation software, language mediation through companions or hospital staff). Despite their efforts, the participants in our two case-studies lacked the linguistic and interpreting subtleties needed to perform complex linguistic-interactional tasks, and in this way, a form of ‘false fluency’ was created. Ad hoc multilingual solutions, significant as they are, require additional language support to avoid diagnostic insecurity. At the level of patient management, a ‘linguistic assessment’ of patients could potentially be integrated into the triage process, and clinicians should be trained on how to recognise and remediate communication problems under the specific conditions of the emergency department.