Dr.
Özlem Özmen Akdoğan
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Literary
Translation
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Literary translation "gives us access to the literature of the world. It allows us to
enter the minds of people from other times and places. It is a celebration of
otherness, a truly multicultural event without all the balloons and noisemakers.
And it enriches not only our personal knowledge and artistic sense, but also our
culture’s literature, language, and thought" (Wechsler, p. 8). People have the
desire to read great books from great writers from around the world. It’s by
reading those writers and sharing their experiences and having access to other
places, other times, other consciousnesses, people become part of a bigger
thing, something global.
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Goethe called literary translation
“one of the most important and dignified enterprises in the general commerce of the
world” (quoted in Lefevere, 1992, p. 6).
Also Robert Wechsler considers literary translation as an art. He suggests that "[l]iterary
translation is an odd art. It consists of a person sitting at a desk, writing literature that is
not his, that has someone else’s name on it, that has already been written" (p. 4). Then
he claims that "[w]hat makes it so odd an art is that physically a translator does exactly
the same thing as a writer" (p. 4).
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The excellence of the translated literary depends on the
cleverness of the literary translator. When a literary
translator deals with the literary work, he reads it carefully,
he criticizes it, and writes it with the other language, all at
the same time. Literary translator, also, must be able to
read, understand, and retain, somebody else’s ideas, and
then render them accurately, completely, and without
exclusion, in a way that conveys the original meaning
effectively and without distortion in another language.
How is
z Purpose (not informative, but aesthetic, emotional and
entertaining)
literary Fictional
translation
different A poetic/literary use of language
from the
translation Style of the writer is important
of non- Perception by culture/society
literary
texts? Possible to get your name heard
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Steps of literary
translation:
Reading the ST (not once!)
Doing research about the writer,
source culture, and the context
Reading the other texts of the
writer
Cooperation with the writer (if
possible)
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Other factors in the translation process:
Editorial Graphic Marketing
director designer expert
Literary Source text
Readers
agencies writers
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Feminist
translation
Changing
translation
strategies Postcolonial
translation
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Techniques in literary translation:
Borrowing
Elision/Reduction
Linguistic amplification
Transposition
Historicisation
Standardisation
Updating
Localisation/Adaptation/Modulation
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Task of the literary
translator:
The literary translator must know both languages
cleverly. The major task of the literary translator is to
protect the integrity of a work. The literary translator
can be seen as the spokesperson of the author of
the translated text: he admits the author’s superiority,
manipulates the author's characters and images, and
expresses the author’s vision and ideas.
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Robert Wechsler believes that the literary translator looks like a musician:
«Like a musician, a literary translator takes someone else’s composition and performs it
in his own special way. Just as a musician embodies someone else’s notes by moving his
body or throat, a translator embodies someone else’s thoughts and images by writing in
another language» (p. 4).
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A translation should reproduce in the TL reader the same
emotional and psychological reaction produced in the original SL
reader
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Transparency vs. fidelity
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One problem is trying to squeeze
every last kernel of meaning from
the SL text
Word for
The result of overly zealous
word concern for "fidelity" to the original.
translation?
Don't go word--for--word!
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Thought--for--thought should help
you render more fluent or
transparent translations, especially
Sense for with highly emotional discourse.
sense
translation? The goal is to translate not what
the author wrote, rather what the
author meant.
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3 options for translating the
(un)translatable?
Footnotes,
Interpolation (adding parenthetical word or phrase),
Omission
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Poetry translation
Poetry presents special challenges to translators.
it has so many more linguistic factors to account for (notably
sound, rhyme and metre).
the translator has to make decisions regarding both form and
content
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Dante: “[n]othing which is harmonized
by the bond of the Muses can be
changed from its own to another
language without having all its
Views on sweetness destroyed” (quoted in
Wechsler, p. 45).
poetry
Octavio Paz: “poetry is ‘impossible’ to
translation translate because you have to
reproduce the materiality of the signs,
its physical properties”
z Roman Jacobson believes that poetry is by definition
untranslatable (1959, 115).
Robert Frost argues that poetry is what gets lost in
translation (cited in Gentzler 2001, 27).
Views on
poetry Clifford Landers claims: “If literary translation is itself a
translation leap of faith, poetic translation puts that faith to the
severest of all tests” (2000, 97).
In André Lefévere’s view, most poetry translations are
unable to capture the source text’s totality, and,
therefore, they remain “unsatisfactory renderings”
(1975, 99).
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Techniques in poetry translation
Vocalic translation
Word-for-word translation
Metric (rhythmic) translation
Paraphrasing
Rhymic translation
Free verse translation
Commentary
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Methods for translating poetry introduced by Andre
Lefevere:
Phonemic translation: aims at the reproduction of the SL sound
in the TL text while rendering the acceptable paraphrase of the
meaning. Emphasis on the sound.
Literal translation, or word-for-word translation: distorts the
original sense and syntax.
Metrical translation: emphasizes the re-creation of the original
metre, subduing other poetic features of the original. Emphasis
on the metre.
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Translation into prose: which distorts the form, communicative
value, and syntax of the original.
Translation into rhymed poetry: When the translator is restricted
by the bondage of both the rhyme and metre. In this case, the
resulting product poem is merely a ‘caricature’ of the original.
Translation into poetry without rhyme (blank verse): It may result
in a higher degree of accuracy with regard to the original poem.
Interpretative translation: When the translator uses a new form for
the translated original poem, yet retaining its original sense.
Lefevere calls such translations ‘versions’ and ‘imitations’.
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Poetry translation according to James Holmes
Mimetic form: Foregrounds the form of the poem (how it looks)
Analogical form: Trying to find an equivalent form in the TL.
Organic form: Free translation (keeping the meaning)
Extraneous form: Moving away from the ST both in terms of
form and content
