Evaluating translations of surrealist poetry

Target ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham. D. Low
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Think Aloud ◽  
Response Data ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Surrealist Poetry ◽  
Comparative Note

Evaluating translations of poetry will always be difficult. The paper focuses on the problems posed by French surrealist poetry, where the reader was held to be as important as the writer in creating interpretations, and argues that evaluations involving these poems inevitably require reader-response data. The paper explores empirically, in the context of André Breton’s “L’Union libre”, whether a modification of Think-Aloud procedure, called Note-Down, applied both to the original text and to three English translations, can contribute useful information to a traditional close reading approach. The results suggest that comparative Note-Down protocols permit simple cost-benefit analyses and allow one to track phenomena, like the persistence of an effect through the text, which might be hard to obtain by other methods.

Instantiation and individuation in Buddhist scripture translation

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-246
Author(s):  
Pin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Buddhist Scripture ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Chinese And English ◽  
Heart Sutra

Abstract This paper analyses and compares the systemic functional features of the Sanskrit original text and the Chinese and English translations of the Buddhist scripture Heart Sutra, focusing on the ideational components that are manifest on the strata of discourse semantics and lexicogrammar. Results show that there are both expected equivalence and significant differences among the Sanskrit original text and the two translated texts. The accounts for the equivalence and differences are twofold (on two hierarchies): in terms of instantiation, the translators go along different re-instantiation routes in finding corresponding potentials between the source text and their respective target texts; in terms of individuation, the English and Chinese translators’ personal and social identity has an immediate influence on their respective reproductions of the text.

Blood Wedding in (re)translation

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-207
Author(s):  
Patricia González Bermúdez
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Seminal Article

Abstract This article is a comparative study of four different translations into English of Federico García Lorca's play Bodas de sangre (1933) carried out in the United Kingdom and Ireland throughout the 1990s. Since the publication of Antoine Berman's seminal article on 'retranslation', this theoretical concept has provided a fecund framework for descriptive translation studies, illuminating the variety of solutions translators provide when confronted with the same original text. This article furthers that body of scholarship while simultaneously providing new angles on Lorca's dramatic work. The comparative approach to several English translations of this classic work concentrates on two key scenes of the play and discusses the linguistic, pragmatic and theatrical adequacy of each translation.

Conclusive English then and Swedish då

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bengt Altenberg
Keyword(s):  
Original Text ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Notable Feature ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
English Translations

Conclusive English then and Swedish då are compared on the basis of a bi-directional translation corpus. The examples are classified into five different uses according to certain formal and contextual criteria. The two words are shown to have obvious functional similarities: in each of the categories distinguished then and då are the preferred translation equivalents of each other. But there are also striking differences. Swedish då is generally much more common than English then and the latter is often left out in the English translations. In other words, the use of an explicit conclusion marker is more often felt to be redundant in English than in Swedish. The two words also display positional differences. For example, unlike then, Swedish då cannot occur initially in non-declarative clauses and its use as an unstressed pragmatic particle is confined to clause-final position. Another notable feature is that an unstressed particle in the original text (in both languages) is sometimes rendered by a stressed adverb in the translation, a tendency which suggests that the distinction between stressed anaphoric adverb and unstressed pragmatic particle is blurred and a matter of degree rather than a clear-cut dichotomy.

Gismond of Salerne

PMLA ◽  
1906 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 435-461
Author(s):  
John W. Cunliffe
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Dutch Version ◽  
King's College ◽  
Original Shape ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Italian Novel

This tragedy was presented before Queen Elizabeth by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple in 1567–8. In its original shape it remained in ms. until published a few years ago in Brandl's Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England; but a recast by Robert Wilmot was printed in 1591 under the title Tancred and Gismunda and included in Dodsley's Collection of Old English Plays. From the initials appended to each act in this later version it has been concluded that Henry Noel wrote Act II, Christopher Hatton Act IV, and Robert Wilmot Act V; the authors of Act I (Rod. Staf.) and Act III (G. Al.) are as yet unidentified. Before examining the play it will be well to glance at the literary and dramatic influences under which it was produced. A notable beginning in English classical tragedy had been made at the Grand Christmas of the Inner Temple in 1561–2 by the performance of Gorboduc, which was repeated before the Queen at Whitehall a few weeks later: an unauthorized edition of the play was printed in 1565. In 1564 the Queen saw at King's College, Cambridge, “a Tragedie named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus,” and “an English play called Ezechias, made by Mr. Udall.” At Christmas, 1564, a tragedy by Richard Edwards (probably Damon and Pythias) was acted at Whitehall, and in 1566 his Palamon and Arcyte was presented before the Queen in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, as well as a Latin play, called Marcus Geminus. At Gray's Inn the same year Gascoigne's Supposes (translated from Ariosto) and the Jocasta were performed: the last purported to be taken from Euripides, but was really a translation of Lodovico Dolce's adaptation, itself made probably not from the Greek but from the Latin. Dolce adhered in the main to the model of Seneca, whose tragedies he had translated: English translations of eight out of the ten had also been published during the ten years before 1566, so that Elizabethan tragedy came under Senecan influence at first, second, and third hand. The learned dramatists of the Inner Temple no doubt had recourse to the original text, but like their fellows of Gray's Inn of a year or two before, they turned to Dolce as their immediate model, and they made an important step in advance by taking their plot from Boccaccio. It is true that Arthur Brooke in the preface to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562) said that he had seen the same argument “lately set foorth on stage,” but the play referred to is now to be found only at second-hand in a Dutch version, Romeo en Juliette, written about 1630. Gismond of Salerne is the earliest extant English tragedy founded upon an Italian novel.

scholarly journals Translators’ Choices in Tartuffe

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Nancy Senior
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
North American ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The North ◽  
English Translations ◽  
French Tradition

Abstract Selected passages from twelve English translations of Molière’s Tartuffe are studied. The passages are chosen because of questions they raise about the language of everyday life and of religion in seventeenth-century France. The translators choose the extent to which they will keep the structures and references of the original text, or adapt them for easier access by a contemporary audience. They also choose between the French tradition of a dark, menacing interpretation, and the North American one of seeking the maximum of laughs.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Based Study of the Linguistic Errors Committed by the Iranian EFL Learners in English Translation of MA Research Abstracts of Educational Management Based on Liao’s (2010) Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Bahar Pourshahian
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Educational Management ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Free Translation ◽  
Classification Of Error ◽  
Saturation Method ◽  
Ma Thesis

Given the importance and the precision required in the translation of research abstracts, this descriptive quantitative research made an attempt to investigate the analysis of the type and frequency of the linguistic errors occurring in the English translations of 40 academic MA research abstracts in the field of educational management. To this end, 40 academic MA thesis abstracts in the field of educational management from 2009 to 2019 were gathered from Shiraz Azad University through the saturation method. Then, the errors were categorized based on the classification of error types adapted from Liao’s model (2010). The results of the study revealed that based on Liao’s categorization (2010), the frequencies of possible linguistic errors by educational management include grammatical mistake or ungrammatical syntax of target language (F = 190), excessive literal translation, which leads to ambiguous translation (F = 30), awkward expression, including ambiguous meaning, mismatch, redundant words, and unnecessary repetition, (F = 29), incorrect character, improper punctuation marks, or inconsistency in term translation (F = 26), excessive free translation, which differentiates the translation from the original text (F = 6), and inappropriate register (F = 6).

TACTICS AND OPERATIONS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF UKRAINIAN FOLK TALES

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (31) ◽  
pp. 374-378
Author(s):  
Yevheniia Savchenko ◽  
Oleksandra Kosiuha
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Folk Tales ◽  
Correct Information ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Interesting Task ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Devil

The article is devoted to the problems and difficulties that arise in the process of translating Ukrainian folk tales into English. Particular attention is paid to the translation of spatio-temporal categories, as they are an integral part of the linguistic picture of the world of each nation, which is reflected in their folklore. The problem of interpretation of the philosophical categories “space” and “time” has a long history. Different researchers have interpreted them differently, building their theories in philosophy, physics, mathematics, linguistics. This problem is not solved today in any of these areas of knowledge, so it is relevant and needs further study. In addition, the transfer of national identity of the original text is still not a simple but interesting task for translators, because the question of the nature, types of realities and methods of their translation remain to be open. Every translator must be able to apply the full range of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge to translate the national color of the original during translation. The aim of the work is to analyze translation tactics and operations in English translations of Ukrainian folk tales. The research was carried out on the material of Ukrainian folk tales “The brother, the sister and the Devil Dragon”, “Ivanko, Tsar of the beasts”, “The poor man and his sons”, “Ivan-not-a-stitch-on and his brother”, “Ivan the dragon killer”, “The seven brothers — seven ravens and their sister”, “Ivan the bohatyr”, “Ivan the peasant’s son”, and their translation by Irina Zheleznova. We divided each of the selected fairy tales into three parts (in order to simplify the analysis of the text): initial, medial and final. In each of these parts, topographic and chronological formulas were identified. Then, by a comparative analysis, we determined the tactics and translation operations, which the translator used during her translation into English. On translating the all fairy tales into English, the translator used the strategy of communicatively equivalent translation. For this, the translator used the tactics of transferring relevant information, the tactics of pragmatic adaptation of the text, the tactics of reproducing the stylistic textual characteristics, the tactics of correct information formatting and the tactics of reproducing the formal-structural textual characteristics. More often, fairy tales were translated by using an equivalent match search.

Unfaithful Passions: Coding Women Coding Men in Jeremiah 2-3 (4:2)

1996 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.R. PETE DIAMOND ◽  
Kathleen M. O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Marriage Metaphor ◽  
Rhetorical Function

AbstractThis close reading of Jeremiah 2:1-4:2 uses critical theory on narrative, metaphor and reader response to investigate the gender symbolism in the text in order to assess its governing symbolic grammar, rhetorical function and reception. Jeremiah's metaphor of the broken marriage functions as a root metaphor that unifies and narratizes the disparate materials in these chapters. The variants between the MT and the LXX Vorlage appear as alternative performances of Jeremiah's metaphor. The majority of variants cluster around the female addressee as a means to ruin the latter's image and sharpen national application of the metaphor. Jeremiah re-encodes Hosea's version of the marriage metaphor to serve new circumstances and create a new configuration of readers. The essay concludes with a contemporary, feminist assessment of Jeremiah's gender symbolism in relation to violence against women.

A Comparative Study of Two Major English Translations of The Journey to the West: Monkey and The Monkey and the Monk

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Ji
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
English Language ◽  
Original Novel ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The West ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
Journey To The West

As two major English translations of a famous sixteenth-century Chinese novelThe Journey to the West, Monkeyby Arthur Waley andThe Monkey and the Monkby Anthony Yu differ in many respects due to the translators’ different concerns and translation strategies. Whereas Waley’s translation omits many episodes and significantly changes textual features of the original novel, Yu’s translation is more literal and faithful to the original. Through a comparison of the different approaches in these two translations, this paper aims to delineate important differences in textual features and images of protagonists and demonstrate how such differences, especially the changing representation of Tripitaka, might affect English-language readers’ understanding of religious references and themes in the story. It also seeks to help us reconsider the relationship between translations and the original text in the age of world literature through a case study of English translations ofThe Journey to the West.

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