Foucault in English

Target ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Bennett

It is something of a cliché to affirm that translations into English are almost always domestications, privileging fluency and naturalness over fidelity to the source text. However, back in the 1970s, many of Michel Foucault’s major texts, which were introduced to the English-speaking public for the first time through Alan Sheridan Smith’s translations for Tavistock Publications, were not domesticated at all. Despite the fact that the originals are grounded in a non-empiricist theory of knowledge and use terms drawn from a universe of discourse that would have been completely alien in the English-speaking world, these translations closely follow the patterns of the French, with few or no concessions to the target reader’s knowledge and expectations. This paper analyses passages from Sheridan Smith’s English translations of Les Mots et les choses and L’Archéologie du savoir in order to discuss the long-term effects of this translation strategy. It then goes on to compare and assess two very different translations of Foucault’s lecture L’ Ordre du discours (1970), an early one by Rupert Swyer (1971), which brings the text to the English reader, and a later one by Ian McLeod (1981), which obliges the reader to go to the text. The paper concludes by reiterating the need for Anglophone academic culture to open up to foreign perspectives, and suggests, following Goethe (Book of West and East, 1819) that new epistemes are best introduced gradually in order to avoid alienating or confusing a public that might not be ready for them.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Timothy Smith

<p>Dante’s Commedia has been translated into English more than one hundred times. As a result, there are plenty of opposing opinions on how best to translate Dante’s masterwork. One can mimic Dante’s rhyme scheme (terza rima), utilize a more conventional English metre or rhyme scheme, or resort to a prose translation that abandons any attempt to reproduce Dante’s poetics. It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate that all of these are, in the right context, appropriate translation strategies; no platonic ideal translation strategy exists. To provide a more tolerant approach to translations of Dante’s poetry, I employ a translation theory called Skopostheorie (skopos theory). This theory argues that each translation has its own unique purpose (skopos); there are any number of (valid) strategies available to the translator. This theory is often seen as extreme, providing the translator with too much freedom to manipulate the text. Accordingly, this thesis first makes a case for the application of Skopostheorie in literary translation, attempting to defend it against its critics. Second, this essay exhibits how the theory may be applied in practice. To demonstrate its application, I look at three very different English translations of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno published during the 1990s. These translations are by Seamus Heaney (1993), Steve Ellis (1994), and Robert M. Durling (1996). In doing so, I hope to identify the various approaches of these translators, to demonstrate the breadth of options available to translators of Dante’s capolavoro, and to add to the discourse on the reception of Dante in the English-speaking world.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Timothy Smith

<p>Dante’s Commedia has been translated into English more than one hundred times. As a result, there are plenty of opposing opinions on how best to translate Dante’s masterwork. One can mimic Dante’s rhyme scheme (terza rima), utilize a more conventional English metre or rhyme scheme, or resort to a prose translation that abandons any attempt to reproduce Dante’s poetics. It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate that all of these are, in the right context, appropriate translation strategies; no platonic ideal translation strategy exists. To provide a more tolerant approach to translations of Dante’s poetry, I employ a translation theory called Skopostheorie (skopos theory). This theory argues that each translation has its own unique purpose (skopos); there are any number of (valid) strategies available to the translator. This theory is often seen as extreme, providing the translator with too much freedom to manipulate the text. Accordingly, this thesis first makes a case for the application of Skopostheorie in literary translation, attempting to defend it against its critics. Second, this essay exhibits how the theory may be applied in practice. To demonstrate its application, I look at three very different English translations of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno published during the 1990s. These translations are by Seamus Heaney (1993), Steve Ellis (1994), and Robert M. Durling (1996). In doing so, I hope to identify the various approaches of these translators, to demonstrate the breadth of options available to translators of Dante’s capolavoro, and to add to the discourse on the reception of Dante in the English-speaking world.</p>


Author(s):  
Kendrick Lee ◽  
Steven R. Laviolette ◽  
Daniel B. Hardy

Abstract Background Cannabis use in pregnancy leads to fetal growth restriction (FGR), but the long-term effects on cardiac function in the offspring are unknown, despite the fact that fetal growth deficits are associated with an increased risk of developing postnatal cardiovascular disease. We hypothesize that maternal exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) during pregnancy will impair fetal development, leading to cardiac dysfunction in the offspring. Methods Pregnant Wistar rats were randomly selected and administered 3 mg/kg of Δ9-THC or saline as a vehicle daily via intraperitoneal injection from gestational days 6 to 22, followed by echocardiogram analysis of cardiac function on offspring at postnatal days 1 and 21. Heart tissue was harvested from the offspring at 3 weeks for molecular analysis of cardiac remodelling. Results Exposure to Δ9-THC during pregnancy led to FGR with a significant decrease in heart-to-body weight ratios at birth. By 3 weeks, pups exhibited catch-up growth associated with significantly greater left ventricle anterior wall thickness with a decrease in cardiac output. Moreover, these Δ9-THC-exposed offsprings exhibited increased expression of collagen I and III, decreased matrix metallopeptidase-2 expression, and increased inactivation of glycogen synthase kinase-3β, all associated with cardiac remodelling. Conclusions Collectively, these data suggest that Δ9-THC-exposed FGR offspring undergo postnatal catch-up growth concomitant with cardiac remodelling and impaired cardiac function early in life. Impact To date, the long-term effects of perinatal Δ9-THC (the main psychoactive component) exposure on the cardiac function in the offspring remain unknown. We demonstrated, for the first time, that exposure to Δ9-THC alone during rat pregnancy results in significantly smaller hearts relative to body weight. These Δ9-THC-exposed offsprings exhibited postnatal catch-up growth concomitant with cardiac remodelling and impaired cardiac function. Given the increased popularity of cannabis use in pregnancy along with rising Δ9-THC concentrations, this study, for the first time, identifies the risk of perinatal Δ9-THC exposure on early postnatal cardiovascular health.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Li ◽  
Xingyao Ren ◽  
Xu Zheng

Purpose – This paper aimed to analyze the short- and long-term effects of the breadth and depth of seller competition on the performance of platform companies, and investigated the underlying mechanisms of customers’ two-sided marketing tactics on the structure of the competition between sellers. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal research design was adopted by gathering daily market objective data on e-commerce platforms for 250 days, and the dynamic evolution effects was analyzed by using a vector autoregression model which compared the differences between the short- and long-term effectiveness of different customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. Findings – The breadth of competition amongst sellers improves the performance of platforms, whilst the depth of competition among sellers has a positive effect on the short-term performance. However, it has a negative effect on the long-term performance of their platforms. In both the short and long terms, advertising tactics that attract new buyers contribute more to increases in the breadth of seller competition than those that attract existing buyers do. Subsidies for new sellers decrease the depth of seller competition more than those for old sellers. Research limitations/implications – Further research could be undertaken to investigate the validity of marketing tactics other than advertising tactics, and thus expand the time windows of the available data. Practical implications – It is imperative for platform companies to implement effective control over seller competition to balance the interests of the sellers and of themselves. Originality/value – The dyadic paradigm of CRM research has been extended by considering the perspective of the electronic platform company, how the tactics of exploitation and exploration of two-sided customers impact upon seller competitive structures have been delved into and why new customers have a unique value to platform companies has been identified.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sviatlana Engerstam

PurposeThis study examines the long term effects of macroeconomic fundamentals on apartment price dynamics in major metropolitan areas in Sweden and Germany.Design/methodology/approachThe main approach is panel cointegration analysis that allows to overcome certain data restrictions such as spatial heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, and non-stationary, but cointegrated data. The Swedish dataset includes three cities over a period of 23 years, while the German dataset includes seven cities for 29 years. Analysis of apartment price dynamics include population, disposable income, mortgage interest rate, and apartment stock as underlying macroeconomic variables in the model.FindingsThe empirical results indicate that apartment prices react more strongly on changes in fundamental factors in major Swedish cities than in German ones despite quite similar development of these macroeconomic variables in the long run in both countries. On one hand, overreactions in apartment price dynamics might be considered as the evidence of the price bubble building in Sweden. On the other hand, these two countries differ in institutional arrangements of the housing markets, and these differences might contribute to the size of apartment price elasticities from changes in fundamentals. These arrangements include various banking sector policies, such as mortgage financing and valuation approaches, as well as different government regulations of the housing market as, for example, rent control.Originality/valueIn distinction to the previous studies carried out on Swedish and German data for single-family houses, this study focuses on the apartment segment of the market and examines apartment price elasticities from a long term perspective. In addition, the results from this study highlight the differences between the two countries at the city level in an integrated long run equilibrium framework.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Rioja ◽  
Fernando Rios-Avila ◽  
Neven Valev

Purpose – While the literature studying the effect of banking crises on real output growth rates has found short-lived effects, recent work has focused on the level effects showing that banking crises can reduce output below its trend for several years. This paper aims to investigate the effect of banking crises on investment finding a prolonged negative effect. Design/methodology/approach – The authors test to see whether investment declines after a banking crisis and, if it does, for how long and by how much. The paper uses data for 148 countries from 1963 to 2007. Econometrically, the authors test how banking crises episodes affect investment in future years after controlling for other potential determinants. Findings – The authors find that the investment to GDP ratio is on average about 1.7 percent lower for about eight years following a banking crisis. These results are robust after controlling for credit availability, institutional characteristics, and a host of other factors. Furthermore, the authors find that the size and duration of this adverse effect on investment varies according to the level of financial development of a country. The largest and longer-lasting decrease in investment is found in countries in a middle region of financial development, where finance plays its most important role according to theory. Originality/value – The authors contribute by finding that banking crisis can have long-term effects on investment of up to nine years. Further, the authors contribute by finding that the level of development of the country's financial markets affects the duration of this decrease in investment.


Kybernetes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lance Nizami

Purpose This study aims to examine the observer’s role in “infant psychophysics”. Infant psychophysics was developed because the diagnosis of perceptual deficits should be done as early in a patient’s life as possible, to provide efficacious treatment and thereby reduce potential long-term costs. Infants, however, cannot report their perceptions. Hence, the intensity of a stimulus at which the infant can detect it, the “threshold”, must be inferred from the infant’s behavior, as judged by observers (watchers). But whose abilities are actually being inferred? The answer affects all behavior-based conclusions about infants’ perceptions, including the well-proselytized notion that auditory stimulus-detection thresholds improve rapidly during infancy. Design/methodology/approach In total, 55 years of infant psychophysics is scrutinized, starting with seminal studies in infant vision, followed by the studies that they inspired in infant hearing. Findings The inferred stimulus-detection thresholds are those of the infant-plus-watcher and, more broadly, the entire laboratory. The thresholds are therefore tenuous, because infants’ actions may differ with stimulus intensity; expressiveness may differ between infants; different watchers may judge infants differently; etc. Particularly, the watcher’s ability to “read” the infant may improve with the infant’s age, confounding any interpretation of perceptual maturation. Further, the infant’s gaze duration, an assumed cue to stimulus detection, may lengthen or shorten nonlinearly with infant age. Research limitations/implications Infant psychophysics investigators have neglected the role of the observer, resulting in an accumulation of data that requires substantial re-interpretation. Altogether, infant psychophysics has proven far too resilient for its own good. Originality/value Infant psychophysics is examined for the first time through second-order cybernetics. The approach reveals serious unresolved issues.


2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi König

The story of how the theory of general relativity found its way into the English speaking world during the Great War has often been told: it is dominated by the towering figure of the Cambridge astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington, who (in 1916, and through the good services of the Dutch physicist Willem de Sitter) received copies of the papers Einstein had presented to the Berlin Academy in 1915. Eddington engaged in promoting the new theory, and in order to put one of its predictions — the bending of light in a gravitational field — to the test, he arranged for the famous expeditions to observe the eclipse of 29 May 1919 to be mounted, the results of which, presented in November of the same year, were the major breakthrough of general relativity and provoked a public interest unprecedented in the whole history of science. But a history of general relativity in the English-speaking world would be thoroughly incomplete if it did not take into account the contributions made by another, nowadays almost forgotten but at that time probably the most prolific and most dedicated of its popularizers, the Australian physicist and translator Henry L. Brose. Largely overlooked in recent accounts of the history of general relativity, Brose's rendering into English of a series of excellent German works on the theory was decisive for its understanding in the Anglo-Saxon world. The texts he chose (including Moritz Schlick's Space and Time in Contemporary Physics and Hermann Weyl's Space, Time, Matter) were among the first and most important that had so far appeared on the subject, and their English translations were published at a time when accounts of what was to be called 'one of the greatest of achievements in the history of human thought' were scarce and badly needed in Britain. Also, it will become clear from a closer look at both Brose's biography and the tense political situation between Britain and Germany shortly after the Great War, that hardly any of those works would have made its way into England so promptly (if at all) if not for Brose's enormous personal efforts and dedication. This paper retraces Brose's role as a translator and promotor of general relativity in its early days, thus shedding light on the mechanisms of knowledge transfer during and after the First World War.


2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gizem Levent ◽  
Ashlynn Schlochtermeier ◽  
Samuel E. Ives ◽  
Keri N. Norman ◽  
Sara D. Lawhon ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Antibiotic use in cattle can select for multidrug-resistant Salmonella enterica, which is considered a serious threat by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A randomized controlled longitudinal field trial was designed to determine the long-term effects of a single dose of ceftiofur or tulathromycin on Salmonella population characteristics in cattle feces and peripheral lymph nodes and on hides. A total of 134 beef cattle from two sources were divided among 12 pens, with cattle in each of the 3-pen blocks receiving a single dose of either ceftiofur or tulathromycin or neither (control) on day 0. Fecal samples were collected before treatment (day 0) and repeatedly following treatment until slaughter (day 99+). Hide and lymph node samples were collected at slaughter age. Salmonella prevalence, phenotypic antimicrobial resistance, serotype, and phylogenetic relationships were examined. Multilevel mixed logistic regression models indicated no significant effects (P ≥ 0.218) of metaphylactic antibiotics on the prevalence of Salmonella across sample types. However, there was a significant time effect observed, with prevalence increasing from spring through the midsummer months (P < 0.0001) in feces. The majority of Salmonella isolates were pansusceptible to a panel of 14 antibiotics both before and after treatment. Highly prevalent Salmonella serotypes were Salmonella enterica serovar Montevideo, Salmonella enterica serovar Anatum, Salmonella enterica serovar Cerro, and Salmonella enterica serovar Lubbock across all sample types. Strong pen and cattle source serotype clustering effects were observed among Salmonella isolates originating from fecal, lymph node, and hide samples; however, the potential role of Salmonella isolates from the pen environment prior to animal placement was not assessed in this study. IMPORTANCE Salmonella is a leading bacterial foodborne pathogen, causing a significant number of human infections and deaths every year in the United States. Macrolides and 3rd-generation cephalosporins play critical roles in the treatment of human salmonellosis. Use of these antibiotics in beef cattle can select for resistant bacteria that may enter the food chain or spread from the farm via manure. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the long-term effects of metaphylactic antibiotic administration. Here, we assessed Salmonella population dynamics during the feeding period until slaughter following single-dose antibiotic treatment. We found no long-term effects of antibiotic use early in the cattle-feeding period on Salmonella prevalence and antimicrobial resistance at slaughter. We identified the pens in which cattle were housed as the factor that contributed most to Salmonella serotypes being shared; importantly, the dominant strain in each pen changed repeatedly over the entire feeding period.


1991 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Öhman ◽  
Antti Servo ◽  
Olli Heiskanen

✓ A total of 213 patients with verified aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) of Grades I to III (Hunt and Hess classification) were enrolled in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial to determine the effect of intravenous nimodipine on delayed ischemic deterioration and computerized tomography (CT)-visualized infarcts after SAH and surgery. The administration of the drug or matching placebo was started immediately after the radiological diagnosis of a ruptured aneurysm had been made. Of the 213 patients enrolled in the study, 58 were operated on early (within 72 hours after the bleed: Days 0 to 3), 69 were operated on subacutely (between Days 4 and 7), and 74 had late surgery (on Day 8 or later). Eleven patients died before surgery was undertaken and one was not operated on. A follow-up examination with CT scanning, performed 1 to 3 years after the SAH (mean 1.4 years), revealed no significant differences in the overall outcome between the groups. However, nimodipine treatment was associated with a significantly lower incidence of deaths caused by delayed cerebral ischemia (p = 0.01) and significantly lower occurrence of cerebral infarcts visualized by CT scanning in the whole population (p = 0.05), especially in patients without an associated intracerebral hemorrhage on admission CT scan (p = 0.03).


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