(Trans)fusions of Conrad’s darkness: Selected adaptations of Heart of Darkness

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Kujawska-Lis
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Opera ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Language Version ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
The Us ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
Radio Broadcast

Heart of Darkness, due to its semantic complexity, interpretative openness and universal thematic interests, has been frequently intersemiotically adapted in a variety of media, encompassing radio broadcast, films, opera, graphic narratives and video games, as well as rewritten in the form of interlingual translations and refracted, with refractions including reviews and critical assessments, but also textual versions radically different from the source text. This article considers selected reinterpretations of Conrad’s text and comments briefly on how in each case the adaptation illustrates a fusion of Conrad’s vision with that of the adapter, hence (trans)fusion, and how this may give a new life to the source text via interpretative shifts. The article presents case studies: the film adaptation – Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Tarik O’Regan’s one-act chamber opera (both the United Kingdom in 2011 and the US staging in 2015), the graphic narrative by Catherine Anyango and David Zane Mairowitz (2010) and Jacek Dukaj’s Polish language version Serce ciemności (2017). This selection is governed by the variety of media and by the dissimilar approaches of the adapters to their source text. What is evident based on these variants is the role of the adapter as a creative participant in the process of transmitting the ideas of the original text, often updating them to make them relevant to new recipients of various cultural backgrounds. Additionally, reinterpretations and recontextualizations of the novella result directly from adaptive strategies specific to a given medium.

scholarly journals Wielowymiarowy obraz rosyjskiej konstytucji – refleksje językowe, kulturowe i poznawcze

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Joanna Kowalczyk
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Target Area ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Language Version ◽  
National Values ◽  
Russian Constitution ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The Russian Federation

A Multidimensional Image of the Russian Constitution – Linguistic, Cultural and Cognitive Reflections This article deals with the transposition of concepts in the process of translating legal texts. The material basis was the original text of the constitution of the Russian Federation and the constitution of Russia, which was translated into Polish. The primary assumption of the analyzes made is the thesis that the constitution is the foundation of the system, norms and principles. The Constitution also sets out the main directions of community development. As the superior document of a social and political nature, it confirms the most important national values and social beliefs. The awareness of the highest rank of this normative act should also be considered as an important factor in the process of translating the constitution into other languages. Depending on the context and depending on the structural and conceptual flexibility of the original text, the transposition of a generalized vision of the community world can be a complex task or a process that does not require a lot of work. The subject of the article is the relation between the Constitution of the Russian Federation and its Polish language version. The analysis includes the linguistic and non-linguistic reality in which the constitution of Russia is present. The research covered: the current constitution of Russia of December 12, 1993 in the Russian and Polish language versions. The legal act in Polish was made available on the official website of the Biblioteka Sejmowa (biblioteka.sejm.gov.pl). The aim of the review was to identify the possibility of reconceptualizing the Russian legal reality and determining the efficiency of transposing the concepts to the target text. The author wanted to answer the questionwhether the translation text can be treated as a source of knowledge and understanding of cultural and civilizational norms and values, building the state and Russian society. The first part of the study was devoted to general concepts that created the state system. Attention is paid to their functionality in the source and target area. The essence of the image of the world was taken into account. Using the concepts of Родина and Отечествo, has been explained the lexical context of translated lexemes. The second part of the review concerned the reconstruction of the collective memory of the Russian nation. This level focuses on the text of the preamble as a component containing generalized ideas of the political system. The third part was a substantive summary of all findings. This part of the article was based on a comparative study, covering the relation between the text of the constitution and the content and context.

Formalizing the Primacy of English

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J.W. Baaij
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Language Version ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
Process Use ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
The Eu

The first step in evaluating and proposing an alternative to current EU Translation is determining which language version is and should be the original text and thus the “source text” for translation into the other language versions. Notwithstanding the rules and rhetoric of EU’s Institutional Multilingualism, English is in reality the language that participants in the EU legislative process use primarily to draft and debate EU legislation. Analogously, the Court of Justice of the EU appears to give more weight to a small number of widely used languages when interpreting EU legislation, particularly the English language version. Europe’s cultural diversity and EU’s democratic legitimacy demand that EU Institutions acknowledge this reality and accept English as the institutional and pan-European lingua franca. Moreover, they ought to formally recognize the English language version as the original and sole authentic legislative text, and thus as the source text in EU Translation.

Anti-System Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Term Result ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges—from both the Left and the Right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. This book traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the postwar model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s, these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, the text explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, it discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence.

scholarly journals COVID-19 in Latin America: a first glance to the mortality

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nubia Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
The Us ◽  
Latin American Countries

It is too early to know which will be the final death toll from the Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 virus epidemy in Latin America since the epidemy is still active and we will not know when it will end. The curve for new infections and deaths has not reached yet a peak (Figure 1). In addition, we know little about the epidemiology of this new virus. The daily litany of the number of people infected with the number of admissions to hospitals and intensive care units and the number of deaths guides health authorities to plan health services and politicians to gauge the degree of confinement necessary to control the transmission of the virus, but it says little about the magnitude of the problem if we do not relate it to the population at risk. At the end of the pandemic, we will be able to estimate age-standardized death rates for the different countries, but until then the crude death rates will provide a first glance or snapshot of the death toll and impact of the pandemic from March to May 2020. These rates are well below those estimated in other countries in Europe and North America: Belgium (82.6), Spain (58.0), the United Kingdom (57.5), Italy (55.0), France (42.9), Sweden (41.4), and the US (30.7). (Johns Hopkins CSSE, May 30, 2020). However, in the European countries and the US the number of deaths has reached a peak, while this is not the case in Latin American countries. (Figure 1). It should be taken into account that the above rates are crude and therefore, some of the differences could be due to the fact that European countries have a larger proportion of the population over 70 years of age in whom higher mortality rates have been reported.

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.

scholarly journals Estrangeirização e domesticação: indo além de mais uma dicotomia

2016 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Reginaldo Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Dynamic Equivalence ◽  
Free Translation ◽  
Target Culture

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2014n16p91O teórico e crítico de tradução francês Antoine Berman afirma que as traduções literárias em suas formas tradicionais e dominantes representam um ato culturalmente etnocêntrico, isto é, que traz tudo à sua própria cultura, às suas normas e valores, buscando fazer com que se esqueça que se trata de uma tradução. Para se opor a essa prática dominante, o autor propõe uma tradução que não esconda o elemento estrangeiro na obra traduzida, e que para isso seja fiel à “letra” (lettre) do original. Essa oposição é muito conhecida também nos termos utilizados pelo teórico norte-americano Lawrence Venuti, que fala em “domesticação” (domestication) e “estrangeirização” (foreignization) para se referir respectivamente às práticas tradutórias que ocultam as diferenças culturais, adaptando tudo à cultura de chegada, e àquelas que mantêm a estranheza do texto original e da cultura de partida. Interpretações mais radicais das ideias desses autores podem levar a pensar a tradução como dividida nessas duas possibilidades, e muitas vezes à escolha de uma delas como ideal e a outra como condenável. Entretanto, assim como com dicotomias mais antigas (literal x livre, equivalência formal x equivalência dinâmica, etc.), também estas não são duas categorias estanques, podendo haver diferentes combinações de ambas na tradução de um mesmo texto, além de estratégias híbridas ou soluções que não representam nem uma nem outra posição. Neste trabalho discuto a problematização dessa dicotomia, incluindo exemplos de minha tradução do italiano para o português do livro infantojuvenil O diário de Gian Burrasca, de Luigi Bertelli (Vamba).ABSTRACTFrench translation theorist and critic Antoine Berman states that in their traditional and dominant forms literary translations represent a culturally ethnocentric act, which adapts everything to its own culture, standards and values, seeking to make readers forget that they are reading a translation. To oppose this dominant practice, the author suggests a kind of translation that would not hide the foreign element in the translated work, one that is faithful to the “letter” (lettre) of the original text. A similar opposition to that / to Berman’s is also well-known through the terms “domestication” and “foreignization” as defined by American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who uses them to refer to translation practices that on one hand conceal cultural differences, adapting everything to the target culture, and on the other keep the strangeness of both source text and culture in the translation. Radical interpretations of these authors’ ideas may lead to the misconception that translation is divided into those two possibilities, and often to the judgement that one of them is ideal and the other condemnable. Nevertheless, as with other older dichotomies (literal vs. free translation, formal vs. dynamic equivalence, etc.), these are not clearly distinguishable and opposed categories. There may be different combinations of them in the translation of a text, as well as hybrid strategies or solutions that do not represent either one of them. In this paper I discuss the problems of such dichotomy, drawing examples from my translation of Luigi Bertelli’s book Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca from Italian to Portuguese.Keywords: foreignization; domestication; dichotomy.

scholarly journals Possible Worlds in Translation: Coleman Barks’s Rendition of a Story from Rumi’s Masnavi

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahid Medhat ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin ◽  
Pyeaam Abbasi
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Narrative Worlds ◽  
The Way

This article applies the theory of possible worlds to the field of translation studies by examining the narrative worlds of original and translated texts. Specifically, Marie-Laure Ryan’s characterization of possible worlds provides an account of the internal structure of the textual universe and the progression of the plot. Based on this account, one of the stories from Rumi’s Masnavi is compared to Coleman Barks’s English translation. The possible worlds of the characters and the unfolding of the plots in both texts are examined to assess the degree of compatibility between the textual universes of the original and the translated texts and how significant this might be. It also examines how readers reconstruct the narrative worlds projected by the two texts. The analysis reveals some inconsistencies in the way the textual universes of the original and translated texts are furnished and in the way readers reconstruct the narrative worlds of the two texts. The inability of translation to fully render the main character results in some loss in terms of the pungency and pithiness of the original text. It is also shown that the source text presents a richer domain of the virtual in comparison, suggesting a higher degree of tellability in the textual universe of the Masnavi’s narrative.

scholarly journals Comparison of Strategies and Policies for Building Distributed Digital Preservation Infrastructure: Initial Findings from the MetaArchive Cooperative

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Halbert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Digital Preservation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Content Preservation

This paper discusses the importance of a particular approach to building and sustaining digital content preservation infrastructures for cultural memory organizations (CMOs), namely distributed approaches that are cooperatively maintained by CMOs (rather than centralized approaches managed by agencies external to CMOs), and why this approach may fill a gap in capabilities for those CMOs actively digitizing historical and cultural content (rather than scientific data). Initial findings are presented from an early organizational effort (the MetaArchive Cooperative) that seeks to fill this gap for CMOs. The paper situates these claims in the larger context of selected exemplars of DP efforts in both the United States and the United Kingdom that are seeking to develop effective DP models in an attempt to recognize those organizational aspects (such as the governmental frameworks, cultural backgrounds, and other differences in emphasis) that are UK and US-specific.

scholarly journals The Polish COVID Stress Scales: Considerations of psychometric functioning, measurement invariance, and validity

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0260459
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Adamczyk ◽  
D. Angus Clark ◽  
Julia Pradelok
Keyword(s):  
Measurement Invariance ◽  
Health Anxiety ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Language Version ◽  
Structure Reliability ◽  
Level Measurement ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Anxiety Depression

The COVID Stress Scales (CSS) were developed to measure stress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To further investigate the psychometric properties of the CSS, we used data collected in Poland across two waves of assessment (N = 556 at T1 and N = 264 at T2) to evaluate the factor structure, reliability (at the item and scale level), measurement invariance (across the Polish and Dutch translations of the CSS, and time), over time stability, and external associations of the Polish-language version of the CSS (CSS-PL). Overall, results suggest that the CSS-PL is psychometrically robust, largely invariant across the countries and time-lags considered. The CSS-PL was also positively related to other measures of COVID-19 fear, health anxiety, obsessive compulsive symptoms, anxiety, depression, and intent to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. This study thus provides considerable information about the CSS’s items and scales, and lays the foundation for future investigations into COVID stress across time and different populations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document