Es war mir ein Anliegen, das Geheimnis nicht zu lüften Sieben Formen von Unübersetzbarkeit in Ilija Trojanows Der Weltensammler

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Martina Schwalm
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
The Novel

Abstract This article discusses the thesis, developed in Emily Apter’s Against World Literature (2013), on the limits of literary translation, using the example of Ilija Trojanow’s Der Weltensammler (2006). The tension between the multilingual worlds of experience in the novel and the seemingly dominant literary monolingualism of the first German publication is addressed in the novel itself as a problem of untranslatability. On the textual level, the novel refuses to be translatable and takes its refuge in Bhabha’s Third Space, »which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously as an integrated, open, expanding code.« I will reveal seven forms of untranslatability that simultaneously open up different interpretive perspectives. In reference to Emily Apter’s monography, untranslatability will be decoded as a textual precondition, and hybridity will be seen as the fundament on which world literature is based upon.

On translating Emily Brontë’s style in Wuthering Heights into Arabic

Babel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatima Muhaidat
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Wuthering Heights

Abstract Translating Emily Brontë’s (1818–1848) Wuthering Heights (1847) into Arabic is a complex and multifaceted task. This paper explores the challenges involved in this task by discussing distinctive features of Brontë’s style and their counterparts in Mamdouh Haqqi’s Arabic translation of the novel. Stylistic features under focus include lexis, figurative language, and structure. As for Brontë’s lexis, it intricately knits elements like characters, setting, and themes. To take their readers to the unpredictable world of Wuthering Heights, translators try to find Arabic equivalents suggesting the associations and connotations of the Source Text (ST) style. Among the obstacles translators need to overcome are lexical gaps, as some lexicalized thoughts and experiences in English have no lexicalized equivalents in Arabic. Resorting to paraphrases may result in sacrificing the compactness of the source text (ST) and losing some shades of meaning. Further complications result from dealing with figurative language. Conveying Brontë’s imagery, personifications, and references to abstract notions in terms of material objects requires thoughtful consideration. Furthermore, the structure of Brontë’s language significantly expresses characters’ attitudes and other subtle traits. Less vivacious translations are expected when the function of expressions in the ST eludes translators’ attention. Throughout the discussion, suggestions are made to provide readers of the text in Arabic with better access to the ST. At the same time, the researcher acclaims Haqqi’s translation which reflects a considerable effort to make a landmark of English/world literature accessible to Arab readers.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

“An Indigenous Sovereignty of the Imagination”: Reenvisioning the Great Australian Novel in Alexis Wright's Carpenteria

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Liz Shek-Noble
Keyword(s):  
Third Space ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Women Novelists ◽  
Homi Bhabha ◽  
White Settler ◽  
The One

Alexis Wright's second novel, Carpentaria, received critical acclaim upon its publication by Giramondo in 2006. As the recipient of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2007, Carpentaria cemented Wright's position as the country's foremost Indigenous novelist. This article places Carpentaria within contemporary discussions of “big, ambitious novels” by contemporary women novelists by examining the ways the novel simultaneously invites and resists its inclusion into an established canon of “great Australian novels” (GANs). While critics have been quick to celebrate the formal innovations of Carpentaria as what makes it worthy of GAN status, the novel nevertheless opposes the integrationist and homogenizing myths that accompany canonization. Therefore, the article finds that Wright's vision of a future Australia involves moments of antagonism and mutual understanding between white settler and Indigenous communities. This article uses the work of Homi Bhabha to argue that Carpentaria demonstrates the emergence of a third space wherein negotiation between these two cultures produces knowledge that is “new, neither the one nor the other.” In so doing, Wright shows the resilience of Indigenous knowledge even as it is subject to transformation upon contact with contradictory ideological and epistemological frameworks.

A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Modern Arabic

This chapter examines the influence of Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), the ingenious Arabic cycle of stories, on the development of the novel as a literary genre. It shows that the Nights helped shape the European novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter first explains how the French translation of the Nights and its popularity in Europe led to its incorporation in world literature, creating an enduring taste for “Orientalism” in many forms. It then considers how the Nights became integrated in modern Arabic literature and how Arabic novels inspired by it were used to criticize social conditions, dictatorial authority, and the lack of freedom of expression. It also discusses the Nights as a source of innovation for the trend of magical realism, as well as its role in the interaction between the Arab world and the West.

scholarly journals Tradition Versus and Modernity in Laila al-Juhani’s The Waste Paradise: An Intertextual Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abdullah Abduldaim Hizabr Alhusami
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Story Writer

The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of intertextuality in the novel Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) by the female Saudi novelist and short story writer Laila al-Juhani. Intertextuality is a rhetoric and literary technique defined as a textual reference deliberate or subtle to some other texts with a view of drawing more significance to the core text; and hence it is employed by an author to communicate and discuss ideas in a critical style. The narrative structure of Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) showcases references of religious, literary, historical, and folkloric intertextuality. In analyzing these references, the study follows the intertextual approach. In her novel The Waste Paradise, Laila al-Juhani portrays the suffering of Saudi women who are less tormented by social marginalization than by an inner conflict between openness to Western culture and conformity to cultural heritage. Intertextuality relates to words, texts, or discourses among each other. Moreover, the intertextual relations are subject to reader’s response to the text. The relation of one text with other texts or contexts never reduces the prestige of writing. Therefore, this study, does not diminish the status of the writer or the text; rather, it is in itself a kind of literary creativity. Finally, this paper aims to introduce Saudi writers in general and the female writers in particular to the world literature.

scholarly journals Rendering stylistically marked units in the novel Depeche Mode by Serhiy Zhadan: a comparative study

2019 ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Mariia Onyshchuk
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Colloquial Language ◽  
Expressive Meaning ◽  
Interdisciplinary Nature ◽  
Colloquial Style

The study analyzes lexemes and word combinations of colloquial style, slang and low colloquial language, performs their comparative analysis at word level, looks into the transformational patterns that the structures undergo during literary translation into English and Russian, and discusses the advantages and flaws of the applied translation strategies through suggesting adequate translation solutions. In the article, the argument is made that the translation strategies of substandard lexis reflect the interdisciplinary nature of expressive meaning and connotation which can be conveyed differently through various language levels during literary translation.

scholarly journals Allusion As The Way Of Rendering Elements Of Ancient Greek Mythology In The Tissue Of Modern Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 505-514
Author(s):  
Mirzaeva Aziza Shavkatovna ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
American Writer ◽  
The Way

World literature of XX century has experienced the great influence of postmodermism, which resulted in diversity of styles and refusal of well-known structures and forms. One of the most widely used stylistic devices, characterizing the features of postmodernism, is intertextuality. Appearing only in recent years, intertext become widespread with its own forms, such as allusion, quote and reminiscence. And the novel “Percy Jackson” b y American writer Rick Riordan seems to be an example of the use of intertext-allusion within the work. 12-year-old boy, Percy Jackson, becomes the part of adventeruos, danderous and exciting world of Ancient Greek Gods, legends, myths and heroes. This work tries to study and analyse the importance of allusion to understand the idea of the writer and interpret the used allusions in the first book of Riordan “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”.

scholarly journals The Mystery of Lexical Coincidences in the Works of Yuri Tynianov and Osip Mandelstam

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 68-77
Author(s):  
Valery Milydon
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
Extreme Degree ◽  
High Regard ◽  
The Times ◽  
The 19Th Century

The essay explores lexical coincidences in the works of Yuri Tynianov and Osip Mandelshtam coincidences which appeared in different time periods, independently of each other.In the second half of the 1920s, Tynianov wrote the novel Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar which, while dealing with events of the 1820s, anticipated the soon-tobe disappearance of free artistic speech.Ten years later, Tynianov's anticipation became a reality reflected in Mandelstam's poem Lamarck. Freedom of creative activity did not disappear completely but became, in many respects, a thing of the past. Even if the hope for the return of free expression still existed, no one imagined when this event would take place. Loyalty to the regime and assentation were the signs of the times. Studies of Soviet artistic life in that period reveal the extreme degree of the unnatural selection aimed at creating unwavering servants of the regime. One of such servants wrote: In today's situation, genius and villainy are two compatible things: the killing of a Mozart may assist history.Such assistance to history became a Soviet norm and, according to independent Russian migr observers, led to a situation in which Soviet literature lost the position within world literature obtained by the Russian classical literature of the 19th century and acquired unmistakably provincial traits. As Shigalev declared in Dostoyevsky's Demons, All are slaves and equal in their slavery.Analogous processes were taking place in cinema, where pro-regime servilism due to cinema's ability to influence the audience more rapidly and more powerfully than literature acquired its most dangerous form. This was fully understood by the Bolshevik regime which held cinema in high regard. Creating art? No, doing what you were told to do, this was how Soviet filmmaker Leonid Trauberg later described those times.

scholarly journals A glossary as an explicative translation technique in the translation of the third culture elements

2021 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Michał Gąska
Keyword(s):  
Literary Translation ◽  
Cultural Barriers ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Third Culture ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Translation Technique ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Utilising notes or glossaries in literary translation has both its opponents and supporters. While the former conceive it as a translator’s helplessness and failure, the latter defend it as a manner of overcoming cultural barriers. The present article aims to scrutinize glossaries used as an explicative translation technique with regard to the rendering of the third culture elements. The analysis is conducted on the basis of the novel by Dutch writer Hella S. Haasse: Sleuteloog, in which the action is set in the Dutch East Indies. For this reason, Indonesian culture occurs as the third culture in the translation process. The source text is juxtaposed with its translations into German and Polish in order to examine the similarities and differences in images of the third culture elements the glossaries evoke in the addressees of the target texts.

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