scholarly journals Cultural Dimensions of Poetry Translation

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-29
Author(s):  
Ildikó Pusztai-Varga

Abstract The present research analyses Hungarian and English target-language translations of contemporary Finnish poems. The translation solutions of culturally-bound lexical elements are compared in both Finnish-Hungarian and Finnish-English translation directions. The analysis is carried out using a text corpus comprising Hungarian and English translations of Finnish poems published after 1950. The text corpus consists of 160 Finnish source poems and their 160 Hungarian and 160 English target-language translations. The objective of the research is to reveal the cultural aspects of the translation of poetry and to answer the question as to what types of translation solutions literary translators use when translating culturally-bound lexical elements in Finnish poems into Hungarian and English. Results show that English-language translators of contemporary Finnish poems more frequently use translation solutions which are less creative and do not stray far from the original source language text. Hungarian translators, on the other hand, are more courageous in deviating from the source text and adapting their translations to the target language. This can be explained by reference to the two translation contexts or as a result of genre-specific reasons.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 231-239
Author(s):  
Joghee Senthil Kumar ◽  
Obang Ochalla Ojoho ◽  
Gebreegzabhar G ◽  
Hiwet G ◽  
Yohans ◽  
...  

Translation is a tool of communication in education. Translation is an intelligent activity, requiring creative problem-solving in novel, textual, social and cultural conditions. A translator is the first ‘reader’ of the other culture as is shown in the foreign language text and he is expected to present the other in a primary process. Cultural substitution is a strategy of replacing the source language (SL) expression with a target language (TL) item that “does not have the same prepositional meaning but is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader”. In view of all these, we find it less than convincing to consider the notion of “cultural translation” as a sort of extension or overcoming of the linguistic concept of translation. The concept of culture is fundamental to any approach to translation. The objective of this paper is to discuss the concepts, cultural dimensions and the problems of translation from an Indian language text into English, especially, Chandrakant Bakshi’s Gujarati short stories into English language.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-155
Author(s):  
Beatriz Martínez Ojeda

AbstractThe current article primarily aims at analysing the strategies utilised by quintessential translators of F. Villon to render into Spanish the figures of diction and thought that characterise the poetry of the 14th-century author, following the classical classification proposed by Abrams (1953). A second objective is to suggest a set of guidelines on how to translate the figurative use of discourse into a given target-language text. Accordingly, this article will first provide an overview on the most relevant approaches to poetry translation, which especially concern relaying the figurative language of a source into a target-language text. Moreover, it will analyse a set of examples that best illustrate the distinctive use of rhetorical devices by Villon, and will examine the ways to better transforming them into another target language, namely Spanish. Lately, this article will propose a set of translation guidelines for both the figures of diction and thought that permeate his poetry.


Babel ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liu Yang

Translation is to reproduce the meaning and style of a source language text in a target language text in consideration of the cultural differences. Because of dramatic differences between the cultures, translators have to sacrifice something, such as time, religious connotation, and the wording of the original poem to obtain its aesthetic value and its original beauty. In this paper the author examines the poetry translation focusing on the basic concepts of cultural translation and the difficulties of Chinese poetry translation, and special attentions are paid on losses and the strategies in the translation. Beginning from the basic concepts of cultural translation, the paper expounds the essence of the cultural translation in order to lay a sound foundation for the following analysis of the poetry translation. In Part 2, the paper points out the difficulties of Chinese poetry translation that arise from the differences between Chinese and English cultures .Part 3 is a tentative analysis of the losses in the English translation of Chinese poetry and categorizes the losses into four groups:the loss of time;the loss of religious connotation ;the loss in wording; the loss of allusion. To address the losses, the author proposes several strategies such as free translation , transfer of allusion and annotation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-152
Author(s):  
Sally Elizabeth Cowan

Abstract Tourist promotional texts function like advertising texts in that they aim to “persuade, lure, woo, and seduce” (Dann 1996). In the context of global marketing, tourists can be considered consumers who seek to escape from ordinary life carrying their culturally embedded mindsets with them. Although cultural differences have been widely discussed in the literature on tourism translation, few studies have focused on the deeper level ‘out-of-awareness’ culture through which tourists travelling abroad interpret what they see. This paper investigates cultural localisation as a strategy to adapt the source text of a French wine tourism website to the hidden cultural values of British tourists in order to preserve the persuasive function of the target text. Using Hall’s anthropological iceberg model and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as the framework, a small sample of French source texts and their English translations are compared to demonstrate the link between the stylistic features of tourism language and the psychological motivations of tourists, highlighting the interplay between all levels of the cultural iceberg. The findings suggest that culturally localised tourism websites are more likely to succeed as instruments of persuasion, with ego-targeting discussed as an effective strategy when adapting the text to appeal to the British market.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 946
Author(s):  
Ming Li

A Psalm of Life is a well-known poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and it has been translated into many different versions since the Qing Dynasty. From the 1980s, translation studies have focused on the cultural aspects rather than the literal equivalence. The new perspective takes into account how the translated version is adapted and accepted and influences the target culture. This paper, based on the cultural turn perspective, examines the theoretical background of translation research and analyzes a translated version of A Psalm of Life in light of the target language and culture. This paper concludes that the creative translation method in English-Chinese poetry translation is reasonable and innovative.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 562
Author(s):  
Sahar Ahamdpour ◽  
Davud Kuhi

Language is used for communication and it is a carrier of culture. Culture and language are inseparable. If learners are successful in understanding and use of the target language, they need to have good knowledge of cultural aspects of the foreign language as well. Therefore it is essential to teach culture and language simultaneously. The present study aims to understand Iranian Kurdish EFL learners’ attitude towards the way culture is addressed and treated in English language course at high schools. To this end, two hundred and fifty female EFL learners were selected based on availability sampling from two high schools in Boukan, West Azerbaijan and were asked to complete the attitude questionnaire. The results indicated that Iranian Kurdish EFL learners hold negative attitudes towards the way culture is treated at English course in Iranian high schools. At the end, the paper provides some recommendations for policy makers, textbook designers, and teachers in order to foster cultural awareness in teaching and learning process.


Literator ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
W. Cloete ◽  
M. Wenzel

The translation of “cultural identity” in a novel such as “Kringe in ’n bos” contributes towards the definition of a uniquely South African representation of time and space in the global context. When translation is studied as a product of its socio-historical context, the translator is faced with problems of translating ideology and cultural identity in literature. Realia constitute a particular challenge to the translator because, according to the definition, precise equivalents of these words do not exist in other languages, which could cause shifts in the target language text. This article considers the concept of translatability and concludes that, despite the problems encountered, an adequate and satisfactory German translation from the Afrikaans original should be possible. The question of translatability assumes an interesting dimension as the Afrikaans novel was translated into English by the author herself. The privileged position of author-translator granted Matthee a near-perfect understanding of the different layers of meaning and intention of the source text and eliminated the gap between the author and translator. However, one gains the impression that the German translator (Stege) resorted to transference as a strategy to avoid translation and it emerges that most instances of definite mistranslations are, indeed, attributable to Stege’s unfamiliarity with the South African context.


Author(s):  
Yulieda Hermaniar

This study is aimed to describe the errors in linguistic and cultural aspect when Yuliani Liputo and Eva Y. Nukman translate Invisible Man into Manusia Gaib. Paragraphs that consist of errors in linguistic and cultural are taken and analyzed to gather the data. In collecting the data, the writer uses library research. It is conducted by collecting data from materials related to literature of the problem. There are 11 data that need to be observed by the writer. The writer compares the source language text and the target language text and gives her analysis about what errors occur and also the suggested translation for the errors. The data which have been observed by the writer show the errors that have been classified: (1) Linguistic; syntactical, morphological, and semantic. (2) Cultural errors; socio-culture. The data which have been observed by the writer show that the translator made errors in linguistic and cultural aspect. In translating the novel, the translator does not pay attention to linguistic and cultural aspects in the novel. Based on the data which have been analyzed, the writer found that in translating a novel, a translator needs to learn not only about all types of translation, but also the linguistic and cultural issues in the novel. In linguistic aspect, a translation should realize the differences between the source language and target language, pay attention to modifier, and classification of word. In cultural aspect, a translation should be aware of cultural issue in the novel


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Andreia Sarabando

This article looks at the Portuguese translation of Patricia Grace’sPotiki, and more specifically at the paratextual elements that it contains, as a response to the linguistic hybridity of its source text. Potiki incorporates Māori elements in its mostly English-language text in a way that is common in Māori fiction writing these days, but which was groundbreaking at the time of its release, in 1986. The Portuguese translation’s decision to include paratextual information clarifying the meaning of words and expressions, which is absent from English-language publications, can be considered controversial and, moreover, runs counter to contemporary approaches to hybrid linguistic features in fictional texts.


Author(s):  
Marisa Díez Arroyo

This paper explores the persuasive power of phraseological units (PUs) in cosmetics leaflets written either in English or French, together with their translation into French or English, respectively, as well as into Spanish. The approach rests upon, firstly, the concept of genre, determined, in agreement with Swales (1990), on the basis of the purpose of the text. Cosmetics leaflets are argued to be a manifestation of advertising. Hence, their ultimate aim is to persuade the (potential) buyer about the benefits of the product. Secondly, the occurrence of the phraseological units in this type of genre has important consequences for rhetoric and stylistics. Thirdly, we deal with the definition of phraseological units and their relation to metaphor, which will permit us to study how persuasion is achieved through this particular text type. Finally, by comparing the source text with its translation into two other languages, we analyse whether the translator has grasped the stylistic effect of the phraseological units and has succeeded in conveying a similar value in the target language text.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document