Literary Translation Training through Back-Translation: Focused on the Korean↔Spanish back translation of Por Favor, Cuida De Mamá by Shin Kyung-sook

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
So-young Park
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426
Author(s):  
Byron Taylor

When writers are called ‘untranslatable’, it is either because of the singularity of the experience they write about or because of their unique use of language. As a Holocaust survivor whose poetry remains largely hermetic, Paul Celan is foremost among authors deemed ‘untranslatable’. This article uses back-translation as an empirical method of exploring the reasons for the untranslatability that tends to be attributed to Celan's work. It back-translates Michael Hamburger's and Pierre Joris’ translations of two poems by Celan, and demonstrates that back-translation can enhance the work of translators and be a creative form of criticism when it renders the scene of literary translation more visible and interpretable. Rather than opposing Barbara Cassin's and Lawrence Venuti's respective approaches to the ‘untranslatable’, the article argues that they can be reconciled through the practice of back-translation, insofar as it makes more visible the decision to domesticate or foreignize ‘untranslatable’ philosophical and poetic terms.


Author(s):  
Svitlana Gruschko

In the article the phenomenon of translation is regarded as mental interpretation activity not only in linguistics, but also in literary criticism. The literary work and its translation are most vivid guides to mental and cultural life of people, an example of intercultural communication. An adequate perception of non-native culture depends on communicators’ general fund of knowledge. The essential part of such fund of knowledge is native language, and translation, being a mediator, is a means of cross-language and cross-cultural communication. Mastering another language through literature, a person is mastering new world and its culture. The process of literary texts’ translation requires language creativity of the translator, who becomes so-called “co-author” of the work. Translation activity is a result of the interpreter’s creativity and a sort of language activity: language units are being selected according to language units of the original text. This kind of approach actualizes linguistic researching of real translation facts: balance between language and speech units of the translated work (i.e. translationinterpretation, author’s made-up words, or revised language peculiarities of the characters). The process of literary translation by itself should be considered within the dimension of a dialogue between cultures. Such a dialogue takes place in the frame of different national stereotypes of thinking and communicational behavior, which influences mutual understanding between the communicators with the help of literary work being a mediator. So, modern linguistics actualizes the research of language activities during the process of literary work’s creating. This problem has to be studied furthermore, it can be considered as one of the central ones to be under consideration while dealing with cultural dimension of the translation process, including the process of solving the problems of cross-cultural communication.


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