scholarly journals A Translator’s Apologia

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Anne Malena
Keyword(s):  
Literary Translation ◽  
Guillermo Cabrera Infante ◽  
Suzanne Jill Levine ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

Literary translators are often too shy to discuss their own practice. As the penury of translators’ prefaces would attest, they have assimilated the fidelity imperative only too well and, even though they may be masters at transforming the literal into the literary, they prefer to remain invisible behind their author as if only the latter were real and they merely fiction(al) workers. Such doesn’t appear to be the case for two translators of Tres Tristes Tigres by the Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante: the first, Albert Bensoussan, working in French and the author of Confessions d’un traître (PU de Rennes, 1995); the second, Suzanne Jill Levine, working in English and the author of The Subversive Scribe (Graywolf Press, 1991). While it is undeniable that their respective collaboration with authors of the calibre of Cabrera Infante must have played a large part in their desire to write of what must have been an unforgettable experience, this paper will focus on different questions in order to gain insight into the theorization by translators of their own practice: Why and how do both Bensoussan and Levine produce prize-winning translations of famously difficult and considered “untranslatable” works? Why, in spite of their success and ability to push translational creativity to its limits, are they ultimately incapable of dispelling a sense of betrayal? Rather than providing definitive answers, exploring these questions leads to reflect on possibly constant factors in literary translation and on teaching or evaluating translations as well as training translators.

Paradata in Documentation Standards and Recommendations for Digital Archaeological Visualisations

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-220
Author(s):  
Lisa Börjesson ◽  
Olle Sköld ◽  
Isto Huvila
Keyword(s):  
Research Data ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Processing History ◽  
International Harmonisation ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Current Standards ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
As If

Abstract Digitalisation of research data and massive efforts to make it findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable has revealed that in addition to an eventual lack of description of the data itself (metadata), data reuse is often obstructed by the lack of information about the datamaking and interpretation (i.e. paradata). In search of the extent and composition of categories for describing processes, this article reviews a selection of standards and recommendations frequently referred to as useful for documenting archaeological visualisations. It provides insight into 1) how current standards can be employed to document provenance and processing history (i.e. paradata), and 2) what aspects of the processing history can be made transparent using current standards and which aspects are pushed back or hidden. The findings show that processes are often either completely absent or only partially addressed in the standards. However, instead of criticising standards for bias and omissions as if a perfect description of everything would be attainable, the findings point to the need for a comprehensive consideration of the space a standard is operating in (e.g. national heritage administration or international harmonisation of data). When a standard is used in a specific space it makes particular processes, methods, or tools transparent. Given these premises, if the standard helps to document what needs to be documented (e.g. paradata), and if it provides a type of transparency required in a certain space, it is reasonable to deem the standard good enough for that purpose.

Healing the ‘split’: trauma as a dynamic in psychosis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Franco ◽  
Lindsey Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
Paranoid Schizophrenia ◽  
Process Thought ◽  
False Self ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

In this article, the first author uses an autobiographical account of a trauma she experienced and shows how, in her understanding, this led to her developing what was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. The trauma forced her to accept a distortion of her understanding of reality, which, she explains, caused a split in her ego between the inner truth of the event and the imposed distortion. She considers Freud’s theory of how trauma develops and looks at how it applies to her case. Using Winnicott’s theory of there being a ‘false self’ in psychosis, she shows how a false self was formed out of the distortion. Bion’s understanding of the development of thought applied to trauma is used to give insight into how the mind finds it difficult to process thought when a trauma occurs and, using Brown’s understanding, she indicates how this is similar to what happens in psychosis. She utilizes Winnicott’s explanation of there being a trauma not lived through, as if not experienced, being present in psychosis and how the need to experience, ‘remember’, this trauma is for healing to take place. In conclusion, she argues how the reaching and establishing of the inner truth is what is needed for recovery to happen and for the split in the ego to heal.

Contra Academicos as autobiography: a critique of the historiography on Augustine's first extant dialogue

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-264
Author(s):  
Stuart Squires
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

AbstractContra Academicos is not one of Augustine's masterpieces and, as such, modern scholarship has largely ignored this text in favour of examining Augustine's more mature works. Scholars do, however, attempt to use it as a way of interpreting Augustine's psychological state of mind at the time of his conversion because this is his first extant text. I argue that this attempt at reading Contra Academicos as autobiography is dangerous because Augustine was deliberately offering a self-representation to a pagan-philosophical audience and, therefore, scholars should not attempt to interpret this dialogue as if it offered neutral insight into Augustine's state of mind around 386. This article will first review the history of the scholarship which has attempted to read Contra Academicos as autobiography to prove that Augustine was only a Neoplatonist at the time of his conversion, or to disprove this theory. In either case, the authors of both positions have relied on Contra Academicos to support their claims. Then, I will make three arguments why reading Contra Academicos as autobiography is dubious. First, I will argue that the literary genre of the dialogue shows that Augustine's intended audience was for pagan-philosophers. Second, I will argue that the dedication of the text shows that Augustine's audience is a pagan-philosophical audience. Augustine's dedicatee plays a larger role in this text than do most dedicatees of texts in late antiquity. Third, I will show that the specific content demonstrates that Augustine's text was focused on a pagan-philosophical audience. Augustine never quotes scripture but goes to great pains to demonstrate his knowledge of Vergil and Cicero.

scholarly journals ZADANIA MUNICIPIUM W ŚWIETLE LEX IRNITANA. PRZYCZYNEK DO STUDIÓW NAD PRAWEM MUNICYPALNYM W STAROŻYTNYM RZYMIE

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Bronisław Sitek
Keyword(s):  
Local Authorities ◽  
Significant Similarity ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Legal Entity ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Legislative Power ◽  
Municipal Law ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

Tasks of municipium in lex Irnitana. Studies on Municipal Law in Ancient RomeSummaryThe paper presents the tasks of municipium set in lex Irnitana. Inparticular it touches upon the questions of munera publica and the tasks ofmunicipality, cura annonae, local security, duties connected with privatetransactions, legations, public cult, legislature and administration ofjustice.The analysis of lex Irnitana provides an insight into the ancient conceptof municipium, viz., structure of a local society. It shared some elementswith the republican system, however, with alterations implied by the newpolitical regime. Although the idea of legal personality was not known inRoman law, municipium functioned as if it was a legal entity: it had organsandduties. Further analysis of lex Irnitana shows that local authorities had, to some extent, a legislative power, which was exercised by decuriones andduoviri. Aediles were responsible for the security on roads, at bazaars andtheatres. It is characteristic for the antiquity that local authorities had somejudiciary power, and duovirs adjudicated in less significant cases. Othertypes of cases were adjudicated by the governor of a province.Munera publica, that is public duties, were performed by the magistrate, since in Rome the idea of tasks of municipality was not known. It is possible to ascertain that there is a significant similarity between the range of tasks of local societies, especially municipalities, in Rome and the duties set forth in contemporary self-government bills. 

scholarly journals The original and its translation from the reader's perspective

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Meta Grosman
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
Tacit Assumption ◽  
As If

To claim that the readers' experience of a literary work in translation is different from their experience of the original at first seems very paradoxical and even heretical. Such a statement is so unexpected simply because we always think of the original and its translation as being the same literary work without paying any attention to their different concre­ tizations on the part of their readers due to textual differences. This tacit assumption of their sameness seems totally unaffected by the fact that we never think of the original and its translation as representing the same text; on the contrary, we always take it for granted that they are two different texts in two different languages. The differences between the two texts and the differentness of the translation are never lost sight of in the discussion of the qualities and adequacy of the translation. When it comes to criticizing the literary work or teaching it, however, the translation is tacitly assumed to be identical with the original and approached as if it were the original, with little or no critical awareness of the fundamental textual and other possible differences. This critical and pedagogical approach to literary translation seems to be almost immune to the growing awareness of the importance of the textual elements, to an increasing body of research concerning their impact on the reader, and to the ample evidence about various inadequacies of literary translations, revealed especially by the processes of retranslation and thus visible in all works that exist in several translations. This approach also takes little if any notice of the overall tendency of the translation to assimilate the original to the receptor culture, to simplify and sometimes also to reduce the original.

scholarly journals The Recuperation of Humanism in the Context of the Martial Society

Clotho ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jerzak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Narrative Medicine ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Humanist Tradition ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

The humanist tradition developed in the Renaissance that not only cultivated the human spirit but applied its knowledge for the purpose of improving society across various humanist and scientific disciplines is not altogether extinct. Using the erudite Swiss physician and botanist Anton Schneeberger (1530–1581) as a founding father of sorts of modern humanist medicine confronted with war, I discuss the recuperation of humanism in the twentieth century, first in the thought of psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) who, under war circumstances, produced a work whose analytical acumen can still be used today, and subsequently in the creation of the discipline of narrative medicine that, unwittingly perhaps, echoes Schneeberger’s insight into the imperative of inserting storytelling into the practice of both patient- and physician-centered medicine. In the background of the argument is the existence of a new society, a martial society that functions as if there were war despite its ostensible state of peace.

scholarly journals New Perspectives on Retranslation: The Case of Iran

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Samira Saeedi
Keyword(s):  
Early Career ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Animal Farm ◽  
Multiple Translations ◽  
Insight Into

This paper examines the social aspects of retranslation in contemporary Iran. Foreign classics and award-winning literary books have attracted multiple translations into Persian within a short period of time. For instance, George Orwell’s novella, Animal Farm, has received more than one hundred retranslations in the last 40 years. The aim of this paper is to investigate possible reasons for such an unusually high number of retranslations. By analysing sixteen interviews with Iranian translators and publishers and performing paratextual analysis of four retranslations of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, this paper sheds light on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of retranslation. It does so by drawing on the trust-based approach to the study of translation proposed by Rizzi, Lang, and Pym, and by offering sociological insight into retranslation in contemporary Iran. Four groups of translators are identified: amateur, early career, mid-career, and senior translators. Retranslation for the former two groups is viewed as profitable trade in literary translation market. For the latter two, retranslation is the process of reinforcing trustworthiness at the institutional level that means trust in professionalism of certain Iranian translators and publishers.

scholarly journals Brian Cherney’s Illuminations

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-155
Author(s):  
David Adamcyk
Keyword(s):  
String Orchestra ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If

Brian Cherney’s Illuminations for string orchestra, composed in 1987, reflects ideas related to Jewish mysticism. Descriptions and accounts of meditation techniques that ultimately lead to visions of light, and even an encounter with the divine, so inspired the composer that he decided to write a piece that re-enacts a meditative cycle. Illuminations is thus a dramatic staging: the listener, as if granted special insight into the mind of someone who is meditating, witnesses how the mind is transformed as it approaches light (or the divine). The composition expresses light and the divine in multiple ways, from the layout of the instruments on stage, to the formal plan of the piece, to the variety of pitch collections heard throughout the work. This article unveils some of the subtle intricacies that make Illuminations so powerfully evocative, and why it remains one of Cherney’s signal achievements.

‘Out of a reverie, and as if giving unconscious expression to a deep internal feeling’

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sorcha Nic Lochlainn
Keyword(s):  
Women's Work ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
May Day ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Degree Of Overlap ◽  
As If

This chapter discusses the songs which were performed to accompany the labour of clothmaking in Gaelic-speaking areas of Ireland and Scotland. Clothmaking was predominantly women’s work, and these songs provide us with an insight into the preoccupations of song-poets whose compositions are unlikely to have been preserved elsewhere in the tradition. There are deep underlying similarities between the Irish and Scottish clothmaking corpora which have not been discussed in any detail to date; there are also indications that the liminal context of clothmaking songs demonstrates a degree of overlap with other elements of Gaelic tradition, particularly in the contexts of matchmaking and fertility and in the reassertion of physical boundaries seen, for example, in traditional May Day celebrations.

scholarly journals “Vagrancy” as an Adaptive Strategy: The Duchy of Brabant, 1767–1776

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Winter
Keyword(s):  
Representative Sample ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Adaptive Strategy ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Migration History ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
As If ◽  
History And Theory

The study builds on a representative sample of more than 2,500 court cases against vagrants in the Duchy of Brabant between 1767 and 1776. Individual evidence on social background and whereabouts has been quantitatively processed to provide qualitative insight into the “why” and “how” of their movements. Transcending the judicial framework and historical and historiographical biases, these “vagrants” are shown to have displayed various patterns of mobility that fit intelligibly within the wider framework of migration history and theory. By exposing the varied scope of the concept of “vagrancy” in meaning and policy practice, the article argues against its continued ubiquitous (and often dismissive) use in historiography as if it refers meaningfully to a distinct marginal social category, which not only often reiterates the biases of a distorted elite view, but also obstructs a more unified and insightful understanding of patterns of migration in history.

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