scholarly journals Dances with Words: Issues in the Translation of Japanese Literature into English

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Richard Ninian Donovan
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
English Translations ◽  
More Care ◽  
Syntactic Differences

<p>Chapter One: Literary Translation Studies, Japanese-to-English Translation, and Izu no odoriko This introductory chapter explores aspects of Translation Studies relevant to Japanese-to-English literary translation. I employ extended metaphors from the case study, Kawabata Yasunari's novella Izu no odoriko,to re-illuminate perennial TS issues such as equivalence, 'style' and disambiguation, contrasting the translating approaches of Edward G. Seidensticker and J. Martin Holman. The chapter concludes with an outline of the investigative path I followed in analysing the sourcetext (ST) and comparing it with the target texts (TTs): the English translations. I explain the thesis's systematic corpus approach in using an NVivo database to establish a set of potentially problematic translation issues that arise out of the interaction of source language-target language (SL-TL) features.  Chapter Two: A Taxonomy of Japanese Paradigmatic Features and the Issues Arising for Translation into English The Japanese and English languages have significant lexical and morpho-syntactic differences, which I contend give rise to potentially problematic translation issues. The chapter begins by differentiating cultural and linguistic features and explaining why the thesis will focus on the latter. The rest of the chapter presents a detailed analysis of ST exemplars of the most significant of the paradigmatic (lexical) features. Seidensticker and Holman's translations are analysed to determine how they have addressed the translation issues arising from these features.  Chapter Three: A Taxonomy of Japanese Syntagmatic Features and the Issues Arising for Translation into English This chapter continues the analysis of linguistic differences between Japanese and English in the context of literary translation. Here the focus is on the syntagmatic (structural)features of Japanese in comparison with English, again examining examples from the ST and comparing how the translators address the issues arising in their translating decisions.  Chapter 4: 'Shall We Dance?' Translation Acts in the English Translations of Izu no odoriko and Beyond The focus moves to the features of the translators' overall translation strategies, and how they apply these strategies in their translating decisions: so-called 'translation acts'. Conducting a close reading of the ST and TTs of a pivotal scene in Izu no odoriko, I draw on previous academics' frameworks to create a simple rubric for categorising the manifestation of these strategies at the discourse level. The chapter concludes by drawing together the theoretical and empirical strands of the thesis and demonstrating the relevance of this discussion to the English translation of Japanese literature. While acknowledging the necessarily subjective nature of the translational act, and the sophisticated techniques the translators employ to deal with complex issues, I propose that my analytic framework urges more care in the preservation of semantic and formal elements than can be observed in aspects of the translations examined.</p>

scholarly journals Dances with Words: Issues in the Translation of Japanese Literature into English

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Richard Ninian Donovan
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
English Translations ◽  
More Care ◽  
Syntactic Differences

<p>Chapter One: Literary Translation Studies, Japanese-to-English Translation, and Izu no odoriko This introductory chapter explores aspects of Translation Studies relevant to Japanese-to-English literary translation. I employ extended metaphors from the case study, Kawabata Yasunari's novella Izu no odoriko,to re-illuminate perennial TS issues such as equivalence, 'style' and disambiguation, contrasting the translating approaches of Edward G. Seidensticker and J. Martin Holman. The chapter concludes with an outline of the investigative path I followed in analysing the sourcetext (ST) and comparing it with the target texts (TTs): the English translations. I explain the thesis's systematic corpus approach in using an NVivo database to establish a set of potentially problematic translation issues that arise out of the interaction of source language-target language (SL-TL) features.  Chapter Two: A Taxonomy of Japanese Paradigmatic Features and the Issues Arising for Translation into English The Japanese and English languages have significant lexical and morpho-syntactic differences, which I contend give rise to potentially problematic translation issues. The chapter begins by differentiating cultural and linguistic features and explaining why the thesis will focus on the latter. The rest of the chapter presents a detailed analysis of ST exemplars of the most significant of the paradigmatic (lexical) features. Seidensticker and Holman's translations are analysed to determine how they have addressed the translation issues arising from these features.  Chapter Three: A Taxonomy of Japanese Syntagmatic Features and the Issues Arising for Translation into English This chapter continues the analysis of linguistic differences between Japanese and English in the context of literary translation. Here the focus is on the syntagmatic (structural)features of Japanese in comparison with English, again examining examples from the ST and comparing how the translators address the issues arising in their translating decisions.  Chapter 4: 'Shall We Dance?' Translation Acts in the English Translations of Izu no odoriko and Beyond The focus moves to the features of the translators' overall translation strategies, and how they apply these strategies in their translating decisions: so-called 'translation acts'. Conducting a close reading of the ST and TTs of a pivotal scene in Izu no odoriko, I draw on previous academics' frameworks to create a simple rubric for categorising the manifestation of these strategies at the discourse level. The chapter concludes by drawing together the theoretical and empirical strands of the thesis and demonstrating the relevance of this discussion to the English translation of Japanese literature. While acknowledging the necessarily subjective nature of the translational act, and the sophisticated techniques the translators employ to deal with complex issues, I propose that my analytic framework urges more care in the preservation of semantic and formal elements than can be observed in aspects of the translations examined.</p>

Translation of Persian Mystic Terms into English: A Case Study of Conference of the Birds by Attar

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 552
Author(s):  
Sadaf Khosroshahi ◽  
Ahmad Sedighi
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Direct Transfer ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The One ◽  
Persian Translation

Translation of mystic terms or metaphors is a very important portion of rendering a text from a source language to a target language, because some of mystic terms do not exist in the target language and this point makes the translation harder. This paper aimed at identifying the translation strategies and procedures used by Darbandi and Davis (1984) in The Conference of the Birds of Attar Neishabouri. To achieve the objectives, Attar’s Persian original work (Shafiei Kadkani, 2010) was read carefully to extract mystical terms.  Then, the translated text by Darbandi, and Davis (1984) was carefully read and the corresponding English translations of Persian mystical term were found.  The original mystical terms and their Persian translation were analyzed based on Van Doorslaer’s (2007) map to find out translation strategies and procedures used by the translators on the one hand and indicate the dominant strategy and procedure in the whole work of translation on the other. The result showed that literal translation strategy (72.41%) was the most frequently used strategy and direct transfer procedure (68.96%) was the most frequently used procedure.  This paper may have some implications in literary translation and help translation instructors and translation trainees as well in translation classes.

Translation of visual poetic spatiality

Babel ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 796-810
Author(s):  
Yongzhi Liu ◽  
Chunlan Tang
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Iconic Signs

Abstract Spatiality in literature has been explored in depth in recent years, but there are still few applications in literary translation studies. With space cognitively defined and the trichotomy of iconic signs adopted, we argue that the written text of a poem has its visual poetic spaces – the scene properties of linguistic signs (letters, character parts, words, lineation etc.) and relational reference of linguistic signs (distance, sequence etc.) – and that these poetic spaces are imagically and diagrammatically iconic. Our analysis of the English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation of poems’ iconic letters, lineation, distance, and sequence reveals that some translators have successfully reproduced the source text’s visual spatiality in the target text, but some have simply ignored or neglected the rendering; visual poetic spaces are semantically important and translatable, and the translation techniques involve direct reproduction and complementary renderings. We argue that, in addition to portraying the linguistic and cultural information found in poems, translators should pay more attention to visual poetic spatiality in their work in order to ensure an accurate portrayal of the original author’s work.

READDRESSING TRANSLATION STRATEGY IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (31) ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Natalya Zhmayeva ◽  
Iaroslav Petrunenko
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Compensation Technique

Modern translation studies which are of descriptive nature mainly presuppose the opportunity of altering the function of the source text in translation, reconstruction of sense and structure in correspondence with the aim of translation. The investigation has been carried out in the framework of the communicativefunctional approach to translation which accounts for the entire spectrum of linguistic and extra linguistic factors influencing translation in the broad sense. This fact proves the relevance of the article. The translations of both narrations intended for the children’s audience exclusively conform to the ideology of the children’s fiction aimed at socialization and attraction of young addressees. It results in the loss of the worldview reflection by the originals and focusing on reproducing their fairy–tale plots. The applied readdressing translation strategy has been implemented by the following tactics: the tactic of relevant information rendering, the tactic of pragmatic adaptation of the source text, the tactic of stylistic features rendering, the tactic of the source text formal and structural features rendering. Common operations for the applied tactics have proved to be as following: search for a variant equivalent, omission, restructuring and compensation. The compensation technique has turned out to be the most universal operation within the applied translation tactics. This fact can be explained by the complex nature of transformations the source text is subjected to, the need to omit, rearrange amounts of information and to preserve the chosen genre along with its adaptation for the potential addressee.

scholarly journals On Re-instantiation of Literary Dialects: A Systemic Functional Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 706
Author(s):  
Jing Chen
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
New Development ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
New Perspective

With the developments in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the functional approach to translation studies (TS) has offered new perspective into understanding how translation can be viewed as the re-instantiation of Source Text (ST) in another language system as Target Text (TT).In literary texts, language variations such as literary dialects have long been considered challenges in translation, but literary dialects are also believed to be “valued” linguistic elements since non-standard language such as dialects are socially related and may trigger linguistic stereotypes among readers. In tune with the new development in SFL, the current research focuses on the English translations of dialects in Li Jieren’s Si Shui Wei Lan (死水微澜) which is rich in Sichuan dialects and are with linguistically varied voices. The purpose of this article is threefold: firstly, to briefly present the linguistic features of ST, revealing author’s intentional arrangement in his choices of dialects; secondly, with case studies to compare and discuss the translators’ choices in re-instantiating dialects from the perspective of coupling and commitment; finally, to offer suggestions for translating literary dialects. This paper argues that SFL helps translators pinpoint the linguistic features that are valued in ST and inform translators of alternative renderings. This paper adopts a descriptive approach to the triplet on how translators re-coupled and re-committed the language variations in the ST into TT, and it serves as a manifestation of how SFL applies to TS from a new angel.

scholarly journals THE VARIATION OF INTERPERSONAL MEANING BREADTH OF BILINGUAL TEXT “SERIBU KUNANG-KUNANG DI MANHATTAN BY UMAR KHAYAM”

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Eka Yunita Liambo
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
First Variation ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Bilingual Text

<p class="Abstract">ABSTRACT</p><p class="IsiAbstrakabstractcontent"><em>The process of meaning realization to the target language may involve the change of meaning. This change leads to the variation of meaning depth, breadth, and height. This is caused by the differences of linguistic features between the target language and source language. Therefore, the difficulties of finding equivalent words in target language may force translators to use other words which do not have the exactly similar meaning. However, this becomes a phenomenon in translation studies. This research aims to know the variation of interpersonal meaning breadth of a bilingual text. The primary data of this research is the sentences of first bilingual text taken from Seribu Kunang-Kunang di Manhattan translated into A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan. There were 281 sentences are analysed. The result shows that those sentences found to have different variations. The most frequently variations found in this short story are the first variations in which element functions in the source text and target text have one difference. First variation has 28,82% then followed by zero variation  with 23,48%. Whereas other sentences is classified as the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth variation of interpersonal meaning breadth with percentage of 18,14%, 4,62%, 3,20%, 14,23% and 7,47%. These variations occurring in the first bilingual text Seribu Kunang-Kunang di Manhattan translated into A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan seems to be done to maintain the correspondence in the target language.</em></p><strong>Keywords: </strong>bilingual, breadth meaning, interpersonal, translation, variation of meaning,

scholarly journals Emotion without a Word: An Analysis of Bengali Emotions and Their English Translation

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 250
Author(s):  
Shibashis Mukherjee ◽  
Anupam Das
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
English Word ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Emotion Word ◽  
Activity Measurements ◽  
Skopos Theory ◽  
English Translations ◽  
English Speaking

<em>Using Bengali texts and their English translations done by a set of English speaking native Bengali translators and another set of native English translators, we analyze how two specific Bengali emotion words (obhiman and lajja) have mapped onto English. In translating lajja translators use only three English words while for obhiman they choose an array of words with no consistency. This indicates that no English word represents a concept that is close to obhiman’s meaning suggesting that the concept represented by a particular emotion word in one language may not be totally captured in another language. Additionally, the findings indicate emotion words represent concepts with fuzzy borders (as suggested in scripts hypothesis) instead of dots in affect grids as envisioned in evaluation-potency-activity measurements. Such concepts vary in the spectrum of events they denote and in the degree to which they overlap. Subsequently, we, drawing from skopos theory, argue that cultural contexts in translation studies need to be considered rather than looking for exact equivalence of these emotion words.</em>

Reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the explicitation of cohesive chains

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Xi Li ◽  
Long Li
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Hong Lou Meng ◽  
Different Types ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Chinese Classic ◽  
Logical Links

Abstract Explicitation is a key concept in translation studies referring to turning what is implicitly narrated in a source text into explicit narration in a target text; it has been widely studied from different aspects across language pairs and genres. However, while most previous studies investigate explicitation through a few indicators of explicitness, most of which are specific logical links and connectives, textual explicitness encompasses far beyond these. To date, little attention has been paid, especially in literary translation, to semantic explicitation, which is realized through cohesive chains in textual development. Since cohesive chains represent the development of events and characters throughout the text, it is assumed the more there are of them, the more tangible a text is in realizing its meaning within its context. This research, therefore, sets out to investigate the cohesive chains in a Chinese classic novel, Hong Lou Meng, and in its two English translations, The Dream of the Red Mansions and A Story of the Stone, with an emphasis on how the texts are manifested as narratives in the respective contexts with different readers. It has found a trend of explicitation in translation from Chinese source text to English target texts in terms of the numbers of cohesive chains and the lexical items forming the chains. It has also found differences in the distribution of different types of cohesive chains (identity chains and similarity chains), which represent distinctive patterns of realizing the context in each text. The interpretation of these different stylistic features in narrative reflects both typological differences and translators’ choices.

scholarly journals CHANGES OF VIEWPOINTS IN INDONESIAN-ENGLISH TRANSLATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-42
Author(s):  
Susini Made ◽  
Sujaya Nyoman
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Cultural Bridge

This study concerns with translation which involves languages that have different linguistic and cultural systems. When a source and target language do not have the same system of language and culture, to some extent, equivalence cannot be directly achieved. By deploying Vinay & Darbelnet’s Modulation (1995) and House’s translation equivalence (2015), this study is to reveal the changes of point of view the translators did in translating texts from Indonesian into English. The data sources of this present study include Indonesian novels and short stories loaded with culture and their English translations. The analysis revealed that to create adequate target texts, the translators changed their points of view through some conditions. The changes include: a) negation of opposite; b) part for the whole; c) abstract for concrete; d) cause for effect; e) active for passive; f) space for time; g) change of symbols; and h) intervals and limits. Changing point of view becomes cultural bridge in the translation which involves languages with different culture.

scholarly journals Domestication in the Translation of D. Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (29) ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Gintarė Aleknavičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Da Vinci ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Cooperative Principle ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The One

Literary translation is one of the most widely discussed topics in Translation Studies. There are different opinions and approaches to literary translation. On the one hand, some theorists and translators suggest that linguistic aspects such as syntax, lexis, etc., are of great importance to literary translation; one must keep to the rules of the target language without digression from the original meaning, after all. On the other hand, some scholars believe these factors are insignificant, because turning translation into a linguistic exercise undermines the more important textual, cultural, and situational factors (Leonardi 2000). However, the application of Grice’s Cooperative Principle to literary translation allows the mixture of both the linguistic aspects and all that is left beyond the meaning. The study was inspired by Kirsten Malmkjaer, Gideon Toury and Kristina Shaffner’s debate on Norms, Maxims and Conventions in Translation Studies and Pragmatics (Shaffner 1999). The aim of the article is to analyse the Lithuanian translation of D. Brown’s The Da Vinci Code within the framework of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the strategy of domestication by reviewing domestication and foreignization and introducing Grice’s Cooperative Principle. The research proves that even though it is virtually impossible for a translator to convey the meaning of the source text exactly as it is given, the insufficient use of domestication in the Lithuanian translation of The Da Vinci Code emphasises the presence of the translator and disrupts the ease of reading.

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