scholarly journals Cross-Cultural Literary Translation Studies - In the Translation of Works of Mo Yan, For Example

Author(s):  
Chunyan Zheng
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1015
Author(s):  
Wensheng Deng

Since Mo Yan was given the Nobel Prize for Literature,literary translation has been heatedly debated. Howard Goldblatt, as one of Mo Yan’s major translators of English world, is gaining global eyes. And his translations are so popular that some scholars claim that Howard flatters MoYan himself, and he has rewritten Mo Yan. To make the debate known to the public, the thesis explores Howard’s translation of Red Sorghum, based on the perspective of Media-translatology. In the translation, Howard Goldblatt has made addition, subtraction, rearrangement, etc., in the translation. His changes and adjustments are quite different from the ST, but it retains the image, structure of the ST, and it adopts aesthetic fidelity, which is a universal principle in literary translation. Howard’s choice of MoYan is another reason to help him achieve success in translation for western readers are particularly interested in Mo Yan’s invention of genre, style, techniques and language. And what Howard’s action has coincided with the significant opening-up policy of China is also a great power to popularize his translation. Actually, Howard’s performance and practice are necessary steps to communicate culture in cross-cultural interactions, he is not only a communicator of Chinese literature, modern and contemporary, but also a constant contributor of world civilization and culture, for his new attribute in translation—a thirdness.


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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Gholam-Reza Parvizi

The question of image in literary studies and in recent years in Translation Studies is one of the most problematic innature. In the present study an attempt was made to define the nature of translating linguistic constructions – evokingimages in the mind of reader – in English novels and their rendered versions in Persian translations. In this studyseven types of images (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinesthetic and organic) in two English novelsand their rendered versions in Persian were analyzed based on two theoretical frameworks, the first one is Jiang’sImage-Based Model to Literary Translation (2008) by which the nature of translation of images were examined andthe other is Chesterman’s translation strategies (1997) which help to systematize translation strategies adopted bytranslators in rewriting the images in English novels. The results have shown that in most of the cases the images thatare intended by original author have been changed in the translations, and the aesthetic experience of the ST reader isdifferent from that of the TT reader.


Babel ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-168
Author(s):  
Kenneth Grima

Abstract The process of literary translation includes the source culture-specific elements that constitute an integral part of the source text. This paper aims to identify and analyse various translation strategic processes that could be adopted in translating cultural factors within the parameters of a Maltese bilingual, but not necessarily bicultural, context. Each of the suggested strategic procedures is presented in useful flow-chart formats, varying from source language/source culture to target language/target culture bias approach in order to keep cultural losses to a minimum whilst maximising cultural gains and, therefore, to make the transformation of the source text into the target text successful. Such flow-charts are aimed to provide the literary translator with a rapid means of achieving an adequate and satisfying suggested solution for a quality cross-cultural transposition of the cultural elements encountered within a bilingual context. In certain instances, it is also suggested that some strategies are used concurrently with others. To achieve this aim, an extended practical translation exercise by the author himself is used. This paper also helps to strengthen further both the level of research in narrative translation studies in general, and the research done in Maltese narrative literary translation from a cultural point of view.


Babel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng-Lin Chen

Abstract Research on Goldblatt’s translation of Red Sorghum has attracted more attention in recent years after its author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for this work. This translation study has addressed the imagery and symbolism in this classic Chinese work, an area that has yet to be investigated with the use of empirical data. The study employed the corpus-based approach, and analysed the translation of images and symbols based on a parallel translation corpus of Chapters 1 and 2 found in the text of Red Sorghum. Most important images and symbols are represented by 30 distinct nouns in the novel as successfully translated into English as a result of the translator’s adoption of a literal translation strategy. A more focused examination of a translation of the most prominent key word, sorghum, finds that the translator has faithfully adopted the imagery and symbolism techniques in the source text whenever conveying the images and symbols of sorghum across cultures. Based on the findings, this study argues that images and symbols in the source text may present themselves in the translation of novels if translators adopt a source-oriented translation strategy. Our analyses of the translation of figures of speech, namely similes, personifications and repetitions further highlight the importance of taking concert and literal translation strategies into the realm of literary translation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gonzálvez-García

Abstract Building on Tabakowska’s (1993, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2013) full-blown defense of a cognitive linguistic approach to literary translation as well as on previous research dealing with the implementations of Construction Grammar(s) for translation studies (Szymańska 2011a, 2011b; Serbina 2015), this paper critically examines the role of iconicity in selected lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnets capitalizing on the passage of Time-Death and their corresponding translations in present-day Spanish and Italian. Specifically, drawing on Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006) and Contrastive Construction Grammar (Boas 2010a; Boas & Gonzálvez-García 2014), I focus on instances of secondary predication with verbs of sensory perception, causative constructions and aspectual constructions iconically connected with the above-mentioned motif and demonstrate that iconicity emerges as a very useful communicative ‘filter’ that can help to minimize any undesirable arbitrariness which may obscure the semantico-pragmatic interpretation of the source text and/or its rendering into the target text.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 01123
Author(s):  
Julia Privalova ◽  
Victoria Ovcharenko ◽  
Natalia Kashirina ◽  
Alexey Yakovlev

The paper concerns teaching literary translation as a type of cross-cultural speech act in the system of translators’ professional training and integrated into the course of “Home Reading”.The authors believe that all disciplines that comprise translators’ professional training should be profession-oriented, equipping the students with skills and competences necessary for effective cross-cultural mediation, thus contributing to the formation of a cross-cultural component of the translator’s competence. A hierarchy of tasks and assignments is presented in accordance with the three-stage structure of the translation process (pre-translation, translation, and post-translation stages).The results and efficiency of the proposed method, tested in the course of a 17-years long experimental teaching, is described.


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Ruano

In this article, speech verbs in Dickens’sHard Times(1854) and their translation into Spanish are analyzed. Apart from their basic function of introducing speech, these verbs can also contribute to characterization. The regular occurrence of a particular speech verb to report the direct speech of a particular character helps to create a fictional personality. Given the important role they may play, the rendering of such verbs in four Spanish versions of this novel is assessed. To do so, a corpus-based methodology has been employed. A concordancing software was used to retrieve speech verbs from the original novel, allowing their close analysis in context. Then, using an aligned parallel corpus containing the four versions, a comparison was carried out to see how they have been rendered. Evidence is provided that none of the four translations entirely preserves the characterizing value of the verbs, which may affect the way readers form impressions of characters in their minds. The use of this corpus metholodogy is thus seen to contribute to the field of literary translation studies.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-118
Author(s):  
Yukari Fukuchi Meldrum

Translationese in Japanese, despite its distinct characteristics when compared to natural Japanese, has so far been systematically studied by only one researcher (Furuno, 2005). In addition to this general lack of scholarly interest, the translational situations in Japan are not well-known in the West. In this paper, the notions of translationese in Japan are investigated from the perspective of Translation Studies and of Kokugogaku (studies of Japanese language). In addition, this study provides reasons for conducting systematic studies of translationese in Japan, where Translation Studies is still in its initial stages. Finally, the results of a preliminary examination of small comparable corpora using a translation and a non-translation are presented.


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