Literary Translation and Digital Culture: The Transmedial Breakthrough of Poland’s The Witcher

Author(s):  
Paulina Drewniak

This chapter explores the international transmedial phenomenon, The Witcher, which began life as a 1986 Polish short story, ‘Wiedźmin’ (The Witcher) by Andrzej Sapowski, but has become a paradigm of the intercultural communication facilitated by the digital age, including not only translated fiction, but also fan fiction and fan translations, a videogame trilogy and a film. The chapter highlights the new opportunities that digital cultures offer translated literatures, regardless of national origin, and the challenges they present to existing translation studies theory, dominated by the circulation of high literature in book form. It also notes, however, how even internationally co-owned genre franchises, old considerations of national cultural diplomacy, narrative and identity remain.

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Тетяна Ляшенко

In the paper, we off er the translatological defi nition of the concept of culture, relevant for literary translation as a culturological phenomenon. We believe that the given defi nition combines the main aspects of its interpretation in culturology, socio-cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Such an approach allows outlining cultural background knowledge of the translator, which is necessary, on the one hand, for understanding of the text and, on the other, for the adequate translation of cultural information. The article analyses various theories of the understanding of culture and the tradition of its research in the translation studies, particularly in German translatology. The combination of interpretive, linguistic and translational turns in the cultural sciences is identifi ed as a perspective for translation studies. The attention focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of common interpretations. The paper considers the issues of meaningful and spatial defi nition of the concept of culture. The study characterizes the understanding of culture in the process of intercultural communication and the role of literary translation in it as well as clarifi es the peculiarities of the refl ection of culture in the literary text. The elements of culture that constitute translation problems are both extralinguistic concepts, i.e. phenomena and events that take place in a particular linguocultural community (the culture described by language), and “culturally conditioned” units of language as markers of a particular culture (the culture in language). In this research, we exemplify the possible ways of solving the problem of identifi cation and translation of cultural information in literary translation. It is important to complete a systematic description of culture in literary texts to enable its identifi cation at the macro- and microstructural levels. The article points out the need to consider the issue of identifi cation and translation of cultural information not only at the stage of implementation of the message in the language of translation, but also at the stages of decoding the source text and its recoding. The prospects for further research are outlined, which consist in the operationalization of the concept of culture at the empirical level, a systematic description of cultural manifestations in the source text, and a systematic approach to the reproduction of cultural information in the translated text. Key words: culture, translation studies, intercultural communication, literary translation, literary text.


Multilingua ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minako O’Hagan

AbstractIn this rapidly technologising age translation practice has been undergoing formidable changes with the implication that there is a need to expand the disciplinary scope of translation studies. Taking the case of game localisation this article problematises the role of translation as intercultural communication by focusing on cultural elements of video games. Game localisation evolved in response to the game industry’s need to distribute game software in territories other than the country of origin whereby adjusting games technically, linguistically and culturally to suit the requirements of the target market. Despite the importance of this cross-lingual and cross-cultural operation for the industry’s success in the global market, game localisation remains an underreported area of research in translation studies. A critical analysis of game localisation as generating software-mediated cultural experiences reveals intercultural communication issues due to the nature of modern digital games as technological and cultural artefacts. By combining translation studies perspectives and the theoretical framework of critical theory of technology, the author argues that game localisation is eliciting something new about the role of translation in forging intercultural communication in the digital age.


Babel ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Rasool Moradi Joz ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin

Abstract Borges’ works deconstruct the time lag conceived in the binaries such as the work’s production vs. its criticism, the original text vs. its translation, the source text vs. the derivative nature of the target text, and reality vs. fiction. Benjamin, as Borges’ near contemporary, echoes rather the same idea in his post-Nietzschean philosophy of translation. Focusing on the similarities between the views of Benjamin on translation and those of Borges as reflected in his stories as well as his essays, particularly in his well-received essay on translations of Thousand and One Nights and in his meta-fictional short story ‘Pierre Menard’: Author of the Quixote, this paper aims at bringing the two scholars together in the context of literary translation studies in the postmodern era, where intersemiotic and intertextual collage (in Eco’s terminology) and mimicry bear witness to the claim that translation, like other intertextual enterprises, is neither inferior to the other intertextual undertakings such as writing, nor is it detached from language as post-structurally conceived. Furthermore, another core objective of this study is to show how Borges’ ‘Menard’ heralds and truly represents the translation theories built upon the underlying assumptions of deconstructionism since the 1980s. It is concluded that as far as postmodern and poststructuralist theories are concerned, both Borges’ and Benjamin’s works had predicted the future of literary and translation theories in which the decisive role of translation and translator in the construction of culture and identities cannot be denied.


Author(s):  
Nadezhda V. Razumkova

This article reviews the text concept studies on the material of a Russian poem and its translation into Chinese within the framework of the anthropological linguistics. The study of individual concepts, embodying the ethical and aesthetic values of a creative person, is relevant and promising for the further development of establishing their role in the implementation of a writer’s individual style in translation. The author analyzes the lexical-semantic space, which implements a fragment of the content of the universal concept of HOME, presented in the original and translated texts. The author presents a linguistic experiment carried out among Chinese students. Its purpose was to consider the cognitive (indicative, figurative, and situational) basis of the content of the translation and the degree of its compliance with the author’s intention. The tasks include the description of translation transformations as well as interpretation of the mental reactions of Chinese respondents. The results obtained indicate that the author’s representation of the HOME concept is achieved through the use of cognitive structures, associated with Russian traditional views. The representation of the discursive concept by interpreters is accompanied by cognitive refraction in terms of the associative development of thoughts. Literary translation is seen as an indirect act of intercultural communication, the subjects of which — the author, translator, and reader — have a set of individual characteristics, lining up on the principle of following an ethnic cultural standard to individual-emotional and gender marked manifestations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-320
Author(s):  
Caroline Stockman ◽  
Fred Truyen

This paper aims to explore the nature of digital culture research, and the fitting methodology. Although it is still felt to be a novelty, it is not so different from the more general domain of Cultural Studies. The aim of research for both domains is meaning, or the challenge to understand the dynamics of the encoding and decoding process. Both domains endorse a wide variety of subjects, although typically the concrete methodology of Cultural Studies still remains restricted to qualitative approaches. The question of quantitative data and their analysis is highlighted in digital culture, and we should consider both its opportunities and limitations for the research at hand. In our reflection, Cultural Studies research emerges as a performative enterprise, and this is one of its unique distinctions as a research domain.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-82
Author(s):  
Vo Huong Nam

AbstractThe digital culture has a profound influence on the formation of personal identity among the youth of Gens Y and Z. The networked society has strongly affected the process of forming an “inner identity,” a critical task in the adolescent period. The design of digital social media and apps can enslave youth in the “hive” and take away the solitude and resources needed for them to cultivate their “inner identity.” Therefore, there is a need for institutions such as school, family, and church to reinvent better ways to accommodate youth and engage them with digital media with responsibility and discernment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 206-255
Author(s):  
Stefano Evangelista

This chapter explores the relationship between the proliferation of artificial languages and literary cosmopolitanism at the turn of the century: both strove to promote ideas of world citizenship, universal communication, and peaceful international relations. The two most successful artificial languages of this period, Volapük and Esperanto, employed literature, literary translation, and the periodical medium to create a new type of cosmopolitan literacy intended to quench divisive nationalisms and to challenge Herder’s theories on the link between national language and individual identity. Starting with Henry James’s lampooning of Volapük in his short story ‘The Pupil’ (1891), the chapter charts the uneasy relationship between literature and artificial language movements. Ludwik L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, stressed the importance of literary translation for his utopian ideal and used original literature to explore the complex affect of his cosmopolitan identity. The chapter closes with an analysis of the growth of the Esperanto movement in turn-of-the-century Britain, focusing on its overlap with literary, artistic, and radical circles, on contributions by Max Müller, W. T. Stead, and Felix Moscheles, and on the 1907 Cambridge Esperanto World Congress.


Author(s):  
Eren Kesim

All nations throughout the world have been influenced by rapid developments and transformations in the twenty first century. Throughout this process of rapid change, in which newly developed technologies and globalization gained momentum, all social establishments are being restructured. The restructuring process may only be realized with the involvement of individuals raised and trained in accordance with the age we live in, thus the strategic importance of educational organizations has risen. For educational organizations to fulfill the expectations of the responsibilities assigned to them, they must be managed in accordance with the requirements of this era. School principals are laden with important responsibilities throughout this process. One of the foremost variables of the transformation process enabled by digital technologies in the digital age is the concept of digital culture. This concept must be analyzed regarding its repercussions in educational organizations. This study analyzes the digital culture which has emerged in the digital age regarding its repercussion in schools and school management from a conceptual perspective.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Evans ◽  
Helen Ringrow

The introduction to this special issue discusses the notion of border and its position in current scholarship in translation studies and intercultural communication. It then analyses ways in which borders can be useful for thinking, focusing particularly on Walter Mignolo’s notion of “border thinking”. It reviews how borders are viewed in both translation studies and intercultural communication and offers some possible directions for future research before introducing the papers in this special issue.


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