Evading Frames: D’Antin van Rooten’s Homophonic Mother Goose

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Fraser

In 1967, American dialect actor Luis d’Antin van Rooten published his now-classic Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames, a non-organic arrangement of French-language words and phrases designed to approximate the speech sounds of Mother Goose Rhymes. Though much read and imitated, these homophonic translations have largely evaded theoretical focus. Perhaps this is because their unique structuring allows them to evade anchorage in any specific contextual frame, and to send up the researcher’s own efforts toward contextualization, which has been prescribed as the methodological “first step” in Translation Studies since the Cultural Turn. Presented here, first of all, is a search for the potential frames of the Mots d’Heures–biographical, inter-textual, cinematic. These homophonic translations, I will then contend with reference to Jean-Jacques Lecercle (1990), exist to defy these frames by collapsing together, at the phono-articulate level, the target text with its most obvious context: the English-language source. Finally, I would contend, this collapse exemplifies the phenomena of “weaning,” “trans-contextual drift,” and “remainder” argued by Derrida (1988) as the enduring property of the signifying structure. The Mots d’Heures serve, then, as a playful reminder, in an intellectual climate where context reigns, of the signifying form’s structural ascendancy over the frame, of its “iterability.”

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-127
Author(s):  
Ardik Ardianto

This paper is an attempt to approach the translational stylistics, aiming at identifying the equivalence and translation procedures used in translating the Toer’s authorial style from the Indonesian language to the English language in the novel This Earth of Mankind. A translational stylistics model proposed by Malmkjær was used to contrast the target text (TT) and the source text (ST), primarily focusing on the stylistic shift. Further, as to the model of translation procedures, it specifically employed Vinay and Darbelnet’s methodology for translation. Data used in this study were addressing terms found in two novels, the Indonesian novel Bumi Manusia and its translation This Earth of Mankind. The rigorous analysis demonstrated how the translation of addressing terms involved a wide range of aspects, such as sociocultural and historical values (including social identity and social strata) and power and solidarity relation. Therefore, it raised a number of noteworthy translation issues, i.e., its equivalence, stylistic shift, and translator’s strategies. Through the increasing awareness of ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies, the concept of equivalence is supposedly perceived not as an absolute assessment but as a mediating attempt to accommodate and transpose the inferred or perceived meaning from the ST to the TT as much as possible. However, the findings are not set out to appraise the translator’s ethical attitude, considering the limited data used in this study and numerous factors that are not yet taken into account, e.g. the power play of the translation industry, and culture-mediating agenda in the receiving culture.


Author(s):  
Antonio Jesús Martínez Pleguezuelos

Abstract In this study we analyse different linguistic elements in the TV series Will & Grace that shape the gay identity of the main characters of the show. We will base the analysis on the inclusion of the cultural turn into the field of audiovisual translation studies and on the technical time and space constraints that may emerge when conveying the message in this type of texts. Therefore, we will focus on the treatment of cultural references associated to the LGBTQI community that are shown on the series, as well as the linguistic variant of gayspeak and the comic elements included in the dialogues in order to observe whether the information that viewers of the Spanish dubbed version receive regarding gay identity is the same that is portrayed in the original version in English.


2019 ◽  

The paper, in its first part, outlines the Slovak research into audiovisual translation (AVT) from the 1950s up to the present, paying attention to the most important scholars as well as publications that helped to shape and establish the discipline within Slovak translation studies. It is based on the ongoing bibliographical research and the historical explanation mapping the development of AVT research in Slovakia by I. Tyšš – e.g. his publication Myslenie o audiovizuálnom preklade na Slovensku: 1952 – 2017 (Thinking on Audiovisual Translation in Slovakia: 1952 – 2017, 2018) – as well as on own findings covering the last two years. In more detail, the first part of the paper highlights that it was primarily thanks to a younger generation of translation studies scholars – especially E. Perez (née Janecová), L. Paulínyová (née Kozáková) and J. Želonka – that in 2012 the Slovak research into AVT finally became systematic. The second part of the paper is devoted to the phenomenon of the so-called second-hand translation of originally Russian audiovisual works that may be observed in Slovakia in recent years. The questionable nature of this phenomenon is stressed since the Russian language is not a language of limited diffusion and definitely not remote in relation to the Slovak cultural space. On the example of two documentary films – Под властью мусора (Held Captive by Rubbish, 2013) and Дух в движении (Spirit in Motion, 2015), the author discusses and analyses the problems that occur when translating originally Russian AV works into Slovak through the English language, i.e. the negative shifts resulting from mis-/overinterpretation of the source text, translation by omission, wrong order of dialogues, cultural specifics and incorrect transcription.


Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 177-182
Author(s):  
Natalia Kurchinskaya-Grasso

This article examines the peculiarities of the legal English language as the object of translation studies. Currently, English language is dominant in international relations and business, and plays a significant role as legal language within the European Union. Legal English is a global phenomenon. This style of English language is used by the lawyers and other legal experts in their work. In the conditions of globalization of English language, it is necessary to be scrupulous about translation of the legal English in order to avoid inaccuracies in the entire system of international law. Therefore, the goal of this article consists in consideration of the unique characteristics of legal English associated with its origin, terminology, linguistic structure, linguistic peculiarities, and punctuation. The work employs descriptive method, comparative method, and method of applied comparative jurisprudence. The conclusion is made that legal English developed under the influence of languages previously used in the legal system, which is reflected in modern legal terminology and linguistic structure of the legal English language and requires attention in translation. Taking into account the aforementioned peculiarities would be of much help the legal translator in working with legal texts in English language.


Author(s):  
С.М. Кравцов ◽  
Т.Л. Черноситова

Постановка задачи. Исследование билингвальных художественных произведений, созданных писателями-транслингвами, использующими несколько языков в своей творческой деятельности, является одной из наиболее актуальных проблем теории языка, в частности таких ее областей, как социолингвистика, стилистика, язык и социум, язык и культура. Подобные произведения, переведённые автором с одного языка на другой и адресованные представителям разных этнических сообществ, носят лингвосоциокультурный характер, который достигается писателем посредством создания интертекста, содержащего внутритекстовые вкрапления, основанные на аллегориях, реминисценциях, аллюзиях, цитациях и аппликациях. При этом аппликации принадлежит весьма важная роль в решении задачи формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе. Результаты исследования. Во франкоязычной версии романа Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines», созданной в результате осуществленного ею самоперевода англоязычного романа «Plainsong», выявлено много текстовых аппликаций в виде фрагментов песен, с помощью которых автор формирует лингвокультурный диалог, а также создает не только смысловой, но и музыкальный фон произведения. Установлено, что с целью формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе аппликации в виде отрывков песен могут не совпадать в англоязычной и франкоязычной версиях. Данный эффект достигается во франкоязычной версии благодаря использованию цитат с расширением их посредством сочетаний слов; использованию лексем с более конкретным, точным значением, чем у их английских аналогов; использованию паронимов их английских аналогов; использованию дословного перевода песен с английского языка на французский; использованию включения в перевод на французский язык строфы из англоязычной песни с сохранением при переводе рифмы без искажения исходного смысла самой песни. Выводы. Результаты исследования позволяют сделать вывод о том, что аппликация песенных фрагментов в романе Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong» является довольно продуктивным стилистическим приемом и имеет несколько видов реализации в зависимости от потребности автора в создании определенного смыслового, эмоционального и музыкального фона произведения. Благодаря широкому использованию и адекватному выбору писателем-транслингвом того или иного вида аппликации она служит эффективным способом формирования лингвокультурного диалога в билингвальном романе Нэнси Хьюстон «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong. Problem statement. The study of bilingual novels created by translingual writers who use several languages in their creative activities is one of the most urgent problems of language theory, specifically in such areas as sociolinguistics, stylistics, language and society, language and culture. Such works, translated by the author from one language to another and addressed to representatives of different ethnic communities, are of a linguistic and socio-cultural nature, which is achieved by the writer through the creation of an intertext containing intra-textual inclusions based on allegories, reminiscences, allusions, citations and applications. At the same time, the application plays a very important role in problem solving of forming a linguistic and cultural dialogue in a bilingual novel. The results of the study. In the French-language version of Nancy Huston's novel «Cantique des plaines», created as a result of self-translation of the English-language version of her novel «Plainsong», many text applications in the form of fragments of songs are revealed, by means of which the author forms a linguistic and cultural dialogue, and creates not only a semantic, but also a musical background of the novel. It is established that in order to form a linguistic and cultural dialogue in a bilingual novel, applications in the form of song fragments may not coincide in the English and French versions. This effect is achieved in the French-language version through the use of citations with their extension by word combinations; the use of lexemes with a more specific, accurate meaning than their English counterparts; the use of paronyms of their English counterparts; the use of a literal translation of songs from English into French; the use of including a stanza from an English-language song in the translation into French, while preserving the rhyme without distorting the original meaning of the song itself. Conclusion. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that the application of song fragments in Nancy Huston's novel «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong» is a rather productive stylistic technique and has several types of implementation, depending on the author's need to create a certain semantic, emotional and musical background of the work. Due to the wide use and adequate choice of a particular type of application by a translingual writer, it serves as an effective way of forming a linguistic and cultural dialogue in Nancy Huston's bilingual novel «Cantique des plaines» / «Plainsong». The results of the study indicate that it is relevant not only for the theory of language, but also for Romance and Germanic linguistics.


Author(s):  
Edward Lamberti

Chapter 5 considers Barbet Schroeder’s English-language American true-life drama Reversal of Fortune (1990) and his French-language political documentary Terror’s Advocate (2007), two films about lawyers and legal systems. Desmond Manderson refers in his collection Essays on Levinas and Law: A Mosaic (2009) to the ‘mosaic’ of a Levinasian approach to the law, as, sceptical of legal systems but devoted to justice, Emmanuel Levinas posits an ethics that refuses to crystallise into a prescriptive view of how the law should work in respect of the Other. I argue that these two Schroeder films, with their multi-faceted, ‘mosaic-like’ styles and structures, perform this fractured Levinasian refusal to settle on a fixed, simplistic definition of the law’s purpose. I analyse Reversal of Fortune for its multiple story strands and the different visual styles Schroeder deploys to delineate them, along with elements of performance – especially from Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow – that complicate questions of otherness. In discussing the documentary Terror’s Advocate, I draw on Stella Bruzzi’s work on performative documentary (2006) to explore how Schroeder uses film style to perform both the bravado of the film’s protagonist, the real-life criminal lawyer Jacques Vergès, and the Levinasian ‘mosaic’ of the legal situations he surveys.


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