The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa

This chapter offers a verse by verse translation of the Meghadūta, which is at once poetic and scrupulously accurate. The translation highlights the landscapes visited by the Cloud, their mytho-historical significance, and the fluid blending of language, image, feeling, and form. The entire journey is taken over the pathos of loss, which accounts for the gently stepping meter of the poem that was said by Sanskrit poeticians to be suitable for “love in separation” and was equated with certain landscapes and seasons of the year. Footnotes are provided that explain names, place, and other references in the poem that may be unfamiliar to an English reader.

Howard Goldblatt’s Translations of Mo Yan’s Works into English: Reader Oriented Approach

This article examines the strategies followed by Howard Goldblatt, the official translator of Mo Yan while translating his works from Chinese into English. Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 and critics argued that it was Goldblatt’s translation that was mainly responsible for Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Though Mo Yan’s works in translation are available in various languages, it is Goldblatt’s version that has become most popular. Therefore, from the perspective of Translation Studies, it would be interesting to identify the techniques used by Goldblatt that make his translations so special. The present paper compares titles, structure, and culture-specific expressions in the original and its English translation to identify the strategies followed by Howard Goldblatt in translating Chinese literary texts.

Reception of literary works in the original and translation. A case study: Students’ responses

The present case study applies the Reception Model of Literary Translation that places a high value on multiplicity and subjectivity of a target readership’s response to a source text. The article highlights a three-stage experiment that analyzes Literary Translation majors’ responses to Yuriy Vynnychuk’s novel Tango of Death in the original and in Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko’s translation. The data on the students’ response was collected by means of brainstorming sessions, in-class discussions, written reports, essays, and questionnaires. The informants agreed that on a large scale the translators succeeded in recreating the fusion of tragedy and humor of Vynnychuk’s writing. However, on a small scale, certain translation decisions initiated polemics. Thus, some students criticized the recurrent translators’ decision to alter the author’s syntax, which is one of Vynnychuk’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. Whereas others would fully approve of this technique, stating that otherwise the text would be incomprehensible for an English reader. Another stumbling block was associated with culturally biased units. Some students criticized the literality of conveying a number of Ukrainian set expressions, others saw in it a manifestation of a foreignization strategy. The students’ feedback prompted a conclusion about the experiment helping to build up the learners’ confidence in their professional expertise, boost their self-esteem and empathy, as well as to prepare them for actual translating projects of their own.

Lexical Gaps and Ideological Shift in the Translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as “Le Monde S’effondrein French”

In translating Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, Michel Ligny translates directly Igbo terminologies, realities and beliefs into the French language. This has contributed greatly in the preservation of the beauty and authenticity of the original text. However, the title of the novel is domesticated by Michel Ligny to present a different ideology. Within the framework of Lawrence Venuti (2004) theory of domestication and foreignization of translation, this paper examines the ideological divergence between the title of the original text and the title of the translation. The paper concludes that the ideology that the translated title projects to the French-reader is totally different from the ideology that the original title projects to the English-reader.

Noble English woman Adeline Paulina Irby on Kosovo and Metohija in Serbia

This paper is about Adeline Paulina Irby, an English lady. She left deep trace and indelible mark in memory of Serbs from Bosnia and Old Serbia (Kosovo and Metohija). Furthermore, it is focused on her journey through whole "European Turkey" (the Balkans) where she was acquainted with living conditions of the Christians there. She informed England and the whole western world about it. For that purpose, she travelled through Old Serbia-Kosovo and Metohija. Irby broke all the stereotypes Western World adhered to, in the first place stereotypes about "wild Slaves living in the Balkans". Irby presented to English reader the whole truth about Serbian nation whose Empire was conquered by Ottomans. Paper is particularly focused on her humanitarian work.

«A SONG ABOUT TSAR IVAN VASILYEVICH, THE YOUNG OPRICHNIK, AND THE VALIANT MERCHANT KALASHNIKOV» BY MIKHAIL LERMONTOV: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE NATIONAL AND HISTORICAL COLOUR IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

The article deals with the problem of preserving the national and historical colour in the English translation of «A Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the Young Oprichnik, and the Valiant Merchant Kalashnikov». The Lermontov’s poem is a strong manifestation of the national character of his oeuvre. Realia makes a culture-specific background of the song; the translator’s task is to translate them adequately into a foreign language.The paper compares four translations of the poem into English done by English and Russian translators in the XXth century. The author of the paper singles out the main realia found in the text of the poem: ethnographic, social and political. Then the author analyses the ways of realia translation into English by different translators from the viewpoint of preserving the national and historical colour of the original. The author points out the most productive ways of translating Russian realia into English. They include replacement, transcription and transliteration,omission. However, translators do not always manage to convey the national and historical colour of the poem. This is due to the differences in the source and target languages, the genre of the folk historical song, the poetic form of the work. J. Kurnos uses replacements more often than other translators. Translators aim to fill in the missing connotation with the help of context, choice of archaic and stylistically coloured words. In some cases, the meaning of words is revealed in footnotes, which allows an English reader to more fully understand the Russian realia. In general, all the translators in one way or another were able to reconstruct the national and historical colour of the poem and introduce the Russian poem to an English reader.

Lost in Translation: The Improbable Task of Rendering Esoteric Jewish Mystical Works into English

In this paper, I propose that we are in the midst of an English language “translation movement” targeting historic texts of Kabbalah. This translation project is a distinctive feature of recent American Jewish culture, beginning in the 1970s and continuing to this day. It has both a scholarly and evangelistic component. As a result, a not insubstantial library of heretofore inaccessible material has been made available to a general English-reading audience, making it possible to offer the English reader a gamut of primary texts in translation. I then consider some of the technical features of translating esoteric Kabbalah into English. I situate the key feature of esoteric aura which drips from such texts within George Steiner’s “hermeneutic motion.” I conclude that the only proven recourse for conveying the meaning of translated esoteric texts is through copious use of glosses and learned textual notes.

Cultural Identity in Sinan Antoon’s Self-Translated “The Corpse Washer”

Self-translation can be a powerful tool in the transmission of cultural identity. The Baghdad-born American Sinan Antoon, as self-translator of his successful novel “The Corpse Washer”, was awarded the Banipal Saif Ghobash prize for his invisibility and fluency in the Target Language, English. Accordingly, he is expected to have domesticated the Source Text cultural idiosyncrasies in the Target Text at the expense of accuracy, and met the English reader expectations in consequence. Apparently, he has accomplished a readable translation. Still, it is assumed that he has also chosen to be visible in many instances of his self-translation. Such visibility is substantiated by retaining the Arabic cultural items in English through foreignization. There is ambivalence here. Antoon’s intended visibility as a self-translator is attributed to his emotional and cultural involvement in the cause of his country of origin, Iraq. His self-translation is an attempt to avoid cultural alienation, make a difference, let the Target Text readers be aware of his cultural identity, and achieve universality.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita Reader

The Bhagavad Gita has been chanted and read in homes and workplaces. Children and families love to recite it during festivals and gatherings. It is the discourse that instructs man to realign himself to his duty and responsibility. It is the scripture that creates a strong foundation for implicit faith and concordant action in day to day life. How may we read the Gita? It's verses are written in a meter known as Anushtup Chhanda consisting of 32 syllables each. The traditional way to recite is to pause after 8 syllables. However the commonly available editions of the Bhagavad Gita do not give any such pause. This is a book that lists all the 700 verses of the Gita with pauses at 8 syllables i.e. at each quarter. A complete Devanagari Latin transliteration is provided using the iso15919 standard. This makes it very easy for the English reader to quickly learn the proper chanting procedure.The original Sanskrit text is also present with pauses at each pada. The split of the verses is done using Grammar rules of Sandhi as given in the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, a timeless masterpiece on language, word formation and syntax. Thus it fulfills a basic academic need of individuals, schools or colleges using the Bhagavad Gita in any manner. Most institutes imparting Sanskrit teaching also use the Gita and this book is an apt textbook for the same.