Cultural Translation and Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s Thang Fhâkhri Tahcildârar Tâmar Tarowâl

The act of translation cannot be called a simple act of conveyance because a text is a product of a cultural milieu. Hence when a text is translated it does not remain a plain act of transfer from one language to another, it becomes an act of cultural transference. The paper dwells on this aspect of translation and analyses my own experience of translating Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s Thang Fhâkhri Tahcildârar Tâmar Tarowâl.

Zoopoética y codigofagia en dos fábulas de Esopo en náhuatl. Alejandro Viveros

RESUMEN: Este texto busca desplegar dos modelos conceptuales, la zoopoética y la codigofagia, en las traducciones en náhuatl de las fábulas de Esopo realizadas en el México colonial. Abordaremos este asunto en tres secciones correlativas. La primera contextualiza el sentido de ambos conceptos como perspectivas de interpretación. La segunda refiere a la figura de Esopo y su recepción en el México colonial, especialmente en el Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. La tercera sección desarrolla un enfoque comparativo y hermenéutico que analiza la traducción cultural en dos fábulas de Esopo en náhuatl: “El coyote y el león” (“Coyotl yuan tequani miztli”) y “La hormiga y la huilota” (“Azcatl ihuan huilotl”). Ulteriormente, buscamos reconocer en la zoopoética y la codigofagia dos perspectivas útiles para la interpretación de las traducciones de Esopo al náhuatl, no solamente como evidencia de la interacción entre horizontes culturales, sino que como ejemplo de la creación de uno nuevo, acuñado por los propios indígenas. ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on two conceptual models, zoopoetics and codiphagia, in the translations of Aesop's fables made in colonial Mexico. I will address this issue in three correlative sections. The first contextualizes the meaning of both concepts as perspectives of interpretation. The second refers to the figure of Aesop and his reception in colonial Mexico, especially at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. The third section develops a comparative and hermeneutical approach that analyzes the cultural translation in two of Aesop's fables: “The Coyote and the Lion” (“Coyotl yuan tequani miztli”) and “The Ant and the Huilota” (“Azcatl ihuan huilotl”). I seek to recognize, in zoopoetics and codiphagia, two useful conceptual models for the interpretation of these Aesop's translations into Nahuatl, not only as evidence of the interaction between cultural horizons but as an example of the creation of a new one, built by the Indigenous people themselves.

Semiotic alteration in translation. Othering, stereotyping and hybridization in contemporary translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan

It is already widely recognized that ‘foreignization’ is a cover word which stands for many different processes of cultural translation, from a problematic literalism which tends to exoticism, to a welcome but rarely achieved ‘othering’ understood as an ethical act of respect for the other ’s specificity. Seen from a pragmatic perspective, what still needs to be assessed are the reasons behind a hypothetic threshold of acceptability and the extent of the unstable and risky space where source culture expectations are challenged as a result of the translator ’s management of socio-cultural biases. Starting from the assumption that cultural translation implies a metonymical move by which key textual elements stand as symbols representing the foreign culture, the proposed article will present a scheme of the pragmatic and semiotic processes at work in translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan. A review of recent Spanish translations of contemporary Arabic fiction and the muchacclaimed Catalan translation of the Qur ’an will try to show that instances of hybridization and ambivalent readings occur foremost when semiotic categories are altered as a result of the familiarization of unexpected cultural referents. However, semiotic alteration only happens in the narrow margin allowed by the threshold of acceptability, which is the site of ambivalence.

Intercultural Dialogue via Music: Translating the Beatles’ Legacy into Contemporary Pop Culture

Cultural translation phenomena are per se an intercultural product. Exchange and interaction take place every day in our globalized world. Especially with respect to music, a translational perspective can broaden the horizon of research projects in a very fruitful way. Music always combines elements from different cultures, periods and styles and can, in that way, serve as a medium of intercultural dialogue, which affects the participants of the dialogue not only on a rational, but also on an emotional level – and helps to cross borders and build bridges between different cultures. In my analysis, I take a look at the legacy of the Beatles and how it is performatively unfolded by the Spanish-Chilean band the Recalls, based in Germany. Different cultures intermingle in such appropriation and show a joyful (postmodern) handling to create a very special, discrete type of music and self-staging. Thus, music as a product of intercultural dialogue can become a chance for a successful interaction between different cultures.

Translation, Adaptation, and Validation of the L’Échelle d’Interactions Infirmière-Patient-23 for the Portuguese Culture: The Multidimensional Nature of Nursing Care

Nursing care is based on the interaction between nurse and patient. The L’Échelle d’Interactions Infirmière-Patient-23 (EIIP-23) is used to evaluate and understand the perception of nurses about their interventions in the practice of care, to reach better health results. The present study aims to validate the questionnaire EIIP-23 to Portuguese, evaluating its psychometric properties. Methods: This is methodological research for the process of cross-cultural translation and adaptation. Results: The process of cross-cultural translation and adaptation were satisfactory. The committee of experts reached an agreement of more than 90% in the first evaluation for all the items. The internal consistency of the nurse-patient interaction scale 22-PT (NPIS-22-PT) was 0.864. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out in the NPIS-22-PT model, with three factors. The results show that the final factorial solution presents acceptable goodness of fit indexes and adequate convergent validity. Conclusion: The translated version produced a good quality psychometric evaluation, and can be considered a valid, trustworthy, and useful instrument to evaluate the nurse-patient interactions in Portugal. It showed acceptable reliability and validity in psychometric tests. In the context of nursing, the NPIS-22-PT is a relevant instrument.

The Resonance of Music Across Cultures

What predestines music to be able to transgress geo-cultural boundaries? I argue that music’s sensuous, bodily-affective immediacy requires a mode of cross-cultural translation via what I call auditory resonance—the spontaneous attunement of listeners with the sonic presence of music through media-technological transmission despite vestiges of cultural colonialism and other sociopolitical barriers. I trace such resonance effects from German Romanticism through our global present, focusing especially on the conversations between two Japanese cultural figures, the conductor Seiji Ozawa and the novelist Haruki Murakami. These texts show that the category of auditory resonance is more suitable for addressing European music’s global significance than its traditional claims to transcultural universality. Keywords: Music, resonance, immediacy, presence, media technologies, cultural translation, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Walter Benjamin, Seiji Ozawa, Haruki Murakami

The Role of Cultural Translation for Literary Historiography

The main objective of the present paper is to highlight the relevance of translation in the scholarly endeavour of placing and firmly setting national literature in a wider context, i.e. planetary literature. Moreover, due to its complexity, long tradition, noble endeavour, worldwide mission and overarching goal, translation – as a fourfold process encompassing the linguistic, cultural, interpretive, comparative dimensions, according to Christian Moraru – serves as a most effective connector between words and worlds, in addition to overcoming successive waves regarding the state of “translatability” as Emily Apter scholarly theorized it, from her first thesis “nothing is translatable” to the twentieth thesis “everything is translatable”, where all the intermediary stages, hypotheses, and other theoretical assumptions further investigated.