Investigating Literary Translator’s Style in Span of Time: The Case of Sa‘di’s Gulistan Translated into English

Stylistic issues have typically been considered as a challenge for literary translators. As far as literary style is concerned, Sa’di (1208–1291) is the most famous Persian poet. The present study aims at investigating the effect of time on the universals appeared in translating Sa’di’s style in the Gulistan. The corpus of the study consisted of the Gulistan’s two English translations: one by Rehatsek (1888) and its 2010 edition by Rosenbaum, and the other by Newman (2004). Baker’s (1996) framework, consisting of simplification, explicitation, normalization, and leveling out, was used as the basis for analyzing the collected data. As far as stylistic issues were concerned, it was realized that Rehatsek’s translation and its new edition by Rosenbaum, were not distinctly different. It was also found that the passage of time has had effects on selecting some specific features more than the others. Prosification was the most and leveling out was the least frequently observed features, while normalization and poetrification had never been detected. The findings also revealed greater tendency of recent translators to deviating from the ST author’s style and their stronger inclination towards providing easy-to-understand texts for today’s TT audience.

Sociolecto literario y discurso heterolingüe en la obra de Faïza Guène: la traducción en espacio multicultural

Resumen El objetivo principal de este trabajo es poner de manifiesto dos de los principales retos de traducción a los que se enfrenta un traductor cuando acomete la tarea de verter, en este caso, del francés al español, narraciones contemporáneas catalogadas por la crítica como littérature de banlieue o littérature urbaine, como son el Français Contemporain des Cités (FCC) y la hibridación translingüística. En este trabajo identificamos, en primer lugar, los recursos más relevantes que utiliza la escritora Faïza Guène en su obras para representar la lengua codificada de la banlieue (como las prácticas verlanescas y argóticas, las variaciones fonéticas, sintácticas, gramaticales y léxicas) y el heterolingüismo recogidos en segmentos lingüísticos en los que confluye el francés con el árabe y el inglés. Posteriormente esbozamos los principales retos a los que nos enfrentamos como traductores en las fases de comprensión del texto original y su trasvase a la lengua meta. Finalmente exponemos las soluciones adoptadas y las estrategias implementadas para salvar los retos que esta lengua codificada nos plantea y que podrán servir de ayuda para la traducción de otras obras de autores enmarcados en estas estéticas literarias.

NOMEN PROPRIUM UND METONYMIE

When language change phenomena have repercussions in various social areas at the same time, they are worth an analysis. One of the well documented occurrences of this kind is the discursive history of the metonymic proper name Bologna as a designation of an education reform. As Johannes Angermüller und Ronny Scholz stated in their remarkable study (2013), its mere introduction had made some political processes easier. In this paper the question is put whether some distinctions of the notable metonymy theory by Peter Koch (2004) are able to deliver categories to clarify this phenomenon. In doing so, I point out some deficiencies of Kochs approach concerning his conception of metonymy as such and demonstrate that these are to be ascribed to its “cognitive” frame and that the remedy lies implicitly in an elementary consideration by Saussure and in an explicit passage by Husserl whom Koch himself invokes. As a result of this, I come to the conclusion that Saussure and, particularly, Husserl could have elucidated the most crucial feature of the metonymic proper name more appropriately.

Wie ein Virus die Sprache verändert – Beobachtungen zum Russischen

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged people’s thinking worldwide. Russia, too, has seen experts writing reports on the causes and consequences of the pandemic and citizens commenting on the restrictions on their lives, which they accepted or rejected. None of this would have been possible, if words had not been adopted, borrowed, modified, revisited, fitted into grammatical structures, or varied in their meanings. This article provides a first overview of such changes in Russian.

Traducción feminista transnacional: instrumentalización y manipulación de la recepción transnacional del relato autobiográfico sobre violencia sexual

Transnational feminist translation studies stand for activism, cooperation and solidarity in connecting feminist thinking developed in all parts of the world (Alvarez et al. 2014, Castro/Ergun 2017, Flotow/ Farahzad 2017, Flotow 2019). One of the important issues is wartime sexual violence, which is the focus of this article, and constitutes a feminist, transnational phenomenon. The account of wartime sexual violence by female victims faces instrumentalization and manipulation by the agents involved in the publication process, including the translators, who are an active part of the patriarchal literary system, with the purpose “to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant ideological and poetical currents of their time” (Lefevere 1992: 8). The transnational reception, thus, is driven by ideological and commercial interests that agents in a literary system negotiate. The aim of this article is to analyse the transnational reception process, examined under the perspective of transnational feminist translation, and based on questions as who rewrites and how is the wartime sexual violence account rewritten. Undertaking a case study, the diary ‘Eine Fau in Berlin’ of an anonymous female author, Anonyma, who describes rape, prostitution and the gender relations in the context of Second World War, an analytical framework is developed to shed light on the question how women’s writing on wartime sexual violence and its transnational reception are determined by mechanisms of instrumentalization and manipulation that are due to the conceptions and moral values that prevail over wartime sexual violence in two different political and historical eras. We conclude that transnational feminist translation enables activism and solidarity about wartime sexual violence beyond geographical limitations. This leads to the empowerment of the victims on a transnational level.

Believe it or not! Assessing the credibility of voices in dubbed animated films

The main aim of this study is to determine whether and to what extent the use of celebrities to dub animated characters affects the degree of credibility of the final version. Our hypothesis is that the character’s voice has a major impact on the degree of credibility: the animated voices performed by professional dubbing actors will be more credible than those performed by actors and non-actor celebrities. Results reveal that the dubbing voice has a significant influence on the degree of credibility of the animated character. In fact, voices dubbed by professional dubbers are perceived as the most credible, whilst voices dubbed by non-actor celebrities are perceived as the least credible.

The Terminology Work of Arabicization and Dissemination of Arabicized Terms in the Arab Press from the Perspective of Arab Journalistic Translators

The paper investigates Arab journalists and journalistic translators’ perceptions towards the terminology work of Arabicization, which is laboriously shouldered by Arabic Language Academies (ALAs) in the Arab region. The paper discusses the Arabic academy’s Arabicized terms’ popularity and dissemination in Arab press agencies and outlets, in addition to the linguistic and extralinguistic factors, which play a key role in disseminating these Arabicized terms among Arab journalists, journalistic translators, and news editors. So far, the ALAs have made hugely concerted efforts to Arabicize foreign terms, particularly scientific and technical terminology, particularly from English (ST) into Arabic (TT). However, there is a lack of circulation of the academy’s Arabicized terminologies among Arab journalists and translators in the Arab press. Therefore, Arab journalistic translators in several Arab news agencies and networks were approached as respondents of five semi-structured, detailed interviews to provide an insightful understanding of the case at hand. Accordingly, data were collected via in-depth interviews, and based on the interpretive content analysis of the interviews, the data were analyzed, described, and interpreted. The findings revealed that the ALA’s Arabicized terms are not well-received by Arab journalists and translators and, therefore, these terminologies are not frequently used in the translation of news in the Arab press. The respondents pointed out that the ALA’s Arabicized terms are sometimes difficult to understand because they are unfamiliar forms of Arabic.

Über die Terminologie der Merkmale der übersetzten Sprache: Normen, Universalien oder Übersetzungsgesetze?

There is a lack of agreement on the way general features of translational behaviour are termed, defined and operationalised. In addition, most research on this subject has mainly been focused on pinpointing and describing these features, while, apparently, disregarding the factors exerting influence on the recurrence of a specific translational behaviour. In this paper, we will intend to clarify and distinguish between the terminology used for discussing regular tendencies of translational behaviour. Furthermore, we will discuss the reasons why the concept of laws of translation may be more useful than others to describe and explain these features.