Translation has always played a fundamental role within the Anglo/European literary traditions since Roman era. Translation goes long back in time for languages such as Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. Certainly, literary texts have constantly been adapted or translated, modified and amended into other literary texts, often by poets and authors, already writers of their own creative texts. In the words of Alexander Pope, “Translation is the realizing of meanings and effects in one language that correspond in some way to the meanings and effects realized in another” (Pope, 2002, p. 247). Similarly, translation is the interpretation of the source language meaning to the target language meaning by generating the similar idea.
Translation as a paradigm
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Literary translation has to do with translating texts written in a literary language, which is abundant in homonyms, ambiguities and arbitrariness. Literary language is highly subjective and connotative because each literary author is stylistically and lexically distinctive through his power of imagination, he uses certain literary techniques such as figures of speech, proverbs and homonyms through which he intertwines literary forms. The literary translator is therefore the person who concerns himself with translation of literary texts. “A literary translator, according to Peter Newmark (1988) generally respects good writing by taking into account the language, its structure, nature and content. The literary translator participates in the author's creative activity and then recreates structures and signs by adapting the target language text to the source language text as closely as intelligibility allows. He needs to assess not only the literary quality of the text but also its acceptability to the target reader, and this should be done by having a deep knowledge of the cultural and literary history of both the Source and the Target Languages.” (Kolawole, 2008)
2 - Problems & Solutions in Literary translation: It may be said that literary translators have the greatest number of strange problems. Problems in literary translation largely depend
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Therefore, translation, being a simple linguistic process, a cultural understanding comes into play because the translator is supposed to produce equivalence and where this does not exist, complications occur. For example, Most of African literature interprets their 'living manners'. If translated by someone who is not familiar or close to the culture and the specifics that make it alive, then the translation subsequent of such a text fails to link the spirit of the culture producing literal translation, which does not re-create or imitate the people in the correct manner. The translator is expected to creatively exploit the improved cultural, literary and linguistic context in order to realize the different possibilities of the target language in an action of literary creation since translation is an intercultural activity.
Besides prose, the translation of poetry is another more difficult and challenging tasks for every translator. As Robert Frost’s puts it “Poetry is what gets lost in translation”, we can say, that this statement could be considered as a truthful one to a certain extent because there is no one-to-one equivalent when comparing two languages. Even if the translators possess a profound knowledge in the source language they would not be able to create a replica of the original
Throughout literature and novels we can find authors who will reference history, other authors works and most often the Bible. One may ask themselves the reasoning behind allusions and how it can affect our perspective and the authors meaning when reading the novel. In the late sixties, Julia Kristeve, who studied the elements of literature and other communication systems, introduced the word “Intertextuality”. In Kristave’s essay “Word, Dialogue, and Novel” she went into deep analysis of an authors work and its text, “A literary work, then, is not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the strucutures of language itself. Any text," she argues, "is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text
“Often fear of one evil leads us into a worse”(Despreaux). Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux is saying that fear consumes oneself and often times results in a worse fate. William Golding shares a similar viewpoint in his novel Lord of the Flies. A group of boys devastatingly land on a deserted island. Ralph and his friend Piggy form a group. Slowly, they become increasingly fearful. Then a boy named Jack rebels and forms his own tribe with a few boys such as Roger and Bill. Many things such as their environment, personalities and their own minds contribute to their change. Eventually, many of the boys revert to their inherently evil nature and become savage and only two boys remain civilized. The boys deal with many trials, including each other, and true colors show. In the end they are being rescued, but too much is lost. Their innocence is forever lost along with the lives Simon, a peaceful boy, and an intelligent boy, Piggy. Throughout the novel, Golding uses symbolism and characterization to show that savagery and evil are a direct effect of fear.
Throughout the past two hundred years, many linguists have attempted to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy into English. While all have been successful in conveying the general meaning of various passages, diction and wordiness have varied wildly; no two translations are identical. This can be attributed to two factors: normal translational variation and the intent of the linguist. Taking both of these into account, John Ciardi's 1954 translation is far superior to the others.
Srinivasa Iyengar, you don’t. Iyengar says, “poetry, by nature, is untranslatable. [A] competent translator can, however, play the good broker between the poet and the reader... and give the intimations of the poet’s sovereign utterance.” But even this seems to suggest that at best, the translator is only a middleman, able to convey the subtleties of the poet’s original work, but not without noted differences. Famous poet Bysse Shelley calls translation of poetry “vain”, saying “it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principal of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no
Translation is a linguistic science, but it occurs within a theological and moral framework. The issue is a sensitive one, as theology involves an obligation to the text and morality involves an obligation to the
Another example of the fluidity of author-reader-critic roles occurs in Traveller, where the identities of the various author characters are undermined by Ermes Marana, a translator who disseminates false translations of books in order to fulfill h...
Literature is a medium that offers insight and into the values, customs, and traditions of the different cultures that produce works all around the world. The works The Epic of Gilgamesh, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis all illustrate what values their respective cultures held at the times of their creations. By observing and analysing each piece of literature with an open mind, we as readers are offered a window into the cultures of the works, which we can then use to gain insight and appreciation for different values, beliefs, and traditions.
André Lefevere (1992) proposes that translation is a rewriting of the source text, in which the relationship among various shareholders certainly influence the production of the target text. This is especially prominent in translating Lolita, which allows multiple interpretations; for instance, whether the tie between Lolita and Humbert Humbert is passionate love or destructive
This book mainly focus on the relationship between translation and culture. It addresses the shift of focus from translated block of text to the binding of translations and the cultures involved in generating these translations. It also covers the significance of translation for cultural planning.
In human society, translation plays a significant role, which helps realize effective communication among people. Benjamin (as cited in Venuti, 2000) indicates translation is the mode, which plays a function of transmitting information; hence translatability determines whether the information could be effectively and appropriately delivered and is regarded as the “essential quality of certain works”. Throughout history, many scholars have developed translation theories, which provide various effective translation strategies and methods, to explore the translatability. Equivalence theory points out that all languages always share some similarities; hence the languages could be exchanged (Nida, as cited in Venuti, 2000). The skopos theory emphasizes
Translations are essential to us and our culture, because through ancient documents, inscriptions and books, historians and archeologists reconstruct the ancient societies and civilizations, as well as the story of our forefathers and the history of the entire human race. They allow communication between us and different countries and nations, whose language might be different from ours and this may create difficulties in being able to understand each other. However, translators make this possible as they are the mediators between two different cultures. The need for translations is massive, from both a social and political outlook. According to David Katan’s Translating Cultures, “The translator is a bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities” (16). Therefore, for a translation to succeed translators have to be not only bilingual, but also bicultural. A translator is furthermore put in an exclusive but at the same time, difficult position because it is his responsibility to clarify certain ideas within cultural and natural boundaries. This can be done by keeping the same exact (literal) meaning. Interpreting and translating a text is not a simple and easy task; it takes time and is also challenging, because “the translator cannot merely search for equivalent words in the target language to render the meaning of the source” (Dingwaney and Maier, 3). Up until today there are many translations of ancient works and books, such as the Odyssey; and so, there is a wide range for people to choose from. This choice must be taken with the most care because some may be exceptionally good at communicating the essence of the original text while others ...
The work of the translator stars with the reading of the ST: he has to study the lexicon, the grammatical structure, the communicative intention of the writer, and of course the cultural context in which is developed the ST, in order to identify the best translation strategy able to express the original intention.
translation which are all close or very close to the ST (source text) (Schjoldager, 2008, p. 93-99). Therefore, they are not considered as creative skills and strategies, and texts translated using merely these cannot be considered creative translations. On the contrary, eight strategies in some way add to the level of creativity when applied in translations (which are Explication, Condensation, Deletion, Addition, Paraphrase, Adaptation, permutation and Substitution). Within these eight creative strategies and skills, the degree of creativity varies as well. The model of creativity classifies the strategies explicitation, condensation and deletion as slightly creative since they merely involve elaborating on existing meaning, shortening text and taking out meaning. The other five creative strategies, however, are rewriting semantics of the ST or adding meaning which cannot be directly inferred from the ST. Therefore, they are regard as more creative.
Translation was founded a hundred of years ago because the importance of communicating and understanding other people with different languages. Translation is a bridge that fills the gaps between two languages and cultures. Moreover, “it is a communicative process which transfers the message of a source language text to a target language” (algaz, 2015, p.183). It is not only conveying the meaning from the one language to another language, but also transferring the culture and tradition of the community. Lefevere (2003, p.2) describe the translation as "channel opened" and it can influence on the target culture by the foreign culture. It cannot be denied that translation has a pivotal role in communicating and sharing culture. Ideology and
In the late 1970s, the focus of translation studies shifted to the process of translation as well as the receivers. Hans Vermeer is the founder of Skopos theory. As the Greek word skopos indicates, this theory stresses that translati...