ISSUE 6/ 2009
ABSTRACTS
TRANSLATION STUDIES
Traduire les jeux de mots, entre défi, courage et (mal)adresse (pp. 1-7)
Carmen ANDREI, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
The paper deals with a sensitive issue in translation studies: translating puns. Given the divergent opinions of scholars in linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and literary studies who work on and with puns, the paper firstly aims at defining the term and presenting its main features, functions and typologies. Secondly, it raises questions with regard to pun (un)translatability, while giving a brief overview of several studies arguing in favour and/or against translating puns. Stress is laid on the arguments in favour of pun translation on condition that the translator manages to create the same effect in the target language. The concluding part of the paper proposes a translation into Romanian of Caen, the famous sketch of the French comedian Raymond Devos, and analyses the puns that could prevent a non-native spectator from understanding the text, providing solutions for their translation.
Key words: ambiguity, effect, homonymy, pun.
Using Technical Corpora in Translation (pp. 8-11)
Ionela BATOG, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
The rapid technological progress involves a strong demand of specialized texts in the field. Translators need a helpful hand to keep up with this rapid evolution. Corpus based research is an important branch of Translation Studies. Creating an electronic data base of English-Romanian, Romanian –English technical and specialised words, would be a useful tool for translators as well as for English learners. This project aims at laying the basis of a general corpora and specialized corpora data base which can allow users to exploit the available resources.
Key words: corpora, machine translation, technology, translation studies.
“Therefore, you, clown, abandon, - which is in the vulgar, leave” – Speech Variation in English-Georgian Translations (pp. 12-19)
Khatuna BERIDZE, Shota Rustaveli University, Batumi, Adjara, Georgia
Social setting, change of social roles, shift of registers, speech variation and contextual meaning reflect social and situational variation of the language. The paper focuses on the analysis of compatibility of the translation norms between the above pair of languages. The characters of the SL texts make several shifts from formal to informal registers in the interactions. In the Georgian translations the effect of the formal/informal variation of the register and tone is transposed through maneuvering between singular and plural forms of the pronouns: თქვენ / t’quen / and შენ / šen / which the present study distinguishes as an extra grammatical category in Georgian for the reproduction of role-shifting. Comparative study of the Georgian-English and English-Georgian translated corpus examines various scenes of interactions, such as friendship scenes, confession of love, verbal duel, etc.
Key words: contextual meaning, registers, social roles, social setting, speech variation.
On Exile as Ultimate Experience in Translation (pp. 20-23)
Ruxanda BONTILĂ, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Ethos and spirit—the individual’s imprints since birth—can be undone at both great pain and loss. This explains why neither jokes nor poems easily lend themselves to translation; nor does the exile —although a being at the fringe of cultures and languages—easily accept transgression across geographies, histories, stories. His/her ‘trial’ of memory as atonement of loss is similar to the translator’s ‘task’ seen as an effort to turn abandonment (of the desire for a perfect translation) into pleasure (of translation as donation/duty/mission). In my contribution, I assimilate Paul Ricœur’s (2004) paradox of the translation – equivalence without adequacy – to the exile’s efforts to stay creatively sane within language.
Key words: bilingualism, épreuve de l’étranger, equivalence without adequacy, exile-writer, (inter)linguistic hospitality.
The Meanings of the English Modal Verbs in Translation (pp. 24-28)
Valentina CIUMACENCO, The Free International University of Moldova, Republic of Moldova
Modality as a major exponent of interpersonal relations has been extensively studied. It is mostly studied in a highly individual centered view that individual speakers and their relations to one another are central, and social relations are built up through the linguistic interactions of speakers. In most cases, a modal verb expresses the speaker’s or the author’s attitude at the time of speaking. So, it is very necessary that we learn the meaning of the modal verbs in translation. This paper aims at explaining difficulties involved in the treatment of modals by presenting meaning-definitions through paraphrases which take underlying culture-based assumptions into account.
Key words: linguistic interactions, meaning, speaker attitude, translation.
Synchronisme vs formes sans fond dans des traductions poétiques roumaines de la période de 1848 (pp. 29-32)
Ana-Elena COSTANDACHE, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
The proposed research sets out from the problems raised by the fictional transcriptions that the Romanian poets from the 1848 period have created as to assume the literary models of the west literature and as to synchronize them with the actual facts of the époque. Discovering the western world by reading and researching, influenced by the French romanticism and actively taking part in the cultural life of the country, but also in that from abroad, the 1848 writers have believed in their puissance to model the Romanian public, following the pattern of the Europeans, proposing new artistic and linguistic valences, therefore contributing to the enlightenment of the masses. If the transcriptions have succeeded in accurately conveying the French poets’ ideas, or they simply materialized in plain replications, lacking originality, that is what we will try to solve in the article below.
Key-words: synchronism, literary translations, influence(s), literary models, culture.
Proverbs: Cultural and Linguistic Forms of Identity in Translation (pp. 33-39)
Elena CROITORU, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Proverbs promote the inherited wisdom of a culture and appeal to shared knowledge and values, encoding old experience handed down from generation to generation. In addition proverbs represent the speaker’s intervention into the situation by stating a judgement, giving some advice, suggestion, etc., or the speaker’s evaluation of the situation correlating it with other people’s experience. Consequently, when discussed from the perspective of translation, proverbs become cultural and linguistic forms of identity.
Key words: cultural identity, functions of proverbs, misleading synonymy, syntactic parallelism.
Approaching Cultural Relations for Translation Purposes (pp. 40-47)
Daniel DEJICA, Polytechnic University of Timişoara, Romania
The paper starts from the hypothesis that one of the keys to felicitous text understanding, and implicitly translation, is represented by knowledge of various possible cultural relations embedded in the information universe of texts. A model for the identification and analysis of such holistic relations is presented and exemplified for translation purposes.
Key words: cultural relations, holistic analysis, source text analysis, translation process.
Strategies Used in Translating Syntactic Irregularities in Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night (pp. 48-53)
Gabriela DIMA, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Once the translating process has been completed, an analysis of the procedures used by the translator in order to achieve equivalence will show that the syntactic architecture of the ST is left behind and has undergone relevant changes in rendering the original message. Transposition of verbal or adverbial groups, omission of that – complementizer, relative conjunctions or auxiliary do are rendered through interpolation of clauses, expansion of binary sentences, constituents shift and replacement meant to recreate the dramatic effect.
Key words: equivalence vs non-equivalence, naturalization, syntactic irregularity, translation strategy.
Trying to Keep Faithful to the Original in the Romanian Translations of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, The Years (pp. 54-60)
Irina-Ana DROBOT, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest), Romania
The aim of this paper is to show that, in an effort to keep faithful to the original text, translators make use of both preserving original meanings and adaptation as far as some cultural aspects are concerned. This is Wilhelm von Humboldt’s view on what a good translation is. According to him, a good translation should also keep a certain ‘foreign flavour to it’ aside from decoding the original meaning of a text. The Romanian translations of Virginia Woolf’s novels Mrs Dalloway and The Years will be examined in this paper.
Key words: creativity, fidelity, Mrs Dalloway, The Years, translation.
Sur les vertus de l’exercice de traduction (pp. 61-66)
Anca GÂŢĂ, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
This study discusses a possible approach to the translation exercise in foreign language teaching, focusing on the pedagogical potential provided by the source text. An example of approach is provided with respect to teaching French and translating reported speech fragments.
Key words: translation, translation exercise, reference to information source.
Possible Criteria for the Criticism of Translation into English (pp. 67-71)
Vesna LAZOVIĆ, Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia
In the era of globalization, when the need for almost instant translation is evident, there emerge more and more examples of inadequate and unacceptable translations into English in all the media, and hence the necessity for translation criticism arises. This paper points out possible categories and criteria when evaluating and/or criticizing translation into English, by illustrating the examples of translations from Serbian into English.
The aim of this paper is to help future translation critics determine translation quality, thoroughly analyzing whether and to what extent the original and the given translation correspond, by following the suggested criteria, which must encompass four levels, namely, lexical, grammatical, orthographic and discoursal along with the subcategories of each.
Key words: English, possible criteria, translation criticism, translation quality, Serbian.
Translation Strategies for English and Romanian Conventionalized Similes (2009) (pp. 72-77)
Nadia Nicoleta MORĂRAŞU, Bacău University, Romania
Considering that conventionalized similes “allow little or no variation in form, encapsulate stereotyped aspects of experience and can be culture-specific” (Baker 1992: 63), we face several problems in the interpretation and translation of such patterns. After identifying different translation strategies for idiomatic expressions, we reach the conclusion that finding an expression of similar meaning and form in the target language is effective only when stereotyped and clichéd similes are treated paradigmatically; hence, we definitely need to consider the rhetorical effect of their contextual spread.
Key words: comparison pattern, conventionalized simile, idiomatic simile, phraseological expression, translation strategies.
Pun Translation or the Best of the Worst (pp. 78-86)
Mariana NEAGU, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Humorous discourse and verbal play, in general, intersects with the wider study of creativity in language. If we look at wordplay as “a form of layman’s poetry” (Chiaro 1992: 123), we can understand why, not infrequently, humour is characterized by some extra difficulties (not encountered in translating straight referential prose) that compare with the difficulties faced in the translation of literary texts and especially poetry. Language-specific jokes, also called poetic jokes (Chiaro 1992: 87) present many of the same problems as poetry when they are translated. Like the punster, the poet has at his disposal a variety of options within the language which he can exploit to create a stylistic effect. As these options tend to be typical only of the source language, it follows that poetry and puns tend to encounter similar difficulties when an attempt is made at translation. Some jokes are worth comparing to poetry in terms of the density of translation obstacles to be overcome and, whether easy or difficult to translate, like poetry, they are not exactly mirrored in their translated form.
Key words: equivalence of effect, lexical ambiguity, pun untranslatability, wordplay.
Specific Features of Translation Process of the European Union Documents (pp. 87-90)
Elena NIKOLAJOVÁ KUPFERSCHMIDTOVÁ, Commenius University, Slovakia
Since 1993 when the Association and Stabilisation Agreement was signed and after accession to the European Union in 2004, the translation process from and to Slovak started, writing its history. The process itself has got some specific features closely related to the life of European Union. The translator finds these matters connected with translation within European Union somewhat hazy, but at the same time they provide gradually increasing knowledge and understanding of this highly complex subject through creation of interactive terminology databases.
Key words: EU documents, language, linguistics, translation.
Non Serviam: Refusal of Translating Cultures in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (pp. 91-94)
Ecaterina PĂTRAŞCU, Spiru Haret University, Bucharest, Romania
Kiran Desai’s novel, The Inheritance of Loss, brings forth an atypical migrant portrait, that of Biju who, confronted with the classical scenario of migration, refuses to comply with it. His American experience ends with the heretic Non Serviam and thus his return to India, his native land. The article deals with the trajectory of his defying what a typical migrant would have blindly followed: his reasons for not accepting the route to a new and borrowed identity as well as the identity consequences of “the route not taken.”
Key words: ethics, identity, immigrant, politics, postcolonialism.
Interpretation and Translation of Fairy-Tales (pp. 95-98)
Anca-Mariana PEGULESCU, University of Craiova, Romania
Starting from the acknowledged truth that any text is a written discourse, I intend to analyse the speaker's intention, when addressing the interlocutor. The speaker is the author himself or may be another character. In a fairy-tale we can refer to the interpretation as a scientific approach of the text. The context independence vs the context dependence appears when passing from the original text T1 to the translated text T2. The content must remain the same, even if the expression may change.
Key words: fairy-tale, interpretation, pragmatics, semantics, translation.
Technical Translation: the State of the Art (pp. 99-104)
Ioan-Lucian POPA, University of Bacău, Romania
Technical translation has undeservedly been neglected by the theorists and practitioners of translation. All too often, it has been regarded as a basic type of translation and the interest has been limited to terminological issues. Technological progress has resulted in large amounts of specialized texts and it has become all too obvious that the way in which information is conveyed from the source language into the target language and the accuracy of the process deserve much more attention.
Our paper aims at giving a condensed and comprehensive account of the state of the art of technical translation along with exposing the misconceptions about it, highlighting the promising perspectives it offers for theoretical investigation, and revealing its major economic impact.
Key words: specialized texts, technical translation, translation accuracy.
Translating English Mathematical Eponyms (pp. 105-109)
Floriana POPESCU, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Within a research study devised to produce a comprehensive approach to the use and translation of English eponyms into Romanian, several varieties of English for specific purposes have been explored. Eponyms, as a productive word-creating resource, may generate difficulties in the translation process, when Romanian is the target language.
Difficulties originate in the fact that eponyms are created instantly, as results of contributions belonging to great personalities, famous in the Anglo-American world, but may be less known to Romanian translators. The degree of eponym recentness also results in their not being included even in the latest and updated versions of general or encyclopedic dictionaries. As a consequence, translators need either to rely on monolingual specialized dictionaries or to spend long hours trying to solve the enigma created by personal nouns attached as determiners to laws, lemmas, approximations, coefficients, formulae, procedures, etc.
The present approach will discuss the translation techniques to be resorted to in emergency situations. It will critically discuss attitudes of the English and Romanian mathematical lexicographers, as they are actually reflected by dictionary structure and entries.
Key words: terminology, specialized dictionaries, translation techniques.
Romania’s Past on Film. The Challenges of Subtitling (pp. 110-119)
Michaela PRAISLER, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
In Romanian history, the darkest corners remain those in which communism crept in unawares and, slowly but surely, grew hideously. Nuntă mută [Dumb Wedding], the film directed by Horaţiu Mălăele and released in 2008, captures one such moment with its impact on individual lives. Its tragic-comic story is one of the breaking of the Romanian spirit and traditions, of the destruction of the myths of community, family and home. Subtitling the film for the benefit of foreign viewers interested in the metamorphosis of Romanianness has proved a challenging task, especially since many of the scenes, in their unreal reality, speaking boldly of faults we as a people are to blame for, deliberately take the Romanians themselves by surprise.
Key words: film, history, representation, Romanianness, subtitling.
Unfaithful Translators and Translation Infidelity (pp. 120-127)
Daniela ŞORCARU, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
When translating a text, especially a literary work, a translator requires broader background knowledge. He cannot depend on the text and the dictionary alone. The cultural background that contributes to the creation of the text must be studied before working on the translation itself. A careless decision in choosing equivalent expressions to be used in the target text may cause various problems, such as the loss, gain and /or gap of meaning.
Key words: semantic gap/gain/loss, source/target language culture, translation infidelity, unfaithful translators.
Referentials on Competences in Professional Translations (pp. 128-132)
Angelica VÂLCU, “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
Any professional activity depends on well determined social, economic, legal context which is rather restrictive and this is why professionals are expected to have a behaviour influenced by his/her specific domain of activity.
The present paper enlarges on the importance of intercultural competence in the process of translating specialized texts. The intercultural component in communication is essential to efficient professional exchanges, so much the more that this competence is not referred to only in relation to Professional French, but also in relation to French as a Foreign Language. In the practice of translating professional texts, linguistic competence combines with professional competence.
Key words: intercultural competence, Professional French, competence referential, professional translation.
Verbal Collocations in Maritime Language Translation (pp. 133-139)
Ioana Raluca VIŞAN, Constanţa Maritime University, Romania and
Elena CROITORU, “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania
In spite of the large literature dealing with maritime language, the linguistic features of this type of discourse have not been systematically studied. Therefore, the frequent use of collocations represents on one hand, the linguistic characteristics of maritime language and, on the other hand, a challenge for the researchers in the field. In the acquisition and translation of this type of language, collocations are of paramount importance since these combinations of words pose great difficulties for non-native speakers and hence, for translators. The aim of this paper is to analyze and translate different types of verbal collocations that frequently occur in Maritime English, also allowing for the translation strategies. In our approach, attention will be focused on the verbal collocations that prevail in the area of handling, maintenance and assistance of ships.
Key-words: maritime discourse, translating verbal collocations, translation strategies.
Prospectivity and Retrospectivity as Polarity Items in Translation (pp. 140-145)
Titela VÎLCEANU, University of Craiova, Romania
Translation implies sensitivity to linguistic and cultural contexts, which determines the strategic positioning of the translator. Traditionally, this strategic choice is reduced to the dichotomy author-centred translation (retrospectivity) vs. readership-oriented translation (prospectivity). More recent approaches promote the translator’s divided loyalties, i.e. the translator’s positioning and repositioning while the translation is unfolding. Admittedly, prospectivity and retrospectivity seem not to be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, at the global level of the text, one of the strategies prevails – prospectivity and retrospectivity may be considered polarity items in translation in spite of the occurrence of reversed polarity.
Key words: ecological validity, operational equivalence, prospectivity, retrospectivity.
Translation between Pretension and ‘Innovation’: On Ioana Ieronim’s Translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (pp. 146-154)
George VOLCEANOV, “Spiru Haret” University, Bucharest, Romania
This paper is a sequel to last year’s article, in which I discussed a few aspects of my new Romanian version of The Tempest, the first play to be issued by Editura Art in its forthcoming Shakespeare series. This year I will examine Ioana Ieronim’s strategies, her outspoken convictions underlying these strategies, the way in which, and the extent to which, she fulfils her readers’ expectations. I will assess the faithfulness of her recent version to the original text and / or the translator’s acts of betrayal, illustrating it / them with several examples regarding prosody, vocabulary, style, denotation and connotation, etc. As every new translation is inevitably related to the history of previous translations, in a gesture of either acceptance or rejection of earlier texts, I will also tackle the translator’s moral principles, mirrored by her unacknowledged attitude toward her precursors (actually, toward Leon Levitchi’s influential version, which has been the canonical translation of The Tempest in Romanian for the past fifty years) – an attitude ranging from complete disrespect to previous translations to subtle ways of plagiarizing her illustrious precursor. And, insofar as Shakespeare himself has come to be considered a commodity in the supply side of culture (cf. Michael Bristol et al.), I am also intent on evaluating the short-term and the long-term impact of this translation in the Romanian book-market and theatre as well as in the Romanian academe.
Key words: innovation, pretension, Shakespeare, The Tempest, translation.