Textual Analysis of Two Translated Transcripts: 2012 Presidential Debate and a Speech Presented by Cyrille de Lasteyrie

Delia Chiaro (2010) describes humor in two broad categories: referential and verbal. The former focuses on the meaning of a story or event and the humor embedded within. In the case of the latter, idiosyncratic features such as word play displays humorous undertones. This Master’s thesis examines oral text transformation to another language via transcription. The transcripts themselves consist of 10 minutes of the 2012 Presidential debate between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy and 10 minutes of a monologue presented by French animator Cyrille de Lasteyrie. Both transcripts are linked by the commonality of humor and exhibit the two categories previously outlined. Additional attention will be given to the translation challenges that arose such as: transferring the overall meaning of each idea, maintaining as much of the humor within the text as possible and conveying each speaker’s style. This study aims to provide future translators guidance in their translation endeavors by pinpointing scholarly research and discussing the various translator techniques implemented in overcoming challenges such as metaphors and collocations

The silence of the lamps : visibility, agency and artistic objects in the play production process

This thesis is a case study which looks at the creation of two theatre productions. Using the literature of Actor-Network Theory as a methodological provocation, it analyses the processes by which networks of actors created these theatre pieces with particular attention to where agency was observed. Through data gathered through observing material interactions, the thesis develops the concept of the (play)text: an object that is an expression of the ideas of the text, but is not the text itself – rather, a bricolage of ‘translations’ of a piece of written and rehearsed work bound together by time and combined action. Conceiving of the eventual product – the (play)text in performance – as an example of the ANT concept of an agencement, a network of different people and objects working together to maintain a stable construction, but one which perpetually refines and redefines each of its component parts – this thesis proposes that the (play)text is an example of a dynamic and fractional artistic object, stabilised only briefly in the moments of its performance. Examining the theatre production process in this way contributes to ANT literature by providing specific examples of an artistic object created materially and agentively; it also highlights the limitations of the ways in which theatre has been used as a metaphor within Organisation Studies. Finally, it contributes to work on process change in showing an object which is, though it appears constantly improvisational and changing in its form, stabilised by material interactions

Berlusconi’s Language in the British Press:Translation, Ideology and National Image in News Discourse across Italian/English Linguacultures

The thesis examines the representation of Silvio Berlusconi’s language in the British press through the reverberations of linguistic taboos when translated from Italian into English. The analysis is set within the overarching premise that ‘Linguistic relations are always relations of symbolic power’ (Bourdieu 1992: 142). In order to navigate through the analyses, the trajectory of Berlusconi and his language is first set against the Italian sociolinguistic and historico-political backdrop. Then, through a triangulation of methodological approaches, the study attempts to understand some of the underlying mechanisms that influence the ways in which news producers shape knowledge on cultural difference. Critical Discourse Analysis methods are used to reveal the implicit propositions and evaluative translational choices in three datasets of online news texts drawn from British quality and tabloid newspapers. The first dataset examines news narratives on Berlusconi’s sexist and taboo language and the translational decisions of these ‘critical points’ (Munday 2012). Textual framing and cultural stereotyping are the focus of the second dataset that analyse a meta-debate across Italian and British newspapers on national image. The third dataset examines ‘anti-gay’, ‘sexist’ ‘racist’ narratives on Italy, as portrayed in British news discourse. Semi-structured interviews with the journalists who were among the active agents in these framing practices provide data on the habitus of the ‘journalator’ (van Doorslaer 2012) and the role of the journalist/translator as cultural mediator. A tentative approach to sample the ways in which readers respond to the framed discourses was made in order to gauge the impact of these news narratives on the image of Italy in the eyes of the audiences

Difficulties and Principles of Drama Translation: With Special Reference to Jabra and Niazi’s Translation of Macbeth’s Soliloquies

Drama is one of the most significant literary genres. The primary characteristic that sets drama apart from any other literary form is \u27performance on stage\u27. Other elements contribute to its impact such as speakability and performability and the extra linguistic features drama possesses. Translating drama and assessing the quality if its translation should therefore consider such elements. AI-Qinai\u27s seven parameters of translation quality assessment (TQA) are employed in assessing two Arabic translations of Shakespeare\u27s Macbeth produced by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1980) and Salah Niazi (2000). Mismatches between the source text (ST) and the target texts, (TT1 and TT2) are highlighted. Attempts are made to solve some of the pragmatic and semantic problems pertaining to translating dramatic texts by means of employing a cognitive approach to translation. By addressing elements of speakability and performability as well as nonverbal characteristics, it is believed that drama translation may overcome some of its obstacles in the TT. Consequently, TQAs should be modified in a manner that caters to drama as an exclusive literary form. Comparing contextual and pragmatic equivalences rather than focusing on the formal and linguistic aspects of drama is considered key in a successful TQA

Translationese revisited - a heightened theatrical language for English-Language theatre

The central focus of this thesis is theatre translation, particularly the use of ‘translationese’. It is inspired by Japanese 翻訳調 (hon-yaku chō [translationese/translation tone]), a concept that has its origins in the Meiji era (1868-1912). In English, this concept is often perceived negatively and used to criticise particular translations, but the Japanese 翻訳調 (hon-yaku chō [translationese/translation tone]) does not necessarily carry the same connotations. I aim to shed light on translationese in order to revive the positive vision of it. (In the absence of an abstract the above extract has been taken from the Introduction section

Is Hamlet untranslatable? : renegotiating the boundaries of translatability in twentieth century German Hamlets

This thesis will focus on twentieth-century German translations and adaptations of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Some of the pre-requisites of a work's translatability are that it must exist in a stable text, its meaning should be accessible to interpretation, and it should provide a unitary comment that can be re-constructed in a second language and culture. I do not believe that Hamlet satisfies any of these pre-requisites. There is no transcendent text, it seems to resist interpretation, and the lack of a unitary comment problematises the articulation of a response to the play that can be re-coded in the target text. Translators seek to stabilise and interpret, whereas Hamlet is semantically and formally in continuous motion and resists attempts at closure. The demands of translation and the nature of Hamlet seem to be in direct conflict, and I begin my investigation with a hypothesis that Hamlet is 'untranslatable'. I have conducted a series of interviews with German translators of Hamlet, and I have used these discussions to construct a dialogue in this thesis. In Part 1 of the study I will focus on those translators of the play that have agreed that Hamlet is a flawed work, which must be repaired and improved before it can be translated. This dialogue explores the assumptions about Shakespeare's 'artistic failure' and how changes to the text are thought to facilitate its translatability. There will be an investigation of how translators and editors have continually rewritten Hamlet based on notions of 'correct' text. I will examine the validity of concepts such as the 'originar work and 'fidelity' to originals, as the premise on which translation is based, and I will question whether the work of these translators is phenomenologically flawed. In Part 2 of this thesis I will proceed to consider whether Hamlet has been rejected as untranslatable because of metaphysical qualities that foreground our notions of the play. It seems to be the case that translators only experience the problem of untranslatability, or of Hamlet as a flawed work, when certain demands are made on the transcendent text in which Hamlet is believed to exist. The translators and adapters, whose work is the object of my analysis in the second part of this study; have been able to circumscribe the issue of translatability by changing the way they have understood the ontology of Hamlet. By deconstructing notions of the unitary work or the transcendent text, and conceiving of Hamlet as a series of enactments or a methodological field, it becomes possible to trahslatethe material across the boundaries of language and culture. I will thus develop the argument that by moving away from traditional notions of a 'work' to understand Hamlet as a broader cultural text, we can re-think the interpretive possibilities of the play and push back the boundaries of what has been traditionally possible through the limited practice of translation. I will be working towards the conclusion that translation theorists should re-think their conceptions of the 'source text' and the function of translation, working from a field of cultural material, rather than attempting to translate a non-existent transcendent text. The work of translators and adapters examined in the second part of my study presents a more productive approa((h to translation, and a more realistic II understanding of the ontology of literary works, compared with the attempts of other translators, who continue in their search for the play's lost echt. My research methodology, which involved the construction of a dialogue between translators, is also an attempt to promote a method of analysing and evaluating translations that includes the translator. Analyses of translations too often treat the translation as if it had been written in a social, political, linguistic and cultural vacuum. In fact, there are many factors that decide how a text is going to be translated even before the translator reaches his text. There have been many forces that have shaped and conditioned the way Hamlet has been translated and appropriated in German, ranging from large-scale intervention from political regimes like the Nazi Party and the Socialist State in East Germany, to small-scale domestic quarrels with a spouse. My thesis combines textual analysis and detailed discussions with translators, in order to develop a fuller understanding of the pragmatics of translation, and the need for a new interpretative methodology

Syntactic change in Xining Mandarin

PhD ThesisThis dissertation discusses the Xining Mandarin dialect (spoken in Qinghai province, northwest China), a variety in which head-final syntax has emerged on the model of local Mongolic languages and Tibetan. The underlying socio-historical scenario is explored in detail and analysed as a case of ‘fort creolization’ (Bickerton 1988). An overview is then provided of how head-final categories emerged in the dialect, namely through reanalysing Chinese form-meaning units to fulfil functions found in the substrate languages, with comparatively little reordering of grammatical devices inherent to Chinese or outright borrowing of substrate forms. The relevant changes are discussed in relation to Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) model of contact-induced grammaticalization and findings from creole studies. Detailed discussion of the dialect’s clausal syntax focuses on aspect marking, tense/mood marking, non-lexical functions of SAY and object scrambling. With regard to the aspectual system, an account is proposed of ZHE, which is typologically unusual in showing imperfective/perfective polysemy. Tense and modality is then considered with regard to the sentential particle lia, and its future marking function is seen to be conditioned by the aspectual class of the sentence, providing evidence of aspectually sensitive tenses (de Swart 1998) in Chinese. In terms of non-lexical functions of SAY, a range of clause-final uses are discussed, including as a complementizer and volitional mood marker, whilst discourse marking uses of SAY are interpreted in light of Traugott’s (1995, 2010) notion of (inter)subjectification. Finally, object fronting in the dialect is shown to possess the properties of Japanese style scrambling, despite the absence of this type of movement across other Chinese dialects. Its existence in the Xining dialect, where phrase-structure change has occurred from head-initial to head-final, is argued to provide broad support for the correlation between head-final syntax and scrambling formalized by the Generalized Holmberg Constraint (Wallenberg 2009).The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC

REPROGRAMMING PLATFORMS. THE CO-PRODUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC AND GOVERNANCE INNOVATION IN TRANSLATIONAL INDUCED PLURIPOTENT STEM CELL RESEARCH

This dissertation charts the rise and articulation of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) as a prominent translational technology, invested with high expectations to finally deliver the as yet mostly unfulfilled promise of stem cell research. In a field catalyzed by the therapeutic promise, iPSCs have been adopted for widespread translational efforts, in the areas of disease modeling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine, and have progressively positioned themselves, through the mobilization of several biomedical platforms, as a key resource of stem cell-based bioeconomies. Specifically, drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this work targets distinct iPSC innovation pathways across the United States and the European Union, and conducts the analysis of distinct models of iPSC\u2013based innovation implemented by three leading iPSC research organizations that have been spearheading translational iPSC research: the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and the European Bank for induced Pluripotent Stem Cells \u2013 respectively, the largest stem cell research organization in the world; the largest private translational stem cell research institution in the United States; and one of the two flagship stem cell consortia launched in recent years at EU level. Through a comparative approach, this dissertation explores the co-productive relationship between scientific and governance innovation, and probes the distinct ways in which some of the leading research institutions in the field design and implement governance arrangements and practices of standardization in order to harness the innovation potential of iPSC-based technologies. Furthermore, it accounts for the socio-political salience of these emerging institutional configurations, and traces the assembly of distinct constituencies claiming jurisdiction in this domain of biomedicine

The interaction between reflective processing and language among bilingual speakers

Internal or Reflective attention can refer to our thoughts/reflections in order to make sense of our external world through our senses and perception. Reflective attention also includes the act of refreshing which is the act of thinking back and shifting internal attention towards previously activated mental representations. Previous research (M.R. Johnson et al., 2013) has shown that refreshing mirrors a striking similarity to that of inhibition of return (IOR) effect which inhibits visual attention to return to a previously cued location (Posner & Cohen, 1984; Posner, Rafal, Choate, & Vaughan, 1985). This IOR-like mechanism helps facilitate our thoughts (similarly to perception) by encouraging internal attention to move towards new information and avoid constant fixation on a single thought (M.R. Johnson et al., 2013) which was coined as reflective IOR (rIOR). The objective of the thesis investigates variables such as time duration and language during the production of rIOR mechanism. A total of seven experiments were conducted. The first set of experiments (Experiments 1 to 3) aimed to examine the time course of refreshing while the second set and (Experiments 4 to 7) examined the effect of language on reflective attention. In each experiment, participants were shown two stimuli, either in the form of pictures or English/Malay words. They were instructed to refresh by keeping one item (i.e., mental representation) active while ignoring the other. Results showed an attentional shift or bias towards the unrefreshed mental representation, more so in the experiments which used word stimuli rather than picture stimuli. The novelty of the current thesis is that early language processing (i.e., English and Malay words) in bilingual speakers was taken into account while investigating the reflective attention. This pattern was consistent whether the words were presented in English or Malay which are consistent with M. R. Johnson and colleagues’ finding that IOR mechanism shifts internal attention to new information However, if participants were presented with English stimuli, refreshed the English word but were then probed in the equivalent Malay word, a stronger priming effect emerged instead. The behavioural pattern implicated that asymmetrical cost during language switching could be reduced as a result of refreshing. The data also showed that while refreshing may cause a temporary inaccessibility to recently activated items, refreshed words were more memorable in a later recognition task. This suggested the role of refreshing plays an important role encoding and storing mental representations in later long term retrieval. Mental representations that were ignored or were not give n attention tended to fade away more quickly. The novelty of the thesis is that language processing was explored as a component to this mechanism by manipulating languages of the refreshed words presented. Participants were more likely to make false alarms when they were presented with an English equivalent word in the recognition task, when the original word had in fact been presented (i.e., previously refreshed) in Malay. Language models such as the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) ( Kroll and Stewart, 1990, 1994) were applied in examining refreshing in stronger or weaker languages that gave rise to poor memory performance. According to the RHM’s logic, words activated in non-dominant language would subsequently activate words in the dominant language in order to access the meaning of the word. In this language processing route, it is possible that refreshing a word in the weaker language would subsequently activate the similar word in the stronger language which is reflected as a false memory incident