Cultural untranslatability: A comparative study of Four-Character-Idiom translation in two English versions of Xi You Ji

The study comparatively and qualitatively analyses the translation of four-character idioms in Chinese novel Xi You Ji by Wu Cheng’en to examine the existence of cultural untranslatability in translation. Anthony C. Yu’s The Journey to the West (1977) and W.J.F. Jenner’s Journey to the West (2000) are the two English translations chosen to be the parallel corpora. The results from detailed comparisons between the two versions are predicted to support the hypothesis that cultural untranslatability exists in the translation of four-character idioms in Xi You Ji and cultural elements have significant influence on the degree of cultural untranslatability. The research findings are expected to echo Catford’s (1965) argument that cultural untranslatability is a relative notion and it can turn to translatability to some extent

FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION IN THE MINISTERIAL WEBSITE LOCALIZATION

The translation is a representation of the effect of developing technology on language. Translated website or website localization with the easiness of accessibility is considered as the most efficient space for transferring the information nowadays. It certainly involves the appropriate translation strategies in order to provide reliable information required. This research aims to identify the translation strategy involved under foreignization and domestication reference in the official website localization of Ministry of Health of Republic of Indonesia, to find out the most dominant translation strategy used, and to analyze the reasons to what extent foreignization and domestication applied, by referring the classifications proposed by Venuti (2008). The source of data was taken from five (5) popular news along 2018 which were broken down into 191 data analyzed, consisting of 5 headlines in the form of phrases and sentences, contents totally written in 161 sentences, and 25 sub-contents in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The research found that the translator used all eight (8) translation strategies under domestication and foreignization reference including literal translation, transliteration, borrowing, transference, transposition, omission, addition, and adaptation, simultaneously or separately. Literal translation becomes the most dominant translation strategy used and it can indicate that the website localization is translated into source text-oriented

A Model for Metaphor Translation from English Literature into Arabic

Except for two main contributions to models of metaphor translation from English into Arabic by (Newmark (1988) and Dickens (2002), this area of research remains neglected despite the numerous studies on translation studies. This research attempts reconsidering the two previous models and presents a model based on translation perspectives. Newmark's model establishes metaphor classification on rhetoric, and Dickens’ on lexicology. The grounds on which metaphor classification is set up and the overlap between metaphor translation techniques are the two unconvincing and deficient resolutions within those available contributions which have triggered us to look for some further distinctive features for metaphor translation. This thesis main objectives are the discovery of metaphor translation most efficient strategies and procedures together with the establishment of a model, capable of overcoming the cultural barriers in translation in order to preserve metaphor power and function in the target language. The scientific method to achieve them is the application of a quantitative approach at a macro level on a wide range of the selected data particularly from Shakespeare poetry and some idioms. The rationale behind my pinpointed choice is the adequacy of poetry as a genre of literary text type characterized by the density of metaphor usage. The translation on which the analysis is carried on is my own translation since my purpose is the formulation of metaphor translation rules rather a comparative study between translations. My model proposes classification of metaphor into common and specific metaphors from a pure translation perspective. The diverse translation exercises conducted along this study have manifested the following five techniques for the translation of English metaphor into Arabic language: Replacing the SL metaphor by the same or a similar vehicle, Replacing the SL metaphor by a different vehicle, Converting the SL metaphor into a simile, Reducing the SL metaphor into ground/sense, Converting the SL metaphor into another metaphor, This thesis shows how translation by metaphor seems to be the decisive technique that distinguishes between common and specific metaphors. Translation by metaphor as a technique reveals that some specific metaphors are purely cultural, and the only means for their translation is by their cultural correspondences

Eating and drinking seen through translation: A study of food-related translation difficulties and techniques in a parallel corpus of literary texts

[EN] This paper presents an exploratory study on translators¿ decisions when en- countering food-related translation difficulties in a parallel corpus of German original narra- tive texts and their translations into Spanish and Catalan. For this purpose, all food- and drink-related lexemes in the German original texts were extracted and classified in semantic groups. As a second step, the source and target text fragments of lexemes related to food- related cultural referents, metaphorical expressions or ways of eating and drinking were ex- tracted and analysed in view of the techniques applied by the translators of both language combinations. The results obtained through the classification and quantification of the trans- lation techniques in these three domains allow conclusions to be drawn regarding a) the existence of foreignizing or domesticating tendencies in the translation of food terms, b) the ways translators deal with action verbs that encompass multiple meaning aspects and c) the degree of metaphoricity and food-relatedness in the translation of metaphorical ex- pressions.This study has been supported by research projects FFI2012–35239, funded by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy and Competition, and P1-1B2013-44, funded by Universitat Jaume I.Oster, U.; Molés-Cases, T. (2016). Eating and drinking seen through translation: A study of food-related translation difficulties and techniques in a parallel corpus of literary texts. Across Languages and Cultures. 17(1):53-75. doi:10.1556/084.2016.17.1.3S537517

Theorizing in Unfamiliar Contexts: New Directions in Translation Studies

This thesis attempts to offer a reconceptualization of translation analysis. It argues that there is a growing interest in examining translations produced outside the discipline‟s historical field of focus. However, the tools of analysis employed may not have sufficient flexibility to examine translation if it is conceived more broadly. Advocating the use of abductive logic, the thesis infers translators‟ probable understandings of their own actions, and compares these with the reasoning provided by contemporary theories. It finds that it may not be possible to rely on common theories to analyse the work of translators who conceptualize their actions in radically different ways from that traditionally found in translation literature. The thesis exemplifies this issue through the dual examination of Geoffrey Chaucer‟s use of translation in the Canterbury Tales and that of Japanese storytellers in classical Kamigata rakugo. It compares the findings of the discipline‟s most pervasive theories with those gained through an abductive analysis of the same texts, finding that the results produced by the theories are invariably problematic. The thesis demonstrates that understandings of translation practice have been given to change over time, and vary substantially across cultures. Therefore, an individual theory is unlikely to be able to rationalize particular practices or features of translations irrespective of the cultural context in which they are found. Abductive logic aims to describe translations in particular, rather than translation in general. It can be used to infer factors that may have influenced translators‟ understandings of the roles their texts will take, and hence, their aims in translating. Many theories tend to be underpinned by inductive logic, which essentially restricts textual analysis to the application of pre-defined labels of translation phenomena. Abductive logic forms hypotheses based on the context in question, going far beyond this kind of textual categorization

A critical analysis of the translation strategies used by SM Serudu in his translation of Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom into seSotho sa Leboa

Text in EnglishThis study examines and discovers the translation strategies as employed in the Sesotho sa Leboa translation of Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom was published in 1995 and was translated into Sesotho sa Leboa by S M Serudu in 2001. The Sesotho sa Leboa translation of the life history of Mandela, Leetotelele go ya Tokologong (Long Walk to Freedom) is one of the four completed translations to date that form part of the assignment to translate the original text into the official languages of South Africa. The aim of this study is to investigate the translation strategies used to transfer linguistic and cultural items in the translation of Mandela's autobiography. The study is mainly qualitative and examines the strategies employed by Serudu. For data collection, the source and target texts of Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom as well as the semi-structured face-to-face interviews with four translators into Sesotho sa Leboa, isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans were used. The study is based on the Descriptive Translation Studies Theory, Bassnett and Lefevere's "cultural turn" as well as the domestication and foreignization strategies. In this case, it investigates if Serudu has domesticated and/or foreignized his translation. The findings revealed that Serudu domesticated his translation by using metaphors, similes, personification, euphemism, hyperbole, proverbs, idioms and the use of descriptive words. Foreignization was also found when the translator dealt with the borrowing and loaning of words where most of the concepts were transferred, Sotholised, retained and transferred, as they were, especially culture specific items.African LanguagesD. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages

On the Merits and Logical Validity of Foreignizing Translation

Honors (Bachelor's)International StudiesGeological SciencesUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98866/1/aaronwb.pd

Translation strategies and procedures of in-flight magazines of Gulf Airlines

The purpose of this research is to identify translation procedures and strategies within the area of consumer-oriented texts in English-Arabic translations of in-flight magazine articles. A functionalist approach informs the theoretical framework, which plays the main role in deciding on a suitable approach to a translation. In addition, however, the identification of specific translation procedures and strategies is necessary to establish precise elements to validate outcomes in both the ST and TT data. Therefore, a composite model of 12 translation procedures is formulated based on integrating three key resources for translation procedures: Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), Newmark (1988) and Dickins et al. (2017a). These are supplemented by Vermes’s model (2003) of procedures for the translation of proper names. The resulting composite model is applied to a total of 40 bilingual in-flight magazine articles in English and Arabic, each article comprising 500–2,000 words, in order to highlight the range of procedures, from most to least prominent, for translating general and cultural aspects of English-Arabic texts in in-flight magazines in the Arabian Gulf. Analyses of all the translation procedures adopted are used to deduce translation strategy tendencies on two levels: general and cultural. General strategies are identified in terms of Newmark’s (1988) semantic and communicative translation. The analysis reveals that literal translation, translation by addition and translation by omission are used very frequently when translating in-flight magazine articles, while substitution and proper substitution are the two most frequent procedures used for the translation of proper names. In relation to general translation strategies, the results reveal that both communicative and semantic translation occur frequently in the data, at approximately 54% and 46%, respectively

Retranslating 1984: the effects of linguistic and cultural changes on three Italian translations of the English literary classic

A più di settant’anni dalla pubblicazione di 1984, il classico della letteratura inglese torna protagonista nelle librerie italiane con una serie di nuove traduzioni. Complice la scadenza nel 2021 dei termini di copyright, versioni aggiornate di quella che può definirsi come la fantasia distopica per eccellenza testimoniano come il romanzo orwelliano conservi un’attualità tale da legittimare una sua rivisitazione in chiave moderna. L’obiettivo di questo studio è quello di indagare il fenomeno della ritraduzione, ovvero la realizzazione di una nuova traduzione di un testo nella stessa lingua di arrivo in cui era stato già precedentemente tradotto, nel tentativo di stabilire in che misura interpretazioni successive a traduzioni esistenti riflettono i cambiamenti nel frattempo manifestatisi nel sistema linguistico e culturale di destinazione. A tal fine, è compresa nello studio una comparazione di tre diverse traduzioni italiane del classico inglese, pubblicate rispettivamente nel 1950, 2000 e 2021. L’analisi è condotta in relazione ad alcune delle più influenti riflessioni teoriche riguardanti la pratica (ri)traduttiva, con uno sguardo alle strategie adottate per riprodurre le caratteristiche lessicali, sintattiche e stilistiche dell’originale in base alle sempre mutevoli norme del sistema letterario italiano. I risultati di tale analisi indicano che la ritraduzione letteraria è da intendersi capace di favorire il processo di ri-standardizzazione in corso nella lingua di arrivo. Tuttavia, l’introduzione di eventuali cambiamenti di tipo linguistico e culturale nell’italiano delle traduzioni rappresenta una delle tante ragioni dietro alla proposta di traduzioni alternative del capolavoro di George Orwell, contribuendo così a contrastare la visione tuttora prevalente della ritraduzione come un fenomeno esclusivamente correttivo.More than seventy years after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, a wave of new translations of the classic work of English literature captures the Italian publishing market. As a consequence of the copyright protection coming to an end in 2021, refreshed versions of what can be referred to as the ultimate dystopian fantasy testify to the fact that the contemporary relevance of the novel justifies making more up-to-date reinterpretations of Orwell’s book. The goal of the study is to investigate the phenomenon of retranslation, that is the act of translating a work that has previously been translated into the same language, in an attempt to establish the extent to which alternative renditions subsequent to extant translations reflect linguistic and cultural changes occurring in the receiving system. For this purpose, a comparison of three different Italian translations of the English classic, published in 1950, 2000 and 2021, is conducted. The analysis takes into account some of the most influential theoretical writings regarding the activity of retranslation, focusing on the different strategies implemented in order to adapt the lexical, syntactic and stylistic characteristics of the original to the ever-changing translation norms of the Italian literary system. According to the present study, literary retranslation is to be understood as capable of influencing the process of re-standardization taking place in the target language. Tellingly, innovations introduced in the Italian language of translations are one of the many reasons behind the production of alternative translations of George Orwell’s literary masterpiece, thus contributing to challenging the prevailing view of retranslation as an exclusively restorative phenomenon