Critical Language Study and Translation: The Case of Academic Discourse

This chapter uses Critical Discourse Analysis to show the very different ideologies encoded into Portuguese and English academic discourse,arguing that translation from one to the other is virtually impossible within the genre of the academic article

Galileo's Revenge: ways of construing knowledge and translation strategies in the era of globalisation

Galileo’s fateful confrontation with the Holy Office in 1633 is often taken to mark the start of the Scientific Revolution, the moment when a whole new approach to knowledge began to take over the western world. Amongst the many repercussions of this great epistemological shift was the development of a new ‘transparent’ type of discourse, felt to reflect reality more directly than the elaborate verbal edifices of the Scholastics. Today, the ‘authoritative plain style’, as Lawrence Venuti calls it, is so prevalent in English academic and factual writing that knowledge configured otherwise is rarely allowed past the cultural gatekeepers. There are countries, however, where, for historical and cultural reasons, the Scientific Revolution never really took place. In Spain and Portugal, for example, the anthropocentric paradigm favoured by the Christian humanist tradition has persisted well into the 21st century, and as a result, many of the academic texts produced in these countries operate according to an entirely different philosophy of language. This paper discusses some of the linguistic and ideological problems of translating such scholarship into a form that is publishable in English

Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Socialist Realism: a Case-Study in Intersemiotic Translation

This paper is concerned with Prokofiev’s ballet score, Romeo and Juliet, as an inter-semiotic translation of Shakespeare’s play. My aim is to consider Prokofiev’s distinct interpretation of the play in the light of the political climate of the Soviet Union in the 1930s and to attempt to determine the extent to which it conforms to the norms of Socialist Realism. This is by no means an easy matter, for the composer was at different times lauded by the authorities and vilified by them, while the work itself has been appropriated by both sides of the ideological divide. Nevertheless, close examination of the musical discourse reveals important alterations to Shakespeare’s original concept, shedding some light upon the composer’s own ideology and consequently upon his relationship to the regime under which he lived

Emotion in Scholarly Discourse: Denial, Deconstruction, Reinstatement

Since the 17th century, a battle has been raging between two distinct paradigms of knowledge in which the role of emotion has taken centre stage. With the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, all forms of subjectivity were effectively proscribed, a philosophical orientation that was reflected in the lexico-grammar of scholarly discourse. However, despite the increasing centrality of the scientific paradigm in the modern world, the older humanities tradition has continued to make its presence felt over the years, not least through the challenges to objectivity raised by poststructuralism. This paper traces the various phases of this battle in England and Continental Europe. It looks at how the humanities paradigm flourished in Catholic Europe long after Scholasticism and Rhetoric had been discredited in Protestant England, and focuses on various historical moments when the two paradigms came into conflict

Star-Cross’d Lovers: Shakespeare and Prokofiev’s pas-de-deux in “Romeo and Juliet”

This article analyses the structure of Prokofiev's ballet score 'Romeo and Juliet' as an intersemiotic translation of Shakespeare's play

The Language of Dance

Dance, like most other art forms, is not intrinsically representational. In fact, the expressive, ritualistic or aesthetic dimensions have often had primacy over the referential over the course of its variegated history, and in much modern and contemporary dance, the representational element is sometimes deliberately suppressed as part of a reaction against the romantic ballet tradition. However, the fact that dance events have so frequently been conceived on the back of literary works in Western culture indicates that some level of semanticization of movement is not only possible but also widely recognised. Indeed, some dances are so closely bound to a preceding literary work that they may be considered as “intersemiotic translations” (Jakobson 1992), i.e. rewritings of a verbal text in a kinetic sign system. This is particularly the case with ballet, as we see here. There have been a number of theories put forward as to how dance represents elements from the outside world. The earliest analyses assumed that it acquired its signifying potential from the way in which human beings physically relate to each other and to their environment in everyday life, thereby positing something inherently ‘natural’ and universal about the kinesthetic code. More recent commentators, on the other hand, emphasise the importance of culture in determining not only the semiotic significance of particular movements but also the way in which those movements are conventionalised into genres. The aim of this paper is to examine the semiotic code that is the Western dance tradition in order to try to isolate some of the ‘signs’ that may be mobilised by choreographers and performers for the purpose of intersemiotic translation. These are exemplified with reference to different ballet versions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Best-Sellers in Portugal: the case of Bridget Jones

Portugal continua a consumir em grande quantidade ficção traduzida. Em 2001, um dos maiores êxitos foi O Diário de Bridget Jones, de Helen Fielding, obra que fez rir milhares de pessoas mesmo antes do filme, que saiu no mesmo ano. Contudo, o humor desta obra é culturalmente muito específico, baseado numa rede semiótica que só pode ser apreciada por quem vive dentro da cultura de origem. Qual foi a política da tradutora relativa a estes elementos tão dificilmente traduzíveis? Conseguiu transmitir as complexidades da sociedade contemporânea britânica? Ou será que houve outro motivo menos definido por detrás desta apropriação e que teria a ver com o modo de representar o Outro neste vasto mundo globalizado

Words into Movement: the Ballet as Intersemiotic Translation

Roman Jakobson, in his 1959 article “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, extended the concept of translation to include transfer between different sign systems. On the basis of this definition, many ballets may be perceived as a form of intersemiotic translation, since their aesthetic structure and narrative content is largely derived from some preceding text, which may be either verbal or musical or both. This paper looks at the mechanisms involved in the transfer of meaning from the verbal into the kinesthetic code, with reference to the work of classic dance theorists such as Rudolf Laban, Doris Humphries, Merce Cunningham, etc., and to contemporary culturalist approaches. Examples are drawn from 4 different versions of Romeo and Juliet

What has Translation Theory got to learn from Contemporary Practice?

There has long been a traditional animosity between practising translators and the theoreticians residing in the ‘Ivory Tower’ of the University. In the past, this was due to the judgmental attitude that theory would assume in relation to the translation product; the source-text-oriented discourse of traduttore tradittore and les belles infidèles meant that the whole translation process was essentially doomed from the outset, with practitioners thrust into a thankless No Win situation that was as humiliating as it was gruelling. Modern theory, on the other hand, whilst being much more sympathetic to the undeniably important role that translation plays in the target culture, tends to get sidetracked into ideologically irreprehensible but entirely unfeasible missions to change the world, as can be seen from the discourses surrounding the concepts of ‘visibility’ and ‘transparency’, not to mention those that mobilise more obvious feminist and post-colonialist issues. This paper suggests that translation theory might have something to learn from the experience of real practitioners, who operate within the market and are subject to its forces. To what extent can translation be mobilised for ideological purposes? Does it really have the subversive potential that some theorists have claimed or is it in fact a lot more limited in scope? And how can the poor underpaid translator, whose main aim often goes no further than to satisfy her customers and earn a decent living, contribute to these lofty ideals