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Translation theory and practice
Translation theory and practice
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Translation has always played a key role in shaping cultures, societies, languages, and literatures throughout the history of mankind. On the other hand, in contrast to all its potentials, the discipline has been underestimated within academia and it had not been studied in any systematic way as a planning activity until the last century (Toury, 2002). Having been overshadowed by linguistics and comparative literature, the discipline of translation studies was conceived as a subordinate academic field. This is mainly because translation was merely seen as a code-switching activity and firmly stuck in the paradigms of fidelity and equivalence. This view of translation and translation studies was dominant until the emergence of the so-called “cultural turn” in the 1980s. With the shift …show more content…
49). Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the pioneers that referred to hybridity within the framework of linguistics, literature and stylistics. In his book The Dialogic Imagination first published in 1981, Bakhtin (2011) mentions two types of hybrid constructions: ‘unconscious’ and ‘conscious’ hybridization. Unconscious hybridization refers to the unintentional mixture of different languages that are prevalent within a single dialect, a single national language or a single group of social language. It is one of the most significant “modes in the historical life and evolution of all languages … [and] language and languages change historically primarily by means of hybridization” (Bakhtin, 2011, 358). The conscious hybridization, on the other hand, is an intentional hybrid that is primarily applied as “an artistic device” (Bakhtin, 2011, p. 358). Bakhtin (2011) defines these hybrid constructions
Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” is a short science fiction story that explores the principals of linguistic relativity through in interesting relationship between aliens and humans that develops when aliens, known as Heptapods, appear on Earth. In the story Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist hired by the government to learn the Heptapods language, tells her unborn daughter what she has learned from the Heptapods as a result of learning their language. M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” also explores the topic of language and translations, as she refers to different languages as her “mother tongue” or “father tongue.” Although these two pieces of literature may not seem to have much in common both explore the topics of language and translation and connect those ideas to power and control.
The article The Strange Persistence of First Languages by Julie Sedivy was an intriguing and eye-opening piece of writing to read. The concepts she brought to life through her explicit writing revealed many things I had never heard of before. The further I read, the more I wanted to know and the deeper my interest became. As a monolingual, this article was insightful, captivating and ultimately provided me with a new perspective on language.
Kistner, A. L. and M. K. Kistner. “The Five Structures of ‘The Changeling’.” Modern Language Studies 11.2 (1981): 40-53. Accessed March 29, 2014.
The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright. Berlin [etc.]. Mouton De Gruyter, 1998. Print. The.
The author’s diction heightens the confusion and difficulties the English language evokes, as her simple method of communication progressively becomes more complicated. Words are “sifting” around solely as “vocabulary words” it becomes difficult for her to connect and understand this “closed” language. The author learned Spanish during her childhood through past memories and experiences which helped her form a closer knit bond to the language as a whole; however, English does not root any deep connections for her causing her to doubt the importance of words. The negative connotation when she refers to vocabulary words and closed is due to the fact that she is frustrated with her inability to communicate exactly what she perceives as they are not connected to experiences. Similarly, the language seems “frail” and essentially “bottled up” as she is unable to express her thoughts in a manner other than exclusive “translations”. Unlike Spanish, English seems to have a complicated and confusing aspect tied to it where the author is feels trapped because she cannot convey her emotions or relate to it culturally. The repetitions of these words that have a negative connotation draw out the significance behind communication and the true value of connecting to a culture. Overall, the dictio...
Gideon Toury worked with Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar, the man behind the polysystem; “a system of various systems which intersect with each other and partly overlap, using concurrently different options, yet functioning as one structured whole, whose members are interdependent” (Munday, 2016, p. 174). Toury also saw translation to have a position both in social and literary systems of the target culture, and developed the polysystem theory further, and presented his three-phase methodology for the branch of descriptive translation studies, an empirical branch of translation studies (ibid.). With this method, the description of the translation and its wider role in the sociocultural system is incorporated (ibid.). First, “situate the text within the target culture system, looking at its significance or acceptability” (Munday, 2016, p. 175). Then, “undertake a textual analysis of the ST and the TT to identify relationships between corresponding segments in the two texts” (ibid.), called “coupled pairs” by Toury. Now,
Languages are continually changing and developing, and these changes occur in many different ways and for a variety of reasons. Language change is detectable to some extent in all languages, and ‘similar paths of change’ can be recognised in numerous unrelated languages (Bybee, 2015, p. 139). Since users of language all over the world have ‘the same mental processes’ and ‘use communication for the same or very similar ends’ (Bybee, 2015, p. 1), similar changes occur on the same linguistic aspects, and in many cases these changes produce similar results in multiple languages. However, language change is limited by the function it performs. Languages must be learnt to such an extent which allows communication between the generation above and below one’s own (McMahon, 1994, p. 5). Hence language change is a gradual, lethargic process, as only small changes in
Viewing these two opposing notions (Bhabha’s and Fanon’s) within Othering discourse it becomes evident that hybridity both complicates and simplif...
Sociolinguists such as Eckert (2000) and Milroy (2004) have made provocative efforts to incorporate linguistic-anthropological concepts into sociolinguistic explanation (Woolard, 2008) and foundational studies by Creese (2008) include major works describing the paradigm. Rampton (2007), described the methodological tenants behind LE. LE research is yet a developing discipline that serves as a way of enriching a fundamentally linguistic project. In fact, the formulation of LE covers a large and older body of scholarship on language and culture (Rampton, Maybin, & Roberts, 2014), while simultaneously necessitating and interdisciplinary collaboration of theories and skills, thus blurring the boundaries between branches of variationist, sociological and ethnographic sociolinguistics (Tusting & Maybin, 2007). LE research on language change (Ekert, 2000) and a cultural model of cognition (Levinson, 1996) are worthwhile examples. However, the examples in the following sections serve more as a focus on contributions of LE to the field of
What is a word? How the translator deals with this gap? What influences his choices? These are few of the question we will try to explain in this paper. We will pay a particular attention to the cultural differences and the translational gaps raised from it. In my opinion the non-equivalence in translation is due above all by the cultural barriers that influence our lifes.
To begin with a brief definition of translation, it can be stated that it is basically transferring the words included in one language to the other by making necessary changes and sticking to the source language taken from either the source text or source speech. With the help of rapid technology and the network among countries, the significance given to translation has become an indispensable part of wide range of business and communication purposes. The source determines whether it will be a job of translators or interpreters. It is important to refer each of them by explaining the differences between them at this point.
Slocum, J. (1984). "Machine Translation: its History, Current Status and Future Prospects ", Siemens Communications Systems, Inc., Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
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.
Blum-Kulka argues that shifts in text meaning occur when “the explicit and implicit meaning potential of the source text changes through translations” (1986:299). In her discussion of the relationship between meaning and cohesion, she quotes Haliday and Hasan’s (1976) words which state that “cohesion ties do much more than provide continuity and thus
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...