A DESCRIPTIVE AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO TURKISH TRANSLATIONS OF JANE AUSTEN’S "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE"

Introduction: The Gender and Queer Politics of Translation: New Approaches

As quality is one of the most important aspects of translation studies, the researchers aim at analyzing the quality of the Persian translation of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which is one of the best-selling novels in the world based on House’s (1997) model of translation quality assessment. As it was time-consuming to apply this model to the whole book, twenty sections out of forty-five sections of the English version were selected randomly. In this qualitative-descriptive research, both source text and target text were compared in tables regarding quality. The study revealed that the translator had translated the text overtly, confirming House’s idea, who noted that literary texts should be translated overtly. However, the cultural filter was applied to some parts of the text that were not acceptable in the target culture. Therefore, covert translation was acceptable in some parts. According to the analysis based on House’s model, the Persian translation was almost of good quality. The register, as well as the related sub-branches, was observed well in most parts of the target text. The text, in respect of textual means, was also cohesive and coherent; however, the lexical choice in some parts needed improvement. The researchers also found out that some part of the source text information was not transferred to the target text without any particular reasons. Thus, it was illustrated that although House’s translation quality assessment model is the best translation quality assessment model among other models, it needs improvement. House’s model was not able to analyze the text in respect of information transfer. Therefore, this could be a weak point in House’s model. In short, the translated text was not of high quality as it needs improvement in respect of information transfer and lexical choice.

Currently, it is key to convey precise meanings to readers for translators. Observing expressing habits between different languages is the precondition to make target texts more readable. It is crucial to ensure the exactness and seriousness of legal texts, but it does not mean that translators have to take machined way to leave out and even give up transmitting in-deep cultural implications for the intention of achieving the all-inclusive integrity of target content. It is a correct choice for translators to take overt translation and covert translation in line with traits of source language and target language and differences between civil law system and common law system. The intention of the article is to make an empirical study between overt translation and covert translation.

The original version of the Zambia national anthem was written in English and then translated into most of the 73 Zambian languages. This article looks at how the Zambia national anthem was translated from English into the local languages. However, due to many factors, we chose to limit our study to one language, namely Bemba, which is considered as the most widely spoken Lingua franca in Zambia. In this study, great emphasis has been placed on the various translation processes and strategies used to translate the Zambia national anthem from English into Bemba, in the light of the equivalence theory. The concept of equivalence has often been used to indicate that the source text and the target text share what a number of scholars refer to as “sameness” or similarity. Vinay and Darbelnet as cited by Munday [6] explain that equivalence applies to cases where languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means. Translation is therefore perceived as a way of establishing a straight forward correspondence between individual words [14]. This article shows that various translation strategies were used to manage equivalence within the accepted proxies of optimum translation and weaker version translation. In other words, the equivalence levels between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) were analysed. This work shows evidence of semantic and socio-cultural variance between the original English version of the Zambia national anthem and the translated Bemba version. It also highlights the fact that the translation of a number of lines are close to approximations of the original lyrics, while others have substantially been modified to communicate the message in the original version. The ingenuity and innovativeness shown by the translator(s) of the Zambian national anthem into Bemba encompass what Lederer [5] refers to as linguistic competence and world knowledge to grasp the sense of the source text and convey it to the target text. This article shows that equivalence between the source text and the target text can be established at different linguistic levels and using different techniques. Without equivalence, it would be difficult to consider any given translated text as a successful translation of the source text. In this study the translation from English into Bemba can be seen as the product of the translator’s choices.

Kolm Eesti Robinsoni: Daniel Defoe romaan eesti tõlkes / Three Estonian Robinsons: Daniel Defoe’s Novel in Estonian Translation

Research topicality: Political texts are mainly available in translation. Thus, it is very important to provide the reader with an overt translation. To improve the quality of political text translation, it is important to understand and be able to notice the key language elements of the text, keeping in mind that political texts and political translations are manipulative. Figurative language is used to give language elements a figurative meaning and therefore creates a much more vivid image of the text. The aim: To study manipulative devices in political speeches. Research methodology: The analytical method is used in the analysis of literature on political translation and in transcript translations of political speeches. A contrastive analysis on source and target texts is made. To show the stylistic differences or similarities between the source text and translated text, two political speeches and their translation are analysed. A questionnaire for experienced and novice translators is used to prove, or reject the results of the analysis. Main findings: Not only political texts, but their translations as well are always manipulative. Figurative language tools are often used in translations of political speeches, mostly metaphors and epithets. The results of the questionnaire show that figurative language tools are used in everyday translations of political texts, and they reinforce the results gained from the political speeches analysis.

There is little doubt that Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology will appeal more to scholars in literary studies than it will to translation scholars in general. This is presumably not something to which Clive Scott would object. He narrows the scope to literary translation in the subtitle, and the examples of translation discussed in the book are all literary-poetic. Throughout the book he draws on examples of translation of French poetry, which is his area of expertise (Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Mallarmé). The core theoretical literature for this volume will also primarily be familiar to colleagues in literary studies. The most obvious example is Merleau-Ponty, whose thought forms the backdrop and frame of the entire work, but one might also cite Barthes, Gadamer, Glissant, and Richard.In Translating the Perception of Text, Scott presents a theory and practice of translation that falls very much into what French (literary) translation theorists would call a “prospective” theory of translation. His theory emerges from the experience of translation practice; it is concerned with a literary-poetic practice; and it is essentially an interrogative act that does not start from the assumption that translation is communication. The main aim of Translating the Perception of Text is to answer a question that Scott asks on the very first page: “how should I handle language in such a way that the experience of (reading) the source text (ST) can emerge?” (1). The real achievement of this volume, I think, is that it pushes for an overhaul of current understanding of the task of the (literary) translator. Even readers and translators who reject some of his individual claims and particular ideas will find that the thrust of the work as a whole leaves a lasting impression. If all this does is serve to remind the translator not to translate as would a machine (word for word, from one language to another, searching for sameness), this is still a valuable contribution.The volume starts with an introduction and is then divided into two parts: “Part I: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Language” and “Part II: Literary Translation as Phenomenology.” In the introduction, Scott touches on some tropes of contemporary translation theory, including the move away from the context of national standard languages, a recognition of multilingualism in both source and target texts, and the conception of translation as potentiality. At the same time, he has some very interesting ideas about what translation should be. For example, he insists here and elsewhere in the book that translations are not written for those with no access to the source language or source text (15–17), and he also argues that it is “translation's business to translate langue into langage” (10). We see an example of how this would work later in the book, in a discussion of the Zukofskys' translations of Catullus: “We begin to understand how the translator can begin to work towards the signifier of the source text, rather than towards its signified, and in so doing multiply the Englishes present in the text, in terms both of history and register” (100). Part I contains just one chapter (“Merleau-Ponty: Language, Painting and Translation”), in which Scott engages with the most relevant parts of Merleau-Ponty's writing for his own work on translation. This chapter is a necessary set-up for the rest of the book, but as such it is probably the least engaging for those interested in translation.Part II, on “Literary Translation as Phenomenology,” contains five chapters, which examine in turn “Overwriting and the Overwritten Text,” “Listening and Speaking: Sounds,” “Listening and Speaking: Rhythm,” “Writing and Speaking,” and “Translating the Time and Space of Languages.” These are the chapters that will be of most interest to the scholar and that I think will prove most inspiring to translators. Their titles alone reflect several key themes in Scott's translatory thought. The most obvious of these is the idea that translation responds to the reader's own synesthetic experience of the source text by translating toward other, or multiple, levels. Scott's text comes alive in these chapters because he is able to work simultaneously with the large theoretical toolbox he has set up, but also on translation itself. It is worth noting that it is not just phenomenology that informs his work. His interest in the materiality of language means that technical texts from linguistics provide him at times with analytical tools and terminology to discuss particular translation choices. This is done generally successfully, such as when he compares the formal properties of elle rougit and she blushed (63-4), but a linguist might question his selection of theoretical texts because it feels at times somewhat haphazard. Unsurprisingly, Scott is most insightful when reading his own translations, which often go through multiple versions in each discussion. This is not just because more abstract ideas become clearer through exemplification, but also because his conception of translation as “translationwork”—“the textual equivalent of the Pompidou Centre” (108)—rests on this process of opening up and transforming.To say that Translating the Perception of Text will appeal more to literary scholars than it will to translation scholars is not to say that translation scholars should not read this work. In fact, they will get a lot out of Scott's book if they can get past the particularity of this style of literary-theoretic writing. His own formal choices might feel particularly “foreignizing” unless they are understood to be reinforcing his argument; this includes his use of diagrams, tables, doodles, phonetic symbols, and the uneven use of abbreviations which might at first look like bad copyediting. Similarly, they will need to accept the significance he accords to certain translation choices, such as his fondness for the use of ▲ (104–5, 119–20). Finally, there are a number of unanswered questions that translation scholars are left to answer for themselves. This includes, crucially, how Scott's conception of translation really relates to imitation, and also what would happen if we tried to apply his theory and practice in a domain other than the literary-poetic.

Translation issues have long been in the field of view of translators and philologists-researchers. The focus was on the definition of the translation process in view of its psychological and lexical-semantic features and its perception as a certain creative action. The translation process is always functionally and thematically defined and controlled. Its main purpose is to provide the necessary information and establish communication between people of different languages and cultures. Considering translation as an interlingual communication process, we address the question of what language operations should be performed to ensure the integration of source and target texts and at the same time eliminate their interlinguistic structural differences at the conceptual and stylistic levels. The dominant of any translation is its goal (skopos), because differences in the definition of translation goals cause, in turn, differences in interlingual translation strategies. The translator's understanding of the text presupposes his knowledge of the history of society, institutions, social conditions, religious beliefs, culturally and situationally determined patterns of speech activity and behavior of the "source culture", as well as knowledge of the syntax and semantics of the "source text" and their structures. Each translation creates a dynamic connection and is an intercultural transfer of the text insofar as it takes into account the culturally specific comparison of language, situation and object in question. From the standpoint of hermeneutics and from the point of view of translation, the difference of cultures means the difference between "source culture" and thus – the culture of "source language" and "target culture" and thus - the culture of "target language". The analysis focuses on the translation of the most famous poems of German classics. In J. Goethe, along with the ballad "Erlkönig" ("The Forest King"), it is his popular excerpts from the tragedy "Faust". The translation was made by famous writers B. Hrinchenko and M. Rylsky. F. Schiller's poetry is represented by his ballads "Pirnach" ("DerTaucher") and "Glove" ("DerHandschuh"). The latter was translated by the famous poet and translator M. Orest. Heine's works were translated into Ukrainian by such well-known writers as I. Franko, L. Pervomaisky and others.

Corpus-based cross-linguistic studies that have examined the word-formation features of source vs. target texts and non-translated vs. translated language have found that source-language interference and language-pair specific properties noticeably influence the over- and underuse of certain affixes in the target language. They have also highlighted translation-related trends such as the normalization of creative lexis, which may lead to a marked morphological decrease in target texts vis-à-vis their source texts. This article sets out to investigate another facet of the word-formation features of source and target texts, viz. genre-sensitivity, by reporting on a case study of evaluative prefixation in English and French (e.g. mini-, super-, over-). The study is based on two translation corpora (TED Talks and Europarl), representing two spoken genres (oral presentations and parliamentary debates) and two written translation modes (subtitling and translation). The results show that English evaluative prefixation fulfills different functions in the two genres investigated (attitudinal stance in debates vs. intensification in presentations). Translation data also reveal striking differences between the two corpora, with TED Talks displaying a strong preference towards prefix-by-prefix translation. However, at this stage, it is difficult to assess to what extent this is due to source text genre, translation mode or translator expertise (TED Talks are subtitled by non-professional volunteers).

This chapter seeks to contribute to a model for quantitative exploration of translated texts by adopting clustering techniques to search for patterns of comparability in a corpus of retranslations. Drawing on systemic-functional theory (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) as a framework for text analysis, it reports on an exploratory study aimed at investigating source – target text relations as computed through statistical methods for a manually annotated representative text sample. Annotation built on the analytical framework used for comparing source and target texts, which is based on categories of grammatical functions common to both source and target language systems. The corpus was compiled from ten translations of a source text -- a short story written in English by Katherine Mansfield -- into Spanish and Portuguese by different translators over a period of six decades. The texts were explored in terms of the ‘retranslation hypothesis’ (Berman 1990), whereby retranslations tend to be more source-oriented than first translations, orientation being established in our study on the basis of the distance between source and target text as computed through cluster analysis. The results obtained point to similarities between texts computed on the basis of categories ascribed to the lexicogrammatical choices made by each author within the grammatical systems analyzed. They also corroborate the findings of other researchers who have used other approaches and methodologies to probe the ‘retranslation hypothesis’, in that they confirmed the relative distance of a first translation from the source text, while they also showed varied degrees of proximity of retranslations to the source text, the former being in some cases further away from the latter than first translations.

This thesis is a re-evaluation of Lin Shu (1852-1924) and his literary translations. Lin Shu is one of China’s most influential translators. He initiated modern literary translation in China, and his translations imported new ideas, literary concepts, styles and techniques from the West. These, in turn, influenced the emergence and development of modern Chinese literature. Nevertheless, Lin Shu and his translations have been belittled and even dismissed for various reasons over the years. The emergence and development of target/culture-oriented translation theories offer the possibility of re-assessing Lin Shu and his translations. The re-assessment of Lin Shu and his translations in this study is based on target/culture-oriented translation theories, which emerged in the 1970s. Target/culture-oriented translation theories focus on the mutual influence between a translation and its target culture, especially on the influence of a translation on the target culture and readers as a criterion for successful translation rather than examining whether the target text is faithful to the source text, as in the traditional linguistic approach. These target/culture-oriented theories can effectively explain the translational phenomenon of Lin Shu, as Lin Shu translated with the needs of the target culture and readers in mind. He attached great importance to the cultural function and influence of his translations during a period of historical transition in China. The criticisms of Lin Shu and his translations in China and elsewhere have largely been negative, often highlighting political issues - his endorsement of the constitutional Qing monarchy and his conservative attitude to the New Culture Movement - as well as his free translation method. Target/culture-oriented translation theories offer a framework for the re-assessment of Lin Shu and his translations that bypasses these narrow approaches. Adopting target/culture-oriented translation theories, this thesis examines Lin Shu’s translations in a trans-cultural context. Lin Shu based his translations on the needs for the Chinese culture and readers of that time, which was clearly embodied in his choice of, and response to, the originals works. The prefaces and postscripts that he wrote for his translations illustrate the new cultural and literary factors that Lin Shu introduced into China. In this respect, Lin Shu’s translation of La Dame aux Camelia is perhaps the most famous case study of his translation method. Through a comparative analysis of the Target Text (TT) and Source Text (ST), the thesis discusses the ‘truthfulness’ of Lin Shu’s translation, and stresses that ‘truthfulness’ lies in seeking poetic equivalence rather than formal equivalence between the target and source texts. We argue that poetic equivalence is similar to Nida’s principle of correspondence, but is beyond his dynamic equivalence. It lays special stress on literary or aesthetic equivalence. Poetic equivalence in Lin Shu’s translations relates to the stylistic expression in China’s literary language and is therefore intrinsic to sinicization. Lin Shu’s skill in classical Chinese is central to our notion of poetic equivalence. However, I argue that Lin Shu’s translation strategy is actually also beyond equivalence. It is primarily embodied in his constant adaptation of the original to the perceived needs of Chinese culture and the acceptability of his translations to Chinese readers. Adaptation includes omission, addition, alteration and abridgment. In terms of target/culture/reader-oriented translation theories, Lin Shu’s adaptations were acceptable in the cultural context of his time. In brief, this study clarifies Lin Shu’s contribution in introducing Western culture and literature into China. The study also stresses the cultural influence of Lin’s translations on modern Chinese culture and on later generation of Chinese writers and translators. This thesis concludes that Lin Shu played a role of utmost importance in the establishment and evolution of early-modern and modern Chinese translation, particularly of modern literary translation in China. Therefore, Lin Shu is the father of modern Chinese literary translation.

It is a fact that Translatability and Untranslatability have been disputed by various scholars over a long period and the debate goes ahead to the present time. The translation is such a delicate and intricate undertaking, that it raises some major concerns to deal with, therefore, this paper examines numerous issues related to the translation of source text into the target text. As is known that the translation process is a difficult task, hence to deal with both the apparent and deep relationships of language, a translator should have some critical linguistics expertise to avoid ambiguity in the translated version of a source text. Translating one language into another language faces a bunch of problems including style, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and grammar. The present paper focuses on the semantic problems between the source text and its translated version. Here those words which create ambiguity between the source text and its translation version are investigated. For this purpose, Apter and Catford‘s concept of untranslatability has been used for the analysis of data. The findings show that there are numerous issues related to semantics that create a tension of meaning in both texts. These include variations between the source and target texts at the lexical and syntactic levels.

Functionalism in translation studies

Translation has often been regarded as a predominantly reproductive skill. Following the emphasis on communicative aspects of translation, productive aspects have recently come more into focus ‐ to such an extent that translation is sometimes barely distinguishable from original text production. This shift has been welcomed by Reiss, who has always insisted on the need for a target text to be more than a passive reflection of a source text. Originally hypothesising that the source text determines what translation method must be used, Reiss in her later publications assumes no such correlation between source text type and translation method. However, she strongly opposes attempts to ‘dethrone’ the source text, claiming that it remains the yardstick for all measuring in translation. Against this background, the article argues that the extreme positions proclaiming either source or target text hegemony are both untenable. Target text production can neither be completely controlled by a source text, nor completely independent of it. As interlingual textual equivalents of existing texts, translations are characterised by always having a unique or privileged intertextual relationship with another text in another language. While always dependent, they also have a life of their own.

In their role as readers, translators cannot escape having an individual perspective on the text. The translation therefore reflects the way in which they have read and interpreted the source text. As a new textual product in the target culture, the translation subsequently controls the interpretations open to target language readers. To what extent will respective readers of the source and target texts have corresponding options for interpretation? And how will the interpretation of the source text direct the translation strategy? the author explores these questions in a discussion of a Dutch poem by Lucebert that has given rise to distinctly different interpretations. For a number of 'pivotal instances' in the poem, she examines which translation choice in the Spanish version is compatible with a particular perspective on the poem. She concludes that the translator has followed one of these interpretation and that his translation strategy fits it adequately. However the original ambiguity has been lost.