Specification as a Translation Approach in the English Translation of the Sarajevo Marlboro Stories Collection by Miljenko Jergović

Abstract

Translating work by authors who were forced to leave their original cultural context, which provided them with a unique position of viewing their own, but also other identities – now has a new, more interesting function. Translation thus does not only search for a common space for universal recognition and understanding based on common experiences but rather communicates differences and specific local qualities as opposed to the global context. In the English translation of the collection of stories by Miljenko Jergović, Sarajevo Marlboro, a book about the lives of common people from Sarajevo before and during the siege in the nineties, a translator is in a different relation toward the readers, due to the very need to use a translation for communication. In this process, the specification can be seen as not only a translation technique but a strategy for explicitation and explanation of Bosnian & Herzegovinian cultural elements, especially those which are invisible, under the surface of the text, coded in our cultural identities. This paper analyses the translation of cultural elements of Bosnian identity, and the techniques used in their translation.