The translator as reader:the case of poetry translators from modern Greek into English.

Abstract

Reader Response and Reception theories recognize that readerly activity during the reading process means that the reader draws on various resources, such as their knowledge of the world and of literary conventions. A more practical perspective with significant insights into the reader’s input comes from empirical explorations of literature (Hartman 1995, Peskin 1998, Hanauer 1998, 2001). Within Translation Studies there have been some attempts at exploring the role of the reader during the translation process. Cognitive research, using think-aloud protocols and/or eye-tracking and keystroke logging as their methods, has offered valuable information that expands our understanding of what translators do when they read during the translation process (Englund Dimitrova 2005, Jakobsen 2003). In addition, several ‘situated theories’ (Flynn 2013) by translation scholars who are also practitioners has provided several categories with which to describe an initial, exploratory model of the translator as reader. These attempts have been sporadic and not entirely systematic and have been unable to produce a comprehensive picture of what the translator brings into the reading-for-translation process. The object of this study is to merge and expand these categories proposed by translation scholars (Beaugrande 1977, Diaz-Diocaretz 1985, Jones 2011) into a coherent model of the poetry translator as reader. The expanded model is complemented by data from several different sources collected from Modern Greek into English poetry translators. The key issue of how the translatorial habitus affects the reading-for-translation phase is eplored through the examination of a corpus of paratexts created by or about these poetry translators. The study also draws data from the responses of twenty poetry translators to a survey and from ten semi-structured interviews with the same group of poetry translators for the exploration of the translatorial habitus. Finally, the effects of the translatorial habitus on the reading-for-translation phase are explored through verbal protocols with eight poetry translators.