Translation Challenges Creating Obstacles in Comparative Literature Studies: An Evaluating Study on Translated Arabic Poetic Texts

The article deals with translation strategies implemented in English-Ukrainian rendering of dualnumber quantifiers ‘both,’ ‘either,’ ‘neither’ that occur in modern fantasy fiction. The study aims to identify local and global translation strategies and methods of their adequate rendering at the post-translation stage of generalizing the translator’s experience. The research objectives are: 1) to compile a complete register of the lexemes under investigation based on J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its authorized Ukrainian translation produced by V. Morozov.; 2) to determine their semantic and functional characteristics and direct translation equivalents; 3) to identify their semantic roles and syntactic functions in the source text; 4) to specify the types of grammatical shifts and methods of their rendering into Ukrainian; 5) to identify and analyze the translation strategies applied by the translator to reach equivalence and adequacy of translation. The research material comprises 96 dual-number quantifiers used in the original text and their translations in the corresponding Ukrainian text fragments. In the course of the study, the following methods were employed: 1) entire sampling to compile a register of the lexemes and accomplish the source and target text levelling; 2) dictionary entries’ analysis to establish the lexical-semantic and functional properties of the quantifiers and their direct Ukrainian translation equivalents; 3) contextual analysis and immediate constituents’ analysis to identify their semantic roles and syntactic functions in the source text; 4) comparative-contrastive translation transformational analysis to specify the translation methods and types of grammatical shifts applied in their rendering; 5) to identify and analyze the translation strategies implemented by the translator; 6) quantity calculations to determine the frequencies of the analyzed phenomena. As a result, based on dictionary entries’ analysis, the main functional-semantic classes of the quantifiers have been found to be the determiner, pronoun, conjunction and pronominal adverb. By means of immediate constituents’ and contextual analysis, 17 pure and blended semantic roles of the lexemes’ referents in ‘state of affairs’ situations have been identified, the most frequent being the agent (36.4%), locative (14.6%) and experiencer (11.4%). By way of sentence parsing, 19 combinations of the semantic roles and syntactic functions have been established, the most frequent one being the agent subject (37.5%), the others showing frequencies around 10%. With the aid of translation transformational analysis, the most common methods of rendering the dual-number quantifiers into Ukrainian have been found to be omission (62.5%), equivalent (literal) translation (21.9%) and lexical substitution (15.6%). Correspondingly, the main translation strategies, including ST-oriented and TToriented ones, have been proved to be 1) communicative translation (68.8%) by omission with emphasis decrease, related and unrelated-word paraphrase, clause/sentence structure change and explicitness decrease, and by equivalent with emphasis change and clause/sentence structure change and/or addition; 2) literal translation (15.6%) including direct translation (4.2%) by pure equivalent and oblique translation (11.4%) by blended equivalent. i.e. with emphasis change and/or clause/sentence change; 3) semantic translation (15.6%) involving synonymy, emphasis change, phrase structure change, modulation, clause/ sentence structure change and explicitness decrease, 4) domestication (100%) incorporated in the above three strategies, all applied to ensure equivalence and adequacy of the translation.

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.

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

Introduction: The Interactive Relations Between Science and Technology and Literary Studies

This study investigated the ability of a 25-item open-set CVCV Nonsense Syllable Test (NST; Edgerton & Danhauer, 1979) to assess English, Spanish, and bilingual native speakers' speech sound discrimination skills (i.e., both the subjects and the NST were evaluated). The NST was presented at five sensation levels (SLs) between 25 and 65 dB to 29 normally hearing individuals from three native language backgrounds: monolingual English speakers, bilingual Spanish-English speakers having equal experience in each language, and Spanish speakers having little exposure to English. Articulation functions were plotted for each group and compared across SLs, groups, and scoring methods. Results indicated that the phoneme scoring method best described the responses, and all groups' scores improved with increases in SL until they reached a plateau at 45 dB SL. The bilingual group performed similarly to the English speakers; but, as expected, the Spanish group scored significantly poorer than the other two groups. Thus, while the NST may not be highly useful for Spanish speakers, it can help describe the speech sound discrimination abilities of bilingual (Spanish-English) speakers.

This study examines translation strategies and the impact of translation strategies on translated texts produced by master's students of the English program at the campus of UNDIKMA Mataram. This study used a qualitative approach that included recording methods, specifically internal data recording. The data collected were 10 products translated from English to Indonesian by the requester. The English translation includes 390 words. They are allowed to use traditional or offline/electronic dictionaries when translating text. The study used several translation strategies, which are translation methods (literal translation and oblique translation) and translation processes (borrowing, calque translation, literal translation, modulation, transposition, equivalence, and translation). Transform). The results show that master's students tend to use local strategies and literal translation methods in translation. This affects the quality of the translation, making it less natural in the target language. In addition, translation errors also occur due to wrong/incorrect word selection, leading to failure to convey the message in the text source. The result of this research expected will bring valuable contributions to future research and courses serving translation activities.

This thesis is an introduction of "translation strategies", "translation methods" and "translation skills". the author mainly comes up with some features on translation. Due to the fact that translation is a form of language, in which some language information is transformed into another one. In other words, translation is the communicative behavior of converting information. It is a basic communication tool for cross-cultural and cross-national communication. At the same time, it is also a comprehensive language activity integrating sight, listening, speaking, writing and reading. In addition to excellent bilingual ability and "miscellaneous" knowledge, translators should also have the ability to process verbal and non-verbal information in a fixed time, the ability to understand, shorthand or memorize. Of course, it is also very important to master certain techniques. Hence, to grasp and distinguish "translation strategies", "translation methods" and "translation Skills" will contribute to translaters' ability to translate some form of language. This thesis will be supposed to serve translators and make them get a clearer understanding of "translation strategies", "translation methods" and "translation Skills". And further more, translators are able to make use of "translation Skills" under the direction of "translation strategies".

The article is dedicated to translation methods and strategies in English-Ukrainian rendering of indefinite pronominal adverbs of place somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere & wherever in fantasy fiction at the post-translation stage of generalizing the translator’s experience. A complete register of 35 adverbs under study (100%) was compiled by entire sampling from text fragments of the novel “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling and its authorized Ukrainian version translated by V. Morozov. Based on monolingual & bilingual dictionary entries’ analysis, functional-semantic properties and standard translation equivalents of the lexemes were determined. By means of contextual and immediate constituents’ analyses, including sentence parsing procedure, their semantic roles and syntactic functions in the source text were identified. With the aid of translation transformation analysis, a number of grammatical shifts, translation methods and local strategies implemented to reach equivalence and adequacy in rendering the analysed language units into Ukrainian were specified, as well as relevant types of translation were defined. As a result of the investigation, the lexemes under analysis have been found pertaining to three functional-semantic classes, including pronominal adverb (77.1%), pronoun (20%) and conjunction (2.9%). Four semantic roles of the lexemes’ referents in ‘state of affairs’ situations of fictional discourse have been identified, namely: location (42.9%), direction (28.6%), destination (11.4%) and source (17.1%), corresponding to such semantic cases as locative (42.9%), allative (40%), and ablative (17.1%). In the source text, the lexemes have been registered in the syntactic functions of adverbial modifier of place (85.7%), manner (11.4%) and attendant circumstances (2.9%). The translation methods of rendering the relevant units into Ukrainian have been found to be direct and oblique literal translation by equivalent (37.1%), lexical substitution (34.3%) and omission (28.6%). Correspondingly, the principal translation strategies have been proved to be: 1) semantic strategies, comprising related and unrelated word paraphrase (28.6%), emphasis change (5.7%) and synonymy (2.9%); 2) syntactic strategies, including phrase, clause & sentence structure changes (48.6%), literal translation (37.1%) and modulation (17.1%); and 3) pragmatic strategy of explicitness change (11.4%), the most frequent ones being phrase structure change, oblique literal translation and paraphrase. It has been proved that equivalence and adequacy of translation is attained via combination of source text oriented (60%) and target text oriented strategies (40%), in particular the source text oriented literal and semantic translation (37.1% and 22.9% respectively), and the target reader oriented communicative translation (40% of cases).

The aim of the article is to develop a methodology for translation analysis of specialized texts for application in the training of future translators. To achieve this objective, the author addresses several key tasks: establishes parameters for analyzing both source and target texts; defines the scope of the study; selects a representative English-language source text in the field of patents; analyzes it according to the established parameters; formulates a hypothesis about the translation strategies most likely to be used for this source text; analyzes the Ukrainian translation text to determine the translation methods used; and concludes whether the initial assumption based on the source text analysis is validated. The study employs linguistic analysis for the source text and translatological analysis for the target text. The material used is a 526-word fragment from a U.S. patent, specifically a brief description of an invention, within the specialized (technical) field that forms part of the training content for future translators. Following the study, the author draws conclusions that support the hypothesis made during the pre-translation analysis and provide additional refinements. At the syntactic level, the analysis reveals that the translation typically follows the structure of the source text in sentences with simpler constructs, while complex sentences main, subordinate, or coordinate clauses can maintain their structure, other segments necessitate transformations. The dealing with very long sentences, they often need toтранслатологічний сфери, яка входить до змісту навчання майбутніх перекладачів. За результатами дослідження, сформульовано його висновки, відповідно до яких проведений аналіз тексту перекладу загалом підтвердивm ost common transformation is the replacement of passive voice clauses with active voice. When be divided into shorter, more manageable units, leading to further structural changes. The article concludes that the proposed methodology for translation analysis of specialized source and target texts shows promise for use in training future translators. It can help develop the theoretical component of students' translation competence, as well as provide insights into many significant concepts in translation studies and mastery of translation analysis methodologies. However, the author notes that this assumption requires further verification, suggesting that additional research is needed to confirm the proposed methodology's effectiveness.

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.

Functionalism in translation studies

Introduction: Cross-Cultural Reading

Translation is a frequently misunderstood process. Monolingual readers tend to believe that the literary translation they are reading offers a transparent reproduction of the meaning, style and effects of the original. However, those of us who are translators know that this is not so. This thesis highlights the agency of the translator, showing how different translation strategies colour the readers’ reception of the work, creating remarkably different impressions. I take up the case of Japanese-English literary translation and focus on the translation of metaphor, since metaphor is a key literary device and its translation poses particular challenges – including the need to switch between different cultural, conceptual and linguistic frames of reference. Research into metaphor translation strategies has only a short history and focuses mainly on European languages. The much larger linguistic and cultural divide between Japanese and English may require a different mix of strategies to effectively convey the author’s style and imagery. Through a comparative evaluation of the strategies adopted by translators in multiple translations of two well-known short stories: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s 刺青 (“Shisei”) and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s 羅生門 (“Rashōmon”), I explore the effectiveness of a range of strategies for translating metaphorical expressions. I show that in many cases, domesticating strategies are adopted by translators, such as replacing the source language metaphor with a target language metaphor of a similar sense; paraphrasing by removing the metaphor and translating only its sense; replacing a metaphor with a simile; or deleting the expression altogether. However, although the resulting translation may be smooth and readable, such strategies frequently soften the emotive force of the metaphorical expressions. I argue that the most successful approaches are those that recreate the effect of the original metaphor, often by using more foreignizing strategies that retain the Japanese imagery. My case studies also highlight the need for translators to decipher the intratextual and intertextual network of metaphors and attempt to maintain these sub-texts in their translation. This demonstrates the importance of interpretation in literary translation. I then use the insights gained from these case studies, including the importance of analysing the effect of metaphor and its communicative function in the context of the text as a whole, to develop an optimal translation approach. I apply this approach to the translation of two chapters from a contemporary Japanese novel (容疑者の夜行列車; Yōgisha no Yakōressha by Tawada Yōko to illustrate its potential. My overall conclusions are that the interpretive process requires an in-depth reading and analysis of the source text. This is necessary in order to determine the functions and effects of metaphorical expressions and prioritise those which should be retained. Translation strategies for each source text metaphor should be sensitive to the category of metaphor, its novelty, conceptual basis and cultural connotations. The translation strategy best able to recreate the most important effects should be adopted. This requires the translator to be flexible and willing to make use of compensatory strategies where necessary. Above all, the translator needs to exercise creativity to explore the target language possibilities, formulate innovative solutions and resist the easy option of domestication. To use a metaphor, the translator should be a traveller – crossing from one textual landscape to another and exploring the linguistic opportunities that would enable the effects of the original to be experienced in a new environment.

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.

Translation has been a major bone of contention in comparative literature studies. For the longest time it was looked down upon by bona fide comparatists, who insisted on studying literary works in the original. World literature scholars, on the contrary, have from the beginning acknowledged that, given the multiplicity of the world’s languages and their literatures, it was inevitable that one resort to translation to access all but a handful of literatures. The final decades of the 20th century saw the rise of translation studies. Adopting insights and methods from descriptive translation studies might help bridge any putative gap between comparative and world literature studies, also when it comes to transcultural studies.