Catalan Translation Research Articles

The Translation of Joyce's Letters into Catalan

ABSTRACT: This essay focuses on the Catalan translation of a selection of James Joyce's letters, Cartes antologia . The essay discusses the main translation problems the translator encountered and the strategies and methods deployed to solve them. The difficulties analyzed center around the translation of 1) quotations from Joyce's own works, including those of works in the pre-publication stages of writing; 2) literary allusions to Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses; 3) the combination of high and low registers; 4) wordplay; 5) idioms; and 6) metaphorical language. Natural, idiomatic language was required when translating idioms and metaphorical language. A sense of rhythm and poeticality was indispensable when translating the coalescence of high and low registers. Being able to create alliterations and near-homophones was of vital importance to convey wordplay. Familiarity with Joyce's works, especially Ulysses and its Catalan translation, was essential to translate urtexts. And, finally, a sound knowledge of the Catalan literary tradition, especially regarding the translations of the Odyssey , proved useful when translating literary allusions. In all, translating Joyce's letters is regarded as an act of literary translation, a creative process that demanded the ability to fashion a fresh, vibrant new text that had to live up to the original.

Traduir a l’edat mitjana: el repte d’editar la Legenda aurea de Jacobus de Voragine en català

The Catalan translation of the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine has been considered by Meyer and by Corominesas a version very close to its Latin model. However, a review of the preserved manuscripts allows us to note remarkabledifferences from the Latin model as well as among the Catalan manuscripts. In this work we take as a basis the manuscriptE (ms. N-III-5, Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial) to analyse structural, editorialand textual changes in the Catalan compilation: structural changes, such as those related to the arrangement of chapters;editorial changes, such as the deletion of extensive fragments in some chapters or the replacement of the version of achapter with another one other than that by Voragine; and textual changes, such as the variants that characterize the twobranches into which the translation evolves. These changes allow us to characterize the formation and the evolution of thiscompilation. We take as a point of reference manuscript E, representative of one of the two branches of the translation,in contrast with P (ms. Espagnol 44, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France), representative of the other. In E thereare important internal differences in the wording of each chapter and differences with respect to the other preservedmanuscripts. In some chapters, the wording of E is very different from that of P, with a less literal version of the Latin text,a wording that will serve as a model for the later print tradition. Editing this compilation based on manuscript E involvestaking into account the rest of the preserved manuscript evidence, as well as the Latin text, in addition to considering thechapters added in this manuscript.

The Gravitational Pull Hypothesis and imperfective/perfective aspect in Catalan translation

Abstract This article aims to test the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis on the imperfective/perfective aspect distinction in the language pairs English-Catalan and French-Catalan. It draws on the corresponding corpora in COVALT. The GPH posits three cognitive causes of translational effects: source or target language salience and connectivity. Different configurations of these causes, or factors, are expected to result in over- or under-representation of target language features. The imperfective/perfective aspect distinction was chosen as a testing ground for the GPH because it is morphologically marked in Catalan and French but not in English. That may give rise to different configurations of factors and, therefore, to different translational effects. It is predicted that the preterite, which conveys perfective aspect in Catalan, will be over-represented in Catalan translations from English as compared to translations from French and to Catalan non-translations. On the other hand, the imperfect, which conveys imperfective aspect, will be under-represented. Results confirm these predictions. For translations from French, both adherence to the patterns observed in Catalan non-translations and over-representation of the preterite are possible outcomes. Results lend support to the second alternative ― over-representation of the preterite. These results highlight the importance of relying on frequency and other sources of evidence when formulating hypotheses in the framework of the GPH. Research from the field of second language acquisition proved particularly significant in this respect.

"El conte de n'Isop" (ATU 785A + ATU 921B)

Summary: In this article I publish, analyze and comment on two Majorcan versions of «Aesop’s Tale», reported in 2016 and recorded in 2018 in the Majorcan town of Pina. The folktale consists of five episodes: three of them are taken from anonymous Aesop’s Life, presumably from one of the various Catalan translations of which there is evidence, and the other two come from other oral folktales (ATU 875 and ATU 785A). This Majorcan folktale is the third documentation of the ATU 785A type and the first of the ATU 921B (1) type in Catalan-speaking territories. Keywords: literature, Aesop’s Life, oral literature, folktale, tale type.

Literatura i promoció social: lectura i creació literàries entre els menestrals catalans medievals

This article aims to prove the active role played by artisans as consumers (readers, owners, copyists) of literature besides elite and court circles, and links it to the strategies of social promotion launched by that dynamic social group. The analysis is based on two types of sources: on the one hand, on an extensive sample of the presence of literary works in the libraries of the medieval Catalan lower middle classes, derived from the main documentary collections on history of the books produced to date; and, on the other hand, on some literary codices copied by individuals belonging to that social sphere, which have been re-examined. In addition, some individuals are identified regarding the transmission of some works of Francesc Eiximenis ( Llibre de les dones and Llibre dels àngels ) and the Catalan translation of La Queste del saint Graal , as well as regarding the origin of Jaume Conesa’s translation of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troie .

Semiotic alteration in translation. Othering, stereotyping and hybridization in contemporary translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan

It is already widely recognized that ‘foreignization’ is a cover word which stands for many different processes of cultural translation, from a problematic literalism which tends to exoticism, to a welcome but rarely achieved ‘othering’ understood as an ethical act of respect for the other ’s specificity. Seen from a pragmatic perspective, what still needs to be assessed are the reasons behind a hypothetic threshold of acceptability and the extent of the unstable and risky space where source culture expectations are challenged as a result of the translator ’s management of socio-cultural biases. Starting from the assumption that cultural translation implies a metonymical move by which key textual elements stand as symbols representing the foreign culture, the proposed article will present a scheme of the pragmatic and semiotic processes at work in translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan. A review of recent Spanish translations of contemporary Arabic fiction and the muchacclaimed Catalan translation of the Qur ’an will try to show that instances of hybridization and ambivalent readings occur foremost when semiotic categories are altered as a result of the familiarization of unexpected cultural referents. However, semiotic alteration only happens in the narrow margin allowed by the threshold of acceptability, which is the site of ambivalence.

Semiotic alteration in translation. Othering, stereotyping and hybridization in contemporary translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan

It is already widely recognized that ‘foreignization’ is a cover word which stands for many different processes of cultural translation, from a problematic literalism which tends to exoticism, to a welcome but rarely achieved ‘othering’ understood as an ethical act of respect for the other ’s specificity. Seen from a pragmatic perspective, what still needs to be assessed are the reasons behind a hypothetic threshold of acceptability and the extent of the unstable and risky space where source culture expectations are challenged as a result of the translator ’s management of socio-cultural biases. Starting from the assumption that cultural translation implies a metonymical move by which key textual elements stand as symbols representing the foreign culture, the proposed article will present a scheme of the pragmatic and semiotic processes at work in translations from Arabic into Spanish and Catalan. A review of recent Spanish translations of contemporary Arabic fiction and the muchacclaimed Catalan translation of the Qur ’an will try to show that instances of hybridization and ambivalent readings occur foremost when semiotic categories are altered as a result of the familiarization of unexpected cultural referents. However, semiotic alteration only happens in the narrow margin allowed by the threshold of acceptability, which is the site of ambivalence.

La recepció del teatre espanyol a Catalunya. Un cas d’estudi: El último mono (1926) de Carlos Arniches i la seva adaptació catalana (L’adroguer del carrer Nou, 1929)

Study of the reception of Carlos Arniches’ play El último mono in Catalonia, through the analysis of its Catalan translation. Starting from the identification of the characteristic features of the author’s theatre, as presented in the work under examination, the strategy of transposition into the resulting hypertext will be defined, according to the different types of treatment (preservation, adaptation, replacement, elimination, etc.) of the key elements, both in terms of content as well as of language and style.

Repetition and variation in the Catalan translation of Virginia Woolf's The years: a corpus-based approach

ABSTRACT The present study is a corpus-based contrastive analysis of the use of repetitive patterns in Virginia Woolf's novel The Years (1937) and its Catalan translation (1988) by Maria-Antònia Oliver. For our study, we build a parallel corpus in which both the source text and the translation are aligned, and then focus on three kinds of repetition: (a) The question Where am I?; (b) the phrase hum in time to + N, and (c) the construction ‘verb indicating stillness (sit, stay …) + for a moment + verb of perception.' All these patterns are stylistic devices that Woolf uses for the representation of time in its diverse and overlapping manifestations: as an external measurable dimension and as an internal continuous stream. The use of a parallel corpus allows us to study how all occurrences of these repetitions have been translated into Catalan and to identify the semantic prosody surrounding the three expressions in both English and Catalan. Finally, our corpus-based approach provides evidence for a description of Oliver's translation method, which we define as intentionally literal, though mindful of the numerous stylistic and lyrical effects that can characterize Woolf's prose.

Traces of Late Medieval Jewish Scotism: A Catalan Translation in Hebrew Script of De distinctione predicamentorum by Petrus Thomae

Abstract Jewish-Christian intellectual relations in late medieval Spain are discussed in light of a curious fragment in Hebrew script from the Vatican Library. The fragment contains an unknown translation from Latin to Catalan (in Hebrew characters) of the work of the Catalan Franciscan monk Petrus Thomae, De distinctione predicamentorum. This translation is also compared with Thomae’s Tractatus brevis de modis distinctionum as it demonstrates an intermediate version between these two works by Petrus Thomae, though it resembles the first more closely. These traces invite a discussion on the existence of “Jewish Scotism” among the Jews of Catalonia, and after the expulsion, among their descendants, who probably made their way to Italy. The text is among the latest evidence of the use of Catalan in Hebrew characters on the cusp of the sixteenth century.

Transmission of COVID-19 in 282 clusters in Catalonia, Spain: a cohort study

BackgroundScarce data are available on what variables affect the risk of transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the development of symptomatic COVID-19, and, particularly, the relationship with viral load. We aimed to analyse data from linked index cases of COVID-19 and their contacts to explore factors associated with transmission of SARS-CoV-2.MethodsIn this cohort study, patients were recruited as part of a randomised controlled trial done between March 17 and April 28, 2020, that aimed to assess if hydroxychloroquine reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Patients with COVID-19 and their contacts were identified by use of the electronic registry of the Epidemiological Surveillance Emergency Service of Catalonia (Spain). Patients with COVID-19 included in our analysis were aged 18 years or older, not hospitalised, had quantitative PCR results available at baseline, had mild symptom onset within 5 days before enrolment, and had no reported symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infections in their accommodation or workplace within the 14 days before enrolment. Contacts included were adults with a recent history of exposure and absence of COVID-19-like symptoms within the 7 days preceding enrolment. Viral load of contacts, measured by quantitative PCR from a nasopharyngeal swab, was assessed at enrolment, at day 14, and whenever the participant reported COVID-19-like symptoms. We assessed risk of transmission and developing symptomatic disease and incubation dynamics using regression analysis. We assessed the relationship of viral load and characteristics of cases (age, sex, number of days from reported symptom onset, and presence or absence of fever, cough, dyspnoea, rhinitis, and anosmia) and associations between risk of transmission and characteristics of the index case and contacts.FindingsWe identified 314 patients with COVID-19, with 282 (90%) having at least one contact (753 contacts in total), resulting in 282 clusters. 90 (32%) of 282 clusters had at least one transmission event. The secondary attack rate was 17% (125 of 753 contacts), with a variation from 12% when the index case had a viral load lower than 1 × 106 copies per mL to 24% when the index case had a viral load of 1 × 1010 copies per mL or higher (adjusted odds ratio per log10 increase in viral load 1·3, 95% CI 1·1–1·5). Increased risk of transmission was also associated with household contact (3·0, 1·59–5·65) and age of the contact (per year: 1·02, 1·01–1·04). 449 contacts had a positive PCR result at baseline. 28 (6%) of 449 contacts had symptoms at the first visit. Of 421 contacts who were asymptomatic at the first visit, 181 (43%) developed symptomatic COVID-19, with a variation from approximately 38% in contacts with an initial viral load lower than 1 × 107 copies per mL to greater than 66% for those with an initial viral load of 1 × 1010 copies per mL or higher (hazard ratio per log10 increase in viral load 1·12, 95% CI 1·05–1·20; p=0·0006). Time to onset of symptomatic disease decreased from a median of 7 days (IQR 5–10) for individuals with an initial viral load lower than 1 × 107 copies per mL to 6 days (4–8) for those with an initial viral load between 1 × 107 and 1 × 109 copies per mL, and 5 days (3–8) for those with an initial viral load higher than 1 × 109 copies per mL.InterpretationIn our study, the viral load of index cases was a leading driver of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The risk of symptomatic COVID-19 was strongly associated with the viral load of contacts at baseline and shortened the incubation time of COVID-19 in a dose-dependent manner.FundingYoMeCorono, Generalitat de Catalunya.TranslationsFor the Catalan translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

«La nina y el peix». Traducció indirecta d’una cançó popular eslava

The present article is a research on the Catalan translation of a Slavic lyric folk song. The translation has been published in the magazine L'Aureneta in 1896, the author of the translation being Josep Carner using one of his pseudonyms.                As a starting point we use the variation of the song “Riba i djevojka” form the Serbian Folk Song Book (1815) compiled by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. In the article we try to reconstruct and contextualise the path that the song has taken to get to Catalonia. Next, we establish the source that served as the basis for the Catalan translation. In order to reconstruct Carner's work in translating and recreating the verses of the folk song, we analyse the changes in vocabulary, style, and meter that appear in Carner's version with respect to the original and the intermediate translation.                The translation of the young Carner is the only Catalan translation of this folk song known to date, and is likely the only example of Balkan folk poetry that has ever been translated into Catalan.

The effect of attitude towards Catalonia’s independence on response latency when translating ideologically conflicting press headlines

The present paper explores the role of political ideology in translation by focusing on the influence that the affective charge of sociopolitical concepts may have on the translation process of 51 Catalan translation students in the specific context of Catalonia’s independence crisis. The study tests whether the students’ political position in the independence conflict in Catalonia influences the time they use to understand newspaper headlines on the independence crisis and choose a suitable translation. Participants’ reaction times are assumed to be influenced by the relevance of expressions whose ideological content matches or not participants’ position in the conflict. Results from the study report no significant interaction for the congruency between participants’ ideology and the content of source text or translation options. But even if no statistical significance is reported, the tendency observed in the data reveals that the influence of affectively congruent or incongruent content on response time may be different for ST understanding as compared with making a final decision on the translation equivalent. In our study, ideologically congruent stimuli slowed reaction time down during ST comprehension, but speeded it up when making a final decision to select a suitable equivalent.

Bible Translation by Jews and Christians in Medieval Catalan-Speaking Territories

Abstract Despite bans on the reading or possession of Bibles in the vernacular, numerous medieval Catalan translations of the Bible survive, in particular a complete Bible from the fourteenth century, some ten psalters, and a fifteenth-century version of the four Gospels. Moreover, Catalan was the second Romance language in which a full Bible was printed (1478), following the Tuscan Bible of 1471. Most of these translations were commissioned by Christians for the use of Christians. In some cases, however, it is clear that the translators were converted Jews. In some others, the translations appear to have been written by Jews for Jewish readers. We also find one case in which Catalan was the source rather than the target language: the first extant translation of the four Gospels into Hebrew (late fifteenth century) was undertaken, probably by a Jew, using the aforementioned fourteenth-century Catalan Bible.

Los efectos de la censura franquista sobre la traducción catalana de narrativa en los años sesenta: una perspectiva panorámica

Este artículo se basa en los resultados obtenidos del análisis de los expedientes de censura de las novelas traducidas al catalán, publicadas a lo largo de los años sesenta, en el marco de la tesis doctoral «La censura franquista i la traducció catalana de narrativa als anys seixanta». Tras seleccionar las obras traducidas a lo largo de la década, hemos construido un corpus que nos ha permitido investigar de forma exhaustiva las repercusiones de la censura sobre la traducción catalana durante ese periodo. Mediante el examen de los informes conservados en el Archivo General de la Administración (AGA) y la lectura comparativa de los originales —o galeradas— y las versiones definitivas correspondientes, hemos reunido un conjunto de datos con el que pretendemos demostrar dicho control.

Translations and original

Abstract In 1989 and 1990, Kitty van Leuven-Zwart published two articles on the similarities and dissimilarities between a translation and its original. My research is based on a classification model which derives primarily from Van Leuven-Zwart’s comparative method, although I also work with concepts from other authors. The major difference to Van Leuven-Zwart’s research is that the main aim of the model I propose is not to indicate the differences between a translation and the original, but to detect whether previous translations have had any influence upon the studied translation. The goal of this article is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the shift approach to find out the relationship between different translations. I explain and illustrate the classification model by comparing the Catalan translation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth by Josep M. de Sagarra (1959) with previous French, Spanish and Catalan translations in order to ascertain whether these texts had any influence upon Sagarra’s translation.

Datación de la lengua del lybro de Magyka (MS. 5-2-32, Biblioteca Colombina, Sevilla)

El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar la fecha aproximada de la producción del texto del manuscrito Lybro de magyka, la tercera parte de una obra sobre astrología, en espanõl, comprada por Hernando Colón en 1527, que se conserva hoy en la Biblioteca Colombina, Sevilla, bajo la inscripción Ms. 5-2-32. Nuestra hipótesis es que el texto fue escrito entre los siglos XIII y XVI. Por lo tanto, la base teórica está constituida por gramáticas históricas de la lengua española que traen las siguientes características representativas del español medieval que nos permitieran elaborar criterios para el análisis que comprobarían o no la hipótesis inicial: 1) la formación de adverbios con el sufijo -mientre; 2) los masculinos hechos en -a que adoptan concordancia femenina; 3) la aspiración de la f- inicial; 4) el cambio de la copulativa et para y; 4) el adverbio suso. Los resultados permiten observar que la lengua del manuscrito fecha probablemente de finales del siglo XIV o del siglo XV, lo que se encuentra de acuerdo con las hipótesis de autoría propuestas por los trabajos acerca del Lybro de magyka hasta el momento. Así, el presente estudio contribuye para la reconstrucción de la historia del códice y para los estudios acerca de la lengua española. The objective of this work is to identify the approximate date of the production of the text of the manuscript Lybro de magyka, the third part of a work on astrology, in Spanish, purchased by Hernando Colón in 1527, which is preserved today in the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain, under the registration Ms. 5-2-32. Our hypothesis is that the text was written between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and is a copy of a Catalan translation. Therefore, the theoretical basis is constituted by works of internal and external history of the Spanish language that bring representative characteristics of the medieval Spanish. The characteristics below allow to elaborate criteria for the analysis that would verify or not the initial hypothesis: 1) the formation of adverbs with the suffix -mientre ; 2) the masculine ones made in -a that adopt feminine concordance; 3) the change of the copulative et to y; The results show that the language of the manuscript probably dates from the fifteenth century, which is in accordance with the hypotheses of authorship proposed by the works on the Lybro de Magyka so far. Thus, the present study contributes to the reconstruction of the history of the codex and to the studies about the Spanish language.

Traducción y adaptación transcultural al español, catalán y gallego de la escala Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 para la detección de depresión en Atención Primaria

AimTo describe the translation and cross-cultural adaptation process of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) scale into Spanish, Catalan and Galician. DesignTranslation, cross-cultural adaption and comprehensibility analysis through cognitive debriefing. LocationResearch Units of Primary Care in Barcelona and Vigo. ParticipantsFamily doctors and Primary Care patients. Main measurementsFollowing the guidelines of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR): 1) Direct translation. 2) Pilot study based on Delphi methodology with family doctors. 3) Back-translation. 4) Equivalence analysis. 5) Comprehension analysis of versions obtained in Spanish, Catalan and Galician through cognitive debriefing in a sample of patients. 6) Transcultural harmonization. Results73 family doctors participated in the Delphi study. The consensus was established in the first round for the Spanish and Catalan translations, and in the second round for the Galician. The back-translations were similar in all 3languages. All versions were equivalent between them and compared to the original English version. In the cognitive interview, 10 patients participated for each language, without modifying the writing of the items. ConclusionsThe translations of the HSCL-25 scale in Spanish, Catalan and Galician are semantically and conceptually equivalent to the original version. Translations are understandable and well accepted by patients.

Traducción y edición catalanas en la postguerra

La traducción catalana moderna se desarrolló en el paso de los siglos xix al xx. La tendencia al alza se mantuvo intacta hasta 1939. La dictadura franquista intentó destruir esta tradición. Aun así, por distintas vías, la traducción sobrevivió y algunos traductores, de la mano de algunos editores, prescribieron lo que consideraban que había que importar de la literatura extranjera.

Ripensare la lingua del Flos sanctorum catalano

Abstract The article represents an attempt to reconsider the exceptional linguistic status of the manuscript Esp. 44 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, containing the Old Catalan translation of Jacopo da Varazze’s Legenda aurea. First studied by Joan Coromines, its language appeared remarkably conservative and vernacular to the great philologist, however now, more than a half-century after his judgment, the comparison with other products of what has been defined the earliest Catalan scripta leads to relativize linguistic traits of the Parisian manuscript. In particular, it is shown that the manuscript 713 in the library of the University of Barcelona is also distinguished by its linguistic features, and yet it is studied here for the first time.