Translation Exam Notes PDF

Here's a concise summary of the main points for your exam preparation: **Polysystem Theory (Itamar Even-Zohar)** - **Concept:** Literature, including translated works, operates within a larger system of social, cultural, and historical contexts, termed the \"polysystem.\" This dynamic hi...

Here's a concise summary of the main points for your exam preparation: **Polysystem Theory (Itamar Even-Zohar)** - **Concept:** Literature, including translated works, operates within a larger system of social, cultural, and historical contexts, termed the \"polysystem.\" This dynamic hierarchy is in flux, with translated literature occupying primary or secondary positions. - **Primary Position:** - Associated with innovation and shaping the literary center. - Examples: Young literatures adopting external models (e.g., Finnish literature) or at critical literary turning points (e.g., Freud\'s translations). - **Secondary Position:** - Reflects a peripheral, conservative role, conforming to target culture norms. - **Advantages:** Integrates literature with sociocultural forces and moves beyond isolated text analysis. - **Criticism:** Overgeneralization and reliance on outdated models. **Descriptive Translation Studies (Gideon Toury)** - **Focus:** Translations as cultural and literary products shaped by norms and sociocultural contexts. - **Methodology:** 1. Analyze the target culture system. 2. Textual analysis (ST-TT segment comparisons). 3. Generalize patterns for replication across texts. - **Translation Norms:** 1. **Initial Norm:** Decision to prioritize source or target culture norms. 2. **Preliminary Norms:** Translation policy and directness. 3. **Operational Norms:** Presentation and linguistic adjustments (e.g., omissions, additions). - **Laws:** 4. **Law of Growing Standardization:** Simplifies ST relations to align with TL norms. 5. **Law of Interference:** ST patterns influence TT, positively or negatively. **Chesterman's Translation Norms** - **Product/Expectancy Norms:** - Readers' expectations guide translation evaluation. - Influenced by cultural and economic factors. - **Professional Norms:** - **Accountability Norm:** Ethical responsibility. - **Communication Norm:** Ensuring clarity. - **Relation Norm:** Appropriate ST-TT relations based on context and audience needs. Use these points to outline your answers, focusing on key concepts and examples for clarity! Here's a concise summary of the main points for your exam preparation: **Hallidayan Model of Discourse (Systemic Functional Linguistics - SFL)** - **Key Idea:** Language choices reflect sociocultural functions. - **Framework:** - **Sociocultural Environment:** Governs genre, conventions, and context (e.g., political, historical factors). - **Register:** Links social context to language via: 1. **Field:** Subject matter. 2. **Tenor:** Relationship between participants. 3. **Mode:** Medium of communication. - **Metafunctions:** 4. **Ideational:** World representation. 5. **Interpersonal:** Social relationships. 6. **Textual:** Coherence and cohesion. **House's Model for Translation Quality Assessment** - **Core Concepts:** - Focuses on ST-TT Register analysis. - Examines **Field, Tenor, Mode** for mismatches. - **Process:** - Analyze ST Register and genre. - Compare TT Register and genre. - Identify errors (e.g., denotative, dimensional). - Evaluate translation quality as **Overt** (tied to ST culture) or **Covert** (adapts fully to TT culture). - **Cultural Filter:** Adjusts cultural elements in covert translations to mimic TT norms. **Baker's Analysis (Textual and Pragmatic Levels)** - **Focus Areas:** - Textual features like **thematic structure** and **cohesion.** - Pragmatic elements: **Coherence, presupposition, implicature.** - **Key Points:** - Adjust thematic patterns for genre conventions (e.g., nominalization in abstracts). - Handle cohesion shifts carefully to maintain meaning. - Address cultural differences in implicature and presuppositions to align communication. **Hatim and Mason: Context and Discourse** - **Emphasis on:** Ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions in translation. - **Key Analyses:** - Examines shifts in **transitivity** (e.g., active/passive roles) and **modality** (certainty/possibility) that alter meaning. - Highlights sociocultural and power dynamics in discourse. Use these structured points to prepare clear and comprehensive exam answers. Here's a concise summary of the main points for your exam preparation: **The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies (Bassnett & Lefevere)** 1. **Translation and Culture:** - Focus on how translation interacts with culture, history, and ideology. - Shift from linguistic analysis to broader cultural and political contexts, termed the **\"cultural turn\"**. 2. **Translation as Rewriting (André Lefevere):** - Translation is a type of rewriting that can reshape how literature is perceived across cultures. - Influences include: - **Professionals within the literary system** (critics, academics, translators). - **Patronage outside the literary system** (politicians, publishers, media, institutions). - Rewriting motivations: - **Ideological:** Aligning with or rebelling against dominant ideologies. - **Poetological:** Conforming to dominant literary styles and norms. 3. **Patronage:** - Involves ideological, economic, and status components. - Undifferentiated patronage occurs when one entity controls all three components (e.g., totalitarian regimes). - Differentiated patronage allows for independent control of components. 4. **Key Concepts:** - **Dominant Poetics:** Genres, symbols, and the role of literature in society. - **Classic Status:** Determined by inclusion in educational systems and anthologies, reflecting the system\'s conservative bias. 5. **Ideology and Poetics in Translation:** - Ideological and poetological considerations often override linguistic factors in translation decisions. **Translation and Gender (Sherry Simon):** 1. **Critique of Traditional Translation Studies:** - Translation is often seen as derivative, similar to the repression of women in literature and society. - Feminist translation theory aims to challenge these assumptions by re-evaluating fidelity to the **writing project** instead of the author or reader. 2. **Feminist Translation Practices:** - Emphasizes manipulation and active participation by the translator (e.g., Barbara Godard). - Highlights the role of women translators in shaping literature. **Language, Identity, and Translation:** 1. **Queer Translation (Keith Harvey):** - Focus on **camp talk** and its translation between English and French. - Examines cultural identity markers (e.g., slang, accents, and register) in LGBTQ+ discourse. - Findings: - Markers of gay identity often disappear or become pejorative in translations. - Reflects differences in cultural attitudes toward identity and activism. 2. **Key Takeaways:** - Language reflects and constructs identity. - Cultural and ideological contexts shape translation strategies and outcomes. Use these summarized points to structure your responses and demonstrate a clear understanding of cultural and ideological influences on translation! Here's a concise summary of the main points for your exam preparation: **The Cultural and Political Agenda of Translation (Lawrence Venuti)** 1. **Value-Driven Nature of Translation:** - Translation norms are shaped by sociocultural, ideological, and institutional factors. - Key players influencing translation: - **Governments and institutions** (e.g., censorship, promotion). - **Publishing industry** (publishers, editors, literary agents, reviewers). 2. **Invisibility of the Translator:** - Translators are often invisible due to: - Their production of fluent, idiomatic translations creating an illusion of transparency. - Readers' preference for translations that appear as original works. - This stems from the prevailing notion of translation as a secondary, derivative activity. **Domestication and Foreignization** 1. **Domestication:** - Adapts the foreign text to the target culture. - Prioritizes fluency and minimizes foreignness. - Critiqued for perpetuating ethnocentric values. 2. **Foreignization:** - Highlights the foreignness of the source text. - Employs a non-fluent, resistant style to make the translator visible. - Seen as an ethical intervention to counteract cultural dominance. - Example: Venuti's translation of Italian novelist Iginio Ugo Tarchetti using American slang to foreground foreignizing elements. 3. **Ethical Implications:** - Domestication and foreignization reflect attitudes towards foreign cultures. - Both strategies are inherently partial and influenced by the receiving culture's values. **Investigating Translation Practices** Venuti suggests analyzing translation through: 1. Linguistic comparison of ST and TT to identify strategies. 2. Interviews with translators and publishers about their aims and decisions. 3. Examination of trends in book translations, contracts, and translator visibility. 4. Reviews and mentions of translations, assessing the visibility and evaluation of translators. Use these points to articulate Venuti\'s critique of translation practices, emphasizing cultural, political, and ethical dimensions. Here's a concise summary of **Postcolonial Translation Theory** for your exam preparation: **Core Concepts of Postcolonial Translation Theory** 1. **Cultural Studies and Translation:** - Examines the effects of colonization on power dynamics in translation. - Highlights the crossover of disciplines (e.g., poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and feminism) to explore ideological influences in translation. 2. **Gayatri Spivak's Contribution:** - Critiques western feminism and its use of hegemonic languages (e.g., English) in translating \"Third World\" literature. - Argues that **"translatese"** homogenizes diverse cultural voices, erasing identity. - Calls for translators to deeply understand and respect the source language and cultural context. - Translation is framed as a political act that should resist the dominance of colonial languages. 3. **Tejaswini Niranjana's Critique:** - Translation perpetuates colonial power by rewriting colonized cultures to fit the colonizer's ideological narrative. - Criticizes western translation studies for: - Ignoring power imbalances between languages. - Relying on flawed notions of text, author, and meaning. - Failing to question the colonial legacy embedded in translation practices. **Key Themes and Issues** 1. **Power Relations in Translation:** - Translation is implicated in constructing the colonizer\'s image of the \"other.\" - Colonial practices of codifying and translating native languages served to reinforce domination. 2. **Ambivalence and Hybridity (Homi Bhabha):** - Colonial discourse is sophisticated but can be subverted through cultural hybridity. - Translation exists in an **\"in-between\" space** where cultures interact and challenge colonial authority. - Michaela Wolf emphasizes that translators are not neutral mediators but work within overlapping cultural spaces. 3. **Resistance and Non-Translation (Sathya Rao):** - Advocates for **non-colonial translation**, rejecting assimilation of the original into colonial frameworks. - Calls for radically foreign or \"non-translation\" approaches to preserve cultural difference. **Conclusion:** Postcolonial translation theory underscores translation as a site of power struggle, resistance, and cultural negotiation. It critiques the dominance of colonial languages and highlights the translator\'s responsibility to honor the cultural and ideological nuances of the source text. This framework can be explored through case studies of translation practices, analyzing how they either reinforce or resist power imbalances. Here's a concise summary of **Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion** for your exam preparation: **Hermeneutic Motion** George Steiner\'s model, outlined in *After Babel*, explores translation as a hermeneutic process comprising four interrelated movements. It emphasizes meaning, understanding, and the ethical balance in translation. **The Four Moves of Hermeneutic Motion** 1. **Initiative Trust:** - The translator begins with faith that the source text (ST) contains a coherent, translatable meaning. - Risks: - **Overwhelmed by meaning:** Example---sacred texts with expansive divine messages. - **No discernible meaning:** Examples include nonsense rhymes or inseparable form-meaning structures. 2. **Aggression:** - An invasive process where the translator seizes meaning from the ST, akin to mining or capturing. - Steiner describes this as an appropriation, but it has been critiqued for its violent imagery. - Some texts, like Louise Labé's sonnets translated by Rilke, are so well-translated they are predominantly read in translation. 3. **Incorporation:** - ST meaning is integrated into the target language (TL), potentially displacing or enriching the TL system. - Two effects of incorporation: - **Sacramental Intake:** Enrichment of the target culture (e.g., Luther's German Bible). - **Infection:** Initial acceptance followed by rejection (e.g., French neoclassical literary models rejected by Romanticism). - The process also affects the translator's creativity, enhancing or depleting their energies. 4. **Compensation (Reciprocity):** - Balances the dialectical energy flow between ST and TT. - Even if partially adequate, the TT enriches the ST by: - Highlighting its unique features. - Expanding its cultural reach. - This reciprocity embodies ethical faithfulness, restoring equity between ST and TT. **Key Insights and Implications** 1. **Translation as a Dialectical Process:** - It alters both the ST and TT, impacting cultures, systems, and translators. - Balance and mutual enrichment are crucial. 2. **Ethical and Moral Dimensions:** - The hermeneutic motion emphasizes the translator's responsibility to maintain equity and faithfulness. 3. **Critique of Prior Models:** - Steiner dismisses earlier "triadic models" as sterile and suggests his approach offers a more dynamic, moral framework. **Conclusion:** Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion situates translation as an intellectually and ethically complex act. It emphasizes trust, engagement, and reciprocity between texts, offering a model that balances cultural exchange and creative transformation. **Summary of Contemporary Translation Theories** **Mary Snell-Hornby: Integrated Approach** - **Key Concept:** Combines linguistic, literary, cultural, and specialized subject studies in translation. - **Prototypes:** Text types are categorized using the concept of prototypes. - **Scope:** Incorporates cultural history, literary studies, sociocultural and area studies, and domain-specific knowledge (e.g., legal, medical). **Justa Holz-Mänttäri: Translatorial Action** - **Key Concept:** Translation as a purpose-driven, outcome-oriented process involving human interaction. - **Focus:** Intercultural transfer to ensure functionally oriented communication. - **Roles in Translation:** 1. **Initiator:** Needs the translation. 2. **Commissioner:** Contacts the translator. 3. **ST Producer:** Creates the source text. 4. **TT Producer:** Translates the text. 5. **TT User:** Uses the translated text. 6. **TT Receiver:** Final audience of the translated text. - **Purpose:** TT form and genre should fit the target culture\'s functional needs. **Hans Vermeer & Katharina Reiss: Skopos Theory** - **Key Concept:** Translation is guided by its **skopos** (purpose or goal). - **Rules of Skopos Theory:** 1. TT is determined by its skopos. 2. TT provides information relevant to the target culture. 3. TT function may differ from ST function. 4. TT must be internally coherent (Coherence Rule). 5. TT must maintain intertextual coherence with the ST (Fidelity Rule). - **Hierarchy:** Skopos rule overrides others. - **Commission:** Outlines translation goals and conditions (e.g., deadline, fee). - **Adequacy vs. Equivalence:** 1. **Adequacy:** TT meets skopos requirements. 2. **Equivalence:** Limited to cases where ST and TT share the same function. - **Controversy:** Downplays ST importance; prioritizes TT purpose and functionality. **Comparison and Key Takeaways** - Snell-Hornby emphasizes integrating diverse disciplines for translation based on text types. - Holz-Mänttäri views translation as a communicative process tailored to specific roles and outcomes. - Skopos Theory highlights the purpose and functionality of TT over equivalence to ST. These theories collectively shift the focus from linguistic equivalence to cultural and functional adequacy in translation.