Theoretical Material for the First-Term Exam PDF

Theoretical Material for the First-Term Exam 1. Literary Language vs. Non-literary Language The main line of argument is that literary language is emotional, rhetorical, rhythmical, deviant, aesthetic, expressive, symbolic, fictional and, therefore, sublime and superior to non-literary language whic...

Theoretical Material for the First-Term Exam 1. Literary Language vs. Non-literary Language The main line of argument is that literary language is emotional, rhetorical, rhythmical, deviant, aesthetic, expressive, symbolic, fictional and, therefore, sublime and superior to non-literary language which is normal, expected, direct, and lacks all other literary characteristics, and, hence, inferior to literary language. Recently, however, and in the past few years in particular, this view has been challenged by several writers. They claim that such polarization between literary and non-literary language does not exist because they overlap in many texts, and we can find literary features in non-literary texts, and non-literary features in literary texts. To sum it up, the differences between literary and non-literary language can be found at three levels: style, purpose, and form. A. Style: Literary Language: It often employs creative and artistic expression, using figurative language, metaphors, and symbolism. It aims to evoke emotions and may use elaborate or poetic writing. Non-literary Language: It typically uses straightforward and practical language, aiming for clarity and precision. It focuses on conveying information or ideas efficiently. B. Purpose: Literary Language: Its primary purpose is to entertain, provoke thought, or create an emotional impact. It may be used in poetry, novels, and artistic prose. Non-literary Language: It serves the purpose of communication and information exchange, found in everyday speech, technical manuals, news articles, etc. C. Form: Literary Language: It often features complex sentence structures and rich vocabulary. It may include literary devices like alliteration, onomatopoeia, and personification. Nonliterary Language: It tends to be concise and to the point, using standard grammar and vocabulary. 2. What is literary translation? 'Literary Translation' is a term used loosely to refer to the translation of literature. Perhaps 'translating literature' or 'the translation of literature' is more accurate than 'literary translation' for the latter can be sometimes 'unliterary' in the sense that the translation of an SL literary text may fail to be literary in the TL. That said, the term is used to be understood as a reference to the translation of literature that is hoped to be literary in the other language. Literary translation can be defined as a special type of translation that is concerned solely with translating literary genres and sub-genres into literary pieces of work in the TL, accounting for all features of literariness and creative style of the original. Literary texts are different types. They are described as 'Literary Genres'. The major literary genres are three: poetry, prose and drama. Each of these genres has subgenres distinguished within it as follows: (a) Poetry: lyric poetry, epic poetry, ode, ballad, sonnet and children's rhyme; (b) Prose: novel, short story (both of which are narrative fiction), popular fiction and tale; (c) Drama: tragedy, comedy, farce, dramatic monologue. Literary translation covers translating all these genres and sub-genres. 3. What Makes a text literary For the text to be literary, it should have certain features to provoke the readers on different levels: 1. Artistic Language: Literary texts use language creatively, often employing rich vocabulary, metaphors, similes, and other figurative devices to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the writing. 2. Narrative or Poetic Structure: They may follow a specific narrative structure in the case of novels, short stories, or drama, or employ poetic forms and techniques in the case of poetry. 3. Complex Themes: Literary texts often explore intricate and profound themes such as love, human nature, society, morality, and the human condition. 4. Character Development: In novels and stories, there is often detailed character development, where characters evolve and grow, contributing to the overall themes of the work. 5. Symbolism: Literary texts frequently employ symbols and imagery that carry deeper, often abstract, meanings. 6. Emotional Impact: They seek to evoke emotions, whether it's empathy, joy, sadness, or contemplation, and often encourage readers to reflect on their own experiences. 7. Exploration of Ideas: Literary works often delve into philosophical, ethical, or social questions, inviting readers to consider alternative viewpoints. 8. Narrative Voice and Point of View: The choice of narrative voice (first person, third person, etc.) and point of view (e.g., omniscient, limited) can greatly affect how the story is perceived and understood. 9. Aesthetic Considerations: Literary texts pay attention to the arrangement and flow of words, sentences, and paragraphs, focusing on style and aesthetics. 10.Open to Interpretation: They can be interpreted in multiple ways, allowing room for various readings and perspectives. 11.Unique Authorial Voice: Often, literary texts reflect the unique voice and style of the author, contributing to the work's distinctiveness. 12.Critical and Intellectual Engagement: Literary texts invite readers to think critically, analyze, and appreciate the writing beyond its surface meaning. 4. The Literary Translator Like any professional, the literary translator has to command certain capabilities and qualifications. The following list suggests a number of qualifications to be commanded by all types of translators in general including the literary translator, followed by another list especially for the latter's faculties and proficiencies: (1) Due respect for the profession with a view to faithfulness and moral commitment to translating texts from one language into another. No deliberate additions, alterations, deletions or obliterations are exercised on the original unless justified on solid social, religious, cultural, moral, ideological or other grounds. (2) Accuracy of rendering in the sense that everything in a text should be included or taken into account in translation, but not necessarily translated verbatim. (3) Mastery of the two languages concerned in the translation, the SL and the TL, regarding the basics of their grammars (word order, major sentence and clause types, parsing, tenses, etc.), vocabularies (word combinations / collocations, technical terms of different fields and types, main figures of rhetoric, etc.), sound features (alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, and preferably a general idea about scansion, meter and foot). (4) Competence in tone. Landers defines tone as "the overall feeling conveyed by an utterance, a passage, or an entire work, including both conscious and unconscious resonance" ( 2001: 69). Further, Anani defines it in terms of an attitude of irony, humor, seriousness, overstatement, understatement, etc. of the SLT author, which are prone to change from one age to another, and one language to another (1997: ch. 5). (5) Good knowledge of the different types of style of both languages: grammatical, lexical and phonological features of style, in addition to the stylistic scales of formality (i.e. frozen formal l classical, formal / standard, informal, colloquial, slang, etc.). They can be sometimes essential to meaning in the various types of text. (6) Good command of the differences between the conventions of the two languages involved, regarding the use, or non-use of formal / standard, old or modern, or colloquial, or mixed in both languages, or either language. (7) Good knowledge of the SL culture, not necessarily to the same extent of the translator's knowledge of his / her native culture, for, unlike bilingualism, biculturalism is far-fetched. (8) Good awareness of the world around us, and the knowledge shared by all humans about the latest changes and developments with respect to science and technology, cultures, social, political, religious, moral and ideological values and attitudes. (9) Due respect for the TL readership's religious, moral, social, cultural and ideological sensitivities and values. The translator is not an insensitive dolorous duck, but a sensitive human being who has feelings, values, sensitivities, biases, prejudices, attitudes and points of view. (10) Specialism in translation (a higher degree), or at least a considerable proportion of background knowledge about translation theory (basic principles, guidelines, SL text, writer and translator's intentions, writer and translator's attitudes, SL and TL norms, problems and procedures / solutions) and, more importantly, the main translation methods (literal / semantic, free / communicative, pragmatic, non-pragmatic, creative, non-creative / ordinary, poetic / nonpoetic, literary / ordinary, etc.): what, when and how. (11) The translator's personal possession of the best and latest monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and references, alongside online facilities in this regard. One or two references never make a good translator. In addition to these capabilities, the literary translator has yet further faculties to be equipped with: (1) Creativity, or inventiveness; (2) Special liking of literature, what Landers calls "sense of dedication" to literature. The literary translator should be first and foremost infatuated with literature. (3) Psychological aptitude to live the TL literary translation with respect not only to events, characters and the plot, but also, and more importantly, to every word, syntactic structure and prominent sound feature. In short, the literary translator should have personal aptness to lend himself / herself wholeheartedly to construct a matching literary text in the TL through translation. (4) Command of conventions of reading, understanding and interpreting literature. (5) Good knowledge of literary genres and sub-genres in both languages. (6) Considerable competence in figures of rhetoric (metaphors / allegory, similes, puns, metonyms, symbolism, irony, etc.) and special fixed phrases (e.g. idioms, proverbs, adages, etc.) in both languages. (7) Awareness of the basics of sound / prosodic features in both languages, especially alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, meter, foot, beat, scansion and other essentials of prosody). (8) Flexibility and open-mindedness. (9) Background knowledge of some famous works of literature in both languages. (10) Working with the idea that literature is symbolic, representing something else in human life. (11) Perhaps most importantly, specialism, or vast knowledge of the crucial role of style in the understanding, interpretation and, hence, translation of literature. Indeed, and as Landers declares, in literary translation "… how one says something can be as important, sometimes more important, than what one says" (2001: 7). This takes us back to the first capability of creativity which is the product of style in the first place. 5. Methods of Literary Translation 5.1. Semantic and Communicative Translation These two methods were suggested by Newmark (1981) in parallel with, and as a modern, but more specific alternative to the traditional pair, Literal and Free methods. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Semantic translation has a source language bias; it is literal and the loyalty is to the ST (source text) author. It is readable but remains with the original culture and assists the reader only in its connotations if they constitute the essential message of the text. It tends to be more complex, more awkward, more detailed, and tends to overtranslate – it is more specific than the original in transferring nuances of meaning. Semantic translation relates to the word or the word-group. Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Communicative translation has a target language bias; it is free and idiomatic. It attempts to make the reading process easier for the TL reader ‘who does not anticipate difficulties or obscurities, and would expect a generous transfer of foreign elements into his own culture as well as his language where necessary. It must emphasise the force rather than the content of the message. It is likely to be smoother, simpler, clearer, more direct, more conventional, tending to undertranslate, it uses more generic terms in difficult passages. Newmark makes a serious confession that "there is no one communicative nor one semantic method of translating a text … A translation can be more, or less semantic – more, or less, communicative – even a particular section or sentence can be treated more communicatively or less semantically." 5.2. Literal and Free Translation Literal Translation, to start with, is seriously mistaken as a reference to only one method of translation, word-for-word translation, concerned with translating individual words more out of context than in context. Although we translate words, "words alone do not carry meaning" (Raffel, 1994: 4). We translate words in context, and context is of different types: referential, collocational, syntactic, stylistic, semantic, pragmatic, situational, cultural, etc. (Newmark, 1988: 73 ). Literal translation is normally taken to mean literal translation of meaning, no more no less, without beating about the bush.. Everything is translated to a measure as much as possible: no deletions, no additions, no unnecessary exaggerations, or groundless digressions. Free Translation, on the other hand, is again misunderstood to be a method that allows the translator to add, delete, drop, shorten, expand, adapt or change meaning or any part of meaning. Freedom of translation is freedom of language and style, not freedom of rendering the message. In other words, the translator is free to change the style, but not free to change the message. Free translation is two types (see also Ghazala, 2008 / 2012d: ch. 1): (a) Bound Free Translation: a little free translation that might somehow exaggerate, undermine, etc. more than the original without going far away from its lexical / referential meaning, with the aim of making effect or impression of some kind: e.g. We feel sorry about the situation. ‫ نعض أصابع الندم لما اَل إليه الوضع‬/‫نأسف أشد األسف‬ (over-exaggeration about regret) (c.f. ‫)نأسف للوضع‬ (b) Loose Free Translation: a greater space of freedom is exercised here by the translator who may go beyond the referential meaning to explore the inferential meaning, which is in other words a pragmatic meaning, allegedly tracing the authorial intentions. For example: With due respect, you are not telling the truth. )!‫ أنت تكذب‬،‫(بصراحة‬ 6. Aesthetic Communication Theory As-Safi has put down seven rules that must be achieved in the literary translation to be considered as aesthetic and dynamic: 1- Be dynamic rather than static; do not be literal in translating literary works. 2- Be creative and aesthetically communicative; that is how the style of the literary translation should be. 3- Comply with the target linguistic system; it is right that you are creative and not translating word for word, but you have to stick to the grammar of the target language. 4- Be appropriate; choose the pragmatic meaning that fits the message of target/ translated text. 5- Be natural. 6- Be acceptable to the target audience; this is the answer of to which extent you may be creative. 7- Aspire to occupy a position in the target literature as any other original works of arts; it is known that translating a literary work is more difficult than writing a literary work. However, you have to do your best to make your translation sounds original to compete for having a high position as an extraordinary translator for the literary works in that language. 7. Collocations Collocations are defined by Firth (1968) as "actual words in habitual company. Thus, a collocation is a term used to describe a group of words that co-occur (one next to another) repeatedly. For example, in English we normally say 'strong wind' but 'heavy rain'. However, it would not be normal to say *'heavy wind' or *'strong rain'. 7.1. Translation of collocations Translators should have a wide knowledge of both the source and target languages and their cultures, as well as the strategies and norms in translation that allow the translator to reproduce the writer’s imagery and style. Translators should build their own memory bank of collocations which can be called up and activated when needed during the translation process. There are four procedures used to translate collocations: 1- using a synonym or near-synonym of the collocation, 2- going for a literal translation, 3- avoiding translating the collocation at all, and 4- giving the meaning or explanation of the collocation. 7.2. Translation of idiomatic collocations Mona Baker proposed a taxonomy for translating idioms and fixed expressions which includes the following strategies: 1- Using an idiom of similar meaning and form: in such a case the translator looks for an idiom in the TL that conveys roughly the same meaning of the idiom in the SL and consists of equivalent lexical items. 2- Using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form: here the translator focuses on finding an idiom in the TL that conveys the same meaning as the original idiom regardless of the composing words. 3- Borrowing the SL idiom: this is a case similar to that of a loan word, where the translator keeps the idiom in its SL form in the translated version. 4- Translation by paraphrase: this strategy is used when it is hard to find a suitable idiomatic expression in the TL or if the targeted stylistic classification does not suit the equivalent TL idiom. In this strategy, the translator resorts to analyzing a paraphrased version of the SL idiom or fixed expression. 5- Translation by omission of a play on an idiom: this strategy focuses on the literal meaning of an idiom, ignoring a side playful meaning the original idiom has. 6- Translation by omission of an entire idiom: a translator might be compelled to resort to this strategy when none of the strategies above proves effective or for stylistic reasons (Baker, 2018, p.77-87). 8. Metaphor If collocations are the milestone of rhetoric in literary language, metaphor is its heart. Metaphor is a linguistic process used to make a comparison between the attributes of something/somebody and something else. It is the process of transferring or transporting qualities from one object to another: from an animal to a person, a thing to an animal, a flower to a human being, a thing to another, etc. Put differently, it transfers a concept from its usual context to a new context. 8.1. Translation of Metaphor Newmark (1988b) proposes the following seven strategies for translating metaphors: 1. Reproducing the same image in the TL as in ‫ غزو الكهرباء‬the invasion of electricity’ (Brown 1996: 38). 2. Replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image which does not clash with the TL culture as in ‫مراحيض من السياسة‬literally: ‘toilets of politics’, standard English image: ‘sewers of politics’ (Rolph 1995: 25). 3. Translation of metaphor by simile, retaining the image as in ‫ شعر بأنه جورب عتيق مهمل‬literally : ‘He felt he was an old, neglected sock’, simile: ‘He felt like an old, discarded sock’ (St John 1999: 5). 4. Translation of metaphor (or simile) by simile plus sense, or occasionally metaphor plus sense as in ‫ ولقد انتظر طويال أن تبزغ فوق صحرائه أنثى‬literally: “He had waited long until a female should dawn over his desert”; metaphor plus sense: “He had been waiting for a long time for a woman to dawn over the desert of his life.” 5. Conversion of metaphor to sense as in ‫ و كان صوت أمه الملتاع يحفر تحت جلده أمنية جديدة‬literally: ‘His mother’s anguished voice was carving out a new longing under his skin’; sense: ‘Her anguished voice gave birth to a new hope in his flesh’ (Darwish 2003: 165) 6. Deletion: If the metaphor is redundant or serves no practical purpose, there is a case for its deletion, together with its sense component 7. Translation of metaphor by the same metaphor combined with sense. The addition of a gloss or an explanation by the translator is to ensure that the metaphor will be understood as in ‫إنه حاتم هذا‬ ‫ الزمان‬literally: ‘He is the Ḥātim of this time’, addition: ‘He is as generous as Ḥātim al-Ṭā’ī.