scholarly journals TRANSLATING ITALO CALVINO: HOW CLOSE READING AND COMPARISONS CAN ILLUMINATE THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE TRANSLATION PROCESS

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paddy Twigg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Italo Calvino ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
English Translations

I have chosen to translate passages from two works by Italo Calvino (1923-1985) into English. The first, a novel, was his first publication, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, Torino: Einaudi, October 1947. Two English translations of it have been published: the first, The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Archibald Colquhoun, London: Jonathan Cape, 1956, and the second, The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (including the author’s 1964 Preface, translated by William Weaver), by Martin McLaughlin, New York: Random House, 1998. It is the first of these that I have used as a comparison with my own translation. Interestingly, Colquhoun’s translation was re-published by Penguin in 2009 in a form revised by McLaughlin. Colquhoun (1912-1964) was a leading early translator of modern Italian literature into English. As well as those of Calvino, his translations of Manzoni and Lampedusa were highly successful. He was the first recipient of the PEN Translation prize.

A relevance-theoretic account of the use of the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-179
Author(s):  
Wu Guangjun
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Special Category

Abstract Discourse markers are a special category of words or expressions which have been shown to pose challenges during the translation process. This article adopts a relevance-theoretic perspective and, based on the two English translations of the Chinese play Leiyu (Thunderstorm), explores the use of the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English. The findings show that the discourse marker well in translation from Chinese into English is added in two scenarios: to intensify weaker forms of a similar Chinese discourse marker or as an addition when omitted in Chinese. Moreover, interlingual pragmatic enrichment will ensue and the English translations, in comparison with their Chinese originals, become more determinate. Based on this study, we can conclude that discourse markers are important pragmatic elements in translation from Chinese into English. Likewise, contrastive pragmatics is shown to be of potential in the process of translation.

Steadily Attached to His Majesty? Varieties of Loyalism in Revolutionary New York

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Sophie H. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Geographic Regions ◽  
The City

This paper responds to most recent works on the complexity of loyalist identities during the American Revolution. It forms a close reading of over 400 claims submitted by self-identified loyalist claimants from the former colony of New York to the Loyalist Claims Commission. Through a case study of three New York counties (the city and county of New York, Albany County and Tryon County), the paper demonstrates that the loyalist experience differed greatly between the three distinct geographic regions; different counties entered the war at different stages, while demonstrations of loyalism and the range of services provided by loyalists to advance the British cause varied considerably. The paper also outlines (and justifies the use of) the potential of three broad categories by which to analyze loyalist claimants: namely, ‘active’, ‘reluctant’ and ‘passive’. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the varying nature of loyalism was largely the product of local contextual circumstance.

TRANSLATING BY FACTORS.Christoph Gutknecht & Lutz J. Rölle. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 346. $62.50 cloth, $23.95 paper.

1999 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-158
Author(s):  
Sonia Colina
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
State University ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Formal Equivalence ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Professional Translator

Translating by factors (henceforth TBF) is an attempt at systematizing the multiplicity of factors affecting the translation process, in particular those relevant to the translation of the modals between English and German. TBF is an example of the so-called linguistic approach to translation and an illustration of why such an approach has often been criticized by translation scholars and professionals. Although it is useful to linguistics engaged in descriptive and contrastive studies of modals, the predominantly formal, sentence-based, contrastive-analysis approach embraced by the authors (who adopt, without discussion, formal equivalence as the goal to strive for in translation activity) will not be of as much use to those engaged in the teaching and practice of translation for purposes of communication. This is especially true in light of mounting empirical evidence in the translation competence literature that supports functional considerations as a dominant factor in professional translator processes.

‘What is a mouth’: Joyce Wieland’s Pierre Vallières (1972) and the politics of the film portrait

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
Bettina Brunner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shirley Clarke

Focusing on Joyce Wieland’s film portrait Pierre Vallières (1972), this article follows the Canadian artist and filmmaker’s practice as it evolved through her engagement with the New York film avant-garde of the 1960s. Through an analysis of Wieland’s collaboration with Shirley Clarke, I will also discuss Pierre Vallières in relation to US-American documentary practices from the same period. Referring to Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967) with its focus on the spoken word as well as Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, I will place Wieland’s film within this line of film portraits engaging with identity and a performative notion of subjectivity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze, this article concludes with a close reading of Wieland’s film, discussing her use of the close-up as a means of thwarting the linear narrative and logic of its subject’s political speech. Pierre Vallières’ politics thus emerges within an aesthetics that crosses the boundaries of documentary and avant-garde, communicating with audiences beyond the film’s original context of French-Canadian emancipation.

Evaluating translations of surrealist poetry

Target ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham. D. Low
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Think Aloud ◽  
Response Data ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Surrealist Poetry ◽  
Comparative Note

Evaluating translations of poetry will always be difficult. The paper focuses on the problems posed by French surrealist poetry, where the reader was held to be as important as the writer in creating interpretations, and argues that evaluations involving these poems inevitably require reader-response data. The paper explores empirically, in the context of André Breton’s “L’Union libre”, whether a modification of Think-Aloud procedure, called Note-Down, applied both to the original text and to three English translations, can contribute useful information to a traditional close reading approach. The results suggest that comparative Note-Down protocols permit simple cost-benefit analyses and allow one to track phenomena, like the persistence of an effect through the text, which might be hard to obtain by other methods.

Klinghoffer in Brooklyn Heights

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT FINK
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
The Death Of Klinghoffer ◽  
Brooklyn Academy Of Music

Is The Death of Klinghoffer anti-Semitic? Performances of the opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September 1991 were at the epicentre of a controversy that continues to this day; the New York audience was – and remains – uniquely hostile to the work. A careful reception analysis shows that New York audiences reacted vehemently not so much to an ideological position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but to specific nuances in the satirical portrayal of American Jewish characters in one controversial scene later cut from the opera, a scene that must be read closely and in relation to specifically American-Jewish questions of ethnic humour, assimilation, identity and multiculturalism in the mass media. I understand the opera's negative reception in the larger context of the increasingly severe crises that beset American Jewish self-identity during the Reagan-Bush era. Ultimately the historical ability of Jews to assimilate through comedy, to ‘enter the American culture on the stage laughing’, in Leslie Fiedler's famous formulation, will have to be reconsidered. A close reading of contested moments from the opera shows librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams avoiding the romance of historical self-consciousness as they attempt to construct a powerful yet subtle defence of the ordinary and unassuming.

scholarly journals Mode in Arabic-English Translation: with Reference to the Quran

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-522
Author(s):  
Ibrahim II Najjar ◽  
Soh Bee Kwee ◽  
Thabet Abu Abu al-haj
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Rhetorical Questions

A rhetorical question has the form of a question but does not perform its function, i.e. does not seek any information but rather, is used to give a specific or rhetoric function such as denial, assertion, testing, equalization and negation. The present study investigates the two English translations that were used in the translation of the Quranic rhetorical questions. In a nutshell, this is a comparative study that aims to discover if the grammatical shifts that had occurred in the two English translations would have an effect on the denial, assertion, testing, and equalization and negation modes of the Quranic rhetorical questions. For this purpose, we had adopted the register theory of Halliday and Hassan (1985) as well as the translation shifts of Catford (1965) in the comparison of the two English translations, namely the Koran Interpreted that was authored by Arberry (1955) and the Noble Quran: English translation of the meanings and commentary as transcribed by al-Hilali and Khan (1996). According to the analyses, the occurrence of grammatical shifts between the two translations had in fact affected the mode of the ST rhetorical questions, their rhetorical meanings and consequently, issues on mode sustenance. Therefore, it can be said that the register theory of Halliday and Hassan (1985) had been a beneficial tool used in the analysis of the translation process.

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