Babel - Volume 64, Issue 2, 2018

Abstract

The starting point of the present article lies in a question posed by Raymond Federman in a well-known essay on Texts for Nothing: “What form can fiction take when it encounters everywhere nothing but verbal dust?” (Federman 2001: 161). Any critical description of this collection of Beckett’s short pieces points to the worn-out quality of the language, as if the process of negation had deeply affected style with the result of having a text in its final stages of decomposition, of being the remnants of a conscience in the process of dissolution. Apropos of a new translation into Spanish of Texts for Nothing / Textos para nada (2015), the author of the new version wants to reflect on the impossibility of translating words that seem to be so fragile and exhausted that the act of moving them to another language would necessarily entail the definitive shattering into pieces of an already thin fabric of words. The questions that will be addressed are related to the theoretical framework needed to handle this frail material: How can the translator negotiate the conflicting meaning of words without reinforcing its inconsistency even further? By which mechanisms can a translator of Texts for Nothing support his/her work considering, in the words of Hannelore Fahrenback and John Fletcher, “the ghostly dimension of space/time inhabited by this disembodied voice”? (Fahrenback and Fletcher 1976)

Abstract

This article contributes to the discussion of retranslation in Translation Studies through a case study on the retranslation of romance novels in Taiwan. Although retranslation has received some attention from translation researchers, most of the existing studies are based on examples of classic literature. In contrast, popular fiction like the romance novel remains relatively under-researched. In this article, paratextual analysis is applied to the publishing environment and marketing strategies for romance novels in order to explain why works of this genre – which are usually regarded as cheap and “throwaway” – are retranslated and how consumers are motivated to purchase such products. The findings suggest that the retranslation of best-selling romantic novels is a low-cost and low-risk investment for the publishers concerned. Such retranslations are promoted through three channels: via the branding of the retranslation as a “classic”; by persuading readers to believe that the retranslated version is more faithful to the original, and thus superior; and by introducing a different mode of consumption – a shift away from renting and towards the purchase of novels. It is argued that, for commercially-driven retranslations, market factors rather than the inherent features of the texts concerned provide a clearer explanation for the phenomenon of retranslation.

Abstract

The Qur’an is the uncontested central religious text of Islam. Many Muslim scholars dogmatically believe that the language of the Qur’an is the miraculous word of God revealed directly to his Prophet, and disagree that it is possible to translate it into any other language. On the other hand, some scholars, old and new, have argued for the permissibility of its translations for linguistic and pragmatic reasons. The polemics surrounding the translatability of The Qur’an bring to light other enduring debates on the permissibility of translating the word of God into an earthly language even if it has been revealed in one, and if one can safely describe this as a translation.

The debate on the translatability of the Qur’an constitutes one of the most controversial issues in Arabic-to-other-languages translation. This paper aims at weighing, as objectively as possible, the justifications variously employed by each camp to rationalize its position. It also touches upon some of the philosophical issues of translatability itself, along with a critical discussion on the traditional Arabic linguists’ views of meaning and translation.

The paper assumes that some readers, particularly non-Muslim readers, are not fully familiar with certain rhetorical and linguistic issues that might be familiar to Muslim scholars. For reasons of clarity, the paper accordingly includes some detailed discussions of certain essential issues.

Abstract

This exploratory research examines translation students’ use of punctuation, by applying Newmark’s (1988) classical idea of punctuation as a discourse unit for meaning demarcation. Data were collected from a group of 25 Chinese students studying specialised translation at a British university. The research focuses on the use of two punctuation marks in English: comma and period or full stop. The aim is to investigate how students of translation analyse the meaning of a source text with punctuation marks and how they subsequently convert this meaning into the target language again using punctuation marks. It is found that students generally do not automatically copy the punctuation marks of the source text into the translation. They will customize or modify the original punctuation marks according to their meaning analysis of the text and their knowledge of punctuation in source and target languages. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the research for translation education.

Abstract

Through our academic research we developed a control mechanism for translation based on seven variables derived from the studies of the Belgian translatologist Dirk Delabastita. In this paper we implement the control mechanism for translation in the fields of solid waste management and liquid waste mechanics using the academic text-books Handbook of Solid Waste Management and Wastewater Engineering, Treatment and Reuse in order to investigate the quality of translations in Greek. We present an indicative psychometric questionnaire from the initial research conducted with telecommunications scientists, as well as an abstract outlining the processing of the relevant indices, followed by indicative processing in the academic field of environmental engineering. This could be the first step in research for the field of environmental engineering terminology.

Abstract

This paper investigates the mediation role of interpreters through modality shifts in Chinese-English diplomatic interpreting. Based on the custom-built corpus of interpreted government press conferences, this article conducts a Systemic Functional Linguistics-informed analysis of modality shifts by examining the ST-TT sentence pairs that present high-frequency Chinese or English modality markers. Results show that: (1) the degree of mediation by the interpreters is fairly high in terms of modality, with 44% of the investigated sentence pairs involving modality shifts; (2) shifts mostly occur in modality value (91%) and orientation (64%) rather than modality type (5%), thus the basic speech function of the clause is minimally changed; (3) shifts within the three dimensions point to general tendencies towards “weakening,” “subjectivization” and “de-obligation,” which reflect the interpreters’ efforts to construct the Chinese officials’ image as audience-friendly and proactive, and to adapt the TT to the English communicative norms; (4) “strengthening” and “objectivization” shifts occur frequently around issues concerning the Chinese government’s responsibility or ability, which reveals the interpreters’ active involvement in presenting the Chinese government as responsible, confident and powerful. The study argues that the press conference interpreters’ active mediation is motivated by their institutional identity as “diplomatic workers” and “government representatives” in the Chinese context.

Abstract

This work is based on the development of two comparable monolingual corpus works in Spanish and French, made up of articles from the electronic versions of two daily newspapers, El País and Le Monde (from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2011).

First, based on articles published in economic and financial section of El País, we identify terminological and phraseological units which include the word “crisis,” which we take as the verbal core of the main lexical structure of the corpus in Spanish.

Second, we focus on the articles in the corpus in French, finding equivalents for these units. The study reveals three possible situations: Le Monde provides clear equivalents in context; it proposes unclear equivalent words in context; or it doesn’t provide any equivalents, which means translators must start from scratch.

The main research interest is the range of proposed translations that are presented around a ubiquitous term in today’s press, which might be useful for both translators and translation students.

Also noteworthy: the use of a monolingual corpus composed of original texts for finding translation equivalents, as opposed to translated texts more frequently found in traditional translation-oriented analysis.

This article reviews Reflections on Translation Theory: Selected papers 1993–2014

This article reviews Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation

This article reviews Human Issues in Translation Technology