Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 17, Issue 1, 2005

Focusing on translators as a cultural-professional group, this article mobilizes the Bourdieusian concepts of field and habitus for explaining the tension between the constrained and the versatile nature of translators’ action, as determined by their cultural group-identification and by their position in their specific field of action. Emphasizing the basic parameter of status contests and struggle for symbolic capital, it elaborates on three important aspects of translators’ differentiating self-images and strategies of action, using examples from the field of Hebrew translation in contemporary Israel: (1) the variability of strategies translators employ while playing either conservative or innovative roles, as cultural custodians or cultural importers, in specific historical contexts; (2) the dynamic construction and stratification of the field of translation, which results from the endeavor to establish its autonomous source of prestige, oscillating between impersonal professional status and an artistic-like personal “stardom”; and (3) translators’ preferred models of self-fashioning, according to which they select and signify the facts of their life-conditions and use them for improving their status and terms of work.

This paper analyzes several terms used in ancient China to refer to the activity/activities now called ‘fanyi’ in Chinese, or ‘translation’ in English. By tracing the pattern behind the semantic and ideological jogging amongst these terms, the paper offers a new interpretation of the earliest Chinese attempts to define translation (‘fanyi’). The purpose is to highlight the constructed nature of the prevailing notion of ‘fanyi’ and unsettle its established meaning, the better to provoke theoretical discussions on and about ‘fanyi’. The final purpose is to provide a response to the recent call for a non-Eurocentric, international Translation Studies by advocating for a concerted effort to study the conceptualisations of ‘translation’ as they evolved in different cultures, with the view to eventually developing a general theory of translation that truly has general relevance.

The subject of this article is cognitive segmentation in translation. Based on experiments carried out in Translog, a keyboard logging program, significant differences, and also certain similarities, were observed of cognitive segmentation when data from two different subject groups and text types were compared. In the translation of a relatively easy text, novice and professional translators were found to behave fundamentally differently with respect to the size and nature of cognitive units and the speed with which they were produced. When faced with a difficult text, the behaviour in both groups was clearly affected, but some of the differences observed between novice and professional translators in the translation of the easy text were neutralized in that the professionals took over many of the features characteristic of the novices.

Taking my starting-point in Maria Tymoczko’s claim (1999) that syntagmatic elements in texts present the greatest challenges to translators and readers of translations, I want to argue that literary translators and translation scholars need to pay greater attention to clusters of wordplay rather than distinguishing puns as individual, separate brain-teasers. Hence, more is at stake in the translation of wordplay than just trying to transfer the source text complexities into the target language. Historical, social and other contextual and intertextual factors must also be taken into consideration. My case in point is an examination of the transfer of highly challenging networks of puns in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) into Danish and German. The theoretical frame of reference is a discussion of puns in the critical works of Dirk Delabastita, Jonathan Culler, Derek Attridge and Patricia Parker followed by a critique of translator and critic Frank Heibert’s methods of evaluating the German translations.

This paper will place Brecht’s published works within the socio-political context of the Greek junta (1967–1974). After preventive censorship was lifted in 1969, a massive import of Brecht’s works occurred. Brecht was immediately incorporated in the recently established tradition of serious books addressing important social issues, bringing the reader closer to modern thought and kindling the desire for democracy. Two of the most influential publishers of the time published Brecht’s works and actively subscribed to this trend of defiance against the regime in the publishing industry. The publishers’ activity as well as the content and paratextual elements of Brecht’s works they launched constituted instantiations of the discursive motif of dark times introduced by Brecht himself to describe oppression and distortion of truth.

In the process of translation for children, translators negotiate, adapt and manipulate the text in order to expand and explain the message for readers in the target culture. This study focuses specifically on the translation of titles of Australian children’s fiction to determine whether the same ‘readerly’ concerns are evident in the wording of titles featuring Australian animals. French translations of Australian titles are compared with the same titles in other languages to establish the degree of similarity in patterns of translation regarding generic prioritisation, explicitation and simplification. The influence of original titles and their covers on subsequent translated titles, the phenomenon of translated titles ‘copying’ each other, and the appeal of ‘exotic’ referents in titles are considered within a framework of the nature and behaviour of titles in translation. Consistent translation strategies across languages make a strong argument for the influence of commercial and translational imperatives over culture-specific appropriation of the text.

This article examines how “detached” elements (such as those at the beginning and end of Moi aussi, j’aime beaucoup ça, le beurre de peanut) have been handled in the translation of two Quebec plays into English. In French, detachment plays an important role in discourse, marking topic, focus, or emphasis; moreover, it is a strong marker of an informal conversational register. In English, other means are typically used to mark information structure and they do not necessarily differ in conversational and written registers. The study shows that the information structure conveyed by detachment is faithfully rendered in the translations, but the register function is undertranslated. Explanations for this undertranslation are proposed.