Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2013

This paper provides a historiographical approach to the figure of Doña Marina or La Malinche, the interpreter of Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico, in order to reassess the fictionalization of the character that we often find in Translation Studies. It is argued that this discipline has used her name in an impressionistic way and, therefore, it seems necessary to complement the translation scholar’s approach with that of the historian. The paper will explore the ways in which Doña Marina has been presented by translation scholars. The next section will provide the perspective of historians, focusing on three aspects relevant for Translation Studies: (1) the facts known about her origin, which explain her ability to communicate in two local languages, (2) her role as interpreter during the conquest of Mexico, (3) her alleged participation in the Cholulan massacre as an informant of Cortés. It will conclude with a discussion that aims to highlight the contrast between the use of impressionistic views of historic figures and the more balanced narratives based on factual rather than mythical elements.

The tension between domesticating and foreignising translation strategies is particularly strongly felt in the translation of children’s literature, and has been a key issue in many studies of such literature. However, despite the pervasiveness of the concepts, there is little existing empirical research investigating how child (and adult) readers of translated children’s books process and respond to foreignised elements in translation. This means that scholars’ arguments in favour of either domestication or foreignisation in the translation of children’s literature are often based on intuition and personal experience, with no substantial empirical basis. This article presents the findings of an experiment undertaken to investigate Afrikaans child and adult readers’ processing of and responses to potentially linguistically and culturally foreign textual elements in translated children’s picturebooks, against the background of postcolonial/neocolonial cultural and linguistic hybridity in South Africa. The paper reports the results relating to two of the research questions informing the study:1. Does the use of foreignised elements in translated children’s picturebooks have any significant effect on the cognitive effort involved in reading for child and adult readers?2. Is the comprehension of child and adult readers affected by the use of foreignised elements in translated children’s picturebooks?A reading study utilising eye-tracking was conducted, involving both child and adult participants reading manipulated domesticated and foreignised versions of pages from two picturebooks translated from English to Afrikaans. To answer research question (1), data obtained by means of eye-tracking were analysed for dwell time, fixation count, first fixation duration and glances count for areas of interest (AOIs) reflecting domesticating or foreignising translation strategies. In order to answer question (2), short structured questionnaires or interviews with participants were used, focusing on the degree of comprehension of the two texts. Overall, the findings of the experiment demonstrate that while there are perceptible effects on processing and comprehension associated with the use of foreignising strategies, these effects are not straightforward or uniform, with notable differences not only for different AOIs, but also for child and adult readers.

This article examines problems arising from biliterate performances in English and Chinese in the context of the sociolinguistics of Singapore. The questions asked include: What are the ramifications of translating Chinese literature carrying anglophobic themes into English? How might translation displace anglophobic readings from Chinese literary works? What kind of identity discourse do self-translation practices engender? The article examines three cases of cross-linguistic practice as biliterate modalities in Singapore, with an eye on the identity discourse emanating from the translational space between English and Chinese in each case. In the first case, it is argued that the English translation of a Chinese poem with an anglophobic stance triggers an ironic self-reflexivity on the part of the target text reader and has the potential to exacerbate the cultural anxiety faced by the Chinese-speaking Self in the source text. The second case presents an example where the anglophobic interpretation of a Chinese play can potentially be ‘unread’ through the homogenization of code-switching through translation. In the final case of a self-translating playwright, it is found that English-Chinese and Chinese-English translations establish an asymmetric symbiosis whereby translation creates an interliminal space in which a hybrid identity discourse is negotiated. The three cases illustrate the tensions and paradoxes residing in the translational space between English and Chinese in Singapore, pointing to the problematic of inter- and cross-cultural communication in the multilingual state.

We examine the possible impact of frequency differences between a construction in L1 and its equivalent in L2 on translations. Our case is that of existential there in English and existential il y a in French. Using corpus evidence, we first confirm previous claims that existential there is used more freely in English than existential il y a is in French. Drawing on extensive counts conducted in available corpora and self-compiled samples of translated English and French, intra-language comparisons of translated and non-translated language use show that existential there is under-represented in English translated from French while existential il y a is over-represented in French translated from English. It is suggested that source-language interference is responsible for these differences. In addition, counts of existentials in individual novels and their translations show that inter-language frequency shifts systematically occur in the direction of target-language norms, most clearly so for translations into French, which suggests that the observed usage constraint on il y a still applies to a noticeable extent in translated French. Methodologically, we argue the need for a large corpus of translated French.