Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Current Issue

Existing studies of translations of audio-visual productions that explore African American issues focus exclusively on African American Vernacular English and culturally specific references, the standardisation or omission of which are seen to compromise the originals’ critique of race and their value for in-group identity. This article takes a multimodal approach to three such productions dubbed for a Spanish audience. Firstly, it examines how characters’ African American identity is rendered not only by language but also visually and aurally. Comprehension in dubbed versions is more likely to be affected by non-linguistic matters, such as casting of voice talent. Secondly, it is shown how translations shape the audio-visual creation of a fictional world and extra-diegetic elements that address a particular audience and thus enable in-group identification along ethnic lines. Lastly, an alternative translation strategy is outlined that targets audiences from the international Black diaspora to whom such productions might appeal.

This article addresses an underexplored intersection between subtitling and translanguaging with reference to the representation of diverse Chinese fangyan in hip-hop music videos. Drawing on recent progress in the intersection between translanguaging and Translation Studies, the article sketches the multilingualism of the Han ethnic majority and its precarious existence under the governmental policy and language planning of China. Second, it contextualises the rising audibility and visibility of local speeches and non-standard writing in cinematic, metrolingual, and digital cultures. This highlights the social and technological conditions that enable culture creators and language users to practice novel representations of linguistic diversity and variations in the subtitling medium. Furthermore, the case-study analyses illustrate how Chinese hip-hop musicians assemble linguistic, multimodal, and multisemiotic resources to effect translanguaging performance across different communicational repertoires. The conclusion outlines the practical and theoretical implications of translanguaging subtitles for alternative media representations of linguacultural diversities in China and beyond.

Shakespeare’s play Richard III represents a fascinating phenomenon from the perspective of critical disability studies. On the one hand, his portrayal stands at the root of the much-criticised link between evil intentions and a physical deformity; on the other, the play allows Richard to reclaim some of the agency of his own corporeality, as he uses his body to gain his political goals. Translations of this play inevitably mirror contemporary views of non-normative bodies, and the two Slovak versions of the play marking the immediate aftermath of World War II and the last years of the communist rule in former Czechoslovakia provide an ideal ground for observing these shifts against the backdrop of significant sociopolitical changes. This article explores how the subtle nuances in individual translated versions reshape Richard’s image, and ultimately highlights the changing historical narratives of disability translated for different generations of Slovak readers and theatregoers.

Dylan Thomas’s poetry can be seen both as minor Welsh literature and world literature. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, this article explores the mechanism of translation selection and consecration of Thomas’s poetry in China by using his poetry published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press as an illustrative case study. In so doing, it is argued that the integrated forms of linguistic, economic, and symbolic capital associated with Thomas’s poetry, along with the expiration of its copyright, prompted the publisher to select his poetry for translation to maintain its own dominant position in the Chinese publishing field. The publisher, translator, and other agents have consecrated Thomas’s poetry as world literature in China. This article expands research on inter-peripheral translation flows and ‘sociologies of poetry translation’ and advances interdisciplinary studies of translation and world literature.

The cycle of symphonic songs Das Lied von der Erde was based on Die Chinesische Flöte, a German version of classical Chinese poems. As a result, Die Chinesische Flöte crossed the boundary between literature and music, encompassing intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translations. While comparative textual analysis reveals that these two works made changes to the original Chinese texts, intersemiotic translation illustrates that the borders between verbal texts and nonverbal works are fluid. This post-translation study traces the translation context of Das Lied, maps Die Chinesische Flöte’s transitions between literary and musical polysystems, and traces Das Lied’s afterlife in the creation of new artworks. It concludes that poetry, music, and other art forms can mutually translate, complement, and become afterlives of one another.

This article explores the features of simultaneous interpreting (SI) from a multidimensional (MD) analysis perspective (Biber 1988), drawing on a newly built comparable intermodal corpus, the LegCo+ corpus. The corpus incorporates Cantonese speeches that are both interpreted and translated into English, as SI and written translation (WT), respectively. Additionally, a third English corpus consisting of English native speeches (NS), without mediation, serves as a benchmark comparison. We aim to examine the extent of similarities and differences between SI, NS and WT in terms of the linguistic patterns they display. Our findings show that: (1) SI is a hybrid language mode, exhibiting features that lie between those of non-mediated spoken language and mediated written language; (2) in terms of its spoken nature, SI resembles NS in certain dimensions where typical features are associated with orality, suggesting a strong modality effect; and (3) in terms of its mediated status, SI demonstrates similarities with WT, despite their perceptibly distinct modalities, pointing to a potential mediation-specific effect. These empirical findings emphasize the necessity of understanding the multidimensionality inherent in interpreted language.