Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2017

Ethnography refers to in-depth participant observation research and to the written report that results, and is often described metaphorically as a type of “cultural translation.” Little attention has been paid, however, to the actual linguistic translation that occurs in the process of research and writing, even in the interdisciplinary field of Latin American Studies, in which research is often conducted in a language other than English and written up in English. The privileging of academic Standard English in ethnographic texts creates dilemmas for ethnographers whose research participants speak “foreign” languages. These dilemmas are rarely discussed in the ethnographic texts or the literature on ethnographic methodology. Based on content analysis of 47 book-length ethnographies on Latin Americans, we investigate how ethnographers typically deal with language difference in their texts and why language matters. Language is intimately connected to power dynamics in the field, and ethnographers’ decisions about how to represent language can indicate rigor and thoughtfulness about their position vis-à-vis participants, yet such linguistic reflexivity is rare.

The last years have seen a rise in the study of translation as an ideologically-implicated activity within the context of power relations, as well as in translation research from a sociologically-oriented frame of reference. In this article, I will point to a methodological consideration which draws from both of these perspectives, and could be useful for the study of the ideological mediation of national literature through translation. My suggestion is to systematically integrate findings from relatively separate yet complementing discursive areas of culture, located in the publishing, journalistic and academic fields, in order to better grasp the scope and interrelatedness of the phenomena of ideological mediation. As a case study, I examine the mediation of Hebrew literature in the U.S. in the decade following the 1967 Six-Day War, and demonstrate a protective trend meant to create a less critical portrayal, literary and otherwise, of Israeli society and history for the (Jewish-)American audience. I then offer preliminary findings from a recent, quite opposite trend in the mediation of Hebrew literature in the U.S. in the 2000s.

Borges’s “Gospel According to Mark,” written 1,900 years after the first biblical Gospel by the same name, provides a compelling illustration of how translators always play a visible, creative role in the work they perform (even when they do not realize it or want this role). The characters’ interaction with the Bible is an ideal platform to explore some complex notions that stem from postmodern conceptions of translation, such as the complicated relationship established between translators, their translations and audience. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Mark had a considerable impact on two of the three other Gospel authors, and that the Bible has had immeasurable impact on the general interpretation and translation of texts around the world. Borges’s story may seem to portray an absurd misreading of the Mark, but I propose that this radical misreading is not altogether different from the millions of interactions with the texts that have been responsible for creating and disseminating the Bible. Through brief histories of both Mark and the Vulgate in tandem with Borges’s text, we can understand that millions of nameless translators, interpreters and scribes have been responsible for actually creating what is now, in a fragmented nature, the Bible.

This article examines how translation practitioners might begin to develop a praxis that is based on an ontological polyvocality; one which allows for difficulty – even misconstrual and semantic breakdown – so that translations do not become mechanical reproductions, subsumed by systems of power, rather than machinic repetitions that allow for deterritorializations along lines of flight. Because, despite the fact that translations are regarded as relatively autonomous creations, they still conform; they are still produced in the socius which, in modern societies, aids the functioning of capitalism. The question arises: if translations – which are unavoidably a kind of literary repetition – are produced and constructed within capitalist societies, does this mean that they inevitably become mechanical reproductions rather than machinic repetitions? To answer this question, translation is investigated within the ethico-aesthetic framework developed by Félix Guattari and selected translations of passages in the oeuvre of the South African author Ingrid Winterbach are referenced.

One of the concepts that is regularly referred to in studies on retranslation, but has not yet been extensively investigated or operationalized, is the (alleged) aging of (literary) translations. While the assumption that every generation deserves its own translation of canonical literary works is taken for granted, particularly by non-academic critics of literary (re)translations, this notion does not seem to be as prevalent in academia. In this article, I review the scholarly literature on retranslation in order to determine how the concept of aging has been defined and described in translation studies so far. The findings of this survey will subsequently be tested out with a number of case studies on literary retranslation, allowing us to determine the relative importance of the concept and define its different aspects. Finally, I present the first results of an empirical pilot study on aging in literary translation, and will suggest several lines for further investigation that would allow translation studies to further operationalize the concept for future, more comprehensive and systematic analyses of aging in all its different (linguistic, translational, and cultural) aspects.

Translators of German philosophy into English must often choose whether to express concrete or abstract meanings for polysemous German keywords. This article discusses “differential translation,” a widely underestimated strategy for representing polysemous words in translation. Disavowing both untranslatability and the necessity of terminological equivalence, this strategy integrates signs of polysemy into the reading experience by presenting foreign keywords in brackets after their differing, context-dependent meanings. The article discusses how translators have already responded and how they might respond even more constructively to passages where Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Blumenberg, respectively, choose words that link abstractions to images: by presenting existence as both foundational and ground-like (gründlich), time as both fluctuating and fluid (strömend), and common sense as both obvious and nearby (naheliegend). Encountering differentially translated texts would challenge future scholars to evaluate the unity of the concepts behind the words.

Readers may infer that literary characters are sympathetic or unsympathetic based on the perceived phonetics of character names. Drawing on brand name literature in marketing, we investigate whether Slovene and English speakers can identify sympathetic and unsympathetic characters in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist based solely on their names, despite being unfamiliar with the novel. Both Slovene and English speakers can make this distinction, suggesting that sound symbolism may help communicate Dickens’s intended characterizations. Dickens’s documented focus on creating meaningful names suggests the sound symbolism in his characters’ names is likely intentional. These findings are relevant to the translating convention of preserving proper names, which leaves spelling intact (given similar alphabets). Preserving the original names in translation may be justified for readers fluent enough to perceive the original name sounds. However, not altering character names in translation may sometimes lead to different phonetic perceptions, which alter the sound symbolic meaning.

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.