Abstract

The transposition or transcription system of Sub-Saharan African writers

Abstract

translator is a tracker, stepping in the tracks of the writer who came before, careful not to step on anybody's toes, alert to the direction the tracks are pointing, attentive to the scenery, the context, trying not to disturb anything. What happens when a translator attempts to walk in the tracks of a giant?

Introduction

Translating The Black Pelican by Vadim Babenko

Henry Whittlesey

(Please note: a more readable version with footnotes is available on request)

Translating The Black Pelican by Vadim Babenko has offered the opportunity to re-examine a problem that is not unfamiliar, but always challenging for a translator: Can the idiosyncratic motifs and leitmotifs of the original be retained in translation to a greater or lesser extent, or does the translator have to create new ones based on (a) the internal logic of the target language, (b) a predecessor in that language with a comparable diction, or (c) her own understanding of style as derived from the original? Furthermore, presuming that the translator prefers the creation of new rhythmic motifs and leitmotifs, how far shall she depart from the form of the original text, and on what basis or according to what logic?

a comparison of the English original and its French and Spanish translations

Introduction
In an influential article entitled ‘The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies’ Susan Bassnett suggests that the study of translation could help us to understand

‘how complex manipulative textual processes take place; how a text is selected for translation, what role the translator plays in that selection, what role an editor, publisher or patron plays, what criteria determine the strategies that will be employed by the translator, how a text might be received in the target system.’ (1998:123)

“...At last he grows old and dies of old age in the lines of nothingness. He is not a fighter after all, and the nothingness is the victor. In such a place no tumult of fighting is heard, but there is peace....”
--Lu Xun, Such A Fighter (Yang,G. T&E, 1973: 128)

I am sure all of us are aware of the frustration of accessing major writers from other parts of the world which are either far removed from our own or do not appear in local bookshops due to the economics of publishing. How does one manage to read and access such authors?

 Implicatures and the role of the translator

Understanding utterances is not simply a matter of knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the way in which they are combined. It also involves drawing inferences on the basis of non-linguistic information and the assumption that the speaker has aimed to meet certain general standards of communication. In this article, we discuss the question of writer-reader, translator-reader problem of proper communication, and investigate the concept of faithfulness in translation and its manifestations in loyalty to the original text as well as loyalty to the target audience and the prospective readers of the translation. To reach an understanding of this dilemma and suggest solutions to it, an extract from Othello is examined along with its translation into Arabic

omer, who composed in Greek—and who as far as we know never translated, or according to some, even wrote1—was, nevertheless, also the first great translator in the West. Pseudo-Longino bears witness to this fact. The author of On the sublime at one point tells us that in the Iliad the blind bard made men seem like Gods, and vice-versa. Or to put it another way, Longinus understands Homer's task as a sort of translation: translating divine behavior into human, and human behavior into divine: "he made the men who went to Troy gods, to the extent that he could, and the gods he made men. But for us, in our unhappiness, there is a refuge, which is death; while it was not much the gods' nature as their misery which Homer made eternal."2

in Persian and English on Translation of Persian Modern Poetry: A Case Study of Differences Among Persian and English Rhetorical Categorizations in Sepehri's Poems and their translations

I. Introduction:

The function of language in addition to its use in daily conversations for the purpose of interacting with each other in the social context (interactional function) is communicating knowledge, skills and information (transactional function) which has been developed to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. The desire for a more permanent record of what was known must have been the motivating factor for the development of marking and inscriptions and written language (Yule, 1985). If one considers the diversity of languages in the world on the one hand and the urgent need of having access to the knowledge and experience gained by other nations, on the other, they will be able to decipher how crucial the rule of translation in this process is, a process which will in turn serve the improvement of human civilization. Civilization, according to Britannica (2003) ultimate reference suite CD ROM, is a “relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained”. A part of civilization and these ‘written records’ is obviously literature which according to the same encyclopedia is defined as:

The Details and the Spirit of a Literal Translation:
Translating Voskoboev and Elizaveta and Turn in the River by Andrey Dmitriev

Introduction:

This essay on the translation of two novellas by Andrey Viktorovich Dmitriev is an attempt to lay out some ideas about how to approach a literal translation that remains not merely faithful to the content of the original, but also to the spirit of the work. Andrey Dmitriev’s writing offers an intriguing collection of concrete linguistic nuances, some of which cannot be rendered in English without losing all trace of the original’s syntactic uniqueness. While a literal translation must attempt to recapture the particularities of his writing, it must not lose sight of the proverbial larger picture, that is, the spiritual effect of his prose on the reader. Where a sentence proves particularly prohibitive in the new language or where the style is adulterated for the sake of the English text, the translator must search out a new reference point within the work itself. Furthermore, even in the event of a potential story without any stylistic complications for a literal rendering, the translator encounters the problem of retaining the poetry within the author’s polyphony without losing the reader in a sea of detail and sacrificing the beauty of the original to a mechanical equivalent.

WHILE A PROSE TRANSLATION MAY RECREATE THE original quite faithfully, the intricate nature of poetry makes a language change hazardous and the outcome often uneven. As translator for the University of Iowa Press's Modern Hebrew Poetry (1980) I would upon occasion receive remonstrating letters from Israeli poets. Some of these were truly humbling, as they pointed out my own limitations-I had not spoken Hebrew for some thirty years. A note from the widow of a famous poet chided me for confusing nasog (to retreat) with nagos (to bite). Tricky, those three letter roots of the Hebrew verbs: Ashamti, bagadeti, and I of course apologized.

A call for gathering and translating Arab folk tales


A long time ago, during my first days spent in Arab countries, I noticed—as did everyone from the Arabic translators' tribe—the great importance of knowing the colloquial language of the region (al-'arabiyya al-'aammiyya, or al-lugha ad-daarija).

Diglossia in Arabic is almost indescribable. Numerous vernaculars are related to classical Arabic (al-'arabiyya al-fushaa) in the same way as modern Romance languages are related to Latin, and they differ from each other as much as these latter languages differ from each other. Most people understand you when you speak fusha, "modern standard Arabic" (SA—American academics usually use the acronym MSA), but then you sound ridiculous (people smile and even laugh), because nobody uses it in speech, except in certain formal situations. It is almost solely the language of writing and only the educated can use it in oral communication with some ease. It is not a mother tongue, but nevertheless it is taught in schools (B. F. Grimes: Ethnologue—Languages of the World, SIL, Dallas, 13th ed. 1996).