Translation Studies and AVT
Department of European,
American and Intercultural Studies
2016-2017
WEEK 5 - LECTURE 1
Dr. Margherita Dore
[email protected]
Overview
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Venuti and the visibility of the translator
Domestication and foreignization
Berman and the negative analytic
The power play of literary translation
The reception and reviewing of translations
The sociology of translation
Lawrence Venuti
• American translator and translation theorist
• He contests Toury’s ‘scientific’ descriptive model with its
aim of producing ‘value-free’ norms and laws of
translation
• Venuti takes into account the value-driven nature of the
social and political institutions that influence translation
• He analyses the US and UK hegemony in the publishing
industry
• Venuti introduced the terms translator’s invisibility and
domestication and foreignization to refer to translation
practices which are available to the translator.
Venuti and the Translator’s (In)visibility
‘A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or
non-fiction, is judged acceptable by most
publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads
fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or
stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent,
giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign
writer’s personality or intention or the essential
meaning of the foreign text – the appearance, in
other words, that the translation is not in fact a
translation, but the “original”’
(Venuti 1995/2008: 1)
Domestication and Foreignization
Domestication and foreignization: Ethical and discursive levels
(Munday 2016: 228, following Venuti 1995/2008)
Antoine Berman
• French theorist and translator
• His work preceded and influenced Venuti
• He deplored the general tendency to negate the
foreign in translation by the strategy of
‘naturalization’ (cf. Venuti’s domestication)
• He used the terms ‘negative analytic’ and ‘positive
analytic’ to describe the process of translation.
• He conceived translation as an experience and a
trial
‘The properly ethical aim of the translating act is
receiving the foreign as foreign’
(Berman 1985/2004: 277)
Berman and the Negative Analytic
• ‘Negative analytic’ of deforming forces;
12 tendencies:
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Rationalization (changes of the syntactic structure)
Clarification (a.k.a. Explicitation)
Expansion (overtranslation)
Ennoblement (improving the style)
Qualitative impoverishment (lack of iconic features)
Quantitative impoverishment (loss of lexical variation)
The destruction of rhythms (deformation of word order)
The destruction of underlying networks of signification
The destruction of linguistic patternings
The destruction of vernacular network (or exotization)
The destruction of expression and idioms
The effacement of the superimposition of languages
• Counterbalanced by ‘positive analytic’ of ‘literal translation’
Translators and Action
• Venuti’s ‘call for action’ -> visibility through the
foreignizing practice
• Translators must be led by language to listen to their ‘ear’
(Rabassa)
• Translators must listen to the ‘voice’ of the ST (Sayers
Peden)
• Translators must rely on their creativity
• Translators should take a critical stance leading the
reader to think (positionality)
The Power Play of Literary Translation
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Low percentage of translated books in USA and UK
Precarious position of the literary translator
Powerful position of publishers
Agents or ‘cultural gatekeepers’ (Bourdieu):
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Literary agents
Revisers
Editors
Reviewers
Criticism
Anthony Pym’s (1996) criticism:
• Will translation really change if translators refuse to
translate fluently?
• Fluent translation takes place in other literary systems
(which are not as dominant as the USA one)
• English publishing market is so vast that its hegemonic
position may depend on other factors (e.g. Text are not
even translated)
• If considering norms, it is normal to expect fluency
The reception and reviewing of translations
• Reception theory (Brown 1994 on the role of
reviews in preparing the readership)
• ‘Horizon of expectation’ (Jauss 1982)
• Concentration on fluency (as revealed by Venuti’s
analysis of reviews on translated works)
• Paratexts (Genette 1997)
– Peritexts (e.g. Preface, cover, blurb, etc.)
– Epitexts (e.g. review)
Peritexts – Example 1
Covers of Camilleri’s La pazienza del ragno (The Patience of
the Spider):
Peritexts – Example 2
Covers of IL DIVO for the Italian and UK markets:
The Sociology of Translation
• Incorporation of work of ethnographer and sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu
– Field (of social activity; translator, commissioner, author,
etc.)
– Habitus or disposition (the translator’s ‘mindset’ or
‘cultural mind’)
– Capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic)
– Illusio (cultural limits of awareness)
• ‘Translatorial habitus’ is ‘voluntary servitude’ (Simeoni
1998)
• Bourdieu’s theorization can help explain how translators
and interpreters both take part in and construct ‘the forms
of practice in which they engage’ (Moira Inghilleri 2005)
Food for Thought
• Examine how ‘visible’ translation is in Italy, looking at
translation flows and rates. Do your findings tally with
Venuti’s analysis of English?
• Look at a range of paratexts (peritexts and epitexts) of one
translated book, or an author. What is the function of these
different paratexts in your examples?
Bibliography
What we studied so far:
• Munday, Jeremy (2016), Introducing Translation Studies.
Theories and Applications, 4th edition, Routledge,
London/New York – CHAPTERS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8, 9
Translation Studies and AVT
Department of European,
American and Intercultural Studies
2016-2017
WEEK 5 - LECTURE 2
Dr. Margherita Dore
[email protected]
Overview
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Hermeneutics
Steiner’s hermeneutic motion
Resistant difference and elective affinity
Ezra Pound
Walter Benjamin
Deconstruction
Abusive fidelity
George Steiner
• French-born American Literary critic,
essayist and academic.
• In his influential book After Babel
(1975) Steiner approaches translation
from the point of view of
hermeneutics.
• Steiner proposes a totalising model,
which he terms hermeneutic motion,
in translation.
• He believes that translation is not a
science but an ‘exact art’.
Hermeneutics
• Term derived from the Greek verb hermeneuein
meaning to interpret (the bible)
• German Romantic hermeneutic tradition (for the
interpretation of all types of texts)
• George Steiner’s After Babel:
– Hermeneutics is … ‘the investigation of what it means
to “understand” a piece of oral or written speech, and
the attempt to diagnose this process in terms of a
general model of meaning’ (Steiner 1975/1998: 249)
Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion
Steiner’s hermeneutic motion (Munday 2016: 252)
Resistant Difference and Elective Affinity
• Resistant difference:
– Translator’s experience of L1 and L2 is different
– SL-TL relation varies (with effect on the translator’s
identity and society)
• Elective affinity
– Translator is attracted to text, recognizes him/herself
in text
• Tension between the two produces great translation
(Steiner)
Criticism
• Steiner’s After Babel, based on Chomsky’s
generative-transformational grammar, and its allembracing theory of translation is now dated.
• Male-dominated language of his (‘erotic possession’
and ‘penetration’) metaphor and his equating of
words (and women) to the exchange of material
goods (cf. Chamberlain’s 1988/2004).
Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
• Creative energy of translation
• Pound’s ‘reading’ of Chinese ideograms, based on the
notes of Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908)
• Experimental practice
– Deliberately archaicizing or ‘Make it new’ (cf. His translation of
Cavalcanti’s poetry in Dolce stil nuovo into ‘pre-Elizabethan
English’)
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Influenced Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003)
– Transcreation
– Brazilian cannibalism: revitalization of the past (transcreation ->
taking of the life energies of the ST and their re-emergence in the
TT)
Poetry – Ex 1
Ezra Pound’s translation of Cavalcanti’s sonnet
Io vidi li occhi dove Amor si mise
Io vidi li occhi dove Amor si mise
quando mi fece di sé pauroso,
che mi guardar com' io fosse noioso:
allora dico che 'l cor si divise;
e se non fosse che la donna rise,
i' parlerei di tal guisa doglioso,
ch'Amor medesmo ne farei cruccioso,
che fe' lo immaginar che mi conquise.
Dal ciel si mosse un spirito, in quel
punto
che quella donna mi degnò guardare,
e vennesi a posar nel mio pensero:
elli mi conta sì d'Amor lo vero,
che ogni sua virtù veder mi pare
sì com' io fosse nello suo cor giunto.
I SAW the eyes, where Amor took his place
When love's might bound me with the fear thereof,
Look out at me as they were weary of love.
I say: The heart rent him as he looked on this.
And were't not that my Lady lit her grace,
Smiling upon me with her eyes grown glad,
Then were my speech so dolorously clad
That Love should mourn amid his victories.
The instant that she deigned to bend her eyes
Toward me, a spirit from high heaven rode
And chose my thought the place of love's verities
That all Love's powers did my sight accost
As though I'd won unto his heart's mid-most.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
• Literary critic and essayist, philosopher and translator.
• Benjamin saw language as magical and its mission to
reveal spiritual content
– Influence of Jewish Kabbala and German Romantics
• In his seminal essay ‘The task of the translator’
(1923), preface to translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux
Parisiens, ), he suggests that translation serves to
‘express the central reciprocal relationship between
languages’
• Translation should allow ‘pure language’ to shine
through
• ‘Ideal’ translation is literal, interlinear version of the
Bible
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
‘ A real translation is transparent; it does not cover
the original, does not block its light, but allows the
pure language, as though reinforced by its own
medium, to shine upon the original all the more
fully. This may be achieved, above all, by a literal
rendering of the syntax which provides words
rather than sentences to be the primary element of
the translation’
(Benjamin 1969/2004:81)
Deconstruction
• Developed in France in 1960s
• Dismantles some of the key premises of
linguistics, the terms, systems and concepts
which are constructed by language, starting with
Saussure’s clear division of signified and
signifier
• Rejects the primacy of meaning fixed in the word
and foregrounds or ‘deconstructs’ the ways in
which a text undermines its own assumptions
and reveals its internal contradictions.
Deconstruction and Translation
• Interrogates stability of the linguistic sign, of
meaning and of the process of translation
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) introduced the term
in France by playing with the term
– Différance
(différer meaning both ‘defer’ and ‘differ’)
– Détour/Des tours de Babel
– ST ant TT depend on one another for their survival
– Relevant translation vs. Uncovered assimilation
Abusive Fidelity
• Introduced by Philip Lewis (1985/2004) while
translating Derrida
• Drawing on Deconstruction
• Radical, risk-taking approach to literary
translation
• Experimentation with rhetoric and patterns of
language
• Give renewed energy to ST
• Compensate for inevitable losses
Text Resisting Translation – Ex 1
Taken from Camilleri’s ‘La sigla’ (as suggested by Cipolla 2006)
Calorio non si chiamava Calorio, ma
in tutta Vigata lo conoscevano con
questo nome. Era arrivato in paisi
non si sa da dove una ventina d’ anni
avanti, un paro di pantaloni ch’ erano
più pirtusa che stoffa, legati alla vita
con una corda, giacchetta tutta
pezze pezze all’arlecchino, piedi
scavusi ma pulitissimi. Campava
dimandando la limosina, ma con
discrezione, senza dare fastiddio,
senza spavintare fimmine e
picciliddri. Teneva bene il vino,
quando poteva accattarsene una
bottiglia, tanto che nessuno l’aveva
veduto a malappena brillo: e dire che
c’erano state occasioni di feste che
di vino se n’era scolato a litri.
Calorio was not his name, but in Vigata
the whole town knew him as Calorio.
About twenty years back, he had turned
up in town from God knows where, with a
pair of britches that were draftier than a
barn on account of the many holes, tied
with a rope around his waist, and with a
raggedy jacket so patched up he looked
like a circus clown. He walked barefoot,
but his feet were spotless. He scraped
along by begging but without making a
nuisance of himself, never bothering
nobody, or scaring the womenfolk or
young’uns. He held his liquor so well,
when he could scare up enough to buy
himself a bottle, that nobody ever saw
him even slightly pickled; although there
had been times on Feast days when he
had put away quite a few quarts.
Food for Thought
• Do you agree with the feminist criticism against Steiner’s
metaphors? Can you find more in translation?
• There is a strong ethical element to philosophical
approaches to translation. Identify where these ethical
points are in the theorists considered in this chapter.
• HOMEWORK: think about a possible research project
and be ready to present and discuss it in class during
the next lecture.
Bibliography
What we studied so far:
• Munday, Jeremy (2016), Introducing Translation Studies.
Theories and Applications, 4th edition, Routledge,
London/New York – CHAPTERS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10