The Translator's Dialogue


Book Description

"The Translator's Dialogue: Giovanni Pontiero" is a tribute to an outstanding translator of literary works from Portuguese, Luso-Brasilian, Italian and Spanish into English. The translator introduced authors such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, Clarice Lispector and Jose Saramago to the English reading world.Pontiero's essays shed light on the process of literary translation and its impact on cultural perception. This process is exemplified by Pontiero the translator and analyst, some of the authors he collaborated with, publishers' editors and literary critics and, finally, by an unpublished translation of a short story by Jose Saramago, "Coisas."




The Translation of Fictive Dialogue


Book Description

This volume presents a systematic overview of current research on the issues that arise when recreating and translating dialogue in works of fiction (including narrative, drama and film scripts). The central concept is that of fictive orality, a situational linguistic variety differing from spontaneous speech in various respects. Speech in fiction is the product of stylised recreation or evocation by an author. While realism and authenticity may be the most celebrated qualities, ultimately, the literary functions and the semiotic dimension of dialogue place significant constraints on the decisions taken both by the source text authors and the translators. Moreover, the traditions and conventions of the target culture act as powerful sources of expectations that influence the final form of the text. This collective volume is divided into three parts: Part 1 deals with the translators' own reflections on the qualities of fictive dialogue. Part 2 discusses the interaction of fictive orality with other varieties such as dialects (geographical, chronological and social) and genres. Part 3 discusses a range of language resources present in fictive dialogue (syntax and sentence connection, information packaging, pragmatic markers and modalisers, appreciative morphology and phrasemes, spelling and typographical conventions, deictics, etc). All chapters present research results in an accessible language and are thoroughly illustrated with translations from and into various European languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Romanian and Italian) and their varieties. The volume will be of interest for scholars in translation studies and contrastive linguistics, for graduate students, and for readers interested in the translation of style.




Translation and Language Teaching


Book Description

Drawing upon convergences between translation studies and foreign and second language (L2) didactics that have emerged as a result of recent research, this volume continues the dialogue between the two disciplines by allowing for epistemological two-way traffic, marrying established, yet so far unrelated or under-researched, conceptual approaches, and disseminating innovative scientific evidence from different continents. A unique feature of the volume is the sub-section presenting the most recent empirical studies in the development of linguistic and other professional competences for translators, with suggestions for re(de)fining translation curricula. The contributors to this volume include representatives of various spheres, including academics, researchers and practitioners. Their underlying theoretical and empirical research is informed by multiple perspectives: linguistics, didactics, and translation-related. This book shows how integrating insights from translation studies into language teaching and vice versa can effectively respond to the challenges of contemporary language and translator teaching and training.




Dialogues on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation


Book Description

The book is a collection of the dialogues between Xu Jun, a well-known expert in French literary translation and eminent "Changjiang" scholar in translation studies in China, and some celebrated literary translators in contemporary China, some of whom are also literary scholars, linguists, poets, prose writers, and editors. It is a fundamental achievement of research on the literary translation in the 20th century in China, involving multiple literary types, such as novels, poetry, dramas, prose, and fairy tales; and multiple languages, such as English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Sanskrit. The dialogues are centered on fundamental issues in the theory and practice of literary translation, such as re-creation in literary translation, the relationship between form and content in literary translation, the subjectivity of literary translators, literary translation standards and principles, the gains and losses in literary translation, the principles and methods of literary criticism, and so on. Those translation experts' experience and multiple strategies not only play an active role in guiding literary translators in practice but also benefit theoretical development in literary translation. Thus, the book will contribute to worldwide translation studies and get well recognized by translation studies students, teachers, and scholars in the world.




Translation and Interpreting Pedagogy in Dialogue with Other Disciplines


Book Description

This volume offers a collection of original articles on the teaching of translation and interpreting, responding to the increased interest in this area not only within translation and interpreting studies but also in related fields. It contains empirical, theoretical and state-of-the-art original pieces that address issues relevant to translation and interpreting pedagogy, such as epistemology, technology, language proficiency, and pedagogical approaches (e.g., game-based, task-based). All of the contributors are researchers and educators of either translation or interpreting – or both. The volume should be of interest to researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting, second language acquisition and language for specific purposes. An introduction by the editors – both distinguished scholars in translation & interpreting pedagogy – provides the necessary context for the contributions. Originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 10:1 (2015), edited by Brian James Baer and Christopher D. Mellinger.




Discovering the World


Book Description




Between Rhyme and Reason


Book Description

The author of such global bestsellers as Lolita and Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) is also one of the most controversial literary translators and translation theorists of modern time. In Between Rhyme and Reason, Stanislav Shvabrin discloses the complexity, nuance, and contradictions behind Nabokov's theory and practice of literalism to reveal how and why translation came to matter to Nabokov so much. Drawing on familiar as well as unknown materials, Shvabrin traces the surprising and largely unknown trajectory of Nabokov's lifelong fascination with translation to demonstrate that, for Nabokov, translation was a form of intellectual communion with his peers across no fewer than six languages. Empowered by Mikhail Bakhtin's insights into the interactive roots of literary creativity, Shvabrin's interpretative chronicle of Nabokov's involvement with translation shows how his dialogic encounters with others in the medium of translation left verbal vestiges on his own creations. Refusing to regard translation as a form of individual expression, Nabokov translated to communicate with his interlocutors, whose words and images continue to reverberate throughout his allusion-rich texts.




The Translator as Writer


Book Description

Over the last two decades, interest in translation around the world has increased beyond any predictions. International bestseller lists now contain large numbers of translated works, and writers from Latin America, Africa, India and China have joined the lists of eminent, bestselling European writers and those from the global English-speaking world. Despite this, translators tend to be invisible, as are the processes they follow and the strategies they employ when translating. The Translator as Writer bridges the divide between those who study translation and those who produce translations, through essays written by well-known translators talking about their own work as distinctive creative literary practice. The book emphasises this creativity, arguing that translators are effectively writers, or rewriters who produce works that can be read and enjoyed by an entirely new audience. The aim of the book is to give a proper prominence to the role of translators and in so doing to move attention back to the act of translating, away from more abstract speculation about what translation might involve.




Testing and Assessment in Translation and Interpreting Studies


Book Description

Testing and Assessment in Translation and Interpreting Studies examines issues of measurement that are essential to translation and interpreting. Conceptualizing testing both as a process and a product, the collection of papers explores these issues across languages and settings (including university classrooms, research projects, the private sector, and professional associations). The authors have approached their chapters from different perspectives using a variety of methods, some focusing on very specific variables, and others providing a much broader overview of the issues at hand. Chapters range from a discussion of the measurement of text cohesion in translation; the measurement of interactional competence in interpreting; the use of a particular scale to measure interpreters’ renditions to the application of a specific approach to grading or general program assessment (such as interpreter or translator certification at the national level or program admissions processes). These studies point to the need for greater integration of research and practice in the specific area of testing and assessment and are a welcome addition to the field.




The Dao of Translation


Book Description

The Dao of Translation sets up an East-West dialogue on the nature of language and translation, and specifically on the "unknown forces" that shape the act of translation. To that end it mobilizes two radically different readings of the Daodejing (formerly romanized as the Tao Te Ching): the traditional "mystical" reading according to which the Dao is a mysterious force that cannot be known, and a more recent reading put forward by Sinologists Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, to the effect that the Dao is simply the way things happen. Key to Ames and Hall’s reading is that what makes the Dao seem both powerful and mysterious is that it channels habit into action—or what the author calls social ecologies, or icoses. The author puts Daoism (and ancient Confucianism) into dialogue with nineteenth-century Western theorists of the sign, Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure (and their followers), in order to develop an "icotic" understanding of the tensions between habit and surprise in the activity of translating. The Dao of Translation will interest linguists and translation scholars. This book will also engage researchers of ancient Chinese philosophy and provide Western scholars with a thought-provoking cross-examination of Eastern and Western perspectives.