What’s new in Translation Studies? In offering a critical assessment of recent developments in the young discipline, this book sets out to provide an answer, as seen from a European perspective today. Many “new” ideas actually go back well into the past, and the German Romantic Age proves to be the starting-point. The main focus lies however on the last 20 years, and, beginning with the cultural turn of the 1980s, the study traces what have turned out since then to be ground-breaking contributions (new paradigms) as against what was only a change in position on already established territory (shifting viewpoints). Topics of the 1990s include nonverbal communication, gender-based Translation Studies, stage translation, new fields of interpreting studies and the effects of new technologies and globalization (including the increasingly dominant role of English). The author’s aim is to stimulate discussion and provoke further debate on the current profile and future perspectives of Translation Studies.

The Curse of Dogma in Translation Studies

The Turns of Translation Studies: New paradigms or shifting viewpoints?

A Bibliography on Court & Legal Interpreting

Taking a “skopos-oriented” approach to translation means that translators choose their translation strategies according to the purpose or function that the translated text is intended to fulfil for the target audience. Communicative purposes can only be achieved under certain conditions, such as culture-specific knowledge presuppositions, value systems or behaviour conventions. Therefore, the translator will have to analyse the target-culture conditions for which the translation is needed (as specified in the translation brief) in order to decide whether, and how, any sourcetext purposes can work for the target audience according to the specifications of the brief. If the target-culture conditions differ from those of the source culture, there are two basic options: either to transform the text in such a way that it can work under target-culture conditions, or to replace the source-text functions with their respective meta-functions. The paper will explore how these two options relate to translation typologies.

Translating for Communicative Purposes across Culture Boundaries

This thesis reports a study applying stylistics in the analysis and assessment of literary translation, with specific reference to translations between English and Chinese. It focuses on how to maintain the original style in the translation – in terms of techniques or linguistic features in the literary texts and their correspondent functions – and on how to assess the style of the individual translation and translator as measured by quantitative data derived from corpus linguistic analyses.

The thesis starts with an overview of the specific challenges of literary translation and the value of stylistics as an approach assisting in a better understanding of the literary texts, which shows the need for using stylistics in literary translation. It then illustrates how to apply stylistics in literary translation, taking the examples of central stylistic phenomena such as metaphor, free indirect speech, heteroglossia, repetition, and transitivity in the English translations of the celebrated Chinese novella《阿Q正传》(The True Story of Ah Q) (Lu Xun, 1921) and in the Chinese translations of the English short stories “Two Gallants” and “The Dead” (Joyce, 1914). I investigate the distinguishable “fingerprints” of the Chinese translators of the 《阿Q正传》 through scrutinizing the data uncovered by corpus tools, taking into consideration each translator’s individual style alongside any detectable motivations pertaining to their personal experiences, the publishing context, and so on.

This study argues that literary texts – as distinct from non-literary texts – have a real but hard-to-define “added value”, carried by the particular way in which they exploit lexis, grammar, and pragmatics; this added value is everything to do with the text’s style. A good literary
translation must reproduce something of the source text’s style; otherwise the distinguishing literariness in the original will not be conveyed in the target text. Stylistic and corpus methods can help identify important stylistic features in the original, and can help us to evaluate whether equivalent features are or are not present in one or several translations of that original.

background

/pdf/stylistic-approaches-to-literary-translation-with-particular-48t6v5b0pu.pdf

Stylistic approaches to literary translation: with particular reference to English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation

This thesis considers the practice of Bible translation from the perspective of contemporary translation studies and provides a fresh translation and accompanying commentary of aspects of Paul's Letter to the Romans.

The emergence of functionalism, particularly skopos theory, in the latter part of the 20th century is seen as a key moment in the development of translation theory. The thesis argues that it has significant advantages over source text orientated approaches which have traditionally dominated Bible translation practice. An essential history documents this evolution of theoretical developments in translation study. The advantages of skopos theory over equivalence-based approaches are discussed with particular reference to Bible translation theory and the work of E. A. Nida.

The functionalist approach increases the range of possible translations, with this thesis adopting a foreignising purpose in a new translation of Romans 1:1-15, 15:14-16:27. The foreignising approach owes its origins to F. Schleiermacher (popularised more recently by L. Venuti among others) and involves rendering a text so as to preserve or heighten the sense of otherness of the source text, thereby retaining something of the foreignness of the original. An accompanying commentary is provided to explain the translator's choices.

/pdf/functionalism-and-foreignisation-applying-skopos-theory-to-2ffif3bmxb.pdf

The Curse of Dogma in Translation Studies

Citations

The Turns of Translation Studies: New paradigms or shifting viewpoints?

A Bibliography on Court & Legal Interpreting

Translating for Communicative Purposes across Culture Boundaries

Stylistic approaches to literary translation: with particular reference to English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation

Functionalism and foreignisation: applying skopos theory to bible translation

Related Papers (5)

The concept of equivalence and the object of translation studies

Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie

Approaches to translation

Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained

Exploring Translation Theories