Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective views

Cuprins

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Cuprins

TRANSLATIONS ET NEGOCIATIONS IDENTITAIRES:

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Tout en combinant, sur le canevas propre au mémorialiste, les particularités d’idéologie et
de perspective de la nouvelle de mœurs et de la satire dirigée contre les tares de la société
roumaine de l’époque, avec des éléments propres au récit de voyage, la nouvelle Balta Albă
enchaîne, à travers le motif littéraire du voyageur étranger, mis en circulation au XVIII – e
siècle, un dialogue à partir du thème identité roumaine /vs/ altérité étrangère. La structure
enchâssée du texte prouve, de la part de l’auteur, une longue fréquentation de ce procédé
narratif et favorise un climat colloquial, apte, en égale mesure, à transmettre des
informations et à créer un climat de bonne humeur.

BISHOP DOSOFTEI AS A TRANSLATOR AND EARLY ROMANIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY

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Histories of the Romanian language and literature have often neglected translations
favouring original texts, by considering the former to be mere imitations, or sources of
artificial, unnatural structures. As a matter of fact, the European cultural languages have
developed by imitating classical models, deliberately trying to reconstruct the Greek and
Latin semantics, syntax and rhetoric by relying upon the vernacular linguistic material.
Roughly speaking, the linguistic influences manifested in translation (lexical calques, the
structural one, in particular) actually stimulated language creativity by building up
derivation and compounding patterns.

‘TRANSLATING’ HISTORY FOR THE STAGE IN HENRY VIII AND APUS DE SOARE [SUNSET]

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The second half of the fifteenth century seems to have finally brought, in different corners of
Europe, the long waited for political stability that would engender further societal changes
and cultural developments traditionally associated with the Renaissance. In England, for
instance, the crisis of royal power resulting from incessant warfare involving the houses of
York and Lancaster and entailing political instability at the national level was put an end to by
Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor line that would successfully rule England for more than
one century. At approximately the same time, in another part of Europe, in Moldavia, the
same kind of civil strife turned members of the Muşatin family one against the other in a
constant rush for power which occasionally led to short-lived basking in royal privileges only
to be soon lost in favour of another pretender to the throne.

DU ROMAN HISTORIQUE A LA METAFICTION HISTORIOGRAPHIQUE:

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En reprenant dans une étude publiée en 2000 un fragment d’une interview qu’Umberto Eco
lui avait accordée en 1994, Susanne Kleinert commentait l’opinion du romancier selon
laquelle
le travail d’un écrivain postmoderne ne se distingue pas fondamentalement du travail de
l’historien, en ce que la métaréflexion par rapport aux sources (soit de la fiction, soit de
l’historiographie) rend transparent le processus de pensée inhérent au texte. Dans ce
même entretien, Eco a esquissé une définition de la littérature postmoderne comme une
historiographie de l’imaginaire
qui «s’adapte très bien à ses propres romans» (Kleinert en d’Haen, van Gorp et MusarraSchrøder 2000: 145-146). Les romans historiques d’Eco «nous rappellent les systématisations
de la pensée et du monde conçus par des époques passées, en faisant errer les protagonistes
dans ces labyrinthes de la pensée que nous avons oubliés – à l’exception des spécialistes. Et
en même temps, Eco semble jouer de la possibilité d’en mélanger les codes, à son avis la
seule chance d’oublier activement» (Kleinert en d’Haen, van Gorp et Musarra-Schrøder
2000: 147).

RUMOR TRACKS IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIAN DRAMA

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There is no study on the ABC of the press without an inventory of the mass-media functions,
meant whether to shed light on various approaches specific to celebrated media schools, or,
in the words of Claude-Jean Bertrand, to emphasize the dysfunction-pair for each of the
listed functions. We shall briefly comment on the manner in which the subject is dealt with
in several works by media researchers.

TRANSLATING IDEOLOGY INTO LITERARY TEXTS

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The reading efforts voiced by the authorised opinions of Viaţa Românească (Romanian Life)
make no exception to the generalising ideological trend of the year 1958, by contributing to
legitimating a typologising mythology in the creating essence of contemporary texts, via
articles by important contemporary critics. Insertions of the criterion of aesthetic value seize
up the dictatorship of ideology, veiled and subtly omnipresent, in some articles,
representative for the aesthetic recovery of significant texts, at the same time marking a
moment of the ideological “defrost”. Despite all this, the dominant tone of the critic’s voice
resonates with the political one, the layout of the fictional universe doubling the doctrinaire,
including the point of view of typologies. On the other hand, “the communist mythology
has achieved the profoundly dialectic performance of proclaiming, with equal intensity, the
decisive role of the masses, the party and the ruler, everybody’s role, of an elite and of a single
being, a shift proven inevitable along with the affirmation of the totalitarian option” (Boia
1998: 15).

Des AFFINITÉS RÉLATIVES DANS LES TRADUCTIONS, LES ADAPTATIONS ET LA RÉÉCRITURE THÉÂTRALE AU XIXe SIÈCLE ROUMAIN

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Le mouvement dramatique roumain, dans sa phase de début, se développe sous les auspices
des spectacles avec des pièces classiques, des traductions pour la plupart, mais les premières
revues qui placent l’inspiration nationale au centre de leur programme déplacent l’accent et
l’intérêt vers les textes romantiques, les opinions en faveur d’une orientation ou d’une autre
étant exprimées dans des préfaces ou des articles publiés dans la presse. Pour comprendre le
climat culturel qui génère le combat pour le théâtre au XIX–e, il est intéressant de voir ce
qu’on lisait et ce qu’on traduisait de l’espace externe, dans cette période d’émancipation
sociale et politique. Si les options des traducteurs peuvent agir comme une lecture
diagnostic des mentalités de l’époque, ou bien si elles sont un regard prévisionnel sur une
construction pédagogique, en conformité avec les principes de Dacia literară, les titres
montrent la circulation de certains modèles, des idées dont l’implication dans la
modernisation de la culture roumaine est sans conteste (Catalogue des livres français qui se
donnent en lecture à la librairie de la Cour, de Frédéric Walbaum, 1838, Bucureşti, ou le
Catalogue des œuvres françaises qui se trouvent dans le Cabinet de lecture de la librairie
d’Adolphe Henning, 1843, Iaşi: W. Scott – 35 titres en français; Alfred de Vigny – Cinq Mars;
Victor Hugo – Notre Dame de Paris; Alexandre Dumas – 36 titres).

STAGED IRELAND IN FILMIC TRANSLATION:

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Introduction: John Ford’s The Quiet Man
Since the time of its release in 1952 and up to the present John Ford’s The Quiet Man, starring
John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, has remained one of the most popular movies in
America, as well as elsewhere. The film, set in the 1920s, tells the story of an American
prizefighter, Sean Thornton, who, having killed an opponent in a boxing match, decides to
return to Ireland, his ancestral homeland in hopes of finding peace. Once in Inisfree (Ford’s
imaginary village, whose name bears Yeatsian and poetic overtones) Thornton enters a premodern, pre-industrial world, whose idyllic landscape and archaic and traditional
community, with its rituals and jokes, loyalties and feuds set it at complete odds with the
world of the twentieth-century America that the hero left behind.

WORLDS BEYOND WORDS:

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Punning Phrases, Puzzling Translations
As a rule, semantic and visual allusions enable the writer (translator, editor) to break out of
the linear constraints of hermeneutic text construction by introducing echoic or reflected
meanings in the manner of progressing regression. The aim of the present paper is, before
anything else, that of investigating the process of translation as mediation (of meanings
and/or cultural brands) wherein David Lodge the iconic brand (for satire on the academia)
is culturally trans-lated into a new commodity, a new consumer good which is harnessing
power not as product embodying work, but rather as a commodity which is different from
and differing with the original, fathered both by the translator of the novel and by its editor
(the artistic creator who finally decides on the book cover of the new, translated novel).

LIBRICIDE IN RAY BRADBURY’S FAHRENHEIT 451

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Libricide, genocide and ethnocide
Libricide (the killing of a book) is a sub-phenomenon “occurring within the framework of
genocide and ethnocide” (Knuth 2003: viii) and arises from a combination of turbulent social
environment, authoritarian or totalitarian leadership, and radical ideologies and policies.
Disintegrative conditions on a national scale create an environment in which violence
flourishes. The stressed and disoriented population turns to leaders who promise relief
through a new political and social structure, based on transformational ideas. These ideas,
which may be reactionary or revolutionary, justify, and even glorify, the use of violence to
achieve goals such as national fulfillment or achievement of a utopian world. As regimes
consolidate control, often becoming totalitarian, they tend to cast libraries and books in a
suspicious light, as either seditious, or the tool of the enemy, or a scapegoat for a nation, an
ethnic group or class of people that thwarts their policies. Looting, censorship, neglect, and
violent destruction of books and libraries are therefore sanctioned practices.

EFFECTIVE WAYS OF TEACHING ENGLISH IDIOMS TO EFL LEARNERS

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Introduction
Idioms are an indispensable dimension of language teaching; they are the ‘street shoes’ and
the ‘house slippers’ of conversational English. Idioms must be added to the vocabulary stock
just as any other new vocabulary; their constituent words may look familiar, but their
meanings are, well, idiomatic.
They are generally more durable and universal within a language than jargon, slang
or colloquialisms, but nevertheless they are sensitive to questions of register and social
situation. In addition, the line between slang and idioms is not rigid.

(UN) TRANSLATABILITY OF I.T. TERMINOLOGY

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1. On translatability – background, viewpoints, approaches
In order to set an accurate background to the issue under focus – translatability, as well as
untranslatability of texts at various levels of approach — linguistic (lexical, grammatical) and
cultural — a brief historical review is necessary, as it can show the various dominant trends
underlying the different options of translators throughout the last two centuries.
As De Pedro (1999) points out in an extensive study on translatability of texts from a
historical perspective, recent theories have maintained (under the attention of the scientific
world) the concept of untranslatability, a superficial attitude, in the author’s opinion, as it
resulted from two main sources. On the one hand, from the expansion of the concept of
translation itself, and, on the other hand, from the wish to move on from traditional,
ideologically motivated arguments, which could be perceived as problem rising.

TEACHING MEANING, COMPREHENSION AND TRANSLATION

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Introduction
One of the main issues that translators have to cope with is the plain concept of the meaning
of words. The main difficulty lies in grasping that meaning is not an isolated concept, but a
complex entity in which the context of occurrence is crucial. Thus, it depends on the text
type, its functional role, its co-text, its user and his/her intentions, the specific situation of
communication and last but not least, the specific cultures in contact. According to
specialised literature,”the meaning of a given word or set of words is best understood as the
contribution that word or phrase can make to the meaning or function of the whole sentence
or linguistic utterance where that word or phrase occurs” (Zaky 2003: 1).
In other words, it is an important part of the translator’s competence to be able to
distinguish between the meaning of reference (also called referential/ lexical/ conceptual/
denotative meaning) which is to be found in dictionaries and glossaries, and the associated
meaning (also referred to as connotative/stylistic/ affective/ reflective or collocative).

THE ROLE OF COMPUTERS IN DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ TRANSLATION COMPETENCE

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Introduction
Computers nowadays provide great help to linguists, especially if we are to think of text
manipulation techniques: large storage, quick search and retrieval as well as networked
communication. As a result, the styles and efficiency of text processing, language learning
and translation can be greatly improved. Especially the existence of extensive electronic
corpora offers examples and generalisations of language usages, which in turn will
contribute to better language teaching and produce high-quality translation. Electronic tools
such as dictionaries, concordancers, encyclopaedias and Web page search engines offer
instant returns to inquiries about word or phrase usages. Secondly, upgraded machine
translation technology has turned into a helpful tool, not only to business and industry, but
also for translators and language learners. We can therefore say that the machine-aided
translation technology also has beneficial effects both on translation and on language
learning

BOOK REVIEW

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The students’ ever growing interest in the study of specialist terminologies for well defined
purposes (documentation and first-hand access to the literature of any specific field, to name
only extremely few of them) has exercised a positive impact on the making of new teaching
materials provided by Romanian teachers of English. It is true, there has been at least a
twenty-five-year-old tradition in the art and the practice of compiling textbooks of English
for specific purposes, irrespective of the purpose in focus.
Initiators in the devising of such textbooks are a group of dedicated academics,
including Andrei Bantaş from Bucharest University and Nicolae Bejan from Galaţi
University who published Limba engleză pentru şţiină şi tehnică as early as 1981. Ever since,
Romanian methodologists have contributed to the field with more and more complex and
useful such books (Blându, 1982)1