TranscUlturAl (Journal)
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Photographed Metaphors: Meaning, Reference, and Translation in Manoel de Barros
No full textThis article explores Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros’ collaboration with photographer Adriana Lafer in Arquitetura do silêncio (2015). The meta discourse on language that emerges in the book challenges meaning, reference, and translation as a means to transfigure the modes of seeing the Pantanal biome in Brazil, shifting our focus to the insignificant and abandoned things strewn across the ground. By reading Barros alongside Frege and Quine, this article argues in favour of the profound awareness of language in the Brazilian poet’s work, an awareness that culminates in the blurring of words and images in Arquitetura
A “Performative Turn” in Translation Studies? Reflections from a sociological perspective
No full textThe increasing interest in the analysis of the link between and interaction of performance and translation has been brought about not least in the wake of the emergence of a sociology of translation. This is particularly due to the emphasis in research on the figure of the translator and other agents involved in the translation process and more precisely to the exploration of the role and function of the translator as a co-subject of the translation performance. The following reflections will focus on the potential epistemological force of the concept of performance with reference both to the social occurrence of translation and to the term’s contribution to conceptualizing a wider, perhaps more metaphorically nourished perception of translation
Introduction: Borders in Translation and Intercultural Communication
No full textThe introduction to this special issue discusses the notion of border and its position in current scholarship in translation studies and intercultural communication. It then analyses ways in which borders can be useful for thinking, focusing particularly on Walter Mignolo’s notion of “border thinking”. It reviews how borders are viewed in both translation studies and intercultural communication and offers some possible directions for future research before introducing the papers in this special issue
The Pitfalls of Musical Translation
No full textThis paper focuses on the triangular links between a text in a given source language, its “translation” into music and an eventual retranslation into another language. As everybody knows, music is a language per se, with all the characteristics of an articulated language, its own syntax, grammar, even its own dialects and “regionalisms.” The bilateral link between a language and music is rather simple and can be summarized in the following principle: when a composer sets a text to music, it is always a one-way-only “translation”; this text cannot and should not eventually be retranslated into another language, there is no going back because music is the most constricting of all languages. Between two “normal” languages, like English or French for instance, solutions can always be found, even deficient ones if necessary, arrangements that are more or less satisfactory, one can compromise, adapt. It is not desirable to translate a text from Chinese into English and then from English into French but it can be done. However, once music has imposed its rules on a text, it becomes the main source language, with which it is impossible to cheat; everything must be literally respected: the musical words and sentences, the general form, the rhythm, the styles, the melodic, harmonic, tonal aspects… There are no possible arrangements or compromises, music comes first and dictates its rules, there are no choices other than to respect, literally, what the music says and hope that it will work or, if it does not, which is most often the case, abandon. And yet in some cases it is necessary to find a way to retranslate the same text. This is when translators are faced with real, at times unsolvable, problems because they are dealing with two source languages, one of which being Music that prevents any continuation to full triangulation. In this article, I will first analyze a few examples to show some of the main difficulties and then propose the solutions that allowed me to solve these problems in a satisfactory fashion
Translating Wagner - A Stylistic Multimodal Challenge. A Translation and Commentary
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Abstract
The translator tasked with providing a metrical (singing) translation of an opera libretto must consider that the opera, as a Gestalt, is ‘other’ than the sum of its individual verbal, musical and mimic-scenic parts and requires the translator to consider how the relationships between them is affected when one part is altered through translation. Translation, in this case, must go beyond copying the original prosody and rhyme schemes, so that the new words fit the notes, and consider the relationship between musical and poetic meaning as well as the resulting dramatic action on stage. As a composer, Richard Wagner was concerned with every thread in the semiotic web of his operas. He wrote the words and the music, provided copious stage directions, was involved with the production of his works, and went as far as building his own theatre at Bayreuth. His lengthy, and at times convoluted, theorising about the synthesis of poetry, music and the scenic-mimetic in his operas, serves as something of a functional blueprint of multimodality. In his 1851 monograph, Oper und Drama, Wagner explains how musico-poetic synthesis is created through Versmelodie (verse-melody), from which melody grows organically, facilitated by the immediate auditory appeal of alliteration, concision and free rhythm. This thesis examines the nexus of foregrounding found in Wagner’s Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung and considers how three translations used in performance (Jameson c.1899, Porter 1977, Sams 2006) and my own respond to Wagner’s synthesis of verse and music. It will consider the constraints and influences which shape the translator’s recreation of Wagner’s musico-poetic style. My translations of these two operas from the tetralogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen" has been produced for the aim of performance but unlike those of Jameson, Porter and Sams, they prioritize alliterative rhyme as an essential part of the musico-poetic intersemiosis.
 
Sign Language Interpreting in Theatre: Using the Human Body to Create Pictures of the Human Soul
No full textThis paper explores theatrical interpreting for Deaf spectators, a specialism that both blurs the separation between translation and interpreting, and replaces these potentials with a paradigm in which the translator\u27s body is central to the production of the target text.
Meaningful written translations of dramatic texts into sign language are not currently possible. For Deaf people to access Shakespeare or Moliere in their own language usually means attending a sign language interpreted performance, a typically disappointing experience that fails to provide accessibility or to fulfil the potential of a dynamically equivalent theatrical translation. I argue that when such interpreting events fail, significant contributory factors are the challenges involved in producing such a target text and the insufficient embodiment of that text.
The second of these factors suggests that the existing conference and community models of interpreting are insufficient in describing theatrical interpreting. I propose that a model drawn from Theatre Studies, namely psychophysical acting, might be more effective for conceptualising theatrical interpreting. I also draw on theories from neurological research into the Mirror Neuron System to suggest that a highly visual and physical approach to performance (be that by actors or interpreters) is more effective in building a strong actor-spectator interaction than a performance in which meaning is conveyed by spoken words.
Arguably this difference in language impact between signed and spoken is irrelevant to hearing audiences attending spoken language plays, but I suggest that for all theatre translators the implications are significant: it is not enough to create a literary translation as the target text; it is also essential to produce a text that suggests physicality. The aim should be the creation of a text which demands full expression through the body, the best picture of the human soul and the fundamental medium of theatre
