TranscUlturAl (Journal)
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Pseudo-translation as a Subset of the Literary System: a Case Study
No full textAbstract
Persian literature is replete with pseudo-translations to the extent that if one tried to compile a complete bibliography, it would turn into an unwieldy book. Most Persian pseudo-translations belong to Iranian political literature (Okhovat, 2006). As could be guessed, identifying pseudo-translations is not a simple task as their authors want readers to believe in the ‘translationness’ of these works for various reasons. One of the most famous Iranian pieces of pseudo-translations, whose original writer has recently claimed its authorship, is the famous (in Iran) Letter of Charlie Chaplin to his daughter Geraldine. The present article examines diverse aspects of this text, including its political, historical, cultural, and literary milieu of production, and provides a critical discourse analysis of this text and highlights the original author’s ideological stance as it is embedded in this purported foreign letter. The article concludes by surmising the reasons why this famous work was published as a translation, and how it is, that the original writer has claimed authorship after more than 30 years
L2 Translation at the Periphery: A Meta-Analysis of Current Views on Translation Directionality
No full textAbstrac
The Cultural Politics of Translation: The Case of Voltaire’s Mérope and Scipione Maffei’s Merope
No full textIn 1743, Voltaire writes to Scipione Maffei his intention to translate Merope, a drama the Italian playwright had composed thirty years before and that Voltaire deemed worthy of the French stage due to its treatment of the classic heroine and its adherence to classical norms. However, Voltaire later claims that due to flaws in Maffei’s work, he will write his own version of the play. This petty incident stirred a long-lived and animated debate over which dramatist had adhered more closely to the principles of classical theatre and whose country could claim its primacy in European theatre. In my paper, I use this episode to illustrate how translation shapes and is shaped by source and target cultures, and how it determines what is peripheral and what is central to intercultural debates. I argue that both Voltaire and Maffei struggle to assert their position as leading “translators” of classical Greek theatre and eminent interlocutors in the debate over form and content of modern drama. My paper will use Voltaire’s translational faux pas to reflect on the larger issues of how translation situates itself in the middle of cultural hierarchies and how it fashions national identity, cultural pertinence, national subordination, and notions of cultural peripheries and centers, all topics that lie at the heart of contemporary translation studie
Whispered Song: Discerning Voices of 19th Century Louisianan Poets
No full textThe messages of Free People of Colour were spread through subtle and subversive poetry and song in 19th century French Louisiana. Reuniting the lyrical poetry with the original music provides a deep and rich understanding of the intentions and meaning of the poems. The songs portray the French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution situated in the context of life in Civil War era Louisiana. This research details the discovery process of contemporary attitudes toward French in Louisiana, a historical analysis of song and lyrics of the 19th to mid-20th century, and an interpretation of poetry written by Free People of Colour as it relates to the works of Pierre-Jean de Beranger, a French poet who chronicled the spirit of the French Revolution. The narrative describes voices, once silenced, becoming a whispered song
Is The World Enough? Culture, Translation, and Impassable Differences in the Life of Victoria Ocampo
No full textVictoria Ocampo’s work and linguistic aptitude were often criticized due to her gender and privileged social position. Her abilities were seen as intrusions into languages, cultures and a world of intellectual exchange in which she was tolerated, but never accepted. In light of recent studies on intercultural maturity, this essay argues that Ocampo’s relationship between language and culture can now be read as a blueprint for the modern world. This world is that of increased interest in globalization, one in which it is less and less rare that family members need a passport in order to visit one another, and in which heritage language speakers are no longer the odd minority. The world today is marked by transculturation and other incidences of overlapping ethnic and national heritages historically isolated for their “otherness” within a dominant socio-cultural structure seeking homogeneity to a white, western European ideology
Transmesis: Dealing with Translation in Translation
No full textThe concept of transmesis – a relatively new coinage that even among the seasoned theoreticians and practitioners of translation sometimes elicits a bewildered “trans what?” – is perhaps best illustrated in the works of Jorge Louis Borges. His character Pierre Menard from the widely anthologized story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” for example, intends (apparently disregarding Horace’s famous “nec verbum verbo” reservation, if of course he happened to be familiar with it) “to produce a few pages which would coincide – word for word and line for line – with those of Miguel de Cervantes” (66). Borges’s “Library of Babel” in addition to the “the minutely detailed history of the future” also contains “the translation of every book in all languages” (Ficciones 81-82)
Dubbing The Flintstones and The Simpsons in French. A Comparative Perspective between France and Québec
No full textThe present dissertation conducts a comparative study of the dubbing of two American animated TV series, The Flintstones and The Simpsons, in two francophone regions/countries, Québec and France. Since audiovisual products are complex blends of semiotic signs, in which the interplay between the visuals and the verbal is crucial to the understanding of the product, and since they convey their own cultural world, the study is led along three axes: the verbal/nonverbal dynamics, the language(s) used in the dubbing and cultural references. While most theories rely on either a linguistic or a cultural approach to the dubbing process and product, the present research throws a bridge between both and offers an interdisciplinary analysis.
The dubbed shows are conceived as processes and products of the “contact zones” understood as “… social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power...” (Pratt 1991: 34). These contact zones create points of tensions inscribed within a power play at the industrial, linguistic and cultural levels. The dubbing industry is conceived as a space of negotiations or a contact zone between the local and the global characterized by power relations. The dubbing process becomes a subversive “Third Space” (Bhabha 1994: 36) in both versions, a space in between the verbal/visual dynamics, language(s) and cultures that generates a semi (in)visible translation.
Ultimately, both versions become rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) entities connecting heterogeneous elements within the dubbing process that blurs the TV series’ fixed identities. The translation becomes literally political in The Flintstones through multiple references to Québec’s language policies and figuratively in The Simpsons by featuring a meta-commentary on the state of the dubbing industry as an invisible art. The French version incarnates a limbo place or a Third Space in The Flintstones matching its artificial Third language and, in The Simpsons, evolves towards a more concrete patchwork matching a more ‘authentic’ language
I Can Do Better Than That!
No full textThis paper builds on the notion of crypto-languages, or hidden languages, to narrate the author’s coming to writing and translation. His novels are discussed as all including one aspect or another of crypto-language. For example, Russian becomes the key to salvation for Sonya, who doesn’t know how to speak it, in Sonya & Jack, and a clinical psychologist in the former Yugoslavia admits in The Speaking Cure to knowing that his patients lie to him, but that behind every lie lies the truth. The author himself learned the difference between “real” foreign languages—French, German or Spanish—and cryto-languages—Polish, Czech or Yiddish—during his childhood in Chicago. The experience of learning French forged in him the desire to write, which in turn created the desire to translate that is described here as a kind of voyeurism. The title of the paper refers to the feeling one has while reading some translated fiction: “I can do better than that!” Translation, as a form of writing, can improve the original by correcting various mistakes, in the logic of the plot, for instance. But there is a difference between writing and translating: the writer writes to find out how the story will end but the translator already knows. As a result, the best way for a writer to translate is to resist reading the book before starting the translation
