TranscUlturAl (Journal)
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On Translating Postcolonial African Writing: French Translation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
No full textLike many postcolonial African novels written in English, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) written by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie presents many instances of literary hybridity. This paper focuses on these occurrences of hybridity and examines their translation from English into French. The paper considers various manifestations of hybridity in the novel and compares them with the novel’s French translation to illuminate translation strategies while analyzing the implications of key translation choices. This paper emphasizes that the translator made a significant effort to employ ethnocentric strategies to preserve the resonances of the author’s culture, especially instances of vernacular language inherent in the original text. The paper also notes seemingly arbitrary choices that exoticize and homogenize the translated text. Despite these instances, this paper concludes that the translation managed to maintain a balance between the source text and the target language.
 
Three Faces of the Monster: Interpreting Disability and Creating Meaning in Translations of Alice Munro’s “Child’s Play”
No full textThis article addresses the problematics of creating meaning in literary translation by comparing three versions of Alice Munro’s short story “Child’s Play” translated into German, Ukrainian, and Russian. Proceeding from a fluid and unstable source text that represents the conflict of socially perpetuated normative thinking and non-conforming “monstrous” bodies marked by intellectual disability, the translators renegotiate the meaning of embodied otherness and its stigmatization in society in unique ways that reflect their personal perspectives on translation and individual agendas in their translation projects. Munro’s focus on the relationship between a special needs girl and the narrator responsible for her death exposes the society’s deeply ingrained aversion, fear, and hate against people with intellectual disabilities. These prejudiced views find their expression in equating “special” bodies with passive objects, repulsive animal-like creatures, and wild monsters. However, this metaphorical language reflects first and foremost on the narrator, whose hateful speech, breaking through the surface of her seemingly impartial account, unmasks the true faces of the victim and the perpetrator. Each translator ascribes a different meaning to Munro’s deliberately ambiguous narrative: while the German version accentuates the original’s insistence on complexity and uncertainty, the Ukrainian translation increases intensity of the protagonist’s emotional involvement bringing her hatred and disgust to the extreme to make a point about social marginalization of the vulnerable other. The Russian text, conversely, rationalizes the narrator’s actions and turns her tale into a deeply tragic personal confession to align it with a typical plotline of the Russian literary tradition. Overall, three target-language versions of the story add new dimensions to the original text and further destabilize it by consolidating their preferred readings in their treatment of the socially constructed opposition between “monstrous” and “normal”
Translating in Canada: An Interview with Literary Translator and Translation Scholar Dr. Luise von Flotow
No full textIntervie
Quand Lucky Luke et les (Amér)Indiens parlent francoprovençal bressan. Traduction et transposition, entre inaudibilité linguistique et visibilité culturelle
No full textLe francoprovençal (FP), parlé pendant des siècles dans quelques régions de France, de Suisse et d’Italie, ne compte plus que quelques dizaines de milliers de locuteurs, souvent âgés, qui appellent leur langue "patois". Sans statut officiel ni orthographe consensuelle, le FP peine à être reconnu par les autorités scolaires. Dans ce contexte, la traduction de bandes dessinées peut avoir une fonction éducative et favoriser la redécouverte d’une langue devenue inaudible. Elle peut même prendre la forme d’une traduction culturelle dépassant l’enjeu linguistique, comme nous le montrons en analysant le texte et le paratexte d’un album de Lucky Luke traduit vers le FP de Bresse (France), dans lequel le héros emblématique de la "BD western parodique" offre l’occasion de présenter des éléments de la culture bressane. En raison de la présence de personnages amérindiens, l’album traduit illustre les rapports que les cultures dominantes tant américaine que française entretiennent avec l’autochtonie (amérindienne ou "régionale"). Mais la démarche pose aussi la question de la légitimité de certaines transpositions; car le FP, certes ultra-minoritaire, reste associé à l’Occident colonisateur, et l’autochtonisation (bressanisation) du récit par des clins d’œil (noms de personnages et de lieux, proverbes, allusions aux chants, danses ou rituels de mariage bressans) n’inverse pas la perspective eurocentriste. Il reste que, bien qu\u27on puisse difficilement comparer une situation coloniale aux conséquences génocidaires en Amérique du Nord et une oppression sous forme d’assimilation lente en France, cette traduction peut nourrir la réflexion sur la condition autochtone de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique
(Non)Translation as Resistance in Tomson Highway\u27s Kiss of the Fur Queen
No full textAfter a brief explanation regarding the author’s settle-scholar status in regard of interpreting Indigenous texts, Tomson Highway’s novel Kiss of the Fur Queen is examined as a ‘first translation’ in which untranslatability plays the main role. The term ‘first translation’ will be defined, and a deliberately refined definition of a hybrid text will be reviewed through the lens of several Indigenous scholars. Then, following a brief description of Highway’s novel, the paper will envisage its translatory nature from the point of view of three narrative strategies: 1) The insertion of Cree lexical elements within the text. Here, in a codified manner, Highway forces the reader to grasp the importance his mother tongue has in understanding the novel’s complexities. 2) This is followed by a section on the use of Cree mythology within the narrative. Gerald Vizenor’s use of Bakhtin becomes a useful tool in accessing the idea of two consciousnesses through the intertwining of the fantastic and mythology. 3) And finally, the linguistic challenge of cultural contact within the story itself is examined. From the foreignness of English, quite literally attached to the sound of the language, to the inability of expressing the reality of abuse endured in residential school in Cree, the protagonists push up against irreconcilable cultural/linguistic worlds. Put together, these three different narrative strategies come together to form a langue culture, to use Henri Meschonnic’s term
A Practical Proposal to Use Venuti’s ‘Minoritizing Translation’ for Native American Literature
No full textIn a recent article, I argued that Native American literature, as a minor literature according to Deleuze and Guattari, is a great candidate for being translated in a minoritizing way, as proposed by Venuti. Since this literature is very popular in Spain –13 translations published in the 2010s–, I analysed the most recent translations of Sherman Alexie’s, Louise Erdrich’s and N. Scott Momaday’s novels and concluded that they were aimed at entertainment, at linguistic and syntactic fluency, and at over-refined stylistics. This kind of translation means, hence, the erasure of indigenous cultural and literary aspects from the target texts and the hiding of the socio-political implications of the source texts.
In the present article, I insist on the idea that Venuti’s ‘minoritizing translation’ can be adapted to attend to the minor literature features of American Indian books and, consequently, to produce culturally and socio-politically engaged translations. After revising Venuti’s proposal and Tymoczko’s criticism on it, I present a brief description of the translations of works by Alexie, Erdrich, Momaday and Zitkala-Ša, all published during the 2010s. Then, I detail the precise strategies that would help to emphasize the specific characteristics of this literature, and I compare passages from the published translations with my alternative minoritizing translations
Lost and Found in (Self-)Translation: From Colonial to Post-colonial Contexts
No full textThe introduction to this special issue discusses (self-)translation processes and products of migrant and colonized Indigenous peoples in translation and cultural studies scholarship, as well as the creation of minor paintings and literature by these peoples in order to affirm the existence of their languages and cultures. It nuances the linguistic, cultural and identitary tribulations to which colonized and migratory peoples are subjected, the double-edged sword of (self-)translation, and the paradoxical gains that can be found by going through its, at times, painful process. Ways in which (self-)translation can be used to empower dominated, often endangered, languages and cultures are also analyzed, before presenting, very briefly, the articles published in the issu