The cognitive, linguistic, visual, cultural and ideological phenomena

Task A2.1 ➤ The spoken or written form of names in the Harry Potter books often con- tributes to their meaning. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, one of the evil characters goes by the name of Tom Marvolo Riddle, yet this name is itself a riddle, since it is an anagram of ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ and reveals the character’s true identity. Think how you might deal with this form–content problem in translation into another language. In the published translations, many of the Harry Potter translators have resorted to altering the original name in order to create the required pun:in French, the name becomes ‘Tom Elvis Jedusor’ which gives ‘Je suis Voldemort’ as well as suggesting an enigmatic fate with the use of the name Elvis and the play on words ‘jeudusor’ or ‘jeu du sort’, meaning ‘game of fate’. In this way the French translator, Jean-François Ménard, has preserved the content by altering the form. LITERAL AND FREE The split between form and content is linked in many ways to the major polar split which has marked the history of western translation theory for two thousand years, between two ways of translating:‘literal’ and ‘free’. The origin of this separation is to be found in two of the most-quoted names in translation theory, the Roman lawyer and writer Cicero and St Jerome, who translated the Greek Septuagint gospels into Latin in the fourth century. In Classical times, it was normal for translators working from Greek to provide a literal, word-for-word ‘translation’ which would serve as an aid to the Latin reader who, it could be assumed, was reasonably acquainted with the Greek source language. Cicero, describing his own translation of Attic orators in 46 BCE , emphasized that he did not follow the literal ‘word-for-word’ approach but, as an orator,‘sought to preserve the general style and force of the language’ Cicero 46 BC 1960:364. Four centuries later, St Jerome described his Bible translation strategy as ‘I render not word-for-word but sense for sense’ Jerome 3951997:25. This approach was of particular importance for the translation of such sensitive texts as the Bible, deemed by many to be the repository of truth and the word of God. A translator who did not remain ‘true’ to the ‘official’ interpretation of that word often ran a considerable risk. Sometimes, as in the case of the sixteenth-century English Bible translator William Tyndale, it was the mere act of translation into the vernacular that led to persecution and execution. The literal and free translation strategies can still be seen in texts to the present day. The shoe-cleaning machine example Example C1.1 could be considered a literal translation of the Spanish – so literal, it remains part Spanish Example A2.1 below, from a tourist brochure for a vintage train line in Mallorca, shows how a literal translation may be the norm between two closely related languages, in this case ST T r a n s l a t i o n s t r a t e g i e s 11 A SECTION ★ Catalan and TT Spanish. It is easy to see that the lexical and syntactic structures are almost identical: Example A2.1 ST Des de 1912, el Ferrocarril de Sóller uneix les xiutats de Palma i Sóller TT Desde 1912, el Ferrocarril de Sóller une las ciudades de Palma y Sóller [Since 1912, the Railway of Soller joins the towns of Palma and Soller conservant encara el seu caràcter original. conservando su carácter original. preserving still the its character original .] Such a literal translation is not so common when the languages in question are more distant. Or, to put it another way, the term ‘literal’ has tended to be used with a different focus, sometimes to denote a TT which is overly close or influenced by the ST or SL. The result is what is sometimes known as ‘translationese’. To illustrate this, let us consider some typical examples of translated material the English TTs of Arabic STs which seem to defy comprehension. As you read through these TTs, try to identify features of the texts that strike you as odd, and reflect on whether problems of this kind are common in languages you are familiar with. For example, what are we to make of the request for donations in this welfare organization’s publicity leaflet? 12 I n t r o d u c t i o n A SECTION A pejorative general term for the language of translation. It is often used to indicate a stilted form of the TL from calquing ST lexical or syntactic patterning see Duff 1981. Translationese is related to translation universals see Section A Unit 1 since the characteristics mentioned above may be due to common translation phenomena such as interference, explicitation and domestication . In Unit 13, we shall see how an alternative name, translatese, is employed by Spivak to refer to a lifeless form of the TL that homogenizes the different ST authors. Newmark 2003:96 uses another term, ‘trans- latorese’, to mean the automatic choice of the most common ‘dictionary’ translation of a word where, in context, a less frequent alternative would be more appropriate. Concept Box Translationese