ENGLISH LANGUAGE v

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE v

• TIMETABLE
• Prof. Barone
• FRIDAY 8.30 - 10.30 TRANSLATION THEORY AND
  PRACTICE aula 7
• Prof. Garzillo
• FRIDAY 12.30 14.30 TRANSLATION PRACTICE aula 9

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PROGRAMME

• CAE RESULT Student's Book Workbook Resource Pack
  WITH KEY Kathy Gude Mary Stephens, Oxford
• English Collocations in Use Michael McCarthy
  Felicity O'Dell, Cambridge
• English Phrasal verbs in Use, Michael McCarthy
  Felicity O'Dell, Cambridge
• THE ABOVE BOOKS ARE USED WITH YOUR MOTHER TONGUE
  TEACHERS
• B. Hatim, J. Munday, Translation. An advanced
  resource book, London, Routledge, 2004 (pp.
  40-120 and pp. 160 -218)
• FURTHER MATERIALS WILL BE PROVIDED BY THE TEACHER

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COURSE CONTENTS

• DYMANIC EQUIVALENCE AND THE RECEPTOR OF THE
  MESSAGE
• TEXTUAL PRAGMATICS AND EQUIVALENCE
• TRANSLATION AND RELEVANCE
• TEXT TYPE IN TRANSLATION
• TEXT REGISTER IN TRANSLATION
• TEXT, GENRE AND DISCOURSE SHIFT IN TRANSLATION
• AGENTS OF POWER IN TRANSLATION
• TRANSLATION IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ERA
• CONSIDERATIONS ON CINEMATIC LANGUAGE AND
  TRANSLATION

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Course steps

• After each theoretical class you will be assigned
  a task to carry out for the following lesson.
• You will read papers by some of the most
  important scholars in the field of translation
  and youll be asked to write a PPP on them.
• You can work either on your own or in couple.
  Each presentation will be given to me and
  evaluated.
• After each theoretical lesson, we will have a
  lesson totally dedicated to your presentations.
• You will be asked to show your works to your
  colleagues.
• PPPs have to be very concise and their duration
  must be of max. 15/20 minutes.
• The concepts written in each slide have to be
  widened by you during the presentation, as if you
  were at an academic conference.

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Example of ppp

• This is just an example of how to write a PPP.
• It is particularly useful because, besides being
  a PPP, it also gives advice on how to write
  academic papers and/or dissertations.
• This example of PPP is already available on my
  web page.
• http//www.unisa.it//Facolta/Lingue_e_Letterature_
  Straniere/Contatti/Docenti_e_Ricercatori/Barone/li
  nda_barone.php
• in the section MATERIALE DIDATTICO

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Meaning and importance of your works

• Your PPPs will be part of the final exam, each
  work will be given a mark. The average mark of
  your PPPs will be added to the mark you will get
  for the translation exam.
• The average between the two will be your final
  mark of this part of the course.
• The translation exam will be done during the last
  lesson.
• Your works plus the translation ARE your exam
  (both oral and written) concerning my course and
  prof. Garzillos.

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First papers to read

• pp. 161 167
• NIDA, E.A., Science of translation
• NIDA, E.A., Toward a science of translation
• First presentation FRIDAY 13 MARCH

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expansion

• By the end of the course you will write a paper
  of max. 1000 words.
• Youll watch the movie Miracle at St. Anna by
  Spike Lee (both the original and the Italian
  dubbed version)
• Youll read the screenplay of the movie as well.
• Some state that Miracolo a SantAnna is one of
  the worst dubbed movies ever.
• Starting from this assumption/hypothesis and
  after watching the two versions you are asked to
  write about the problems of translation that can
  be found in the Italian version.

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Translatability or comprehension?

• Insisting on full translatability may result in
  lack of comprehension/understanding.
• Insisting on full comprehension (by explaining
  each translation with notes or paraphrases)
  results in something which is not translation
  anymore.
• The balance between these two concepts is
  fundamental.
• NIDA anything which can be said in one language
  can be said in another, unless the form is an
  essential element of the message.

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• Translatability and comprehensibility working
  together and not considered as opposite have
  given rise to dynamic equivalence whose
  counterpart is formal equivalence.
• FE involves the replacement of words or phrases
  in the SL by others in the TL taking context into
  account. However, FE is NOT literal translation.

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• While literal translations tend to preserve
  formal features (a sort of machine translation),
  a formal translation is almost always
  contextually motivated formal features are saved
  only if they can become part of the overall
  meaning.

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example

• Newsweek obituary of Sir Alec Guinness (famous
  British actor).
• () a face so ordinary as to approach anonymity,
  a mastery of disguise so accomplished he could
  vanish without a trace inside a role and a wary
  intelligence that allowed him to reveal the
  deepest secrets of his characters while slyly
  protecting his own.
• Formal equivalence means to focus ones attention
  on the message in both form and content
  respecting the intentions of the author and the
  context in which the text appears.

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Dynamic equivalence

• Yet, for a wide variety of texts, formal
  equivalence is not enough and some explications
  and adjustments are needed.
• This happens when the ST contains words/phrases
  which are not transparent and would result in a
  threat to comprehensibility.
• In these cases the translator MUST intervene.
• This is an English translation of an Arabic
  advert
• X Bank presents the banking services by phone.
  The Telebanking System welcomes you by the
  Islamic greeting assalamu alaykum, completes
  your inquiries/transactions within few seconds
  and sees you off saying fi aman allah.
• THIS WAS A TOTAL FLOP and was soon withdrawn and
  then it re-appeared in this new guise
• X Islamic Bank, the first Islamic Bank in the
  world, is pleased to offer you a sophisticated
  service through Automated Teller Machine Cash
  Card.

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adjustment

• It means to modify a ST in order to make it
  acceptable to the target audience.
• The more form-bound a meaning is the more formal
  the equivalence relation will have to be.
• The more context-bound a meaning is (e.g. obscure
  references to source culture) the more dynamic
  the equivalence will have to be.

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Read the following

• You must be excited about the film coming out,
  a friendly acquaintance remarked at the end of
  2001, a few months before the movie version of
  About a Boy was released. (Those weren't her
  actual words. Her actual words were, You must be
  excited about About a Boy coming out. I changed
  them because, prose stylist that I am, I wanted
  to avoid that double 'about'. I'm sick of it. My
  advice to young writers never begin a title with
  a preposition, because you will find that it is
  impossible to utter or to write any sentence
  pertaining to your creation without sounding as
  if you have an especially pitiable stutter. He
  wanted to talk to me about About a Boy. What
  about About a Boy? The thing about About a
  Boy... Are you excited about About a Boy? And
  so on. I wonder if Steinbeck and his publishers
  got sick of it? What do you think of Of Mice and
  Men? I've just finished the first half of Of
  Mice and Men. What's the publication date of Of
  Mice and Men?Still, it seemed like a good idea
  at the time.)

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This is the official translation

• Devessere una bella emozione luscita del film
  mi disse una simpatica conoscente alla fine del
  2001, pochi mesi prima che uscisse About a Boy,
  la versione cinematografica di Un Ragazzo (anzi,
  più esattamente, le sue parole furono
  Devessere una bella emozione sapere che sta per
  uscire il film. Le ho modificate perché, da
  prosatore attento allo stile, volevo evitare quel
  ripetersi dellinfinito. E un consiglio che do
  anche ai giovani scrittori evitate simili
  cantilene, o vi colpiranno come un pugno nello
  stomaco appena vi rileggerete. mi farebbe
  piacere sapere E un vero piacere avere e
  così via).

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20 March 2009

• Textual pragmatics and equivalence
• The following slides are based on pp. 48-56 of
  your book.
• Next time PP presentations on Koller
  (pp.170-173) and Levy (174-175)
• Two different PPPs

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Translation proper

• Summarizing, explaining and other similar forms
  are considered types of translation.
• What is translation proper?
• TP between the ST and the TT there must be a
  translational or equivalence relation.
• Langue and parole
• What are they?
• How can translation be related to langue and
  parole?

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equivalence

• Equivalence is obtained in parole-oriented
  translations.
• Not a translation from a linguistic system into
  another (langue), but from a text in context into
  another (communication / intended meaning /
  parole-oriented translation).

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Equivalence double linkage

• Equivalence is bound to two linkages
• Conflicting SL/TL linguistic, textual and
  extra-textual factors
• Historical-cultural conditions of the ST and its
  translation
• 1) is mainly about TEXT and 2) is mainly about
  CONTEXT
• These two linkages lead to different degrees of
  equivalence depending on the GENRE of texts

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• I had wanted for years to get Mrs. Thatcher in
  front of my camera. As she got more powerful she
  got sort of sexier.
• (H. Newton Newsweek)

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• Levels of equivalence
• Formal equivalence when we fully respect spelling
  and phonological features
• Referential equivalence (when we change a word
  but we refer to the same thing e.g. sexy -
  attractive)
• Connotative equivalence when we have to adapt
  and take into account the intentions and context
  of ST
• sexy is not acceptable if we consider the usual
  reference (iron lady) to Thatcher, so we have
  to find a different solution (attractive
  femininity) to give meaning to TT readers
  pragmatic equivalence.

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However

• All this depends on the nature/genre of the ST
• Instructions on medicines Vs. ads?
• Decision-making by translators
• Medicine instructions will probably stop to
  points 1 and 2 of the previous slide
• In case of ads points 1 and 2 are not sufficient.

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Different aspects of decision-making

• Aesthetics
• the translator wants to follow aesthetic
  standards (highly subjective). See ex. p. 52
• Cognition and knowledge
• (less subjective) what the translator knows
  (culture, values, beliefs NOT stylistic
  elegance). See ex. p. 53
• Commission
• (no subjectivity, the work is commissioned) the
  translator follows precise orders.

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• Practice
• Read and try to translate this short text into
  Italian (or in your language) in no more than 15
  minutes.
• Whats the genre?

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back-translation experiment

• What is back-translation?
• Back Translation is the process of translating a
  text that has already been translated into a
  foreign language back to the original language.
• That is, we start from a translated text and we
  retranslate it into its original language, but
  ignoring the original.
• Wikipedia A back-translation is a translation of
  a translated text back into the language of the
  original text, made without reference to the
  original text.