ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
Editor-in-chief: Kinga Klaudy
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003
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ABSTRACTS
pp. 5-18
CANON, TRANSLATION, AND LITERARY HISTORY
MIHÁLY SZEGEDY-MASZÁK
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Budapest, Múzeum krt.4.
Phone: +36 1 2669833
E-mail: szegedy@ludens.elte.hu
Abstract: How far can canon and language be sources of (dis)continuity in literary history?
Continuity and discontinuity are concepts of such complexity that only philosophers can hope to make a
successful attempt to define them in general terms. All I can try is a tentative analysis of their
significance for literary history. Since even such an investigation would ask for a lengthy treatment if
conducted on an abstract level, I shall limit myself to reflections on how continuity and discontinuity
are related to the concepts of canon and language. In the second half of my paper a personified
abstraction called nation will also be introduced with the intention of making some remarks on the
legitimacy of the terms national and world literature. The essay also raises the question of whether it is
possible to write literary history in a postmodern world.
Key words: canon, literary history, translation, globalization, nation
pp. 19-53
PARAMETRIZED BEGINNINGS OF SENTENCES IN
ENGLISH AND GERMAN
MONIKA DOHERTY
Philosophische Fakultät II. Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Deutschland
Phone: +49-30-2093 2488, Fax: +49-30-2093 2405
E-mail: monika.doherty@rz.hu-berlin.de
Abstract: Translational evidence from popular-scientific texts shows that about every second
sentence of the German translations does not begin in the same way as the English originals although
the sentences are subject to the same discourse conditions and although in many cases analogous
beginnings are not excluded for linguistic reasons. The differences concern word order and perspective,
i.e., active, passive and passive-like structures, but also structural explicitness, i.e., the use of clauses,
word groups, words or proforms at the beginning of sentences. To explain the findings, it will be
assumed that complex information structures are subject to a strategy of balanced information
distribution, which replaces the given-new strategy of simpler information structures, and that both
strategies spell out differently if grammatical parameters are set differently. In particular, the different
beginnings of German and English sentences suggest that there are stronger constraints in English on
reordering due to processing disadvantages which follow from the tighter subject-verb-object link in
English.
Key words: translation, information structure, parametrized, control paraphrases, discourse
appropriate, language processing
pp. 53-63
EXPLICITATING AND IMPLICITATING SOURCE TEXT
IDEOLOGY
TIINA PUURTINEN
University of Joensuu, Savonlinna School of Translation Studies
P.O.Box 48. FIN-57101 Savonlinna, Finland
Phone: +358 15 511 7739, Fax: +358 15 515 096
E-mail: tiina.puurtinen@joensuu.fi
Abstract: The article applies to translation some ideas from critical discourse analysis and
discusses the potential effects of translational solutions on the ideological content of texts in the light
of a small-scale study on student translations. Ideology refers here to the ways in which linguistic
choices made by the writer or translator of a text, first, create a particular perspective on the events
portrayed, second, may reflect the writer’s opinions and attitudes, and third, may be used to influence
readers’ opinions. Particular linguistic structures, such as vocabulary, finite and nonfinite
constructions, active and passive forms, and grammatical metaphors, can be seen as conscious or
unconscious strategies which realise ideological meanings. In translation, ideologically motivated
linguistic structures of a source text may be manipulated either unintentionally because of insufficient
language and/or translation skills or lacking knowledge of the relationship between language and
ideology, or intentionally owing to translation norms, requirements of the translation commission or
the translator’s own attitudes towards the source text subject. The analysis of Finnish translations of
English magazine articles made by translation students focused on explicitating and implicitating
translation strategies. Implicitation was found to be much more frequent than explicitation.
Explicitation included, for instance, replacing a source-text nominalisation with a Finnish verb phrase
and making clausal relations more explicit by adding connectives to the texts. Implicitation involved
turning verb phrases into nominalisations and complete relative clauses into complex premodified
noun phrases. These strategies changed the viewpoints and occasionally even modified the opinions
expressed by the source-text writers. The students’ non-systematic application of opposite strategies
suggests that source text manipulation was mainly caused by insufficient skills and knowledge rather
than ideological motivations.
Keywords: explicitation, implicitation, ideology, grammatical metaphor
pp. 63-89
EVIDENCE OF EXPLICITATION IN SUBTITLING:
TOWARDS A CATEGORISATION
ELISA PEREGO
Department of Linguistics, University of Pavia
Strada Nuova 65, Italy
Phone: +39 0382 504686, Fax number+39 0382 504487
E-mail: maperego@tin.it
Abstract: After framing the main theoretical issues related to subtitling and specifically to explicitation,
this paper describes an in-progress research project. First, the preliminary hypothesis standing at the basis of the
research is outlined, which is then followed by the presentation of a small-scale corpus designed by the author.
Second, I will offer an account of the research method and of the phases of analysis which helped to identify
cases of explicitaion, and allowed for proposing an initial, rudimentary categorisation of the types of
explicitation found in translation for the screen in the form of subtitling. All the occurrences of different
explicitation types are illustrated with excerpts taken from the films analysed.
Key words: explicitation, subtitling, translation studies, audio-visual translation
pp. 89-109
PROPER NAMES IN TRANSLATION:
AN EXPLANATORY ATTEMPT
ALBERT PÉTER VERMES
Károly Eszterházy College
Egészségház u. 4, Eger H-3300, Hungary
Phone: +36 36 520461, Fax: +36 36 520400 (3064)
E-mail: vermes@ektf.hu
Abstract: The primary thesis of this paper1 is that, contrary to popular views, the translation of
proper names is a non-trivial question, closely related to the problem of the meaning of the proper
name. The aim is to show what happens to proper names in the process of translation, particularly from
English into Hungarian, to systematise and, within the frames of relevance theory, to explain the
phenomena in question. It is suggested that in translating a proper name translators have four basic
operations at their disposal: transference, translation proper, substitution and modification, which are
defined here and explained in relevance-theoretic terms. The paper presents two case studies, which
attempt to explain the treatment of proper names in the Hungarian translations of Kurt Vonnegut’s
1
This paper is a revised version of the empirical chapter of the author’s PhD dissertation (Vermes 2001).
Slaughterhouse-Five and J. F. Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. The analysis is based on the
assumption that translation is a special form of communication, aimed at establishing interpretive
resemblance between the source text and the target text, governed by the principle of optimal
resemblance (Sperber and Wilson 1986, and Gutt 1991). The findings seem to confirm the claim that
proper names behave in a largely predictable way in translation: the particular operations chosen to deal
with them are a function, partly, of the semantic content they are loaded with in the source context and,
partly, of considerations of how this content may be preserved in the target communication situation,
including elements like the specific audience, intertextual relationships and translation norms, in
consistency with the principle of relevance.
Key words: relevance, interpetive resemblance, context, cognitive environment, proper name,
translation operation
pp. 109-133
PERL SCRIPTING IN TRANSLATION PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
GRZEGORZ CHRUPAŁA
Intercultural Studies Group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili,
Placa Imperial Tarraco 1, E-43005 Tarragona, Spain
E-mail: grchrupc7@docd4.ub.edu
Abstract: The field of translation in general and of technical translation in particular has
become increasingly dependent on the use of various electronic tools. Computer assisted translation
uses specialized applications that partly automate the production of multilingual software and
documentation. However, for some needs these applications are not flexible enough. In these
situations programming becomes indispensable. Scripting programming languages such as Perl
provide a perfect platform for rapid solution of specific, short-term problems in a fully customizable
way.
Keywords: translation, scripting, programming, CAT, Perl