Translation Studies Commons^™

Audacious Translation: On Being Haunted And Getting Lost On The Way To Translating Spivak. A Reflection On Spivak’S “Translating Into English”, Susan R. Adams

Susan Adams

In “Translating Into English” within An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), Spivak eludes apprehension, spurns comprehension, and resists neat translation as I, an American educator, attempt to make sense of what is meant by an aesthetic education as Spivak translates the act of translation. Caught and othered as a language broker in learning the double bind of translation, I find no answers, only new questions as I grope toward ways to conceptualize and to name this moment for translators and language educators: (1) What does it mean to be a translator?; (2) Can and should the convenient …

Why Get Lost In Translation? On The English Translations Of Wen Yiduo's Poems, Choi Yung Ng

Theses & Dissertations

The debate over the translatability of poetry has been a long-standing issue for decades. Relatively few discussions, however, have focused on the concrete reasons of poetry being translatable (or untranslatable). Moving beyond traditional ways of elucidating the matter through theoretical argument, this study aims to investigate the question of poetry translation in a more solid, empirical manner by looking into linguistic and language-based aesthetic differences between Chinese and English, in particular their prosodic features and capacities. Part One seeks to answer the question “Why does poetry get lost in translation?” from a linguistic and language-based aesthetic perspective, using the English …

Inadequate Translations: Spanish/English Discrepancies In The Translated Sonnets Of Garcilaso De La Vega, Jessica V. Palmer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The intimate relationship one develops with his or her native language is an experience which cannot be replicated through any amount of education. Diction, vocabulary, intonation and the connotations which accompany the many facets of language all develop along with us as we progress through life's experiences. Because of this deeply ingrained personal understanding, each individual's perspective towards a work of art, namely poetry, is completely unique to his or her experiences with the language in which it is written. Therefore, no amount of diligent translation can make a poem inhabit the same sentiment and effect in any language other …

Anime And Identity: The Reception Of Sailor Moon By Adolescent American Fans, Darrah M. Hewlett

East Asian Studies Summer Fellows

This project looks at the way fans think, talk, and feel about the anime they watch and the manga they read. Specifically, it looks at fans of Sailor Moon, a series of Japanese anime and manga made in the 1990s that have been dubbed and translated into English and have been met with an enthusiastic reception among girls and young women in the United States. Sailor Moon is considered one of the first mass cultural productions to present images of girl power and gender equality and has generated a large and enthusiastic online community of fans. Most of its …

Translating Travel In The Spanish Sahara: English Versions Of Sanmao's Stories Of The Sahara, Ying Xu

Masters Theses

Sanmao (1943-91), author of over 19 books, is well known in Chinese-speaking communities for her travel writing. The present work offers a critical introduction to Sanmao’s life and work as well as an English translation of three selections from her most recognized travelogue, among both general readers and critics, Stories of the Sahara (1976). This text recounts her experience of travelling in the Western Sahara with her husband José María Quero y Ruíz from Spain. Chapter 1 introduces Sanmao’s career, her travel narratives, and the extant scholarship on her work to the English-speaking audience. More specifically, it highlights her time …

The Practice And Evolution Of Video Game Translation: Expanding The Definition Of Translation, Elizabeth Bushouse

Masters Theses

This paper looks at the practice and history of video game translation, with the goal of expanding the definition of translation. Video game translation is a complex process that incorporates a number of aspects from other types of translation, such as literary, audiovisual, and software translation, to form a dynamic whole. As a new medium, video games also present their own challenges to translation in the form of interactivity, technology, non-textual and extra-textual elements, audience involvement, and new business practices. Even though video games are a relatively new medium, the practice of translating them has undergone drastic transformations over the …

The Fascination Of Manga: Cross-Dressing And Gender Performativity In Japanese Media, Sheena Marie Woods

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performativity of gender through cross-dressing has been a staple in Japanese media throughout the centuries. This thesis engages with the pervasiveness of cross-dressing in popular Japanese media, from the modern shōjo gender-bender genre of manga and anime to the traditional Japanese theatre. Drawing on theories from gender-studies and performance aesthetics to delineate the female gender in traditional Japanese theatre, I follow the roles of, representation of, and media for women, concentrating on (1) manga, a form of sequential art featuring illustrations with corresponding text, (2) anime, animated productions (where the word anime is the abbreviated pronunciation of “animation” in …

世界主義的沉思 : 論歐洲戰後保爾．穆杭小說及其中文翻譯的生成與傳播 = Rediscovering Cosmopolitanism : Paul Morand's Novellas After The Great War, Their Chinese Translation And Transmission, Ho Yee, Connie Kwong

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

An Experiment In Gendered Writing: Translation And Original Prose Composition, Julie Warren

Honors Theses

This thesis is a two-part project of translation and prose composition. In part one, I am translating two letters from Ovid’s Heroides, a collection of elegiac poems written from the female perspective of women in mythology to their male lovers. I chose the only two letters, Hypsipyle’s and Medea’s, in the collection that are both written to the same man, Jason. In part two, I am composing two letters in Latin from Jason’s perspective to Hypsipyle and Medea. As Ovid was a male writing from the female perspective and I am a female writing from the male perspective, my goal …

Cinderella: The Study Of Cross-Cultural Encounters In Pre-Modern Societies, Jae Ho Kim

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The vast number of Cinderella variants across the world is staggering and almost unfathomable. Hundreds of versions exist all across the world including Africa, Europe, and Asia. Most people are familiar with the modern Cinderella version written by a French author in the 17^th century. But unbeknownst to a majority of the population, this story dates back centuries ago from earlier time periods. One of the earliest written accounts of the Cinderella story was found in China about 850-860 A.D and the name of the protagonist was Yeh-hsien, instead of Cinderella. By means of comparative textual analysis, three versions …

Food As Symbol: Steps Toward A New Taiwanese-To-English Translation Of Nursery Rhymes, Jason Tsai

Theses & Honors Papers

The purpose of this study is to translate a cluster of three related nursery rhymes from the Taiwanese oral tradition for the immigrant community and a greater Western audience. The study will incorporate tools in American English poetics as well as anthropology to interpret the symbols that would make this genre accessible and meaningful .

This thesis will begin with a concise overview of Taiwanese as a language variant of Southern Min Chinese insofar as how these linguistic traits affect a credible translation .This report will outline relevant aspects of the language's oral tradition as well as the written systems …

老人与海: The Cultural Classroom Handbook, Jessica Ann Brumley

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea has gained global recognition as a literary masterpiece. This novel, although written by an American, is set in Cuba and features cultural elements from Latin America as well as North America. Classrooms around the world use this novel as a means of teaching English to second-language learners because of the comparatively simple grammatical structure and concise word choice.

One specific instance of this is the Chinese classroom, where some students have used The Old Man and the Sea as an introduction to American literature. Hemingway’s work, which has since been translated …

Lost In Translation? Found In Translation? Neither? Both?, Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck, Alyson Waters, Roger Celestin, Charles Lebel

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Translation specialists Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck and Alyson Waters respond to the TQC question:

“Lost in translation”; “Found in translation”: Are these just useless commonplaces or are they indicative of something relevant to your own practice?

Crossing Cultures: The Old Norse Adaptations Of Marie De France’S Lais, Kenna Jacobs

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

The representation of sin and sexuality in Marie de France’s Lais is a topic that continues to be debated among scholars, as the unexpected storylines – including adultery, bestiality, and physical violence – often clash with our preconceived notions concerning the medieval principles of modesty and restraint. The provoking, even disconcerting, nature of this work becomes quite apparent when examined in conjunction with their later adaptations in the thirteenth century, as King Hákon of Norway commissioned the translation of several lais into Old Norse as a means of promoting the courtly codes and conventions within French literature. Focusing on the …

The Unnatural World: Animals And Morality Tales In Hayashi Razan's Kaidan Zensho, Eric Fischbach

Masters Theses

Kaidan is a genre of supernatural tales that became popular during Japan’s Edo period. In 1627, Hayashi Razan translated numerous supernatural tales from China and collected them in five volumes in a work known as Kaidan zensho, the “Complete Collection of Strange Works.” Hayashi Razan was an influential Neo-Confucian scholar and was instrumental in establishing Neo-Confucianism as a dominant ideological force in Tokugawa Japan. As his teachings and stories reached a wide audience, and the government was supportive of Neo-Confucian ideas in Japan, his Kaidan tales, which contained subtle didactic elements, enjoyed success. However, Kaidan zensho was never translated into …

Empathic Encounters: Negotiating Identity In 9/11 Fiction And Translation, Kirsty A. Hemsworth

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Dominated by the polarized strategies of domestication and foreignization, conventional literary translation approaches tend to operate on the assumption that source and target cultures, and, by extension, their literary works, are fundamentally irreconcilable on the basis of linguistic, stylistic and ideological differences. Dislocated by the traumatic force of the event, only to be further uprooted by the translation process itself, the identities at stake in American works of 9/11 fiction cannot be so clearly differentiated and securely defined. Moreover, any attempt to fictionalize and translate this real-world trauma inevitably encounters the event as a visual singularity, whereby the image supersedes …

Philology, Anthropology And Poetry In Arthur Waley's Translation Of The Shijing, Qingyang Lin

Theses & Dissertations

The topic of my thesis is Arthur Waley and his translation of the Shijing, or The Book of Songs (1937), as Waley entitled it. The Book of Songs is especially noted for its philological ingenuity, anthropological insight and poetic appeal; during my preliminary research I discovered that there exists an interesting interplay between these three aspects of this translation. In this thesis, I hope to examine the textual and thematic hermeneutics of The Book of Songs.

Waley did not read the Shijing as a scriptural text inscribed with sagely intention and authority; rather, he returned it to its folkloric origin, …

Variation Theory And The Reception Of Chinese Literature In The English-Speaking World, Shunqing Cao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Variation Theory and Reception of Chinese Literature in the English-Speaking World" Shunqing Cao introduces "variation theory" he developed and suggests that the framework can be applied in studying the dissemination and reception of Chinese literature in the English-speaking world. Cao argues that cultural and literary differences produce variations in literary exchanges among different cultures and variation theory concentrates on these variations. With unique perspectives on variation in translation, cultural misreading, and domestication, variation theory is a useful theoretical framework and methodology for the study of the reception of Chinese literature in the English-speaking world.

“Translation, The Introduction Of Western Time Consciousness Into The Chinese Language, And Chinese Modernity.”, Sinkwan Cheng

Sinkwan Cheng

No abstract provided.

Audacious Translation: On Being Haunted And Getting Lost On The Way To Translating Spivak. A Reflection On Spivak’S “Translating Into English”, Susan R. Adams

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

In “Translating Into English” within An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), Spivak eludes apprehension, spurns comprehension, and resists neat translation as I, an American educator, attempt to make sense of what is meant by an aesthetic education as Spivak translates the act of translation. Caught and othered as a language broker in learning the double bind of translation, I find no answers, only new questions as I grope toward ways to conceptualize and to name this moment for translators and language educators: (1) What does it mean to be a translator?; (2) Can and should the convenient …

Live From New York, It's The Translation Of Cultural Humor!, Megan Hosack

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Translating comedic material into another language presents challenges both in accurately representing specific words and idioms and in conveying social conventions and national temperament. As American television programs gain international popularity, there is a developing need for understanding these issues of translation.

Several American comedy television programs have gained popularity in Spain in recent years. Shows including The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons have been translated into Spanish and dubbed by Spanish voice actors to air on television stations in Spain (Grandio). "Big Bang," the Spanish version of The Big Bang Theory has been on the air in Spain …

“Form Without A Home: On Translating The Indo-Persian Radīf”, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

Unexpected Zeus, Adam Lambert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

"Quotation, Simile, Photograph: Margaret Fuller On The French In Algiers, Christina Zwarg

Christina L Zwarg Professor

Quotation, Simile, Photograph: Margaret Fuller on The French in Algiers In this essay I focus on an obscure New-York Daily Tribune column written by Margaret Fuller and published roughly two weeks before her well-known review of Frederick Douglass. Fuller’s review of Lucy Duff-Gordon’s translation shows not only her range in topic (in this case, a consideration of French colonial practice) but also how she writes through the moment when Walter Benjamin’s famous “aura” was losing ground against modern modes of production. The extended quotations juxtaposed in Fuller’s review have about them a visual or dramatic quality, as if Fuller reaches …

Five Poems From Witch In Mourning In Exchanges, Maria-Mercè Marçal, Clyde Moneyhun

Clyde Moneyhun

Maria-Mercè Marçal was born in 1952, in the middle of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, which lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1939 to the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Marçal writes, “A l’atzar agraeixo tres dons: haver nascut dona, de classe baixa i nació oprimida” [I thank fate for three gifts: having been born a woman, to the lower class, in an oppressed nation], a phrase that is still famous in Catalan graffiti today.