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Context, Translator And History : A Study Of Three Translations Of Luotuo Xiangzi In The Usa, Ying Jun Li

Lingnan Theses

Three different English translations of Lao She’s (老舍) Luotuo Xiangzi (骆驼祥子) were marketed in the USA from 1945 to 2005. What are the major historical occurrences and trends from the late 19th to the early 21st century that define the contexts of these translations? Beginning with an analysis of the stylistic features of each translation, the present study explores how each of the three translators and the corresponding historical context impacted on the production of the translated text, its marketing orientation and its reception in the USA.

With a comparison of the three translated texts and their meta-textual features, the …

翻译操控论：从严复和鲁迅的翻译理论相关的例句实践看意识形态作用, Fengliang Mu

Lingnan Theses

翻译行为一直伴随人类活动。翻译理论却往往是“一堆意见”。翻译操控论正是这样一个值得争论的命题。

本文以翻译研究的语言学转向、文化转向和史学转向为背景，以赫曼斯的翻译操控论为理论架构，研究翻译过程中的意识形态作用，以便于理解翻译过程中的译者主体作用或操控行为。

本文拾起严复和鲁迅的老话题，是希望每次阅读都创造出不同于以往的历史主义的关怀和方法，以便在现在和历史的对话中加深对过去的理解，从中演绎出新意，进而服务于将来。在翻译实践中，严复和鲁迅实施两种截然 不同的翻译操控。本文通过具体的文本比对和译界传统的追溯研究，解读多元因素作用下的翻译实践，回答了前人(例如梁实秋)尚未解决的鲁迅硬译的缘由，贯穿了翻译的操控历史和历史在操控中进化的主题，同时也疏理了操控阵营的理论要点。赫曼斯所代表的操控学派缘起于具有激进倾向的因素作用研究，同时又强调中立描述的稳健立场。这为该派开展翻译规范研究和尝试普遍适用的理论假设提供了转机。鉴于意识形态缺乏恒定值，造成特殊性的普遍存在和普遍性的假想性质，操控学派中的因素论锐气渐弱，规范研究却力度渐强。籍此，本文在以下几个方面做了积极的论证。一、意识形态有若干特征，其关键特征是一时之态。理解意识形态的这种动态变化有利于减少意识形态的一时失态，促进意识形态的相互宽容和相互借鉴。二、本文将翻译操控论施诸严复和鲁迅的个案，界定了“信、达、雅”的“游移性、不确 定性、隐喻性、延异性”，从而揭示了“信、达、雅”变量的可选性、指导翻译实践的方向性和译者自主把握尺度的灵活性。三、在翻译操控论形成之前就有翻译的操控实践。只是在翻译中，操控乏力有碍交流，操控过度就超出了翻译范畴，操控适当才能有利于思想交流。本文指出，译员不操控等于不作为，不利于文本的认知、解读和阐释。查翻译操控论的未来走向，规范研究将促使翻译操控论转变激进立场，或者至少可以由规范研究来把握操控的信度和效度。

La Traversée Des Savoirs Dans Le Roman Africain, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The African novel refers to a socio-political as well as a literary History, but does so with guile, expressing this History from an angle. Referring constantly to the social and human sciences, to the point of competing with them, the novel vacillates between dependency and autonomy. It thus proposes a specific knowledge of society, its functioning, and the individuals who constitute it. However, its true intention is not to copy the world, nor even to imitate its life, but to provide a miniaturized replica of both, and set itself up as a vast metonymic duplicate of a certain universe.

L’Historiographie Positiviste Au Miroir De La Fiction Littéraire, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In its study of L’Écart by V.Y. Mudimbe, this article examines the critical and ironic mirroring of the discourses of the social sciences. By highlighting the pretensions of scientific discourse, Mudimbe’s fiction reveals the ambiguity and the limits of positivist methodology in a postcolonial context.

Murambi Et Moisson De Crânes Ou Comment La Fiction Raconte Un Génocide, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article shows how literary fiction is able to narrate the event of genocide so as to shatter the rational explanations of the world that are the accepted framework for discourse. It studies two texts written on the Rwandan genocide: Murambi by Boubacar Boris Diop and Moisson de crânes by Abdourahman Waberi.

Le Romancier Africain Et L'« Énigme D'Arrivée », Bernard Mouralis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The theme of travel occupies an important place in African literature for two reasons. The earliest African writers wanted to substitute their own discourse for the one that had been produced by the West for centuries and which was long considered to be the sole legitimate discourse on Africa. By portraying African heroes and/or narrators who embarked on voyages to Africa or to Europe, African writers showed that the African too could be a traveler. The second reason is linked to generic considerations. Since the time of Don Quixote, the novel unfolds as an itinerary moving from one point to …

L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If it is recognized that The Ambiguous Adventure is one of Africa’s most studied texts, it should also be noted that most analyses of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel are general sociological commentaries on a mythologized Africa or on a society that is caught in the snares of its own mythic “values.” These commentaries often forget that the text is also the passage through a history that was imposed on Africa, and one which the writer tries to interpret in his own way. If Kane’s text plunges into the Christian faith by invoking Pascal and Augustine, it is in order to …

La Représentation Du Politique Dans La Littérature Gabonaise, Jean René Ovono Mendame

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From which viewpoint do Gabonese writers relate to the realities of the political and social policies of their country and what place do political players occupy in their works? Why do they hesitate so much to denounce the problems of their society? Why is there such a pronounced silence within their literary works? This article raises these delicate and complex questions. The report produced on the evolution of Gabonese writing affirms that writers’ silence is the product of self-censorship. They are condemned to fear saying anything, not only because of potential reprisals, but because they are, for the majority, political …

His/Tory And Its Vicissitudes In Álvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Luz Angélica Kirschner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "His/tory and Its Vicissitudes in Álvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" Luz Angélica Kirschner argues that in Julia Álvarez's In the Time of the Bautterflies and in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, although with certain limitations and differences in their approaches, in a complementary way, their texts exemplify, as Joan Wallace Scott suggested, the need to consider gender "a useful category of historical analysis" to overturn the monological and well-organized version of official history that, in the process of history writing, has tended to obliterate "insignificant" narratives and voices. At the …

Language In Modern African Drama, Isaiah Ilo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Language in Modern African Drama" Isaiah Ilo proposes alternative criteria for language choice in modern African drama. The two most influential constructs on the language question are Fanon's essentialism that rejects Western languages as instruments of subjugation and Achebe's hybrid approach which entails subversion of the foreign languages by infusing them with African verbal characteristics. The constructs, which emphasise indigenised language and content, stem from the idea that consciousness of the colonial experience should determine language choice and usage in post-colonial African literary creativity. In building a case for a post-indiginist aesthetic, Ilo argues that present reality …

Media, Communication, And The Relevance Of Caragiale's Work Today, Cristian Stamatoiu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cristian Stamatoiu discusses in his paper "Media, Communication, and the Relevance of Caragiale's Work Today" media structures in the corpus of Romanian writer and thinker Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912). Stamatoiu argues that in addition to the artistic sophistication of his work, Caragiale anticipated the impact of new media revolution and its forms as an imitation of "pathological situations" of public discourse and communication per se. Caragiale is, therefore, a writer of surprisingly up-to-date relevance today because, despite his air of the belle époque, in his grotesque farces and in his short stories we discover mental structures found in and characteristic …

Globalization And Christopher Columbus In The Americas, Elise Bartosik-Vélez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Globalization and Christopher Columbus in the Americas," Elise Bartosik-Vélez considers the responses of scholars working in colonial and early modern studies to recent exponential increases in the transnationalization of capital and the resulting changes in the role of the nation-state. The case of Christopher Columbus and his appropriation by US-American nationalists during the early modern period is particularly instructive with regard to this discussion because Columbus exemplifies not only the drive to globalization of early modern European colonialism, but also the limits of nation-centric thinking in understanding the intersections and overlappings between empire and nation. Columbus in the Americas …

Portrayal Of Mathematicians In Fictional Works, Daniel Dotson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Portrayal of Mathematicians in Fictional Works," Daniel Dotson explores how people with mathematical abilities -- including mathematicians, mathematics teachers, mathematically-inclined youths, cryptographers, and more -- are portrayed in novels, films, television programs, and a play. A summary table of the characters gives a short description of each of them, the title of the work in which they appeared, and the format of the work. Characters were analyzed to see if they possessed any of ten personality traits: obsessive, having major mental health problems, withdrawn, brave, timid, socially inept, arrogant, uses math to escape reality, out of touch, …

The Politics Of Recognition And Comparative Literature: New Works By Dale And Yu, Bol, Owen, And Peterson, Alexander C.Y. Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Subverting Literary Allusions In Eliot And Özdamar, Walter Rankin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Subverting Literary Allusions in Eliot and Özdamar," Walter Rankin explores the opposing ways allusion can be used in the works of major and minority authors. While Eliot is a canonized author whose The Waste Land is characterized by allusions to Eastern and Western works supplemented with his own comprehensive endnotes, Özdamar is a Turkish-German author whose A Cleaning Woman's Career subjects Western literary and historical figures -- including Medea, Hamlet and Ophelia, Nathan the Wise, Julius Ceasar, an Hitler and Eva Braun -- to the interpretive powers of a Turkish cleaning woman working as a guest worker …

Derrida's Deconstruction And The Rhetoric Of Proper Genres In Leonardo And Lessing, Shun-Liang Chao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Derrida's Deconstruction and the Rhetoric of Proper Genres in Leonardo and Lessing," Shun-liang Chao draws on Derrida's discourse of logocentrism to illuminate the "exorbitant" threads of metaphysical thought in Leonardo's and Lessing's texts on the comparison of poetry and painting. Both Leonardo and Lessing seek to subordinate one of the two sister arts to the other by constructing, respectively, the first, fixed principle of the proper genre and by drawing rigid borders between what is proper and what is improper. Leonardo privileges painting over poetry owing to the power of visiblity; on the other hand, Lessing subordinates …

A Survey Of Bosnian, Croatian, And Serbian Poetry In English Translation In The U.S. And Canada, Snezana Zabic, Paula Kamenish

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper "A Survey of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Poetry in English Translation in the U.S. and Canada," Snezana Zabic and Paula Kamenish present a survey of book-length collections and anthologies of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry in English translation published in the U.S. and in Canada. Zabic and Kamenish argue that it is necessary to determine which factors are advantegous for the survival of poetry originating in "minor" languages and transmitted to the United States and Canada. Zabic and Kamenish propose three elements that have ensured a marginal but persistent presence of South Slavic poetry in English in …

The Old Story Teller As A John The Baptist-Figure In Demille's Samson And Delilah, Anton Karl Kozlovic

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "The Old Story Teller as a John the Baptist-figure in DeMille's Samson and Delilah," Anton Karl Kozlovic argues that DeMille is a pop culture professional, an unsung auteur, and the father of the US-American biblical epic whose production and direction of Samson and Delilah (1949) is a masterful exercise in sacred subtext construction. In the public's eyes, Samson is a saintly hero, but scripturally speaking, he is notoriously bad as the last of the twelve judges overseeing the downward spiral of Israel's religio-political disintegration. DeMille, as Hollywood’s leading cinematic lay preacher, enhanced deliberately the sanctity of his …

A Bakhtinian Perspective On Feminist Lesbian Crime Writing, Sarah Posman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "A Bakhtinian Perspective on Feminist Lesbian Crime Writing," Sarah Posman discusses how the Bakhtinian concepts "ethos" and "chronotope" add to the discussion of feminist lesbian crime writing. She sets out from a Bakhtinian typology of action stories and situates recent crime writing as a curious mixture of mission stories and transformation stories. Focusing on the innovative potential of feminist lesbian crime writing, Posman explores how such stories tackle the iconically masculine and heterosexual conventions of the detective story and manage to balance tradition and subversion successfully. Posman infuses her analysis with issues central to feminism and queer …

Gender Identities In The Contemporary Slovene Novel, Alojzija Zupan Sosic

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Gender Identities in the Contemporary Slovene Novel," Alojzija Zupan Sosic argues that perspectives of sexual identity have become prominent topics. Based on her library and publication research, Zupan Sosic proposes that in the period of 1990–2005 the Slovene novel is illuminated by a development of the personal or intimate story. In this development, changes of sexual identity evolve through the binary system of the heterosexual matrix whereby issues of sexual minorities remain. Important innovation in the Slovene novel include aspects connected to an identity formation determined by sexual identity where perhaps the most significant innovation is found …

Contested (Post)Coloniality And Taiwan Culture: A Review Article Of New Work By Yip And Ching, Alexander C.Y. Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Concentration Of Carnivalesque Themes In The Shared Fabliaux Of The Decameron And The Canterbury Tales, Timothy R. Jordan

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geoffrey Chaucer's interest in social interactions in The Canterbury Tales is easy to see through his pilgrims' estate-based conflicts with each other. In addition to the frame narrative, the interest in social interaction is also apparent in the characters of the individual tales and as a reflection of the conflict between the individual pilgrims. Most of these social interactions embody what is called the camivalesque: free, open, contact between people due to the suspension of social hierarchies. Mikhail Bakhtin has described the camivalesque as characteristic of medieval thought. In medieval literature, the genre of the fabliau, short bawdy stories that …

Le Système Des Personnages Dans Corruption De Pramoedya Ananta Toer Et L’Homme Rompu De Tahar Ben Jelloun, Magda Ibrahim

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

A comparison of the character systems of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Broken Man and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Corruption (transmitter text) has made it possible to identify the same type of protagonist at the core of each novel. He is, in short, a mere functionary overburdened with social responsibilities, leading a cramped life and trying to live and breathe. But the portrayal of him in The Broken Man is more precise, and has greater depth. Moreover, the character systems as a whole is richer, more complex and subtle in this last novel, compared with that

The Reception And Translation Of Wordsworth In Japan, Waka Ishikura

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "The Reception and Translation of Wordsworth in Japan," Waka Ishikura explores the cultural dynamics involved in the understanding of Wordsworth in Japan since the late nineteenth century by examining the ways in which the Japanese encountered him in a broader historical context and the ways in which the development of language modernization in Japan affected the processes of reception and translation. Ishikura's investigation of the topic leads not only to an elucidation of the fate of the English poet in Japan but also to new insights into the ways in which literary or semiotic relations have influenced …

Affect, History, And Race And Ellison's Invisible Man, Alan Bourassa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Affect, History, and Race and Ellison's Invisible Man" Alan Bourassa explores the implications of the Deleuze and Guattarian concept of "affect" for a reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the novel's most problematic relationship -- that between race and history -- there is a third term that transforms the problematic. Invisible Man is simultaneously a conventional novel that establishes emotional individuality as the third term between history and race, and an "underground" novel that sets up "affect" as the third term. If Invisible Man is only about the emotional movements of the individual, race becomes merely …

National Conflict And Narrative Possibility In Faulkner And Garro, Kristin E. Pitt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "National Conflict and Narrative Possibility in Faulkner and Garro" Kristin E. Pitt explores two twentieth-century narratives of the Americas set during and after civil war. Both William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Elena Garro's Los recuerdos del porvenir suggest that the historical narratives of the national community which have been celebrated by the U.S. South and Mexico have resulted in untenable contemporary social systems. Seizing the opportunity presented by national crisis, the central female characters of both novels attempt to rewrite the narratives of their imagined communities and reinscribe themselves within these revisions, doing so primarily by renegotiating …

Memories Of Communism In Central And East Europe: New Work By Janaszek-Ivaničková, Modrzejewski And Sznajderman, Rév, And Spiewak, Agata Anna Lisiak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Literary Archaeologies Of Théophile Gautier, Sasha Colby

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "The Literary Archaeologies of Théophile Gautier," Sasha Colby considers the relationship between archaeology as an emerging nineteenth-century discipline and the history of modern poetics. By explicating Gautier's fiction and poetry within an archaeological context, Colby suggests the ways in which archaeology became not only an intriguing subject for late romantics and early modernists but also the ways in which archaeology conditioned an excavational mode of fictional and poetic practice. Incorporating history, Egyptology, psychology, and literary theory, Colby explores the impact of the archaeological enterprise on the nineteenth-century imagination through the work of one of its most influential …

Interculturalism And New Russians In Berlin, Giacomo Bottà

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Interculturalism and New Russians in Berlin" Giacomo Bottá discusses aspects of the community of Russian artists in contemporary (post-1989) Berlin. The Berlin-based Russendisko night has been held in Tel Aviv, Milan, or Frankfurt, where enthusiastic people danced to songs of obscure Russian bands. In 2004, a new CD compilation, Russensoul, was published and in 2005 Karaoke, the ninth novel by Russion-born and Berlin-based author Wladimir Kaminer appeared in book stores. Russian culture is experiencing global success curiously tied to Berlin. How could the German capital have channelled this interest? Is there a particular historical, social, geographical, or …

Nabokov And World Literature, Charles Stanley Ross

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Nabokov and World Literature" Charles Stanley Ross thinks through the relationship between comparative literature and cultural studies by considering the absence of Nabokov's work in The Norton Anthology of World Literature. The problem seems to be that Nabokov's works are not susceptible to the kind of varying interpretations favored by the Norton's editors, although in practice, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, for example, shows that even Nabokov's tightly controlled fiction can generate diverse responses. The more complex modes of reading that form the basis of David Damrosch's What is World Literature? are used to interrogate just …