The present study deals with the work and practice of three Scandinavian translators, namely Kjell Olaf Jensen (Norwegian), Marianne Öjerskog (Swedish) and Agnete Dorph Stjernfelt (Danish). The main question of the thesis is what strategies the translators use when translating culture-specific elements from French and English. Theoretically the thesis positions itself within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies and draws upon system theories as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture. The method consists of a source text – target text analysis, using a somewhat modified version of Pedersen’s (2007) method identifying seven translation strategies, namely (1) retention, (2) specification, (3) direct translation, (4) generalization, (5) substitution, (6) omission and (7) official equivalent. In this thesis the three former and the official equivalent are categorized as “adequate”, whereas generalization, substitution and omission are categorized as “acceptable” using Toury’s (2012) terminology. Six different types of culture-specific elements are investigated, namely (1) titles, address and professional titles, (2) currencies, (3) weights and measures, (4) literature and music, (5) education, and (6) names. In addition to this analysis, interviews with the three translators were carried out. Results show that there are both similarities and dissimilarities in the translators’ choices of translation strategies. It also turns out that the strategies used to a great extent depend on the culture-specific element in question and hardly ever on the source language. Results also suggest that the higher the translators’ amount of accumulated total capital, the more likely it is that they adopt a heterodoxic translation strategy. Jensen and Stjernfelt are more often positioned at one of the two extremes of the adequacy–acceptability axis than is the case for Öjerskog. Moreover, results from the interviews and the text analyses show that there are a number of norms that govern the translators’ practices. The translatorial practice is to manoeuver in a field governed by norms in order to produce the best possible target texts – target texts that are true to the original and conform to domestic literary standards.

My dissertation analyzes the role of Ovid’s Heroides in Alfonso X’s General Estoria, a massive historical compilation in six volumes that the “Learned King” commissioned in 1272. The way in which eleven of these fictional epistles were incorporated by the Alfonsine translators sheds light on how ancient texts were perceived by medieval scholars. According to the study, King Alfonso relies on Ovid as an accurate historical source and uses the epistles of the heroines as historical documents while preserving their literary dimension. The thesis is divided into six sections. Chapter one introduces the topic of translation in relation to history and literature and argues for the use of a culturesemiotic perspective in the study of medieval translations. Chapter two looks into the General Estoria in order to frame the generic register/s to which the Heroides and Ovid belonged in Alfonso’s historic discourse. Some of these issues include literature and its historical value, and how the ancient past (in this case the times of characters in the Heroides) was used in order to investigate and interpret the concerns of the present, and form decisions about the future. Chapter three speculates on the bearing that the habitus or socio-cultural conditioning of a potential translator like Archbishop Jiménez de Rada could have had in the Alfonsine approach to translation. Chapter four analyzes the uses of and references to Ovid as a writer and his works throughout Europe in order to recreate the position both him and his works held in the socio-cultural milieu of thirteenth-century literature, history, epistolography, and rhetoric. Chapter five focuses on how the Latin text was initially adapted and segmented according to translation patterns and norms. This observational analysis of the Heroides in the GE approaches the text from the perspective of the discipline of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). My research does not seek to propose or refute any theories but, rather, to make a contribution to DTS in the form of an observational analysis.

Research based on translation expertise, which is also sometimes referred to as translation competence, has been a growing area of investigation in translation studies. These studies have not only focused on how translation expertise may be conceptualised and defined, but also on how this expertise is acquired and developed by translators. One of the key observations that arise from an overview of current research in the field of translation expertise is the prevalence of process-oriented methodologies in the field, with product-oriented methodologies used comparatively infrequently. This study is based on the assumption that product-oriented methodologies, and specifically the corpus-based approach, may provide new insights into translation expertise. The study therefore sets out to address the lack of comprehensive and systematic corpus-based analyses of translation expertise. One of the foremost concerns of corpus-based translation studies has been the investigation of what is known as the features of translated language which are often categorised as: explicitation, simplification, normalisation and levelling-out. The main objective of this study is to investigate the hypothesis that the features of translated language can be taken as an index of translation expertise. The hypothesis is founded on the premise that if the features of translated language are considered to be the textual traces of translation strategies, then the different translation strategies associated with different levels of translation expertise will be reflected in different frequencies and distributions of these features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. The study therefore aimed to determine if there are significant differences in the frequency and distribution of the features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. As background to this main research question, the study also investigated a secondary hypothesis in which translated language demonstrates unique features that are the consequence of various aspects of the translation process. A custom-built comparable English corpus was used for the study, comprising three subcorpora: translations by experienced translators, translations by inexperienced translators, and non-translations. A selection of linguistic operationalization’s was chosen for each of the four features of translated language. The differences in the frequency and distribution of these linguistic operationalization’s in the three sub corpora were analysed by means of parametric or non-parametric ANOVA. The findings of the study provide some support for both hypotheses. In terms of the translation expertise hypothesis, some of the features of translated language demonstrate significantly different frequencies in the work of experienced translators compared to the work of inexperienced translators. It was found that experienced translators are less explicit in terms of: formal completeness, simplify less frequently because they use a more varied vocabulary, use longer sentences and have a lower readability index score on their translations, and use contractions more frequently, which signals that they normalise less than inexperienced translators. However, experienced translators also use neologisms and loanwords less frequently than inexperienced translators, which is suggestive of normalisation occurring more often in the work of experienced translators when it comes to lexical creativity. These linguistic differences are taken as indicative of the different translation strategies used by the two groups of translators. It is believed that the differences are primarily caused by variations in experienced and inexperienced translators‟ sensitivity to translation norms, their awareness of written language conventions, their language competence (which involves syntactic, morphological and vocabulary knowledge), and their sensitivity to register. Furthermore, it was also found that there are indeed significant differences between translated and non-translated language, which also provides support for the second hypothesis investigated in this study. Translators explicitate more frequently than non-translators in terms of formal completeness, tend to have a less extensive vocabulary, tend to raise the overall formality of their translations, and produce texts that are less creative and more conformist than non-translators‟ texts. However, statistical support is lacking for the hypothesis that translators explicitate more at the propositional level than original text producers do, as well as for the hypothesis that translators are inclined to use a more neutral middle register. / MA (Language Practice), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

Student Number : 9613926H - MA research report - School of Translators and Interpreters - Faculty of Humanities / This dissertation attempts to offer a contribution to the field of translation by applying the practices of descriptive translation studies to a corpus of Chemistry terms in English and translated into Sepedi in order to establish whether the translation strategies opted for prove successful in promoting Sepedi to be a language for special purposes (LSP). The theoretical framework which is used in this project is the model of Baker (1992) of translation strategies of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). DTS is one of the three main branches of Translation Theory (Holmes, 1972). It differs from the other approaches in that it does not offer a set of guidelines which dictate how a translation should be done. Attention was also paid to theories of translation, such as those of Lawrence Venuti (2000) and his concepts of domesticating and foreignising translation in order to establish whether the translators have domesticated or foreignised the text and to what extent? Both strategies are evident in the corpus. This project also focused on the issue of the mother tongue education in the South African context with the emphasis on the perceptions and attitudes of learners and educators towards translated materials. Learners and their educators show some resistance to the use of local African languages, specifically Sepedi as medium of instruction in high schools. Reasons for their resistance against mother tongue education are economic and political. African languages are regarded as “low languages”, languages of inferior status as compared to English and Afrikaans.

O objetivo deste trabalho é demonstrar como as quatro traduções de Watchmen foram influenciadas pelos diferentes estágios de consolidação da graphic novel no sistema de histórias em quadrinhos do Brasil e pela aproximação deste com o sistema literário. Defende-se a ideia que as histórias em quadrinhos constituem seu próprio sistema e que no Brasil as traduções ocupam o centro do sistema, sendo responsáveis pela introdução de novos modelos de narrativas gráficas. A minissérie Watchmen foi lançada nos EUA entre 1986-1987 em 12 volumes pela editora DC, sendo logo depois reunida em um único livro, com o rótulo de graphic novel. No Brasil, Watchmen seguiu um caminho editorial similarcom as traduções refletindo as transformações do mercado nacional de quadrinhos dos últimos trinta anos em direção à consolidação de um público adulto mais exigente e a migração das vendas em bancas para as livrarias, de forma semelhante ao ocorrido nos EUA na década de 1980. Além disso, este estudo demonstra o peculiar papel de autonomia na escolha de estratégias tradutórias desempenhado pelo tradutor de três das versões brasileiras. O corpus deste estudo é composto dos seis números da edição da Editora Abril (1988), dos doze volumes lançados pela mesma editora em 1999, dos quatro livros da edição da Via Lettera (2005-2006) e a da Edição Definitiva lançada pela Panini Books, em 2011. / This study aims to demonstrate how the consolidation stage of the graphic novel in the Brazilian comic system and the relation between the comic system and the literary system influenced the four Brazilian translations of Watchmen. The ideia defended is that comics have their own system, and that translation occupies the center of the system in Brazil, being responsible for introducing new models of graphic narratives. Watchmen was released in the USA from 1986 to 1987 as a 12-issue miniseries by DC Comics, and not long after was collected into a single book under the label of graphic novel. In Brazil, Watchmen has followed a similar publishing path and the translations reflect the transformations of the national comic book market in the last three decades towards establishing a market for adults and more demanding readers, and to migrate sales from news agencies to bookstores, in a similar way to what happened in the US comic market from the 1980s. This study also demonstrates the peculiar autonomy held by the translator regarding to translations strategies in three of the Brazilian editions. The corpus of this study is composed of 6-issues miniseries published by Editora Abril (1988-1989), 12-issues also released by Editora Abril (1999), the 4 books by Via Lettera publishing house (2005-2006) and the Absolute Edition (2011) by Panini Books.

[pt] O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar a tradução para o inglês de A vida como ela é…, uma coletânea de contos de Nelson Rodrigues, originalmente publicados como coluna diária no jornal Última Hora de 1951 a 1961. Essa tradução, Life As It Is, foi feita pelo tradutor Alex Ladd e publicada nos Estados Unidos pela editora norte-americana Host Publications em 2009. O estudo foi informado pela teoria dos polissistemas de Itamar Even-Zohar (1990), pela abordagem descritivista da tradução de Gideon Toury (1995), pelas ideias de André Lefevere, em especial o conceito de patronagem (1992), e pela proposta de categorização de estratégias tradutórias de referentes culturais elaborada por Javier Franco Aixelá (1996). A análise de Life As It Is enfocou tanto a sua função no polissistema literário norte-americano como o produto em si, avaliando-se os efeitos das escolhas tradutórias de Alex Ladd a partir da identificação dos itens de especificidade cultural segundo a categorização de Franco Aixelá. / [en] The objective of this thesis is to analyze the English translation of A vida como ela é…, a collection of short stories written by Nelson Rodrigues and originally published as a daily column in the Última Hora newspaper between 1951 and 1961. This translation, Life As It Is, was carried out by the translator Alex Ladd and published in the United States by Host Publications in 2009. This study was informed by Itamar Even- Zohar’s polysystem theory (1990), Gideon Toury’s descriptive approach to translation (1995), the ideas of André Lefevere, particularly the concept of patronage (1992), and the proposal of categorizing translation strategies of cultural references, created by Javier Franco Aixelá (1996). The analysis of Life As It Is focused both on its function within the North American literary polysystem as well as the product itself, by applying Franco Aixelá’s categorization of culture-specific items in order to evaluate the effects of the translating choices made by Alex Ladd.

<p>The aim of this study was to identify the strategies used to render the literary dialect in A State of Independence into the Swedish translation. In order to systematically study the translation solutions, a number of ‘coupled pairs’ consisting of source text ‘problems’ and target text ‘solutions’ were extracted from the original text and the translation. The ‘coupled pairs’ were then analysed in order to detect regularities in the translation solutions. The study showed that the major strategy used by the translator was the use of ‘eye-dialect’, i.e. non-standard spellings that simulate non-standard speech. Moreover, some passages in the translation had been standardised, whereas eye-dialectal spellings were found in other passages where the original did not contain any non-standard features. Finally, a comparative count of dialectally marked utterances in both texts was made. The count showed that the dialectal markers were in the majority in the translation, which might indicate that the translator has tried to compensate for the lack of equivalent target language features.</p>

One of the main aims of this thesis is to examine the translational situation of popular fiction in post-industrial Japan. Specifically, the goal is to uncover two main aspects surrounding the phenomenon of translationese, the language used in translation. One aspect to be investigated is the characteristic features of Japanese translationese, and the other is readers’ attitudes toward translationese. This research is conducted within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies (Toury, 1995). The literature review includes a background of how translationese has been approached previously and how methods from different fields (e.g., corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics) can be used in the research of translation. Through the review of the historical background of Japanese translationese and the development of Japanese writing styles, it is revealed that the translation norm in Japan had been very closely oriented toward the original text. In the text analysis, the corpora consist of translations from English and non-translations (i.e., originally written in Japanese) in the genre of popular fiction. The goal of the text analysis is to determine whether the features of translationese are actually characteristics of translationese. The features selected for this examination include the following: 1) overt personal pronouns; 2) more frequent loanwords; 3) female specific language; 4) abstract nouns as grammatical subjects of transitive verbs; and 5) longer paragraphs. Two features (third person pronouns and longer paragraphs) are shown to be characteristic of translationese, while others were proven otherwise or questionable (loan words, female language, abstract nouns as subjects of transitive verbs). Findings from the investigation of readers’ attitudes can help identify what constitutes the “norms” of translation (Toury, 1995, 1999) in Japanese society. Readers appear to be able to tell the difference between translation and non-translation. However, readers’ attitudes toward both translationese and non-translationese are more or less neutral or slightly positive. This may indicate that Japanese translationese has become integrated into the contemporary Japanese writing system and that readers do not regard translationese as overtly negative. This study shows that the major translation norm is becoming more domesticated translation in popular fiction, with the focus on making translations easier for the readers. / Translation Studies

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Research based on translation expertise, which is also sometimes referred to as translation competence, has been a growing area of investigation in translation studies. These studies have not only focused on how translation expertise may be conceptualised and defined, but also on how this expertise is acquired and developed by translators. One of the key observations that arise from an overview of current research in the field of translation expertise is the prevalence of process-oriented methodologies in the field, with product-oriented methodologies used comparatively infrequently. This study is based on the assumption that product-oriented methodologies, and specifically the corpus-based approach, may provide new insights into translation expertise. The study therefore sets out to address the lack of comprehensive and systematic corpus-based analyses of translation expertise. One of the foremost concerns of corpus-based translation studies has been the investigation of what is known as the features of translated language which are often categorised as: explicitation, simplification, normalisation and levelling-out. The main objective of this study is to investigate the hypothesis that the features of translated language can be taken as an index of translation expertise. The hypothesis is founded on the premise that if the features of translated language are considered to be the textual traces of translation strategies, then the different translation strategies associated with different levels of translation expertise will be reflected in different frequencies and distributions of these features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. The study therefore aimed to determine if there are significant differences in the frequency and distribution of the features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. As background to this main research question, the study also investigated a secondary hypothesis in which translated language demonstrates unique features that are the consequence of various aspects of the translation process. A custom-built comparable English corpus was used for the study, comprising three subcorpora: translations by experienced translators, translations by inexperienced translators, and non-translations. A selection of linguistic operationalization’s was chosen for each of the four features of translated language. The differences in the frequency and distribution of these linguistic operationalization’s in the three sub corpora were analysed by means of parametric or non-parametric ANOVA. The findings of the study provide some support for both hypotheses. In terms of the translation expertise hypothesis, some of the features of translated language demonstrate significantly different frequencies in the work of experienced translators compared to the work of inexperienced translators. It was found that experienced translators are less explicit in terms of: formal completeness, simplify less frequently because they use a more varied vocabulary, use longer sentences and have a lower readability index score on their translations, and use contractions more frequently, which signals that they normalise less than inexperienced translators. However, experienced translators also use neologisms and loanwords less frequently than inexperienced translators, which is suggestive of normalisation occurring more often in the work of experienced translators when it comes to lexical creativity. These linguistic differences are taken as indicative of the different translation strategies used by the two groups of translators. It is believed that the differences are primarily caused by variations in experienced and inexperienced translators‟ sensitivity to translation norms, their awareness of written language conventions, their language competence (which involves syntactic, morphological and vocabulary knowledge), and their sensitivity to register. Furthermore, it was also found that there are indeed significant differences between translated and non-translated language, which also provides support for the second hypothesis investigated in this study. Translators explicitate more frequently than non-translators in terms of formal completeness, tend to have a less extensive vocabulary, tend to raise the overall formality of their translations, and produce texts that are less creative and more conformist than non-translators‟ texts. However, statistical support is lacking for the hypothesis that translators explicitate more at the propositional level than original text producers do, as well as for the hypothesis that translators are inclined to use a more neutral middle register. / MA (Language Practice), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013