This thesis examines three contemporary autobiographical narratives - Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), A.S. Byatt's Sugar and Other Stories (1987) and Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) - and their Italian and French translations. My comparative analyses of the texts are underpinned by the latest developments in Translation Studies that place emphasis on identity construction in translation and the role of translation in moulding various types of identity. They focus on how the writers' textual personae make sense of their sexual, artistic and postcolonial identities in relation to the mother and how the mother-daughter relationship survives translation into the Italian and French social, political and cultural contexts. My Introduction outlines my methodology and approach. Theo Hermans (1999) has provided me with a model capable of encompassing Descriptive Translation Studies and cultural analysis. Recent studies on the mother-daughter relationship have offered the framework of analysis of the female characters. The six chapters that follow show how each Target Text activates different cultural, literary, linguistic and rhetorical frames of reference which bring into relief the facets of the protagonist's quest for identity that might be hidden or ambiguous in the Source Text: religious icons and the cult of the Madonna; humour and irony; gender and class; mimesis and storytelling; spatial representations and geographical sense of self; narrative performance and performativity; negativity and women's strength. Whereas the French translation of Oranges highlights the interplay of gender and class, the Italian version brings into focus the religious and political constraints on the protagonist's quest. The Italian and French translations of 'Sugar' emphasize Byatt's fictional explorations of the maternal artistic model. The French version of Autobiography normalizes orality and performativity; the Italian one enhances complex aspects of negativity. This thesis highlights the fruitfulness of studying women's narratives and their translations and the polyphonic dialogue between the translations and the literary and theoretical productions of the French and Italian cultures.

This thesis explores the central role translation came to play in Greek intellectual production under the Dictatorship of 1967-1974, namely its function as a mechanism of cultural resistance. Methodological tools borrowed from both translation and cultural studies are used in order to demonstrate the socio-political dimension of translation as a gesture of great cultural significance. The first chapter juxtaposes the propagandistic discourse and the restrictive practices of the authoritarian regime to the dissident discourse and the progressive ideas promoted by the group of intellectuals practising cultural resistance. This serves to depict the tension created in the Greek cultural field under the Junta, and explains the reasons causing translation to emerge as an effective means of free expression. The mediated nature of translation, allowing those involved in the industry to avoid full responsibility for translated texts' content, is discussed as the most prominent characteristic that turned translation into the publishing product par excellence associated with Greek cultural resistance against the Junta. The second, third and fourth chapters are devoted to three agents of translation, according to the model of patronage proposed by Lefevere. These agents are firstly those publishers who founded new, small-scale, and progressive publishing houses under the Junta, publishing mostly translations and republications of modem Greek texts. The second group were the directors, editors and contributors working for dissident literary journals first published under the Junta, who used translation extensively to infuse the Greek readership with progressive ideas from abroad. Thirdly, the translators themselves, who worked towards producing translations of major texts, contextualizing them in Greek contemporary reality and showing their relevance to the pressing socio-political issues. These three agents are closely examined in terms of their position in the cultural landscape of the time, as are the discussions the translated texts they produced triggered in intellectual circles, both in Greece and abroad. Therefore, this thesis proposes a systematic mapping of the networks of intellectuals involved in translation at the time, and an insight into the impact translations had on the Greek readership. It also offers a selection of close readings of a number of indicative translated texts, which are drawn from the vast corpus of translations published under the Junta, in order to show the potential these texts had to turn the gesture of translation into a dynamic mechanism of cultural resistance. It is by placing emphasis on the work of individuals, such as Giorgos Chatzopoulos, the publisher of Kalvos editions, Dimitris Kalolcyris, the chief editor of TO TRAM, and Pavlos Zannas, who translated A la recherche du temps perdu during his incarceration as a political prisoner, that this thesis engages with the cultural significance translation acquired during the Junta period in Greece, making it emerge as a prominent

Over the last two decades, Translation Studies has become increasingly interdisciplinary. In line with this trend, the present study combines Translation Studies with the cultural psychology of emotions and the study of popular romance in order to explore how cultural norms affect translation in a specific context. The focus of the study is the translation of near universal emotions rendered from British English into modern Greek in bestseller popular romances during the period 2000- 2009. The study, therefore, brings a novel perspective to an under-researched topic of translation studies, namely the translation of emotions. Employing Even-Zohar's Polysystem Theory and Toury's theory of translation norms as its theoretical framework, the study first identifies the most widely accepted set of near-universal emotions, namely anger, fear, happiness and sadness, before outlining the choice of literary texts that constitute the locus of the research. Building on the concept of bestsellers as cultural artifacts, the study takes as its primary data the most popular (sub)genre in the Greek book market, that is, popular romance. The method of the study is, consequently, corpus-based, featuring a parallel and a bilingual comparable corpus consisting of six English popular romances as source texts and their Greek translations on the one hand, and the same English romances together with six original Greek romances on the other. The analysis of the comparable corpus, using an extended set of linguistic and typographical strategies, reveals the cultural norms for dealing with the intensity of those emotions as represented in the chosen romances. A methodological tool developed as a response to the challenge of analysing complex literary data is what has been called here "episodes of emotion" in which the p~sages analysed are selected according to their emotional theme rather than grammatical boundaries. The subsequent analysis of the parallel corpus does indeed reveal frequent shifts of intensity in the translations towards but not quite in line with the Greek norms, indicating that the translators are under the simultaneous influence of British and Greek norms. The results suggest, however, that the Greek norms exert a stronger influence on the translators, mostly in relation to anger and fear, an outcome that goes against the assumptions of Polysystem Theory that the more powerful literary system, in this case that of the UK, will exert the stronger influence. This outcome could be attributed to the commercial pressure of the market on publishers of the chosen genre of popular romance.

This study addresses the consecutive mode of interpreting. With a novel three-way approach to assessing coherence, it investigates whether different ways of delivering the target text - short and long consecutive interpreting - contribute to or impede coherence. Cohesion, paralinguistic features and background knowledge are investigated as possible contributing factors to coherence. Accordingly. the study consists of three parts. The first part involves an analysis of cohesive ties in Turkish and English speeches, and in short and long consecutive interpretations of the English speeches into Turkish. The original English and Turkish speeches are used as a benchmark for comparison between non-interpreted and interpreted speech. Part two of the study involves the textual analysis of para linguistic features ill the short and long consecutive interpretations. Part three is a reception study which assesses the participants' perception of coherence in the short and long renditions. The participants of the reception study form two different groups: participants who had specialised background knowledge of the topics discussed in the texts and those who had not. The cohesion analysis shows that long consecutive interpretations are more cohesive when compared with short consecutive interpretations. The analysis of para linguistic features reveals that hesitation markers, pauses, false starts, slips of the tongue, sc1frepairs, drawn out syllables and word repetitions are more frequent in short consecutive interpretations. The reception study shows that the longer renditions are perceived as being more coherent than the shorter renditions, and this perception is higher for participants with relevant background knowledge. The results of the study thus suggest that specialised background knowledge and cohesion contribute to coherence creation whilst the frequent use of para linguistic features impedes coherence. This study contributes to filling the knowledge gaps in relation to coherence in consecutive interpreting and Turkish interpretations of English spoken texts. In particular, it contributes to our understanding of the difference between short and long consecutive interpretations with respect to coherence.

Since the cultural 'turn' in translation studies, the concept of 'cultural translation' has received considerable attention. Conceptualised in a range of diverse ways, it has given rise to a proliferation of often conflicting accounts. Scholars have noted the limitations of such accounts and signalled the lack of significant analysis to provide a fuller understanding of cultural translation, its limits, assumptions and opportunities. This thesis responds to this need by providing a study of cultural translation in its diverse emanations and discerns four broad themes around which its myriad configurations coalesce: as an ethnographic 'encounter' with cultural difference; as a mobile practice that displays a 'migrant' doubleness of identity as a form of textual production that refuses to 'belong' securely in its place of reception; as a mode that constructs a 'hybrid' text that, in its refusal to be placed firmly within one 'side' or the other, occupies a space 'in-between' original and reproduction; and, in recognition of the appropriative forms of interpretation upon which translation is predicated, as a resistant practice that seeks ways to rectify translation's limited appraisal of cultural difference. The thesis examines these themes in order to test their theoretical possibilities within a practical context and argues for a view of cultural translation, above all, as a locus of intercultural encounter: between translator, original foreign text and all that the translator reads into it. Cultural translation thus emerges as an encounter between the cultural world of the foreign text and the subjective world of a translator, in which the relationship between translator and text is never dissociated from broader matters of power, imperialism, representation and positionality. In such a view, cultural translation insists that matters of inter lingual difference in translation are inseparable from the negotiations of cultural difference and 'anxieties' of otherness that take place behind it.

Translation is traditionally seen as a -process that changes meanings from one language to another. This thesis takes as its premise Gentzler's theory of translation as the condition of communication itself, and applies it to contemporary Northern Irish society, to the perceived gaps between government and subject, and between subject and subject. This thesis aims to explore the construction of identities through translation of people who are actively engaged in constructing a place for their community. It will examine their ontological narratives through the filter of government rhetoric Using the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method of interviewing, this thesis will explore the various decisions and influences that individuals take when they are actively constructing their identity, especially in the case of self-translation in order for them to explain themselves in a foreign culture

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This study aims la explore Occidentalism - the essentialist renderings of the West - as an intellectual and (or) political trend in modem Chinese society, and in particular to investigate whether, and if so, how, to what extent, and why stylised images of the West in contrast with those of China are manifested in Chinese translation scholars' theoretical discourses. I have answered these questions by doing case studies on some translation scholars and analysing their theoretical discourses produced in certain soda-political and historical circumstances. This thesis argues that what these scholars think and write about the West and how they visualize the Chinese-Western cultural relationship are at the hcal1 of their discourses, and various notions of the West vs. China in the antagonistic debates in Chinese translation studi.es are often employed to accomplish certain tasks. Among these are: to preserve tradition and assert identity against the West; to resonate with the state doctrines; to adopt the Western mode of producing knowledge clue to a strong sense of "self-insufficiency"; to win power by engaging with their Western counterparts; or to be a way of asserting other positions vis-a.-vis the Chinese- Western cultural relationship. This thesis also argues that dialectical and essentialist definitions of the West and China are to a greater or lesser extent shaped by socio-political complexities, and more or less driven by a range of local elite interests. Occidentalism in its various forms suggests different power relations between Chinese society and the outside world; it is also part of a critique of internal differences a'1d conflicts within Chinese society, and within Chinese translation studies. Using the theoretical framework of Occidentalism, this thesis hopes to illustrate the connections between discourse, society and history, and the dynamic exchange between individual scholar's academic endeavour and the broad so cia-political concerns. This study aims la explore Occidentalism - the essentialist renderings of the West - as an intellectual and (or) political trend in modem Chinese society, and in particular to investigate whether, and if so, how, to what extent, and why stylised images of the West in contrast with those of China are manifested in Chinese translation scholars' theoretical discourses. I have answered these questions by doing case studies on some translation scholars and analysing their theoretical discourses produced in certain soda-political and historical circumstances. This thesis argues that what these scholars think and write about the West and how they visualize the Chinese-Western cultural relationship are at the hcal1 of their discourses, and various notions of the West vs. China in the antagonistic debates in Chinese translation studi.es are often employed to accomplish certain tasks. Among these are: to preserve tradition and assert identity against the West; to resonate with the state doctrines; to adopt the Western mode of producing knowledge clue to a strong sense of "self-insufficiency"; to win power by engaging with their Western counterparts; or to be a way of asserting other positions vis-a.-vis the Chinese- Western cultural relationship. This thesis also argues that dialectical and essentialist definitions of the West and China are to a greater or lesser extent shaped by socio-political complexities, and more or less driven by a range of local elite interests. Occidentalism in its various forms suggests different power relations between Chinese society and the outside world; it is also part of a critique of internal differences a'1d conflicts within Chinese society, and within Chinese translation studies. Using the theoretical framework of Occidentalism, this thesis hopes to illustrate the connections between discourse, society and history, and the dynamic exchange between individual scholar's academic endeavour and the broad socia-political concerns.

The present study enquires into the fundamental issue of the translator's habitus (Bourdieu 1990). We take up John B. Thompson's synthetic translation of the concept of habitus (1991) while exploring descriptive explanatory interpretive hypotheses about the translator's text production activity. The knowledge underlying these hypotheses is derived from the domain of both conceptual and empirical research. The conceptual search involves accumulating knowledge from providing "logical connections" (Hewson and Martin 1991:23) between culturalist approaches to the study of translating activity. Heuristic approaches (Nida and Taber 1982, Toury 1995, Chesterman 1997, Nord 1997, Reiss and Vermeer 1984) and variable-oriented approaches (Bell 1991, Hatim 997, Neubert and Shreve 1992) are reviewed to identify 'context variables' (Williams and Chesterman 2002) enlightening the translator's activity.

No description available.