It is the purpose of this thesis to show that literary interpretation and translation are closely interrelated, that the translator cannot pursue his goal, the transfer of a work of literature from one language into another, without interpreting that work as literature.

The goal of this thesis is to discuss Clarice Lispector in the Polish context and address the potential gaps in the reception of her oeuvre. Since the principal vehicle of popularizing her writing outside of the Portuguese-speaking world is translation, my thesis also examines the current situation of the Polish translations of Lispector’s work. Based on my research, I contend that the angle of interpretation related to Lispector’s literary awareness has not been well explored in Poland. Given that the perspective related to the creation process constitutes a recurrent characteristic of Lispector’s narrative, I provide a textual analysis of four short stories which specifically deal with this aspect of her writing: “O ovo e a galinha” [The Egg and the Chicken], “A quinta história” [The Fifth Story], “Seco estudo de cavalos” [Dry Sketch of Horses], and “O relatório da coisa” [Report on the Thing]. In order to address and promote this sphere of Lispector studies in Poland, I propose a translation of the above-mentioned four short stories, followed by a description of the challenges I have encountered as a translator of Lispector’s complex poetics. A survey of the most influential translation theories contextualizes both the suggested translations of Lispector’s stories and my own translation experience. With this project, I aim to reintroduce, revitalize, and rewrite – in the form of the presented textual analyses and the proposed translations – Clarice Lispector’s work in the Polish context.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest recorded story known to humanity. It has a long and complex textual history. The final version of the epic, generally known as the standard version, was produced about 1200 B.C. in the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian by a priest and scribe named Sin-leqi-unninni. The cuneiform tablets upon which the epic was recorded, were rediscovered during the nineteenth century when European archaeologists started digging in the ancient cities of the Middle East, especially Nineveh. Since then the story has been translated into many languages; several English translations have been published. Some of these translations of the epic maintain epic poetic form, others are in prose, and there are a number of versions for children. At the moment no complete version exists in Afrikaans. This thesis presents a translation of parts from Geraldine McCaughrean's English children's version, which was published in 2002. McCaughrean adapts the structure of the standard version, clearly a strategy to make her text exciting for modern readers. The theoretical insights of André Lefevere and Lawrence Venuti form the paradigm for the translation process. Lefevere sees translation as one of a number of rewriting techniques. The detail of such a rewriting is determined by the poetics of the target culture, the patronage which enables such a translation to exist, and the ideological framework within which the rewriting develops. Venuti distinguishes between two translational approaches: a domesticating translation adapts the translation to the target culture and creates the impression with readers that they are reading an original text; foreignising translation makes the readers aware that they are reading a text from another culture. The opportunities and limitations of children's literature and translation for children are explored. Specific attention is given to taboo topics, as a number of these appears in the Gilgamesh Epic. The writers of the children's versions have solved these problems in different ingenious ways. Annotations shed light on the translational challenges and the decisions of the translator. Finally the whole project is evaluated and suggestions for further research are made. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Gilgamesj-epos is die mensdom se oudste opgetekende verhaal. Dit het ‘n lang en komplekse ontstaansgeskiedenis. Die finale variant van die epos, wat algemeen bekend staan as die standaardweergawe, is ongeveer 1200 v.C. in Babiloniese Akkadies geskryf deur ‘n skriba-priester genaamd Sin-leqi-unninni. Die spykerskriftablette waarop dit opgeteken is, is gedurende die negentiende eeu herontdek tydens argeologiese opgrawings van die verwoeste antieke stede in die Midde-Ooste, veral Nineve. Sedertdien is die verhaal in verskeie tale vertaal; daar bestaan etlike vertalings in Engels. Hierdie vertalings van die epos word soms aangebied as epiese gedig, in ander gevalle in prosavorm, en daar bestaan ook ‘n paar verskillende weergawes vir kinders. Daar bestaan tans egter geen volledige weergawe in Afrikaans nie. Hierdie tesis bied ‘n vertaling van dele uit een van die Engelse kinderweergawes, dié van Geraldine McCaughrean, wat in 2002 verskyn het. McCaughrean pas die struktuur van die standaardweergawe aan, ‘n duidelike strategie om haar teks vir hedendaagse lesers opwindend te maak. Die teoretiese insigte van André Lefevere en Lawrence Venuti vorm die raamwerk vir die vertaalproses. Lefevere beskou vertaling as een van ‘n hele aantal tegnieke van herskrywing. Die besonderhede van so ‘n herskrywing word bepaal deur die poetika van die doelkultuur, die patronaat wat die herskrywing moontlik maak, en die ideologiese raamwerk waarbinne die herskrywing ontstaan. Venuti onderskei tussen twee vertaalbenaderings: ‘n domestikerende vertaling pas die vertaalde teks sterk aan by die doelkultuur sodat lesers van die vertaling onder die indruk gebring word dat hulle ‘n oorspronklike teks lees; en vervreemdende vertaling, waarin die lesers bewus is dat hulle ‘n teks uit ‘n ander kultuur lees. Die moontlikhede en beperkinge van kinderliteratuur en vertalings vir kinderlesers word ondersoek. Spesifieke aandag word geskenk aan taboe-onderwerpe, waarvan ‘n hele paar in die Gilgamesj-epos voorkom, en hoe die skeppers van die kinderweergawes hierdie probleme opgelos het. Annotasies belig die vertaaluitdagings en die vertaler se keuses. Ten slotte word die projek as geheel geëvalueer en voorstelle vir verdere navorsing verskaf.

Thesis (MPhil)–Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A suitable South African literary text is translated from English to Afrikaans to investigate the possibility of enriching the target culture, although literary translations from English have a limited readership in Afrikaans. The choice of Portrait with Keys by Ivan Vladislavić as source text is motivated in a discussion of its relevance to the target culture, and of its intrinsic literary merit. Enrichment of the target culture is defined within the context of the hermeneutic approach in translation studies. The interpretation of the source text and the role of the translator is emphasised, as seen in Steiner’s account of the hermeneutic motion and Venuti’s views on the visibility of the translator and cultural filtering. Lewis’s concept of abusive fidelity is considered, and ultimately Bandia’s proposed aim of achieving balance, or a middle course between foreignising and domesticating offers an attainable strategy. The annotation of the practical translation of a selection of texts from Portrait with Keys shows that a strategy of foreignisation, of rendering the characteristics of the source texts as closely as possible in the target text, is continually balanced by the translator with a strategy of domestication, in other words creating an idiomatic, accessible target text. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ’n Geskikte Suid-Afrikaanse literêre teks word uit Engels in Afrikaans vertaal om die moontlikheid te ondersoek dat die doeltaal daardeur verryk kan word, hoewel literêre vertalings uit Engels ’n beperkte leserstal het. Die keuse van Portrait with Keys deur Ivan Vladislavić word gemotiveer deur ’n bespreking van die toepaslikheid daarvan binne die doelkultuur, en die intrinsieke literêre meriete van die teks. Die verryking van die doelkultuur word binne die konteks van die hermeneutiese benadering in vertaalstudies bespreek. Die interpretasie van die bronteks en die rol van die vertaler word voorop gestel, soos blyk uit Steiner se uiteensetting van die hermeneutiese handeling en Venuti se beskouings oor die sigbaarheid van die vertaler en kulturele filtering. Lewis se konsep van weerstandige getrouheid, abusive fidelity, word oorweeg en uiteindelik bied Bandia se klem op die bereiking van balans, of ’n middeweg tussen veruitheemsing, of foreignisation, en verinheemsing, of domestication, ’n uitvoerbare strategie. Die annotasie van die praktiese vertaling van ’n seleksie van tekste uit Portrait with Keys toon dat ’n strategie van veruitheemsing, deur die kenmerke van die bronteks so getrou moontlik in die doelteks weer te gee, deurgaans deur die vertaler opgeweeg word teen ’n strategie van verinheemsing, dit wil sê die daarstelling van ’n idiomatiese, toeganklike doelteks.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is internationally considered as one of the classics of children’s literature. The series consists of seven books, of which only the first four were translated into Afrikaans, namely Die Towenaar se Neef (The Magician’s Nephew), Die Leeu, die Heks en die Hangkas (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), Die Perd en sy Seun (The Horse and his Boy) and Prins Kaspian (Prince Caspian). According to the publisher, Human & Rousseau, they have no intention to translate the remainder of the series. The three books that have not been translated into Afrikaans are The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. The main aim of this study is the practical translation of a selection of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The Functionalist approach of Vermeer and Nord, Toury and Chesterman’s translation norms from Descriptive Translation Studies, Venuti’s foreignisation and domestication and Klingberg’s cultural contex adaptation form the theoretical framework for both the discussion and analysis of the source text as well as the translation. The four types of translation problems as identified by Nord are used as the framework for the annotations of the translation. By doing a theoretically based translation, the connection between theory and practice is illustrated: the translator chooses a general approach and translation strategies and is consequently guided to make consistent translation choices on macro as well as micro levels. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: C.S. Lewis se Chronicles of Narnia beklee internasionaal ’n gevestigde plek in die kanon van kinder- en jeugliteratuur. Die reeks bestaan uit sewe boeke, waarvan slegs die eerste vier in Afrikaans vertaal is, naamlik Die Towenaar se Neef, Die Leeu, die Heks en die Hangkas, Die Perd en sy Seun en Prins Kaspian. Volgens die uitgewer, Human & Rousseau, word daar nie verdere vertalings van die reeks beoog nie. Die drie onvertaalde boeke in die reeks is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair en The Last Battle. Hierdie studie fokus hoofsaaklik op die praktiese vertaling van ’n gedeelte van The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Vermeer en Nord se Funksionalisme, Toury en Chesterman se vertaalnorme uit Deskriptiewe Vertaalstudies, Venuti se vervreemding en domestikering en Klingberg se kulturele konteksaanpassing dien as teoretiese raamwerk vir sowel die bespreking en ontleding van die bronteks as die vertaling. Nord se vier tipes vertaalprobleme dien as raamwerk vir die annotasies tot die vertaling. Deur ’n teoreties gebaseerde vertaling te doen word geïllustreer hoe teorie en praktyk by mekaar aansluit: die vertaler kies ’n algemene benadering en vertaalstrategieë, en word sodoende begelei tot konsekwente vertaalbesluite op makro- en mikrovlak.

For English-language audiences, twentieth-century French literature is often identified with a variety of literary movements tied to the political left. In spite of its lesser visibility, the French literary right enjoyed considerable prestige during the first half of the twentieth century. This thesis employs methodologies from translation studies in order to study how the French literary right has been translated, or not translated, into English. Case studies devoted to three seminal writers of the right, including Charles Maurras (1868-1952), Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (1893-1945), and Roger Nimier (1925-62), demonstrate that right-wing committed literature was a central mode of literary production from the 1910s to the 1950s and that this current of writing is underrepresented in English-language translation and scholarship. A number of literary and cultural asymmetries separating English-language literature from French literature have contributed to this situation, such as the phenomenon of literary engagement in French literature and France’s strong anti-liberal intellectual tradition. Using systems theory this thesis argues that these differences between the French and Anglophone literary systems have contributed to the lack of representation accorded to the French literary right, which is manifested in the selection, presentation, and translation of texts by right-wing authors such as Maurras, Drieu, and Nimier. When translations of texts by these authors do exist, a number of translation patterns emerge. These patterns and distortions have ramifications for the construction of literary canon and for our understanding of twentieth-century literary history and the role ideology plays in influencing high- and low-level translation decisions.

No description available.

The study adopts a theory of Descriptive Translation Studies to undertake a comparative analysis of stylistic devices in Shakespeare’s two plays, Julius Caesar and Macbeth and their Xitsonga translations. It contextualises its research aim and objectives after outlining a sequential account of theory development in the discipline of translation; and arrives at the desired and suitable tools for data collection and analysis.Through textual observation and notes of reading, the current study argues that researchers and scholars in the discipline converge when it comes to a dire need for translation strategies, but diverge in their classification and particular application for convenience in translating and translation. This study maintains that the translation strategies should be grouped into explicitation, normalisation and simplification, where each is assigned specific translation procedures. The study demonstrates that explicitation and normalisation translation strategies are best suited in dealing with translation constraints at a microtextual level. The sampled excerpts from both plays were examined on the preference for the analytical framework based on subjective sameness within a Skopos theory. The current study acknowledges that there is no single way of translating a play from one culture to the other. It also acknowledges that there appears to be no way the translator can refrain from the influence of the source text, as an inherent cultural feature that makes it unique. With no sure way of managing stylistic devices as translation constraints, translation as a problem-solving process requires creativity, a demonstration of mastery of language and style of the author of the source text, as well as a power drive characterised by the aspects of interlingual psychological balance of power and knowledge power. These aspects will help the translator to manage whatever translation brief(s) better, and arrive at a product that is accessible, accurate and acceptable to the target readership. They will also ensure that the translator maintains a balance between the two languages in contact, in order to guard against domination of one language over the other. The current study concludes that the Skopos theory has a larger influence in dealing with anticipating the context of the target readership as a factor that can introduce high risk when assessing the communicability conditions for the translated message. Contrariwise, when dealing with stylistic devices and employ literal translation as a translation procedure to simplification, the translator only aims at simplifying the language and making it accessible for the sake of ‘accessibility’ as it remains a product with communicative inadequacies. The study also concludes by maintaining that translation is not only transcoding, but the activity that calls for the translator’s creativity in order to identify and analyse the constraints encountered and decide on the corresponding translation strategies. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This thesis aims to elucidate the translation process by devising a way of retrieving evidence of this process from its output. It further aims to assess the claims made by some scholars concerning the possible existence of Translation Universals. In order to isolate the interaction of texts and contexts, a corpus of American short stories was created, with their translations into Persian published after the 1979 Revolution. Three complementary methodologies gave a rounded picture: (1) Corpus-based Descriptive Translation Studies; (2) The pragmatic and rhetorically-based approach of Thinking Translation devised at St Andrews; and ‎(3) The analytical framework mostly established by Halliday in his Systemic Functional Grammar.‎ Approaching the process of translation in the specific order devised in this thesis provided four vantage points to analyse the data in a systematic way from linguistic, discourse, cultural and literary views before reaching what are at once the most personal and most characteristic aspects of a translator's work. The research begins with a literature review of the field and an account of linguistic constraints and of all Translation Universals hypothesised so far, followed by an extensive analysis of data in two consecutive chapters. With reference to the choices made in this corpus, it is discussed in the Conclusions chapter that most of the Translation Universals so far claimed are not in fact universal. It is the role of the translator which has emerged as the determining factor in producing a translated text, and thus as the key to resolving the issues explored in this thesis. It seems there are no constraints beyond the translator's reach, and there are no parameters which do not involve the translator, who introduces his or her own choices, or manipulates certain parameters. Only when they have done so, will the translation, as both process and product, be accomplished.

The study adopts a theory of Descriptive Translation Studies to undertake a comparative analysis of stylistic devices in Shakespeare’s two plays, Julius Caesar and Macbeth and their Xitsonga translations. It contextualises its research aim and objectives after outlining a sequential account of theory development in the discipline of translation; and arrives at the desired and suitable tools for data collection and analysis.Through textual observation and notes of reading, the current study argues that researchers and scholars in the discipline converge when it comes to a dire need for translation strategies, but diverge in their classification and particular application for convenience in translating and translation. This study maintains that the translation strategies should be grouped into explicitation, normalisation and simplification, where each is assigned specific translation procedures. The study demonstrates that explicitation and normalisation translation strategies are best suited in dealing with translation constraints at a microtextual level. The sampled excerpts from both plays were examined on the preference for the analytical framework based on subjective sameness within a Skopos theory. The current study acknowledges that there is no single way of translating a play from one culture to the other. It also acknowledges that there appears to be no way the translator can refrain from the influence of the source text, as an inherent cultural feature that makes it unique. With no sure way of managing stylistic devices as translation constraints, translation as a problem-solving process requires creativity, a demonstration of mastery of language and style of the author of the source text, as well as a power drive characterised by the aspects of interlingual psychological balance of power and knowledge power. These aspects will help the translator to manage whatever translation brief(s) better, and arrive at a product that is accessible, accurate and acceptable to the target readership. They will also ensure that the translator maintains a balance between the two languages in contact, in order to guard against domination of one language over the other. The current study concludes that the Skopos theory has a larger influence in dealing with anticipating the context of the target readership as a factor that can introduce high risk when assessing the communicability conditions for the translated message. Contrariwise, when dealing with stylistic devices and employ literal translation as a translation procedure to simplification, the translator only aims at simplifying the language and making it accessible for the sake of ‘accessibility’ as it remains a product with communicative inadequacies. The study also concludes by maintaining that translation is not only transcoding, but the activity that calls for the translator’s creativity in order to identify and analyse the constraints encountered and decide on the corresponding translation strategies. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)