This thesis seeks to advance a new hypothesis for addressing retranslations, namely that the traditional explanation according to which translations become outdated and must be renewed can no longer account for all the aspects of the retranslation phenomenon. I propose to view retranslation as a means of transforming documents into monuments, of unearthing the mass of elements they contain and of making them relevant to the present and to the future. Retranslations become a source of inspiration for original philosophical texts, hence new philosophical trends or schools of thought, and for commentaries on the translation and its agents, all of which reflect the place and time where they emerge, thus shaping symbols of self-representation, collective consciousness, memory, and identity. I test this hypothesis through the exploration of 20th century Modern Greek retranslations of Plato’s Republic and through the examination of the diachronic and synchronic values of key political and philosophical elements of Plato’s system within the retranslations. These retranslations reflect not only how Plato’s philosophy is perceived by the modern Greek philosophical and political environment, but also whether they represent and prolong the canonical discourse on classical philosophy or introduce a more critical turn. I explore a case of a philosophical text whereby key elements of the Republic become a source of inspiration to answer basic questions of justice and polity from a modern point of view. I conclude that retranslations project the aspirations, fears, and values of the time and space in which they emerge while using the openness of the text to add extra layers of interpretation and meaning. Almost all retranslations and their corresponding paratext maintain a consistent referential relationship with one another and with other political and philosophical texts produced during the same period. The link that ties these texts together is not necessarily chronological. It also depends on the discursive approach adopted; the translator’s political or philosophical affiliation; the degree of canonicity of each translation and translator, and the prevailing ideologies of the society in which retranslations emerge. A classical work can become either a vibrant document used to promote, sustain, and revive dominant discourses on politics, national identity or philosophy or, alternately, a reactionary document that voices concerns over the relevance of the canonical or traditional discourse with which the original is equated.

Metaphors have long shaped the way pure translation studies describe and justify the translation phenomenon by discovering and consolidating underlying principles. Ultimately, by means of metaphor, something that dwells on the interaction of two seemingly distinct things, translation theorists have obtained a better understanding of the category of translation. Human beings are gregarious, and disputes are inevitable in every society, ancient or modern, primitive or civilized. In fact, conflict is one iron law of life that mankind has had to improvise ways of resolving, from such formal ones as litigation to private ones such as self-help. We may not be able to eliminate dispute altogether, but we can, however, resolve it through creative and civilized means. Translation can be approached in a similar context, except it concerns a metaphorical dispute between cultures and/or languages—and probably on a more intangible and subtle platform. Disparate cultures, religions and languages in a clash can be brought closer to each other with skillful translation, and hence, translation is a variation of dispute resolution. That never went totally unnoticed. Over the years, countless translation metaphors have been constructed and exploited with very different results, which indicates how interdisciplinary a subject translation studies really is. Yet, apparently, translation is most often metaphorized as mediation and negotiation but rarely as arbitration or litigation, and one cannot but wonder whether this happened out of sheer coincidence or because of some misunderstanding. Thus, much as I appreciate what theorists have accomplished with translation metaphors, in regard to didactics and heuristics, my primitive observation is that translation theorists and practitioners have never made full use of metaphorization in that they might have had an incomplete idea of dispute resolution theory in general. After all, a metaphor is, ideally, meant to facilitate active learning and full integration of new knowledge, but there still remains a missing piece that is part and parcel of our metaphorization of translation. Specifically, translators have always embraced the amicable terms of negotiation and mediation, distancing themselves from non-mainstream ones such as arbitration and litigation. To that end, in my thesis, I will explore and examine translation through slightly renewed lenses, demonstrating how and why our metaphor schema and mapping should originate in dispute resolution, and why litigation, and perhaps even arbitration as dispute resolution mechanisms, would serve as good a metaphor—if not a better one—for translation. It is my resolute belief that the translator is more qualified as a judge, a respectable professional vested with immense judicial power, than as a mediator, who is but a third-party neutral facilitating dialogue between two disputants. Only in this way can metaphors do translation theory a great service by furnishing it with a renewed and objective description of translation.

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 study seeks to reveal the attitude of each translator and their translation strategies, which are, to a large extent, decreed by their historical times. The first translation Rickshaw Boy (1945) was a market success because it met the requirement of popular fiction and echoed the prevailing preconception about China immediately after the WWII. The second translation Rickshaw (1979) was an academic production associated with the revival of Sino-US diplomacy in the 1970s. The third translation Camel Xiangzi (1981), which was produced in China but published in both China and the USA, originated from China’s wish to be better known by the world; while the reprint of Camel Xiangzi in 2005 by a Hong Kong publisher represented a new era when Chinese cultural products were turned into profitable commodities in the global cultural market. The production and circulation of the three translations can be studied as historical texts themselves. The three translations, which are connected to all the great events since WWII, show the change of the Chinese image in the American media. They also shed light on the evolution of Chinese literary studies in American academia, which has gradually become an independent discipline during the same period.

This thesis seeks to examine the translation of selected foreign film-titles in Hong Kong and Taiwan from 1990 to 2002. Lawrence Venuti’s theory on “domesticating translation” and “foreignizing translation” will be taken as the conceptual framework for the study. Building on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s perspective on translation and on his observations about the Anglo-American publishing industry, Venuti asserts that “foreignizing translation”, being a strategy to bring the target-text audience toward the original text, should be preferred over “domesticating translation” as the former would guarantee difference by introducing foreign elements to the text recipients. By doing so, people will have more chances to be exposed to cultures other than their own and thus a heterogeneous society will be formed and maintained. Since Venuti’s study has not touched upon the Asian region situated in the periphery of global culture as opposed to the Anglo-American one, his suggestion for “foreignizing translation” might not be feasible globally. Selected film-titles will be examined in this thesis. Data show that most of the translated titles in Hong Kong are domesticated. The same can be said of Taiwan in recent years, though to a lesser extent. Unlike other text types, film-titles are normally translated or adapted by the local film distributors rather than professionally or academically trained translators. With box-office sales as the major concern of the movie business, the adoption of the domesticating strategy can easily be rationalized, if not justified. Equally notable is the fact that, as recent trend in Taiwan demonstrates, domesticating strategy also reflects a stronger sense of local identity.

This thesis is a textual and contextual study of English renditions of poetry in Luo Guanzhong’s Sanguo zhi yanyi, in terms of their artistic approach and their bearing on the artistic functions which poetry fulfills in the novel. There are several English renditions of the Sanguo zhi yanyi in full or in part, including two full translations by Charles H. Brewit-Taylor and Moss Roberts. While the two full translations form the focus of the study, Roberts’s abridged version is also included. Published fifteen years before the full rendition by the same translator, the abridged version serves every now and then as a reference point showing how an individual’s interpretive perception may change over time and bear on choices made in a literary translation. Insertion of poetry in a novel is basically unique to Chinese fiction, often contributing to its overall artistic effects as an organic element. A Western reader coming from a different cultural background may employ different standards in evaluating the artistic role and appeal of poetry in a Chinese classical novel. In an attempt to be as flexible and open-minded as possible, this thesis does not adopt any particular theoretical perspective, but makes use of literary concepts to facilitate the analysis as appropriate. To assess the literary translations, concrete analysis of selected original poems in semantic, syntactic, auditory, imagistic, symbolic and stylistic terms is made before the strategies adopted by the translated versions, along with their merits and limitations, are discussed. Detailed discussions of textual features and contextual elements offer an evidence-based appraisal of the renditions. artistic approaches, which are significant in shedding light on the translators’ attempts to re-create and revitalize the artistic appeal of the source text within the multidimensional context of the target language and culture. It is also hoped that the thesis help shed light on some general as well as language- and culture-specific issues in the translation of classical Chinese poetry.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a theoretical framework that could account for the problems arising in the translation of oral history interviews. While focusing on literary, economic and technical texts, Translation Studies has neglected the examination of Oral History. In order to fill in this major lacuna in the research literature, I ask two fundamental questions: Which are the linguistic problems and challenges (if any) of such texts in translation? How do these translated oral history interviews articulate the communist experience? I do so to call attention to the mutual benefits that can be gained from such an intersectional approach. To instantiate the case, I translate from Romanian into English transcribed interviews given by three categories of people: those involved in the anti-communist armed resistance in the Carpathian Mountains (extracted from the book Memorialul Durerii: Întuneric şi Lumină, by Lucia Hossu-Longin), political prisoners (Supravieţuitorii: Mărturii din temniţele comuniste ale României, by Raul and Anca Ştef) and King Michael I of Romania (Convorbiri cu Mihai I al României, by Mircea Ciobanu). Importing Portelli’s theoretical framework from the field of Oral History allows me to identify the features of historical interviews (orality, narrative, subjectivity, performativity) and account for their difficulties in translation. However, since the Italian researcher negates the orality of transcribed interviews, I manage to solve this problem by proposing the term ‘fictive orality’ (Koch&Osterreicher) and the triad ‘vividness (repetitions/imagery), immediacy (direct speech), fragmentation (ambiguity/ellipsis)’. Defining thus the orality of my written data, I map out the translational problematics of oral testimonies on communism and contend that fragmentation presents the most difficult challenges in translation. Additionally, my results point at the copious use of repetitions, visual/kinaesthetic/organic images, and direct speech. The findings also confirm the effectiveness of a literal translation given the emphatic role acquired by the linguistic strategies previously mentioned. Conclusively, recommendations are made for proximity to the source text as the translational processs assumes the form of a ‘dialogue’ that the translator has to establish with the original, so that he/she could hear all the participants talking. Hence, I rely on foreignization as an over-arching method, demonstrating its compatibility with Oral History on communism. On the one hand, this strategy captures the cognitive and emotive dimensions of the interviewees’ language of suffering and trauma. On the other hand, it preserves the foreignness of the original, by bringing into focus the distinctively Romanian communist experiences. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The main argument of this thesis is that the rewriters of the story of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library, namely journalists and filmmakers, engage differently with primary source material about the detention facility; what they omit and include in their narratives varies and depends largely on their pre-established ideologies. In the field of translation studies, this thesis contributes a new case study; it considers the problematic interplay between law, libraries, and multilingual information access in detention facilities. My research also demonstrates the challenges of examining a library that belongs to a highly controversial military system. In the first chapter I review previous studies of detainee libraries, and I introduce the concepts of rewriting, power, patronage, and ideology. In the second chapter I evaluate how reading material is unevenly distributed across nineteen language groups in the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library. In the third chapter I reflect on the ways in which news articles written by civilian and military journalists about the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library are rooted in disparate ideologies. In the fourth chapter I parse the story of the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library as it is told through the fictitious lens of the film Camp X-Ray (2014). In the fifth and final chapter I summarize the logistical challenges of studying the Guantánamo Bay Detainee Library from afar and imagine what future might await its books.

Cette thèse examine le rapport stylistique et esthétique entre l'original et la traduction : l'écrivain et le traducteur écrivent chacun leur version de l'œuvre, l'une auctoriale, l'autre allographe. Le terme « auctorial » peut donc aussi s'appliquer au traducteur, auteur de la traduction et juridiquement reconnu comme tel. En partant du principe qu'à la lecture, un auteur peut s'identifier à son style d'écriture, il s'agit de montrer en quoi le traducteur a un style propre se démarquant de celui de l'auteur de l'original, en termes de créativité et de faits de style. Cela posé, il restera à déterminer dans quelle mesure l'un ou l'autre de ces deux auteurs, par son style, s'approprie l'œuvre, autrement dit, à qui revient l'autorité en ce qui concerne l'œuvre, en prenant en compte l'action des autres parties prenantes dans l'écriture, comme l'éditeur et même le lecteur : on verra ainsi que l'autorité est une variable. On peut dire que l'écrivain et le traducteur entreprennent une coopération, au sens étymologique, pour l'écriture de l'œuvre. Pour identifier le style d'un traducteur, on s'intéressera au style qu'un même écrivain développe dans différentes productions, et à celui qu'un même traducteur utilise dans différentes traductions. On essaiera d'en déduire quelle évolution stylistique a lieu d'une production à une autre, et d'une traduction à une autre. À la suite de ces analyses, on cherchera à en tirer des enseignements sur l'apprentissage du style en traduction, dans le cadre de la co-écriture de l'œuvre. Cela nous mènera à une réflexion sur la perception subjective de « fautes » de style dans la traduction et sur l'impossibilité d'une version « définitive » de l'œuvre. / This thesis is about style in translation and its implications for both authoriality and authority. It examines the stylistic and esthetic relationship between the original text and its translation: the writer and the translator write different versions of the literary work; one is authorial, the other is allographic, in the etymological sense of the term. The term "authorial" may actually also refer to the translator as the author of the translation, recognized as such by French copyright law. On the assumption that the reader will identify an author by their writing style, the goal is to show in what way the translator's own style sets off from the original author's in terms of creativity and stylistic features. Then we will aim to determine to what extent either of these two authors can stylistically claim the literary work; in other words, which of these two authors has the authority related to the literary work, taking into account those involved in the writing process, such as the editor or even the reader: we will see that the authority is a variable. The writer and the translator can be said to undertake cooperation for the writing of the literary work. In order to identify the style of the translator, the focus will be placed on the style a writer develops in various productions and on the style a translator uses in various translations. We will also try to infer what stylistic evolution takes place from one production to another and from one translation to another. Following those analyses we will seek ways to develop one's writing style in translation in the context of the co-writing of the literary work. This will lead us to reflect on the subjective perception of stylistic "flaws" in the translation and on the impossibility of a "definitive" version of the literary work.

Tercera reunión del grupo de lectura Queer AVT Club. Se discutió el artículo de Judith Butler: "Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism". La introducción estuvo a cargo de María Pérez L. de Heredia de la Universidad del País Vasco.

Jorge Díaz Cintas (University College London) / En esta entrevista, el Dr. Jorge Díaz Cintas (University College London) habla acerca del impacto del streaming en la TAV, su nuevo libro sobre subtitulación y las aplicaciones de subtitulación en la nube.