This thesis project is comprised of a partial Chinese translation of The Awakening, a translator’s introduction in Chinese for Chinese readers, and an accompanying critical analysis for my translation. My Chinese translation is guided by feminist translation theory. Its central ideas are that translations should expose and redress gender-based prejudices, challenge and subvert male-dominated linguistic and cultural systems, and promote gender equality in cross-cultural communications. The Awakening is a pioneering feminist novel written by the American author Kate Chopin and published in 1899. It centers on protagonist Edna Pontellier’s gradual departure from her socially conventional roles as a mother and wife and her unfolding awakening to her individuality and sexuality in the late Victorian era. My partial Chinese translation focuses on the gender and sexuality-related excerpts in the novel, which include the depictions of the female body, the Victorian patriarchy, the inner emotions of the protagonist, and the intimacy and sexuality displayed between the protagonist and the male characters in the novel. The translator’s introduction aims to introduce Chinese readers to Kate Chopin and her works and explain the translation interventions I have made in my translation. The accompanying critical analysis discusses my translation approaches and the decision-making process to foreground the feminist themes and convey them to the Chinese readership while preserving the language texture of an English novel from the 19th century in its Chinese rendition.

Эта магистерская диссертация посвящена исследованию и сопоставлению переводческих трансформаций в рамках теорий Ж.-П. Вине и Ж. Дарбельне и Л. С. Бархударова с целью выявления особенностей каждой из них на фоне друг друга. Материалом сопоставительного анализа послужили монологи доктора Уотсона в первой главе рассказа А. К. Дойла «Скандал в Богемии». / This master’s thesis studies and compares translation transformations within the theories of J.-P. Vinay, J. Darbelnet and L. S. Barkhudarov in order to find out some of the peculiarities of said theories compared to one another. The analysis is based on comparing the translation of Dr. Watson’s monologues in the first chapter of the short story «A Scandal in Bohemia» by A. C. Doyle with the English source text.

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)

In the world of Descriptive Translation Studies, translationese refers to the specific traits that characterise the language used in translations. While translationese has been often investigated to illustrate that translational language is different from non-translational language, scholars have also proposed a set of hypotheses which may characterise such di erences. In the quest for the validation of these hypotheses, embracing corpus-based techniques had a well-known impact in the domain, leading to several advances in the past twenty years. Despite extensive research, however, there are no universally recognised characteristics of translational language, nor universally recognised patterns likely to occur within translational language. This thesis addresses these issues, with a less used approach in the eld of Descriptive Translation Studies, by investigating the nature of translational language from a machine learning perspective. While the main focus is on analysing translationese, this thesis investigates two related sub-hypotheses: simplication and explicitation. To this end, a multilingual learning framework is designed and implemented for the identification of translational language. The framework is modelled as a categorisation task, the learning techniques having the major goal to automatically learn to distinguish between translated and non-translated texts. The second and third major goals of this research are the retrieval of the recurring patterns that are revealed in the process of solving the task of categorisation, as well as the ranking of the most in uential characteristics used to accomplish the learning task. These aims are ful lled by implementing a system that adopts the machine learning methodology proposed in this research. The learning framework proves to be an adaptable multilingual framework for the investigation of the nature of translational language, its adaptability being illustrated in this thesis by applying it to the investigation of two languages: Spanish and Romanian. In this thesis, di erent research scenarios and learning models are experimented with in order to assess to what extent translated texts can be diff erentiated from non-translated texts in certain contexts. The findings show that machine learning algorithms, aggregating a large set of potentially discriminative characteristics for translational language, are able to diff erentiate translated texts from non-translated ones with high scores. The evaluation experiments report performance values such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F-measure on two datasets. The present research is situated at the con uence of three areas, more precisely: Descriptive Translation Studies, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, justifying the need to combine these elds for the investigation of translationese and translational hypotheses.

The detailed comparative analysis of four Czech translations of Alexander Blok's poem The twelve is at the crux of this diploma thesis. Concurrently, it sets the assessment of translation mastery of each translation based on criteria of poetry translation as defined by the signifiant Czech theorecian Jiří Levý. Aesthetic interpretaton of the poem and the description of distinctive features of Block's poetry precede the main part of the thesis. The author comes to a conclusion only two of the translations can be called acceptable to present-day readers (Vojtěch Jestřáb's and Václav Daněk's translations). Nevertheless, the translation by Bohumil Mathesius has a certain aesthetic quality, and if it is looked at from a historical perspective it can be appraised as succeful translation work. The very first translation by young Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert satisfies current poetry translation criteria the least. But there is also an another reason for it: both the Seifert's and Mathesius's translations are greatly influenced by the former language standard (the language obsolescence manifests itself at differet levels). Yet, the latest translations differ too. Jestřáb's method focuses upon stressing exotisicm in his translation, whereas Daněk concentrates on naturalisation. Considering the fact that both...

The present study investigates the translation of dialectal elements in literary texts from the German and Swedish linguistical and cultural areas. Translation theory generally advises against the translation of dialectal elements in standard language texts thereby implicitly questioning their creative and communicative function. The aim of the study is to investigate to what extent the dialectal elements in the source text are translated by corresponding dialectal elements in the target text thereby promoting a "cultural transfer" or whether a translation method based on translation theory is used. The linguistic material from the novels Die Räuberbande by the German author Leonhard Frank, Tjärdalen by the Swedish author Sara Lidman and Kapten Nemos bibliotek by the Swedish author Per Olov Enquist is microanalyzed. In doing so, the phonetical-phonological, morphological and syntactical dialectal features in the three source texts are treated methodically and are exemplarily and systematically presented together with their translation variants in the target language. The study focuses mainly on the translations of dialectal lexicology, which is investigated according to its contrastive function regarding the translations of standard language, thereby examining its adequacy. By including all the dialectal lexemes appearing in the works and their translations empirical dates have been compiled as a result of the translation methods. The study´s analyses demonstrate that dialectal elements are mainly translated into standard language, that a large part of dialectisms is paraphrased and that a small part is rendered by spoken language without regional limits. A tendency towards increasing use of dialectal elements through the times can be detected as well as a propensity to adapt the translation to the stylistical preferences in the receiving country. Thus, "cultural transfer" is not promoted.

In questo lavoro si cerca di applicare i principi teorici e i metodi del filosofo e traduttologo franco-canadese Antoine Berman a uno studio comparativo di quattro traduzioni (tedesca, inglese, danese ed italiana) del volume di racconti El Llano en llamas, di Juan Rulfo. L'applicazione della griglia analitica di Berman mira ad identificare i processi di trasformazione linguistica e culturale - ai quali i traduttori devono cedere nell'affrontare un'opera di pensiero e lingua stranieri, e le negoziazioni necessarie per travasare lo stile e i micro-universi testuali di Rulfo alle quattro lingue di arrivo. L'obiettivo è di misurare l'operatività di questa metodologia per un'analisi comparativa che mira a stabilire come e in che misura i testi rulfiani siano stati trasposti. Di fronte alle tendenze che mettono al centro la leggibilità di una traduzione e la considerazione delle competenze e attese del lettore di arrivo, Berman offre una prospettiva di tipo ermeneutico che si basa sulla nozione di 'ospitalità linguistica': l'obiettivo della traduzione non è quello di rendere comprensibile, di annettere, l'estraneo, bensì quello di accoglierlo in quanto estraneo per arricchire l'orizzonte di arrivo. / This work seeks to apply the theoretical principles and methods of the French-Canadian philosopher and translation theorist Antoine Berman to a comparative study of four translations (German, English, Danish and Italian) of Juan Rulfo's El Llano en llamas. The application of Berman's analytical grid aims at identifying the processes of linguistic and cultural transformation to which the translators cede when dealing with a work conceived and written in a foreign language. The analysis thus focuses on describing the negotiations needed to transfer Rulfo's style and his textual micro-universes to the four target languages. The main objective is to measure the efficacy of this methodology for a comparative analysis aimed at establishing how and to what extent Rulfo's texts have been transposed. In contrast to theoretical approaches where the readability of a translation and the consideration of the target reader's competences and expectations are the main focus, Berman offers a hermeneutical perspective based on the notion of 'linguistic hospitality': the aim of translation is not that of making the foreign comprehensible, of annexing it, but rather that of hosting it as something foreign in order to enrich the target horizon.

This work in the field of the translation theory, extending to the translation practice, focuses on exploring literary terms and techniques, that participate in the construction and poeticisation of the literary text. Very often these terms make problems in the process of translation text from one language to another. The aim is localizing (with regard to its contextual involvement), analysis and subsequent selection of the most appropriate translation solutions of these terms. The work focuses on the translation of these literary devices not only in plan of Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Slovak), but also takes into account the aspect of non-Slavic languages (English).

Denna kandidatuppsats består av en längre översättning av en skönlitterär text från ryska till svenska och en kommentar till denna översättning som behandlar den översättningsproblematik som åtföljt just det här arbetet. Källtexten utgörs av första kapitlet i Aleksej Tolstojs Chmuroe utro (Grå gryning), tredje delen av hans trilogi Choždenie po mukam (Lidandets väg). I mitt översättningsarbete följer jag Eugene Nidas princip om dynamisk ekvivalens och i min kommentar fokuserar jag på att förklara hur jag arbetat med min översättning utifrån Nidas teorier och hur jag löst de översättningsproblem som uppstått under arbetets gång i enlighet med principen om dynamisk ekvivalens. I arbetet tar jag även upp den speciella problematik det inneburit att trilogins två förra delar redan finns på svenska i översättning av en annan översättare och redogör för hur jag valt att förhålla mig till denna tidigare översättning. / This essay covers the translation of a fictional prose text from Russian to Swedish, the source text being the first chapter of Aleksey Tolstoy’s Chmuroe utro (Bleak Morning), the third part of his trilogy Choždenie po mukam (The Ordeal). A commentary of this translation is provided, where the linguistic abstractions encountered throughout the process are documented. My methodology attempts to emulate that of Eugene Nida and his principle of “Dynamic Equivalence”. This procedure is addressed in the commentary, as I explain how utilisation of Nida's theories can assist in overcoming the numerous peculiarities inherent to translation. I also deal with the issue regarding the first two books of the trilogy, which have already been translated into Swedish by another translator. In my work, I explain how and why I have chosen to relate to the earlier translation.

The concept of equivalence has for many years attracted attention of researchers in variousdisciplines: from mathematics to philosophy to translation theory to terminology. This thesisintends to survey the concept of equivalence in three subject fields all of which focus onlanguages and communication, namely: translation theory, lexicography and terminology. Thepurpose of the paper is twofold: to investigate the theoretical grounds of equivalence in thesethree disciplines and to survey the methods and practices of establishing equivalence inmultilingual terminology work. The results of the theoretical investigation are summed up onthe basis of the terminological concept analysis. Four concepts systems are structured andpresented in the form of concept diagrams (two for translation theory, one for lexicography andone for terminology). The concept systems give an overview of the current understanding ofequivalence in the three subject fields and expose the relations between equivalence and anumber of related concepts. The central theoretical question of the thesis whether equivalencecould be considered the same concept in all three disciplines is answered on the basis of theresults of the terminological concept analysis. The empirical investigation is carried out in theform of case studies in the frame of multilingual terminology work. It focuses on the problemsof establishing equivalence, of determining the degree of equivalence as well as on the methodsand practices of presenting equivalents in various terminological resources.