Rooted in the field of Descriptive Translation Studies, the thesis combines such different areas as corpus linguistics, literary, cultural, media and socio-historical studies of the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Five translations (three German and two Dutch) of Agatha Christie's first detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles are analysed. Using the theories by Itamar Even-Zohar (Polysystem Theory) and Gideon Toury (Translation Norms), the different approaches translators have taken to the text are examined and their translation decisions explained by looking at the status and position translations from English, detective stories as such, and the writer Agatha Christie had in the country and at the time these translations were published.

This thesis re-evaluates the relationship between original text and translation through an approach that assumes the equality of source and target texts. This is based on the translation strategy expressed in the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and theoretical approaches by Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, as well as exponents of Possible World Theory. Rather than considering what may be lost in translation, this thesis focuses on why we insist on maintaining a border between the textual phenomena ‘translation’ and ‘original’ and argues for a mutually enriching dialogue between a text and its translation. The opening chapter investigates marginal cases of translation and determines where one form (original) ends and the other (translation) begins. The case studies derive from the anthology Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (edited by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares) and include ‘pseudotranslations’: texts presented as translations even though no linguistic transfer precedes them. Another example is Borges’s self-translation of his Spanish poem ‘Mañana’ into German as ‘Südlicher Morgen’ for the Expressionist poet Kurt Heynicke. Although an original text, the pseudotranslation is judged as a translation, problematizing the boundary between the two. Since its perception changes over time, it unsettles the idea of the stable text by positing a text in progress. The analysis of the effects of the translation is supported by a discussion of Michel Foucault’s categorization expressed in Les mots et les choses (1966). Translations are regarded as coins, which gain value through their ability to represent, and create heterotopias: potentially existing non-places, which escape logic and thereby create an ‘uneasy laughter.’ Heterotopias are based on anti-logical orders, exemplified in the organisation of Antología de la literatura fantástica, collaboratively edited by Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo in 1940. This organisation invites an interpretation based on resemblance rather than comparison, the latter of which always results in the production and reproduction of hierarchies. In Chapter Two, I uncover the fraudulent assumption that an original is a stable text. I make recourse to Walter Benjamin’s definition of origin in ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (1923) as ‘the eddy in the stream of becoming’, and André Lefevere’s notion of the refracted text, explaining that our first encounters with a classic text are mostly made through abridged, altered, and interpreted versions. Collaborative work also unsettles the idea of the single author as source and guarantor of authenticity, exemplified through examples of Borges and Bioy Casares’s collaboration, and Borges’s collaborative translations with Norman Thomas di Giovanni. I elaborate on Possible World Theory (PWT) following Marie-Laure Ryan and Ruth Ronen, explaining key terms and concepts and showing that PWT offers an alternative to thinking about the relationship of original text and translation as hierarchical. PWT can be employed to consider source text and target text to be possible, parallel versions of a fictional world. The findings lead to a link between authenticity and the different reception of original and translated texts. I note that the term ‘authenticity’, often used in reference to the original, also has ‘murderous’ connotations. Applied to a text, ‘inauthenticity’ might therefore be a more helpful term in discussing its ‘afterlife’ (Fortleben; Benjamin) as an inauthentic text. An effective way of ensuring a text can be read as ‘inauthentic’ is to dissimulate its origin and relations, whilst also unsettling the authority of the author and translator. The theoretical examination of hierarchies and categorization is then illustrated in case studies analysing Borges’s contrasting translations of works by Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka. Chapter Three focuses on translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges. While it remains uncertain whether Borges did in fact translate Woolf’s texts himself, the notion of ‘translatorship’ comes into focus. The continuation of claiming Borges as the translator serves to aid the publication of the translations by making use of the famous translator’s name. I give an overview over the publishing environment in Argentina of the 1930s into which the Woolf texts were translated, with particular focus on the readership of the publishing house Sur. I thereby foreground Victoria Ocampo’s particular interest in having Woolf translated into Spanish, since Ocampo considered Woolf a role model for feminism. Feminist discussions show parallels with the way in which translations and original texts are separated. Borges’s Orlando furthermore triggered controversy concerning his handling of gender issues. I offer a reading of the text along the lines of Feminist Translation Studies, as expressed by Sherry Simon, Luise von Flotow and Lori Chamberlain, amongst others. I argue that Borges’s translation can be read ‘inauthentically’ as fidelity becomes a movable factor. I regard the translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges as texts translated in a feminist way as they offer many possible worlds of interpretation and much undecidability. The notion of ‘translatorship’ is picked up again in the final Chapter Four, as it applies equally to the translation of Franz Kafka’s ‘Die Verwandlung’ as ‘La metamorfosis.’ Since there are different versions of ‘La metamorfosis,’ the quest for the translator also questions where ‘translation’ ends and ‘editing’ begins. The popularity of Borges’s version might furthermore be particularly linked to this uncertainty, as I argue that the veneration of Kafka’s work is, at least in part, due to the fragmentary nature in which his work survived. This incompletion enables many possible interpretations of his texts, which thereby appear as perfect pieces of literature since they, like Foucault’s coin, are uncorrodable and have the ability to represent, much like inauthentic texts. The ‘inauthentic’ literary treatment of translating in collaboration, as is the case when Borges and Bioy Casares translate ‘Cuatro reflexiones’, ‘Josefina la cantora’, ‘La verdad sobre Sancho Panza’ and ‘El silencio de las sirenas’ is hence particularly adequate for these fragments. The translations in collaboration, besides undermining the authorial genius of the single author, also feature particular destructions of the perfection of the original. The concluding chapter summarises the findings concerning the questions as to why there should be a hierarchy between the reception of original texts and translations, why this hierarchy is so persistent, and what alternatives may be offered instead. I demonstrate how the selected case studies are exemplary of alternative approaches to Translation Studies and to what effect PWT and Borges have been helpful in pursuing this approach. I then suggest further routes of research, including: an increased visibility of translations in academic disciplines, through publishing books and reviews; further study on the translations of Argentine literature into an Anglo-American context and the ‘decolonized’ effect this could have; and an update of Feminist Translation Studies to expand it to Transgender Translation Studies. I finally suggest that the uncertain and unsettling effect brought about by translation in its creation of multiple worlds should be embraced as a way of reading and writing inauthentically.

In the late 1990s, the donor community espoused a new metanorm, poverty reduction. Against this backdrop, Lionel Jospin, elected French Prime Minister in 1997, promised a shift in French aid policy away from a paternalistic and interest-driven approach towards a more needs-focused, empowering strategy. This thesis asks, with reference to the 1997-2015 period and to the Cameroonianian case, how far, how and why France’s aid discourse on poverty reduction and empowerment has been translated into practice. Our introduction sets out this research question. Our literature review demonstrates that there have been no detailed studies of French aid to Cameroon and looks more broadly at research on French coopération, empowerment and African agency. Chapter three identifies our methodological and theoretical framework, focusing particularly on neo-classical realism and a template of hard, soft and smart power. Chapter 4 shows how French aid sructures and instruments were neo-colonial in the early post-colonial decades. It then highlights reforms under Jospin and President Jacques Chirac’s second term, paying particular attention to the aid instruments deployed in Cameroon and their ‘fitness for the purpose’. Chapter 5 sets out the aid promises of French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, identifying the reformist pressures they faced. Chapter 6 explains why important but ultimately limited changes took place in the French assistance programme to Cameroon. Drawing on a neoclassical realist framework, it shows how the French policy-making establishment was divided between the conservative old guard resisting and modernisers promoting aid conditionalities. Chapter 7 addresses weaknesses in the NCR framework, notably its crude definition of power and failure to include African agency. It shows how francophone Cameroonian elites facilitate or constrain the implementation of French aid. Our conclusion summarises our findings, identifies future aid trends and explores the wider significance of this research.

This thesis consists of two parts: a creative work and two critical essays on translingual writing. The creative component, Then the Cicadas Sang, is a novel set in 1940s Malta. It is a story about love and aspiration. As a teenage girl, Mari vouches she will do anything to leave the tiny island she lives on. Foreigners – the British who governed the island at the time – and books give her a glimpse of the world beyond her shores. But she craves for more, unaware of what she risks losing by chasing her dreams. The novel deals with how books shape our imagination, how the languages we speak give us access to different systems of conceptualizing the world and how we navigate the spaces in between. It does this through the protagonist, Mari, and the people who help shape who she is, in particular Mrs Applegate, a British evacuee who sought shelter in Gozo in the midst of the Blitz. But as much as it is a story of a girl turning into a woman, the novel is also the story of an island. It sits between Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Elena Ferrante’s The Neapolitan Series. The extract submitted is Book One in a series of two. The critical essays explore the poetics of multilingual writing. They analyse the linguistic, political and cultural stratifications in multilingual writing, with a focus on the perception and reception of Maltese literature written in English. I ask if a multilingual writer’s role can be akin to that of a cultural translator. They investigate whether, unlike the monolingual writer, a writer’s multilingual background gives him or her access to different systems of conceptualizing the surrounding environment and how this informs the creative process. This study informs my own process of writing Then the Cicadas Sang, with a particular regard to self-translation and how one language can carry another on the page. In this case the languages I am working with are English, Maltese and Italian.

Book Summary: The essays in this collection explore the languages - artistic, symbolic, and ritual, as well as written and spoken - in which power was articulated, challenged, contested, and defended in Italian cities and courts, villages, and countryside, between 1300 and 1600. Topics addressed include court ceremonial, gossip and insult, the performance of sanctity and public devotions, the appropriation and reuse of imagery, and the calculated invocation (and sometimes undermining) of authoritative models and figures. The collection balances a broad geographic and chronological range with a tight thematic focus, allowing the individual contributions to engage in vigorous and fruitful debate with one another even as they speak to some of the central issues in current scholarship. The authors recognize that every institutional action is, in its context, a political act, and that no institution operates disinterestedly. At the same time, they insist on the inadequacy of traditional models, whether Marxian or Weberian, as the complex realities of the early modern state pose tough problems for any narrative of modernization, rationalization, and centralization. The contributors to this volume trained and teach in various countries - Italy, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia - but share a common interest in cultural expressions of power. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1186/thumbnail.jpg

Although certain critics have mentioned Blasco Ibáñez’s women characters in their writings, they often relegate these persons to a subordinate role relevant to the development of the plot and of the philosophy of the author. Many of the earlier critics have mentioned the importance of the setting in Blasco Ibáñez’s novels, as did James O. Swain when he wrote in 1935, “Especially in his Valencian novels, Arroz y Tartana, Flor de Mayo, La barraca, and Cañas y barro, does the setting play an important role.” As recently as 1961, Sherman Eoff has pointed out how characterization is secondary to the milieu of the people in some of Blasco Ibáñez’s early writing. There are, nonetheless, notable women who play an important part in some of Blasco Ibáňez’s early novels. Eduardo Betoret-Paris has mentioned the significance of women in both Cañas y barro and Flor de Mayo. Doña Manuela in Arroz y tartana and Neleta in Cañas y barro are cited by Antonio Espina as being significant human portraits. M. Romera-Navarro has indicated the mastery with which Blasco Ibáñez created a particular kind of woman in Entre naranjos. Tía Picores in Flor de Mayo has been called a strong and dominant character. Still another woman has been singled out for the complexity of her character in Blasco Ibáñez’s La Maja Desnuda. In recognition of the fact that some women do play an important role in some of Blasco Ibáñez’s earlier novels, this investigation seeks to reveal certain aspects of a particular kind of woman – the dominative woman. In order to present some of the significance of the dominative woman, an examination of portions of the life and philosophy of Blasco Ibáñez will be made. In addition, Arroz y Tartana, Flor de Mayo, Entre naranjos, Cañas y barro and La Maja Desnuda will be studied in order to illustrate Blasco Ibáñez’s presentation of the dominative woman, her characteristics, imagery related to her, and her roles in these works as they relate to aspects of the author’s life and philosophy.

Since the Treaty of the European Union in 1993, the EU has embraced institutional reforms with the stated purpose of achieving greater unity in foreign affairs. Despite the EU's leading role in the political and economic reforms of former Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU has been less consistent and cohesive in former Soviet space further east--in regions fraught with undemocratic qualities and places where the EU enjoys fewer credible incentives and less leverage. While scholars point to divergent national interests as obstacles for unity abroad, few have unraveled how the institutions of the EU itself pose challenges as well. This research asks whether the institutions of the EU--particularly the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament--promote or hinder the EU's ability to act as a global unitary actor. It analyzes EU institutional democratic discourse in three cases of color revolutions in former Soviet space from 2003 to 2011: Georgia, Ukraine, and the Kyrgyz Republic. The research is based on a qualitative database of official institutional documents from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament to identify patterns of discourse in the construction of democracy. The study finds that, across the institutions, democratic discourse is only consistent in the minimal requisites of democracy--particularly elections and rule of law--but the institutions diverge substantially on whether these elements are necessary and sufficient, versus necessary but insufficient. Even if member-states find common ground at the national level, the institutional dynamics of the EU continue to undermine its ability to assert itself as a unitary actor in foreign affairs. The findings of this study have implications for theories on international relations, democracy, and states. It demonstrates that there are limits to mainstream liberal institutionalist approaches best captured by constructivism, and that the EU as a whole, the institutions of the EU, and the constituent member-states can all become actors with competing interests in a given issue area. The study concludes with potential avenues of future research.

This study investigates the interplay of linguistic practices, linguistic representations, language ideologies and social inclusion between students in three related research sites in south west Wales;a designated English medium school,a designated Bilingual school and a Youth Club,as a point of contact between students from both schools. It identifies how students experience and interpret the language ideological content of their education. The following questions underpin the current research: 1. How are the institutional arrangements within this community(or locality)understood by the students? Do school students see themselves operating within language ideological structures?!Do students resist or affirm school based ideologies and school based practice? 2. How do students understand, interpret and live out what language policy and planning documents in Wales refer to as ‘true bilingualism’? Is ‘choice’ experienced as such at institutional, individual and community levels? 3. Is the Welsh language accounted to be an obstacle to social integration for young people within the ‘community’ and into the school environment, or a positive resource? Ethnographic research as been carried out in both schools and at the Youth Club,with three principle methods characterising this research; ethnographic observational fieldwork, ethnographic chats, and audio recordings of spontaneous interaction. vi This study sets out to investigate how the young people at two contrasting (and ideologically polarised) secondary schools in an ‘community’ traditionally thought of as a heartland area understand and orient to the language ideological content of their education. In the school based data language choice results in boundaries being put up around language and language users, both inter school and intra school, with students forming language hierarchies, positioning themselves and others as more or less Welsh, English or bilingual, ‘better’ or ‘worse’ at speaking Welsh and/or English, and more or less authentically Welsh. Schools serve to reinforce and reproduce social divisions, leading to issues of social exclusion. Contrastingly,the Youth Club data highlights that,when freed from the ideological constraints of the school, the young people reflect, sometimes critically, on their school based practice and school based ideologies. This study adds to our knowledge about Welsh medium/bilingual education in Wales; it helps us better understand ‘multilingual’Wales.

Thesis--Leyden University. / Bibliography: p. [xvii]-xx.

Habilitationsschrift--Tübingen. / Bibliography: p. [106]-109.