published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

In its function as a mediating body between the political decision-makers and the population, the media have the potential to influence the public opinion and subsequently, policy making. Representations of political discourses are opinion-shaping instruments and often not mere reflections of a given reality; they incorporate implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious evaluations. In cross-cultural contexts where information travels across languages the media are highly dependent on translation. Despite its central role, media translation as part of the political process has only recently gained visibility in Translation Studies (TS) and remains widely neglected outside the discipline. Current research in TS often prioritises either the textual analysis or, more recently, the identification of the shaping factors in the news production process, and often fails to address diachronic aspects. This thesis investigates the translations of Goebbels’ speeches as published in the French and British press during the interwar period. It combines a synchronic and diachronic textual analysis, inspired by CDA with an in-depth study of context which draws on socio-historical research and the analysis of archival material. Thereby, the thesis is able to link the textual makeup to a wide variety of socio-political and historical variables via the concepts of ‘framing’ and ‘agenda-setting’. In doing so the thesis demonstrates on the one hand, how translation can function as a means of discourse mediation and, on the other hand, it provides evidence that ideology and political expediency alone cannot explain all textual changes introduced by the translator-journalists. Moreover, describing the development of the media images not only allows to add a translational perspective to the reception of the Third Reich but also contributes to a better understanding of the varying influence of contextual factors. The results of the diachronic analysis show that throughout the interwar period the British media published very little about Goebbels and, up until late in 1938, reports focused on the peaceful intentions he expressed. In contrast, Goebbels was frequently reported on in France and the regime was early on represented as an aggressor. Whilst trends in the quantity mirror the differing economic conditions of the newspaper markets, the quality, i.e. the actual realisation, of the media images seems to be a reflection of the differing socio-political positions of France and the United Kingdom after WW1. The development of the images clearly illustrates that the political ideology of appeasement was finally overridden in the UK in 1938 when political expediency forced the government to take a different course of action. However, the study of the editorial correspondence of the Manchester Guardian brings to light that the mosaic of factors influencing the news production process is more complex. The intervention of the involved governments, personal convictions of the foreign correspondents and the editors, spatial and temporal restrictions, issues of credibility, etc. all impacted on the particular make-up of the media texts. The synchronic textual analysis, on the other hand, reveals that the range of framing devices through which the media images were established was largely determined by text type conventions. The strategies applied range from selective-appropriation of text, repositioning of actors and labelling, to audience representation. The analysis clearly demonstrates that intersemiotic translation, i.e. the representation of the speech context, is equally important as inter- and intra-lingual instances of translation.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Translation. 1995 / This project examines folktales that were translated from English to Zulu. The translation was meant for Zulu mother-tongue children in primary schools. The aim of the study is to compare and analyze the style of the source text and target text with regard to accessibility to the audience. The research makes use of Hewson and Martin's Variational Approach. This approach has been modified to include certain concepts within Descriptive Translation Studies such as adequacy and acceptability. Leech and Short's model for text analysis together with the researcher's suggestions are also included in the Variational Approach so that it is applicable to this project. / AC2017

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

Translations of three of Ilse Aichinger's stories which originally appeared in the book Eliza, Eliza are presented in this thesis. The three stories translated are "Herodes," "Port Sing," and "Die Puppe."

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Translating and reading western modernist literature played a vital role in forging contemporary Chinese literature and China’s mode of subjectivity, but little has been written about them, and even less about the interconnections between them. My PhD thesis aims to offer a comprehensive interpretation of the phenomenon of translating and reading modernist literature in Mao’s China, focusing particularly on translators’ and readers’ agency, and their collective construction of a multifaceted discourse of subjectivity. The central questions I try to answer in my thesis are: For what “practical” purposes or needs did the Chinese Communist Party order the translation and publication of these modernist texts which are clearly against the ideology of Mao’s China? What mark did translators from state controlled institutions leave in the intellectual history of China? Why did western modernist literature of 1950s cause such a strong response from the intellectual youth in the 1970s? In Mao’s China, there were a number of modernist literature texts that were translated and published. They were only intended to be available for a very limited readership consisting of high ranking party officials, but ended up being leaked, and eventually became extremely popular in the underground reading movement. I decided to focus on the three most widely read texts, which are On the Road (first translated into Chinese in 1962), Catcher in the Rye (first translated into Chinese in 1963), and Waiting for Godot (first translated into Chinese in 1965). By mapping the translation process and the underground reading of these texts into the context of the politics of China from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, my study provides three arguments which attempt to answer the three questions raised above: 1) Mao’s China encountered similar modernity situations so that western modernist literature after World War II was translated for internal circulation and criticism; 2) Thanks to the subjectivity of translators from state controlled institutions, their translations paved the way for the rising of the self, the end of revolution, and the individualization of Chinese society; 3) As early as in the 1960s to 1970s, the conscious reading of modernist literature brought alternative understandings of self and ways of being, and the sent-down Chinese youth have new self-projection by reading these texts. Few researchers have studied translation beyond analysis of target language text (TLT), while my methodological innovation is to connect three traditionally isolated subjects into a single continuing process of meaning giving activity: the source text and their role in forging western subjectivity; translators and their translations in Mao’s context; and Chinese underground reading of western literature from late 1960s to 1970s. This is a comparative and theoretical study of the three chosen texts in their historical contexts in order to reconsider the cultural significance of translating and reading modernist literature in Mao’s China. I hope it will modify our view of translation and reading history in Mao’s China, contributing to theories of subjectivity and the plurality of Chinese modernity discourse. / published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy