This thesis draws on the rapid development of scholarship in both Translation Studies and Postcolonial Studies in recent times and seeks to explore the interdisciplinary overlap between them with a study of English translations of French Caribbean texts of a Martinican origin. The thesis corpus focuses on three well-known Martinican writers and an examination of their key texts. The authors were chosen in order to deconstruct the mythologization of these texts and identity in translation, particularly considering how in some instances misrepresentations have come to be embedded in the anglophone understanding of the texts. The corpus consists of Frantz Fanon’s texts Peau noire, masques blancs (1952) and its translations by Charles Lam Markmann (1967) and Richard Philcox (2008) and Les Damnés de la terre (1961) and its translations by Constance Farrington (1963) and Richard Philcox (2004); Patrick Chamoiseau’s novels Chronique des sept misères (1986), translated by Linda Coverdale (1999), Solibo magnifique (1988), and Texaco (1992) both translated by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokurov (1999 and 1998, respectively); and Mayotte Capécia’s novelette Je suis Martiniquaise (1948), translated by Beatrice Stith Clark (1997). This study is important because of the approach taken in examining these canonical texts and therefore provides an original contribution to knowledge in several ways. Firstly, the purpose of the translation analysis is to ascertain if Western translation strategies tend to prevail, even when translating texts from a different socio-cultural background. Secondly, by using this analysis, we can then assess the degree to which the identity of both the source language text and, to an extent, the author have been manipulated for the purposes of appealing to the target language readership and market. Thirdly, I then propose both an alternative methodology for examining Caribbean texts in translation using Édouard Glissant’s theory of Relation as a foundation, and also a reading of the concept of ‘translation’ that extends beyond the linguistic to take in ethnography and transformation of the Self, with both approaches exploring the concept of identity and how it is created in both source and target language text. My findings indicate that, although in theory, Translation Studies is moving away from a primarily Western, binary appreciation of translation strategies, this movement has not yet manifested itself meaningfully in the practice of translation. This establishes that these Caribbean depictions of identity have been modified to appeal to a Western anglophone target market. However, a fully developed Caribbean focused translation theory has also not yet been put forward, nor indeed, a translation theory that focuses on the practice, rather than the theory of translation, thus demonstrating areas open to future scholarship and study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:714908 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Scales, Sarah Victoria |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/88357/ |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds