Translating into Galician, A Minor Language: A Challenge for Literary Translators, Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, Cognition & Culture, 2016. Seruya, T. & Miranda Justo, J. (Eds). Springer, pp. 267-276. (original) (raw)
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Soldando Sal. Galician Studies in Translation and Paratranslation
Have you ever wondered whether there are differences between the same soap opera broadcasted in South America and the dubbed version broadcasted in Galicia? Can we access Anglo-Saxon literature a lot more easily than classical authors from Indian literature? What do countries like France or the U.K. think of us when they listen to Galician music? Would Calígula by Camus be the same in Galician as its French version? Are we facing "parallel universes"? Do translated products have a shelf life just like the geopolitical bonds to which they are related? Does Galicia belong to the Portuguese speaking world? Is it possible for somebody like Albert Einstein to become a marketing agent to sell us a car? How did specialised terms like DNA and RNA, amongst others, become colloquial terms? In what way did Galician emigration contribute to Cuban cultural legacy? And what did returning emigrants bring back from there? And finally, how is the software that you use in your computer localised and furthermore, how is text transformed into voice? All these questions lead us directly to translation and its context, namely paratranslation. From everyday activities to new technologies, from televised products to literature and social imagery. Translation and paratranslation make up one of the key elements when describing and analysing cultural phenomena that are permeable, mixable, and crossbreed. However, such information traffic, which in a sizeable part escapes individual and group control, generates distortions, paradoxes and resistance to the constant transformation process that cultural systems are faced with. After all, culture and translation cannot be reduced to just language. We seem to carry a "portable culture" wherever we go and it is both within and on top of our heads. It is not closed, it gets impregnated by its own context, and it creates friction but also provides understanding. In short, translation events are immense networks of information that are difficult to shape. It therefore becomes essential to venture out of certainty and delve into an unexplored and fully transdisciplinary field. In this sense, Soldando sal presents a set of essays that try to interrogate and reveal the capacity of translation in its widest sense, within the privileged role it plays in cultural transformation, in areas that are completely unrelated (politics, TV, comparative literature, informatics, terminology, music, migration,...). The current volume initiates some of the cartographic intersections of future Galician translation studies.
Literature emerging from borderland, transnational or diaspora contexts doesn’t always fit the mould of the dominant national culture where the author resides. Usually this literature is published in the language of the larger society, but sometimes authors prefer to use the language variety in which they write as one of many tools to resist assimilation and highlight their independent or hybrid identity; such is the case with Matilda Koén-Sarano's Judeo-Spanish folktales and Susana Chávez-Silverman’s Spanglish crónicas. When this is the case, translation from these varieties must be done in a way that preserves the resistance to assimilation in a different linguistic context. In this thesis I begin by defining Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish as language varieties, consider who uses them, who writes in them, and the political or personal motivations of the authors. I then problematize the broad issue of translating texts written in nonstandard language varieties. I consider power in translation generally and into English more specifically and nuance the binary between rejecting translation completely and embracing it wholeheartedly as essential. In the final two chapters I turn my attention to specific challenges that presented themselves in translations from Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish and explain how these challenges informed my approaches and strategies. No single translation approach or strategy emerges as a monolithic solution to all problems. Nevertheless, my original contribution to knowledge lies in the nuanced discussion and creative application of varying degrees of ethnolects (or literary dialects), writing based in phonetics, and intralinguistic translation that are explained and that are evidenced in the original translations found in the appendices.
Lori Chamberlain’s eye-opening article “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation”, originally published in 1988, first described translators in general as “handmaidens to authors”. This fruitful analysis helped open up interesting avenues for feminist translation. On the one hand, it highlighted the need for a reformulation of the actual theoretical concepts underlying traditional translation theory; while on the other, it opened up questions regarding the status of women translators in practice. However, further studies have questioned this idea of the translator as female and inferior. For example, postcolonial approaches have shown that Western translators have usually exercised their power to interpret the Other in ways that were complicit with colonial endeavours. It is in this framework that this article explores the power implications of translation for the Galician literary system. The Galician literary system may be interesting as it can be seen as a non-hegemonic system (inside Europe) or a hegemonic one (outside Europe). The analysis of two translations, that of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea by Manuel Forcadela, and that of Sandra Cisneros’ Loose Woman by Marilar Aleixandre shall explore two opposing trends. The first one is a trend in which the discourse of the non-hegemonic position of Galician actually allows for patriarchal and colonial interventions in translation, while the other one takes feminist solidarity as a base for a relationship with the female postcolonial Other.
(Re-)writing the margin: translation and gender in Galician literature
This paper focuses on the relationship between gender and translation in the Galician literary system given a corpus of translations of literary texts written by women and published on different platforms. The selection of the analyzed documents has been made taking into account their representation and significance both for feminism and literature. This is meant to give an overview of those most relevant trends and features.
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF SPANISH TRANSLATION STUDIES
2019
Written by leading experts in the area, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies brings together original contributions representing a culmination of the extensive research to date within the field of Spanish Translation Studies. The Handbook covers a variety of translation related issues, both theoretical and practical, providing an overview of the field and establishing directions for future research. It starts by looking at the history of translation in Spain, the Americas during the colonial period and Latin America, and then moves on to discuss well-established areas of research such as literary translation and audiovisual translation, at which Spanish researchers have excelled. It also provides state-of-the-art information on new topics such as the interface between translation and humour on the one hand, and the translation of comics on the other. This Handbook is an indispensable resource for postgraduate students and researchers of translation studies. Roberto A. Valdeón is Professor in English Studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain. África Vidal is Professor of Translation at
Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies.
2018
Written by leading experts in the area, The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies brings together original contributions representing a culmination of the extensive research to-date within the field of Spanish Translation Studies. The Handbook covers a variety of translation related issues, both theoretical and practical, providing an overview of the field and establishing directions for future research. It starts by looking at the history of translation in Spain, the Americas during the colonial period and Latin America, and then moves on to discuss well-established areas of research such as literary translation and audiovisual translation, at which Spanish researchers have excelled. It also provides state-of-the-art information on new topics such as the interface between translation and humour on the one hand, and the translation of comics on the other. This Handbook is an indispensable resource for postgraduate students and researchers of translation studies. Table of Contents Contents Notes on contributors Introduction: Translation and Translation Studies in Spain and in Spanish-speaking areas Roberto A. Valdeón and África Vidal Claramonte 1. Spanish translation history Luis Pegenaute 2. Literary translation Juan Jesús Zaro 3. Translation and the Spanish empire Roberto A. Valdeón 4. Translation in Hispanic America Álvaro Echeverri and Georges L. Bastin 5. Spanish translation in the US and Canada Kelly Washbourne 6. Translation and gender Pilar Godayol 7. Translation and ideology: Spanish perspectives Ovidi Carbonell 8. Translation and humour Marta Mateo and Patrick Zabalbeascoa 9. Pedagogy of translation Dorothy Kelly 10. Cognitive approaches Amparo Hurtado Albir 11. An overview of interpreting in Spanish: past, present and future Robert Neal Baxter 12. Intercultural communication: public service interpreting and translation Carmen Valero-Garcés 13. Linguistic approaches to translation in Spain Gloria Corpas and Maria-Araceli Losey 14. Terminology Pamela Faber and Silvia Montero-Martínez 15. Legal and institutional translation Rosario Martín Ruano 16. Technical and medical translation Goretti Faya and Carmen Quijada 17. Audiovisual translation Frederic Chaume 18. Localization and localization research in Spanish speaking contexts Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo 19. Translation of Hispanic comics and graphic novels Javier Muñoz-Basols and Enrique del Rey Cabero 20. Journalistic translation María José Hernández Guerrero 21. Tourism, translation and advertising Elizabeth Woodward-Smith 22. Ethics and translation Alberto Fuertes 23. Translation policies from/into the official languages in Spain Montserrat Bacardí 24. A bibliometric overview of Translation Studies research in Spanish-speaking countries Javier Franco and Sara Rovira
The philological underpinning of Translation Studies in Spain and Portugal
At a time when the histories of disciplines are under review, a historiographic viewpoint can help interpreting the present. So, in this essay, we will take a historiographic approach to describe the recent past of Translation Studies in Spain and Portugal in terms of its philological underpinning. In: Maria Lin Moniz and Alexandra Lopes (eds.), The Age of Translation. Early 20th-century Concepts and debates. Peter Lang (series: passagem), 2017, pp 45-66.
Something in Between: Galician Literary Studies Beyond the Linguistic Criterion�
Abriu: estudos de textualidade do Brasil, Galicia e Portugal, 2015
The history of literary phenomena is intertwined with the history of multilingualism. And yet, the study of literature is usually done within the paradigm of the national literature as developed in the 19th century which, from the premise of the existence of a single national language, rarely deals with the production in other languages. This article examines the shortcomings of the imposition of the linguistic criterion applied to the Galician context paying attention to an unexplored area of intersection between national literatures, namely the literary translation of Luis Pimentel's poetry. It concludes by proposing a new understanding of Galician literary studies beyond the linguistic criterion that offers a more nuanced account of the literary field.
Compulsive Translators: Are Narrators in Javier Marías's Novels Beguiled by Language
Hispanic Research Journal, 2017
Javier Marías’s novels are renowned for revolving around his digressive narrators, who, amongst other subjects, persistently reflect upon language and translation. This article discusses the role of these constant reflections and examines the narrators’ engagement with different forms of translation by using Roman Jakobson’s categorisation (intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation) in four novels that correspond to Marías’s mature novelistic period (Todas las almas (1989), Corazón tan blanco (1992), Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (1994) and Tu rostro mañana (2002–2007)). It briefly discusses the effects of intralingual and intersemiotic translation on the narrators before moving on to analysing in detail the impact of interlingual translations. The latter is a prominent aspect in Marías’s fiction; its significance is examined through the use of foreign terms and their translations (or lack thereof ), as well as the narrators’ reflections upon them. The ultimate aim of this article is to establish the link between the all-pervasive uncertainty in Marías’s novels and the narrators’ fascination with translation, especially of the interlingual kind.