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2011 Conference Abstracts:
When is the Centre not the Centre? On Translating Pacific Literature Jean Anderson
The concepts of centre and margins are of course, or ought to be, interchangeable: where we are is, in that sense, always the centre. However, no one would deny that in terms of culture, some “centres” are more dominant than others. In the literary field especially, North American and European cultures are arguably given more weight both in marketing the originals and in the selection of texts for translation. As a translator of Pacific texts, both from French into English and from English into French (as a co-translator), I have become acutely aware of what is at stake in the “centre” of the Pacific, i.e. the islands of New Caledonia and French Polynesia. With a total of somewhere between twenty and thirty published authors between them, it is easy to see that their literatures cannot survive on the basis of the local market alone. Yet outside their countries of origin, they risk being considered both ex-centric and eccentric, despite their numerous points in common with the writings of other indigenous peoples, especially those of the Anglophone Pacific. Focusing on texts from French Polynesia, and drawing specific examples from recent projects I have been involved in, I will consider ways in which literary translation might demarginalise the works of these authors.
How Do Peripheries Translate? The Practice of Translating Harlequin Romance in the Arab World Rania Awadallah
Coming from another part of the world, which is known as the ‘Third World’, the dilemma of “periphery” positions itself by default. Theses peripheries through different productions aim to play an active global role. Consequently, translation in these countries takes precedence in making these works known to the West. Also, translation of Western production by those peripheries is of equal significance in Eastern Western communication. Due to the wide horizon of translation activities in this region, this paper will focus on translation of popular fiction, particularly the romance novels of Harlequin Enterprises. Harlequin novels, which are considered as periphery literature, are targeted towards the mainly female members of the North American community; they convey cultures and traditions that are widely different from female cultures of the Middle East. However, the translation of these novels is active and spreading and it can be traced to the beginnings of the eighties. This presentation will explore the translating practice in a different culture. Between the traditional and religious contexts of the Middle East and the appeal to know about the different western cultures, domestication and foreignization, as suggested by Venuti, of Harlequin romance novels play an important role in the spreading translation of these novels. To serve the aim of this study, I will compare The Spanish Prince’s Virgin Bride by Sandra Marton and its Arabic translation, Emraa Lil Baye. Is it a question of being a ‘periphery’ literature or a question of how do peripheries interact with literature of the ‘Other’?
From the Canadian Rockies to the Amazon: Translating Experimental Canadian Poetry for a Brazilian Audience Odile Cisneros
My presentation will discuss the process of selection and translation of contemporary Canadian poetry for an anthology project I am currently working on with Christine Stewart (EFS) and Luís Dolhnikoff. The project involves 25 contemporary English-language poets from Canada and will be published bilingually (English/Portuguese) in Brazil. As far as I know, this is the first anthology of its kind to be assembled for publication in Brazil, where a sophisticated poetry readership already exists, but there is little or no awareness of Canadian poetry, especially experimental and contemporary. I will discuss both the process of selection of texts to be translated (with relation to cultural issues and contexts) and the challenges involved in some of the texts.
Meaning in (Translated) Popular Fiction: An Analysis of Hyper-Literal Translation in Clive Barker’s Le Royaume des Devins Gabrielle Kristjanson
Online reviews of Brèque’s translation reveal a French-speaking readership that finds Weaveworld incomprehensible and confusing. Brèque’s hyper-literal translation results in an Anglicized French novel, unable to transmit neither storyline nor meaning. Compounding this confusion is the false priming of the peritext of the translated version. Alterations made to the peritext of the French translation result in visual cues that falsely guide the reader toward a horror-reading rather than a fantasy-reading. Prepared for another Barker horror-story and with no attempt made by the translator to domesticate the foreign novel, the reader is unable to reorient himself toward a reading that is conducive to the escapist enjoyment that should come from a fantasy novel such as Weaveworld. The general consensus among translation theory is that a high degree of fidelity to the source text results in a translation that aptly transmits cultural values and meaning embedded within the source language. While the preservation of foreignness might be beneficial to the propagation of international artistic diversity, when translating a peripheral genre like popular fiction, domestication is key to a novel’s successful incorporation into the target literary system. An analysis of Jean-Daniel Brèque’s translation of Weaveworld, Clive Barker’s first attempt at a fantasy novel, from English to French reveals the detriment that strict adherence to the source text can have on the reception of a fantasy novel and affirms that domestication is necessary to transform the source text into a digestible and understandable version by the target audience.
New Orleans Peripheral Translations Anne Malena This paper is part of a larger project, entitled “The City That Shouldn’t Be: New Orleans”, that I will be contributing to a collection of essays on Cities in Translations. New Orleans is a colonial city that has had to justify its existence ever since its foundation in 1718. Built on a precarious site and in a hostile environment it was born with an already tarnished reputation and has always lived up to it. Itself a periphery, therefore, this is a city that has had to project itself into performance, to rely on the exterior value of its own spectacle in order to survive, and to draw a segregated map of itself in order to function. First, maintaining native tribes firmly outside its walls, then building administrative and business quarters in a tightly knit square and finally keeping people of colour at a respectable distance, New Orleans put on a convincing performance of segregation. In reality, however, the confined space in which the city was built meant that traffic, negotiations and exchanges of all kinds had to take place between the denizens of its various neighbourhoods. I will draw from one example of one of those inner peripheries, the black newspaper La Tribune from 1863 to 1868 and its strategic use of translation during that time, to show the extent and significance of translation activities and its performers within the city. Voltaire’s “Almost” Translation of Scipione Maffei’s play: Translating as Cultural Subordination in the XVIII century Stefano Muneroni
In 1743, Voltaire writes to Scipione Maffei his intention to translate Merope, a drama the Italian playwright had composed thirty years before and that Voltaire deemed worthy of the French stage due to its treatment of the classic heroine and its adherence to classical norms. However, Voltaire later claims that due to flaws in Maffei’s work, he will write his own version of the play. This petty incident stirred a long-lived and animated debate over which dramatist had adhered more closely to the principles of classical theatre and whose country could claim its primacy in European theatre. In my paper, I use this episode to illustrate how translation shapes and is shaped by source and target cultures, and how it determines what is peripheral and what is central to intercultural debates. I argue that both Voltaire and Maffei struggle to assert their position as leading “translators” of classical Greek theatre and eminent interlocutors in the debate over form and content of modern drama. My paper will use Voltaire’s translational faux pas to reflect on the larger issues of how translation situates itself in the middle of cultural hierarchies and how it fashions national identity, cultural pertinence, national subordination, and notions of cultural peripheries and centers, all topics that lie at the heart of contemporary translation studies.
Do “Peripheral Texts” Result in “Peripheral Translations”? Lynn Penrod
A recent news article announced that “[w]hen it comes to who’s reading what, book industry experts agree that popular fiction, also called genre fiction, has the widest audience” (New York, McClatchy Newspapers). Perhaps a bit shocking to seasoned academics the article also pointed out that the two biggest categories within so-called genre fiction are romance and mystery-thrillers! Reading on, we are then informed that the Romance Writers of America held its 31st annual conference in New York City in June of this year, where it awarded its Golden Heart and RITA prizes. The younger International Thriller Writers held its annual meeting earlier in July in New York as well, announcing the winners of the Thriller Awards. Apparently the list of winners from the Romance Writers of America conference was too lengthy for inclusion in the newspaper (although the full list is available online), but the winners of the Thriller Awards include the following: best hardback novel—Bad Blood by John Sandford; best paperback novel—The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison; best first novel—Still Missing by Chevy Stevens; best short story—“The Gods for Vengeance Cry” by Richard Helms. Receiving special awards for their “outstanding contributions to the thriller genre” were R.L. Stine, Joe McGinnis, and Karin Slaughter. Now as a reader who has always felt fairly confident about “keeping up” with popular fiction, especially with “thrillers”, I was truly surprised that (1) I had not read, nor indeed had not seen or heard of, any of this year’s Thriller Awards, and (2) as far as Stine, McGinnis, and Slaughter were concerned, they could just as well have been a new Edmonton law firm as honoured writers! However, I then began to wonder: does genre fiction, like the romance novel or the thriller, which in my view is seemingly fairly peripheral to Academe, truly “belong” in the centre of the reading world? And if it is central to so many readers, what about its place within the world of translation? This paper will attempt to shed a bit of light on those two questions, focusing on the translation fate of the 2011 Thriller Award winners.
Zhivago in the Suburbs Elena Siemens
This presentation discusses the production of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago staged by Moscow’s legendary Taganka Theatre. In particular, the paper focuses on the Taganka’s choice of venue, the Meridian Palace of Culture located in the suburbs, and investigates the impact of this site and its peripheral geography on the show’s overall meaning. Together with Marvin Carlson, I argue that theatre buildings and their locations “generate social and cultural meanings of their own, which in turn help to structure the meaning of the entire theatre experience.” Extending Carlson, the presentation outlines the hierarchy of Moscow’s neighbourhoods, their unique meaning, and discusses how art and entertainment reflect these “connotative divisions.” In addition to the Meridian, the paper discusses several other suburban destinations, including the former aristocratic estate of Kuskovo, recently reconstructed to its original glory. The presentation features material gathered from film and photography.
From Page to Screen: Adapting Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility: Emma Thompson’s Screenplay and Diaries Nora Foster Stovel
Two (Other) Kinds of Peripherality Tom Priestly
Most or all those who have translated Slovene poetry into English have been literary specialists. Being a linguist, I believe that I therefore qualify as a breed of "peripheral" translator. First: among the linguistic labels I can attach to myself is "dialectologist." Not only have I studied (and bemoaned) the paucity of Slovene poetry written in the dialects that I study, but I have even translated one such— into an English dialect. I also once transposed Chekov's "Horsey Tale" into a Deep South USA setting, and (with assistance) used "Southern Black Plantation English" for one character's speech. These are "peripheral" forms of language being applied by a "peripheral" translator. — The second part of my paper discusses the questions: Does being a linguist mean being a different and perhaps inferior translator? Am I in some way disqualified because I know too little about the literary background of what I translate, and/or because I dwell rather more on the poetic form to the disadvantage of the poetic content? I give examples from two books of English translations of the poet Srečko Kosovel, and my own reactions to them.
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