Proper Names and Register in Poetry Translation. The Effects of Transplantation in Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats”
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
In literary translation, cultural adaptation or transplantation is a method that offers the readers of the target-text linguistical and cultural ease in their interaction with the text. Still, it could also prevent them from absorbing foreign cultural elements. (Re)translation could change the status of a text in that it could offer fresh perspectives that have never been offered before. In this study, we will analyse two Romanian (re)translations of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Naming of Cats”, focusing on the translation of proper names and on the differences in register and style that arise from different translation choices, to argue in favour of the idea that the transplantation of cultural elements can be just as valuable for the readers as preserving the foreign elements.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
Baker, Linda and Allan Wigfield. “Dimensions of children’s motivation for reading and their relations to reading activity and reading achievement.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 4, 1999, pp. 452-477.
Bell, Anthea. “Translator's Notebook: The Naming of Names.” Signal 46, 1985, pp. 3-11.
Berman, Antoine. “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction.” Palimpsestes, 4, 1990, pp. 1-7. 10 Nov. 2020. <http://journals.openedition.org/palimpsestes/596>.
D'hulst, Lieven. “Cultural translation. A problematic concept?” Beyond descriptive translation studies: investigation in homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger and Daniel Simeoni, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008, pp. 221-232.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. London, Faber and Faber, 1974.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Cartea lui Moş Oposum despre Pisicile Poznaşe. Translated by Viorel Ştefănescu and Tudor Cristian Roşca, Humanitas, 2009.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Pisicoteca practică a lu' Moș Pârșu. Trans. Florin Bican. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2015.
Halliday, Michael. “Register Variation.” Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, edited by Frances Christie, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 29-43.
Hermans, Theo. “Cross-Cultural Translation Studies as Thick Translation.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 66, no. 3, 2003, pp. 380-389. Accessed 9 Mar. 2021. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4146100>.
Jianzhong, Xu. “Retranslation: Necessary or Unnecessary?” Babel, vol. 49, no. 3, 2003, pp. 193-202.
Klingberg, Göte. Children's Fiction in the Hand of the Translator. Malmö, Liber, 1986.
Knutson, Susan. “'Tradaptation' Dans le Sens Québécois: A Word for the Future.” Translation, adaptation and transformation, edited by Laurence Raw, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012, pp. 112-122.
Marco, Joseph. “Register analysis in literary translation: a functional approach.” Babel, vol. 46, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1-19.
Mikulecky, Beatrice S. and Linda Jeffries. More Reading Power: Reading Faster, Thinking Skills, Reading for Pleasure, Comprehension Skills. Pearson Education, 1996.
Milton, John. “Translation Studies and Adaptation Studies.” Translation Research Projects 2, edited by Anthony Pym and Alexander Perekrestenko, Tarragona, Intercultural Studies Group, 2009, pp. 51-72.
Monti, Enrico. “Introduction: La retraduction, un état des lieux.” Autour de la retraduction. Perspectives littéraires européennes, edited by Enrico Monti and Peter Schnyder, Paris, Orizons, 2011, pp. 9-25.
Murphy, Russell Elliott. Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot. A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, New York, Facts On File, 2007.
Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. New York and London, Prentice-Hall International, 1988.
Ng, Clarence and Steve Graham. “Engaging Readers in the Twenty-First Century: When We Know and Need to Know More.” Improving Reading and Reading Engagement in the 21st Century: International Research and Innovation, 2017, pp. 17-46.
Paloposki, Outi and Kaisa Koskinen. “Reprocessing texts. The fine line between retranslating and revising.” Across Languages and Cultures, vol. 11, no. 1, 2010, pp. 29-49.
Panetto, Anthony. “Tradaptauteur”. 27 Oct. 2015. 15 Feb. 2021. <https://www.anthony-panetto.fr/tradaptation/d%C3%A9finition/>.
Popovič, Anton. “The concept “shift of expression” in translation analysis.” The Nature of Translation. Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation, edited by James S. Holmes. Mouton, The Hague, Paris, Publishing House of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, 1970, pp. 78-87.
Quirk, Randolph, et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman, 1985.
Robbins, Dorothy Dodge. “Imperial Names for 'Practical Cats': Establishing a Distinctly British Pride in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.” Names, vol. 61, no. 1, 2013, pp. 21-32.
Robinson, Douglas. “Retranslation and the Ideosomatic Drift.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, 2009, 2 Nov. 2020. <https://ro.scribd.com/document/235766851/Douglas-Robinson-Retranslation-and-the-Ideosomatic-Drift>.
Rueda, Robert. “21st-Century skills: Cultural, linguistic, and motivational perspectives.” Theoretical models and processes of reading, edited by Donna E. Alvermann, Norman J. Unrau and Robert B. Ruddell, 6th edition, Newark, International Reading Association, 2013, pp. 1241-1267.
Schäffner, Christina. “Crosscultural Translation and Conflicting Ideologies.” Translation and Cultural Identity: Selected Essays on Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication, edited by Micaela Muñoz-Calvo and Maria Buesa-Gómez, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 107-127.
Sciarone, Bondi. “Proper Names and Meaning.” Studia Linguistica, vol. 21, no. 2, 1967, pp. 73-86.
Searle, John Rogers. “The Problem of Proper Names.” Semantics—An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, edited by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 134-141.
Stolt, Birgit. “How Emil becomes Michel—On the translation of children's books.” Children's Books in Translation: The Situation and the Problems. Proceedings of the Third Symposium of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, Held at Södertälje, August 26-29, 1976, edited by Göte Klingberg, Mary Ørvig and Stuart Amor. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978, pp. 130-146.
Strawson, Peter Frederick. “Identifying Reference and Truth-Values.” Semantics—An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, edited by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 86-99.
Susam-Sarajeva, Şebnem. “Is One Case Always Enough?” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, vol. 9, no. 3, 2001, pp. 167-176.
Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. “Retranslation.” Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, Routledge, 2009, 232-235.
Tegelberg, Elisabeth. “La retraduction littéraire—quand et pourquoi?” Babel, vol. 57, no. 4, 2011, 452-471.
Unrau, Norman and Jonah Schlackman. “Motivation and its relationship with reading achievement in an urban middle school.” The Journal of Educational Research, vol. 100, no. 2, 2006, pp. 81-101.
Vanderschelden, Isabelle. „Why retranslate the French classics? The impact of retranslation on quality.” On translating French literature and film II, edited by Myriam Salama-Carr, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2000, pp. 1-18.
Vendler, Zeno. “Singular Terms.” Semantics—An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, edited by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits, Cambridge University Press, 1975, pp. 115-133.
Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator's Invisibility. A History of Translation, Routledge, 1995.
Venuti, Lawrence. Translation Changes Everything. Theory and Practice, Routledge, 2013.
Vermes, Albert Péter. “Proper Names in Translation: An Explanatory Attempt.” Across Languages and Cultures, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, pp. 89-108.
Waite, Maurice, editor. Oxford Thesaurus of English, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Weinreich, Torben. “International book production for children related to the children's local experiences and local consciousness.” Children's Books in Translation: The Situation and the Problems: Proceedings of the Third Symposium of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, Held at Södertälje, August 26-29, 1976, edited by Göte Klingberg, Mary Ørvig and Stuart Amor, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978, pp. 147-158.
Yamazaki, Akiko. “Why Change Names? On the Translation of Children's Books.” Children's Literature in Education, 33, no. 2002, pp. 53-62.