Wykład 3

• • Andre Lefevere argued that translation was not a branch of comparative literature or linguistics but an independent discipline – as it is governed by its own methodology
  • The main concern of translation studies: focusing on the historical and cultural background of texts, trying to understand the complexity of manipulations of texts and factors that influenced translators’ translating strategies, etc. 
• Translations are not made in a vacuum and cannot be an isolated activity, as they are influenced by what is happening in both the source literary system and the target literary system.
• Translation has always served a special purpose and has been shaped by a certain force or purpose, such as introducing a new author or genre.
• In its intellectual aspect, translation is a means of cultural enrichment, and the choice of works to be translated, as well as the guidelines and goals of the translation activity, are set by certain forces, such as political choices.
• ‘Refracted texts’ = texts that have been processed for a certain audience (for instance, children), or adapted to a certain poetics or a certain ideology 
• ‘Refraction’ = ‘the adaptation of a work of literature to a different audience (culturally, age, etc.), with the intention of influencing the way in which that audience reads the work’
• Refraction always involves rewriting
• ‘rewriting’ = any text produced based on another with the intention of adapting that other text to a certain ideology or a certain poetics and, usually, to both.
• Lefevere talked about two types of translation

  • As a reflection = it means that the translation more or less reconstructs the original
  • As refraction = it is a text which has been processed and changed for the sake of reaching a given audience 
• • Rewriting is manipulation – it means manipulating the text to fit certain norms and ideologies.
  • Rewriting can introduce new concepts, genres, and devices: If we adopt the initial norm of adequacy, then rewriting will introduce this new concept - innovatory force.
  • Rewriting can also repress innovation, distort it and contain it – when translators go for adequacy.
• Rewriting includes:

  • Translation
  • Criticism
  • Reviewing
  • Summary
  • Adaptation for children – the most famous refraction: Gulliver’s travels – in the original, it is a book for adults, but it was adapted into a book for children 
  • Anthologizing
  • Making into a comic strip or TV film (all sorts of adaptations) 
• Anthologizing - anthology is a collection of works, a translatoror an editor has selected a couple of texts out of a whole body of texts, and this selection can manipulate the way how we read the text – the Caunterberry’s tales
• Translation is not a simple and transparent linguistic matter but involves factors such as:

  1. Power – institutions or governments will influence the translation activity
  2. Ideology
  3. Poetics
  4. Patronage – There are three elements of patronage: 

  • the ideological component 
  • the economic constraints (pension), 
  • status (the writer achieves a certain position in a society).
• Rewriting = manipulation

  • What we read is filtered by translators
  • Texts are constantly ‘recycled’ in contemporary culture 
  • ‘manipulation’ is a description that what we get is never free from any external influences
• Patronage can be exerted by:

  • Individuals 
  • Groups 
  • Institutions – like publishing houses
  • A social class
  • Political party publishers
  • The media