2019 Vol. 10 №3

How translations are willed into existence

DOI

10.5922/2225-5346-2019-3-5

Pages

69-80

Abstract

This paper will argue that translations are willed into existence in three conceivable ways: pull, push and shuffle. Pull is the most intuitive form. It corresponds, for example, to a publishing house that decides to translate a foreign novel. Here, the initiative to invest in a new translation project is almost entirely located on the target side. The push mode, in con­trast, can be exemplified by a company that decides to localise its website to cater for foreign markets. Here the decisions to make translation happen are mostly located on the source side. The shuffle mode corresponds to those rare cases in which the process is located neither on the source nor on the target side, but straddles the semiotic barriers or folds that make acts of translating possible or necessary in the first place. The discussion affirms the status of translators as active players, or agents, of communi­cation. If it is true that in real life translators rarely determine whether a sign will cross a semiotic fold or have much say in the process, in principle nothing prevents them from bring­ing their desires, motives, and strategies to the table. Translators can — and should — have a larger say on why, whether, and how new translated texts appear in the target environment.

Reference

Buzelin, H., 2011. Agents of translation. In: Y. Gambier and L. van Doorslaer, eds. Handbook of Translation Studies. Vol. 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benja­mins. pp. 6—12.

Calvino, I., 1988a. Lezioni americane. Milan: Garzanti.

Calvino, I., 1988b. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Translated by P. Creagh. New York: Vintage.

Copeland, R., 1991. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Aca­demic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, Cambridge studies in medieval literature. Vol. 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eco, U., 2001. Experiences in Translaton. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.

Eco, U., 2003a. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione. Milan: Bompiani.

Eco, U., 2003b. Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Esselink, B., 2000. A Practical Guide to Localization. Rev. ed. Amsterdam and Phila­delphia: John Benjamins.

Folena, G., 1991. Volgarizzare e tradurre. Turin: Einaudi.

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A., 2013. Translation and Web Localization. London and New York: Routledge.

Khalifa, A-W, ed., 2014. Translators have their say? Translation and the power of agen­cy. Zurich: LIT Verlag.

Kundera, M., 1992. The Joke: Definitive Version. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Milton, J. and Bandia, P. eds., 2009. Agents of Translation. Amsterdam and Phila­delphia: John Benjamins.

Padilla Cruz, M., 2016. “Introduction: Three decades of relevance theory”. In: M. Pa­dilla Cruz, ed. Relevance Theory: Recent Developments, Current Challenges and Future Di­rections. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Peirce, C. S., 1931—1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vol. VIII. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Peirce, C. S., 1992—1998. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. II. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pym, A., 2004a. The Moving Text: Localization, Translation, and Distribution. Am­sterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Pym, A., 2004b. “Propositions on cross-cultural communication and translation”. Target, 16(1), pp. 1—28.

Schäffner, C., ed., 1999. Translation and Norms. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Sengupta, M., 1990. “Translation, Colonialism and Poetics: Rabindranath Tagore in Two Worlds”. Translation, History and Culture. London and New York: Pinter.

Solum, K., 2017. “Translators, editors, publishers, and critics: Multiple translator­ship in the public sphere”. Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 39—60.

Sperber, D. and Wilson, D., 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Sperber, D. and Wilson, D., 2004. “Relevance Theory”. In: L. R. Horn and G. Ward, eds. The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 607—632.

Stecconi, U., 2004. “Interpretive Semiotics and Translation Theory: The Semiotic Conditions to Translation”. Semiotica, 150, pp. 471—489.

Stecconi, U., 2009. “Semiotics”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Lon­don and New York: Routledge. pp. 260—263.

Stecconi, U., 2010. “Semiotics and Translation”. In: Y. Gambier and L. van Doorslaer, eds. Handbook of Translation Studies. Vol. 1. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 314—319.

Stecconi, U., 2018. “Semiotics”. A History of Modern Translation Knowledge. Ams­terdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 91—94.

Steiner, G., 1975. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Toury, G., 1986. “Translation. A Cultural-Semiotic Perspective”. Encyclopedic Dic­tio­nary of Semiotics. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 1111—1124.

Toury, G., 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Phila­delphia: John Benjamins.

VV. AA., 1996. Daydreams and Nightmares: A Fearless Anthology of Italian Short Sto­ries. Translated by U. Stecconi, C. Bautista and L. Venuti. In: U. Stecconi, ed. Salin. Pasig City (Manila): Anvil.

VV. AA., 1999. Balikbayan: racconti filippini contemporanei. Translated by U. Stec­coni. Milan: Feltrinelli.