| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Do you 'nativise' the text in the target language, or retain its 'foreignness'? Thread poster: chica nueva
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Heinrich Pesch wrote:
If there is a brochure about a town with all ongoing programs, I would leave out all reference to theatre performances, because foreigners simply do not visit (Finnish) theatres.
You mean you would look up what language they are in and then consult with the client about substituting them with English language performances or other events, or adding a note that they are in Finnish, or possibly leaving out the references... right?
| | | | chica nueva
Local time: 17:38
Chinese to English
TOPIC STARTER | touristic texts, to adapt or not; 'translate' or 'polish'; Venuti etc | Jun 29, 2009 |
Hello Heinrich
1 Thank you very much for your post. At one time I had considered further study in 'touristic texts' myself. I was very interested that you do face a situation where you could adapt for the 'foreign readership', but you are required to do 'word-for-word' for the 'customer'.
I see 'Pepper Mountains' at the foot of this post has taken the other approach, of writing the text in English at the outset, and engaging a (renowned) foreign translator/consultant/advisor ... See more Hello Heinrich
1 Thank you very much for your post. At one time I had considered further study in 'touristic texts' myself. I was very interested that you do face a situation where you could adapt for the 'foreign readership', but you are required to do 'word-for-word' for the 'customer'.
I see 'Pepper Mountains' at the foot of this post has taken the other approach, of writing the text in English at the outset, and engaging a (renowned) foreign translator/consultant/advisor to assist with the process. http://www.proz.com/forum/translation_theory_and_practice/134981-proofreading_a_cooking_book:_can_you_rely_on_your_linguistic_abilities_or_do_you_have_to_be_a_cook-page2.html#1157065 Of course foreign news agencies such as Xinhua, have being doing journalism in English, with the assistance of foreign 'polishers', for a long time ... and now they have an English language TV news service.
2 I have got this idea of a 'domestication/foreignisation' dichotomy from somewhere - another translation site perhaps. But I now see that indeed it was (is still?) a topic of hot debate in Chinese translation circles in the recent past. It seems that Venuti's concepts have echoes in those of the famous modern Chinese writer/teacher/translator Lu Xun/Lu Hsun. (There are several relevant articles in the ProZ database, links below).
3 I was actually quite motivated to translate the 'museums and performing arts' part of the Tourist Guide because my home-city has several 'sister-linkages' relevant to theatre-arts (ie sister-schools, sister-museum). But I think that I agree with you about modern drama; it is perhaps not as much of a drawcard for tourists as, say, ballet, Chinese opera, or a folk-music festival. (Excerpts on each of these four forms of the performing arts may be found below, if peers are interested.).
Lesley
[ ProZ articles on 'domestication/foreignisation':
http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/1643/1/Domestication-vs.-Foreignization-in-English-Arabic-Translation
http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/1204/1/Lu-Xun:-A-Case-Study-in-Foreignising-Translation
http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/285/1/Foreignization{47}Domestication-and-Yihua{47}Guihua:-A-Contrastive-Study ]
[Gansu Performance Arts:
1 The Gansu Province Song and Dance Company: The Gansu Province Song and Dance Company, established in 1951, currently has more than 120 performing and professional staff. ...
2 The Gansu Province Modern Drama Company: The Gansu Province Modern Drama Company grew out of the Qing (Yang) Huan (Xian) Rural Drama School, established in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in 1937. ... .
3 The Gansu Province Long Opera Company: Long Opera is a completely new and distinctive local-opera drama-genre from Gansu, which grew out of Longdong daoqing . ...
4 The Lotus Flower Mountain Hua'er Festival: Hua'er is a type of folk song widely circulated in the Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia area. For a long time past, the people of the various nationalities, Han, Hui, Tibetan, and Dongxiang, in their working and living together, have jointly fostered this bright and colourful flower of art. ... (Translated from 'Culture and art' in Duan, Qi & Li eds., Gansu Tourist Guide (1982), China Tourism Publishing House, Beijing ]
[ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/01/content_11631151.htm Xinhua kicks off English TV news service ]
[Edited at 2009-07-01 07:18 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lia Fail (X) 
Spain
Local time: 07:38
Spanish to English
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| absolutely ... and more | Jun 29, 2009 |
ChristineS wrote: Heinrich Pesch wrote:
In poetry a word for word translation might be a good approach in some cases. In a novel you would develop a style that is has the same qualities as the original author's. In factual texts a word-for-word translation would be silly.
Regards
Heinrich ABSOLUTELY o(∩_∩)o...
In some texts the author is preeminent (poetry, literature), in others the reader (manuals, research articles), so it's not a simple answer to a simple question. I think a good translator will have a good sense of which approach is appropriate for a particular kind of text.
And as an extreme example and a fairly constant source of irritation, the translation of place names: How is one ever going to find Grace Boulevard in Barcelona? Which is neither an author- nor reader-focused translation, just ridiculous!
[Edited at 2009-06-29 20:38 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-06-29 20:38 GMT]
| | | | Lia Fail (X)
Spain
Local time: 07:38
Spanish to English
+ ...
lai an wrote: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?lab=HowTo Lawrence Venuti How to Read a Translation 'Read translations, although with an eye out for the translator's work, with the awareness that the most a translation can give you is an insightful and eloquent interpretation of a foreign text, at once limited and enabled by the need to address the receiving culture.'
Could we circumscribe the argument?
Venuti was not talking about scientific or technical texts, he was talking about literature and he most certainly has a point (but it would be a big mistake to extend his vision to other kinds of texts).
One balances one's loyalty to the author with one's loyalty to the reader. In some cases, the author has to be placed above the reader and in other cases, vice versa.
If I translated the typical technical manual writer that I have translated in the past, kowtowing to him/her as an "author" (that is, leaving a "foreign" flavour in the manual), someone would have been electrocuted! They were engineers not "authors", in fact, it was remarakable how badly they wrote.
If I translated Javier Cercas (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Cercas, in Spanish, the English version doesn't do him justice) by "interpreting" and "simplifying" his long and unwieldy (but wonderfully written) sentences, that would defeat the whole point of the translation.
By the way, I'm responding to your post title: Do you 'nativise' the text in the target language, or retain its 'foreignness'? If you are, in fact, referring to literature, you need to specify that. I'm answering the question you posed. I'm afraid I don't undertsnad Chinese, nor do I have time to analyse lengthy tracts of text, so I have simply addressed the post title:-)
[Edited at 2009-06-29 21:01 GMT]
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B D Finch
France
Local time: 07:38
French to English
+ ...
| Assumptions that limit choice | Jun 29, 2009 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
I wrote my master thesis about translation of touristic texts. One example only:
If there is a brochure about a town with all ongoing programs, I would leave out all reference to theatre performances, because foreigners simply do not visit (Finnish) theatres.
But most customers do not understand the problems envolved, so word-for-word translation would satisfy the customer, adaptation the reader. The customer is the one that pays us.
I've become rather cynical about all "translation theory".
Regards
Heinrich
If just one single foreigner reading the brochure had been interested in Finnish theatre, your omission would have done them a disservice. I can certainly imagine visiting Finland and being interested in knowing about theatrical performances. I might want to see acting styles, stage sets, lighting ... or I might be interested in knowing something about local cultural life by knowing what was on even if I did not want to personally visit the theatre. There might be a highly visual performance that did not require understanding of Finnish. I wonder whether somebody actually asks theatregoers in Finland, at each performance, to put their hand up if they are foreign!
| | | | | interesting, of course agree that there isn't one answer | Jul 29, 2012 |
I like to think that in literary translation, the train of thought is at least partially culturally decided, decides the taste of the text and should be preserved, which means you are never nativising on a big scale, whereas on a word-by-word level, I would get rid of things that make the text difficult to follow to translate the general taste of the text better. Also, things that only occur in the country where the text is conceived, often give it a nice foreign touch that publishers and reader... See more I like to think that in literary translation, the train of thought is at least partially culturally decided, decides the taste of the text and should be preserved, which means you are never nativising on a big scale, whereas on a word-by-word level, I would get rid of things that make the text difficult to follow to translate the general taste of the text better. Also, things that only occur in the country where the text is conceived, often give it a nice foreign touch that publishers and readers like well.
An example: when I translate a Chinese story to Dutch, I cannot translate dialogues word-by-word, because a casual conversation in Chinese would become longish and strange in Dutch.
Swear words are always a nice challenge, swear words that are quite normal in Chinese can be too rude in English, and swear words that are quite forceful in Chinese become funny in English - not the effect you are looking for.
Names are also difficult: in Chinese, people can be called 'Little Lin' and 'Old Li'. They would probably become Lin and Mr. Li in my translation. Sometimes I feel like translating Mary and John to reflect the common-ness of the names, but of course that would be very wrong. It's a never-ending struggle, and I love it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | You cannot, honestly, be translating any serious texts word for word | Jul 29, 2012 |
No professional translator would do it. This is not the right approach at all. This might have been some 19th century school, or something of that kind. You have to understand the meaning of a particular segment of text and convey it in the most accurate way into the target language. You cannot translate separate words and then try to make a whole out of separate, disjoint pieces. The most important thing is to convey the meaning of the original text in the most accurate way. This is really the ... See more No professional translator would do it. This is not the right approach at all. This might have been some 19th century school, or something of that kind. You have to understand the meaning of a particular segment of text and convey it in the most accurate way into the target language. You cannot translate separate words and then try to make a whole out of separate, disjoint pieces. The most important thing is to convey the meaning of the original text in the most accurate way. This is really the only approach. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 07:38
French to English
| I agree with BD Finch | Jul 29, 2012 |
B D Finch wrote: Heinrich Pesch wrote:
I wrote my master thesis about translation of touristic texts. One example only:
If there is a brochure about a town with all ongoing programs, I would leave out all reference to theatre performances, because foreigners simply do not visit (Finnish) theatres.
But most customers do not understand the problems envolved, so word-for-word translation would satisfy the customer, adaptation the reader. The customer is the one that pays us.
I've become rather cynical about all "translation theory".
Regards
Heinrich If just one single foreigner reading the brochure had been interested in Finnish theatre, your omission would have done them a disservice. I can certainly imagine visiting Finland and being interested in knowing about theatrical performances. I might want to see acting styles, stage sets, lighting ... or I might be interested in knowing something about local cultural life by knowing what was on even if I did not want to personally visit the theatre. There might be a highly visual performance that did not require understanding of Finnish. I wonder whether somebody actually asks theatregoers in Finland, at each performance, to put their hand up if they are foreign!
You simply have to specify in brackets that the performance is in Finnish (as I do for links to websites where an English version of the page does not exist).
Sometimes performances can be in a foreign language too. I have been to performances in English but also in Italian and other languages in Paris.
I went to the opera in Moscow and thoroughly enjoyed myself even though I didn't understand a word.
You do have to adapt texts for tourists to appeal to their senses, for example toning down some descriptions of food for French restaurants, since the Brits are more prosaic than the French.
And I recently had a lively discussion about the importance of removing references in a text to how the English were perceived further to their invasion of Northern France in the early 16th century (I believe some of the vocab might violate site rules). I maintained that diplomacy should perhaps prevail over historical accuracy given that the client's aim was to attract English visitors to a celebration of entente cordiale and the long shared history of the two nations. I also maintained that the stretch of water said visitors would need to cross to attend said celebration was to be called the English Channel and not just the Channel. To which the client retorted that it wasn't called that at the time of the events described in the account. I researched the matter and found that it was known as the British Sea at the time. Clearly, the Brits consider the water to be their own, and this feeling needs to be acknowledged.
I do sometimes purposely leave terms in French, to conjure up a touch of local colour, after all if you're going to France for a holiday you ought to be prepared to learn a bit about your hosts. (and if you're not, you should jolly well put up with the weather and Olympics mania back home.)
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