Category: Translation
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For the seventh year running – thanks to the wonderful founder Meytal Radzinski – this August saw another ‘Women in Translation Month’, a whole month dedicated to promoting and celebrating female writers in translation. Like many, I devoted my entire month to reading only translated works from women, and like many, I attempted to reach…
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Voice is something that we often hear being discussed when it comes to writing, with a writer’s voice perhaps being described as strong or unique, and conversations on how to find one’s voice as a writer. But is it possible for a translator too to have a voice, and if so, is it possible for…
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A few posts back, in Gender in Translation (2): Translating Grammatical Gender, I discussed the difficulties of translating between different languages with different grammatical rules concerning gender. Translating grammatical gender is something that a translator normally doesn’t have to think twice about, as in most cases, the straightforward translation of ‘la’ and ‘le’ into ‘the’…
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As of late, I have been delving into the possibilities found in translating word into image, and vice versa. I think the fact that two creative forces such as writing and painting can correlate in a host of different ways and collide through the act of translation is very exciting and is something I aim…
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Every piece of writing is inevitably influenced by writings that have come before. As we write, we sub-consciously awaken texts we have previously read, undoubtedly bringing these texts, into the new text we are now writing. Furthermore, the world surrounding us will influence our writing, thus making our writing “a fabric of quotations resulting from…
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Translating grammatical gender is something that a translator normally doesn’t have to think twice about. In most cases, the straightforward translation of ‘la’ and ‘le’ into ‘the’ is all that is required. But what about when these definite articles mean something much more? In his essay, On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, Roman Jakobson discusses the…
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“A text’s unity lies not in its origins, or in its creator, but in its destination, or audience.” Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author This famous quote from Barthes The Death of the Author, states that what makes a text is its reader, its audience. Barthes discusses the idea that a text comes alive,…
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“I read with my body, I read and move to translate with my body, and my body is not the same as yours.” Kate Briggs, This Little Art (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017) When we read a text, the first voice we hear is our own. This is because when we read a text we are reading through…
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This week I was lucky enough to attend a discussion and reading with renowned Japanese poet and writer, Hiromi Itō, and her friend and translator into the English, Jeffrey Angles. The following day, I also attended the workshop ‘Translating Cultures’, which focused on the difficulties of translating Japanese culture and language specifities into English culture…
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Not so long ago I was at a translation event where a book publisher explained during a panel that the words ‘translated fiction’ or the appearance of a ‘translated by …’ on the front matter of a book have a significant effect on sales. Sadly, it seems that these words often scare people away and…
Alice Banks 