{"id":89,"date":"2013-09-10T16:19:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T16:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/?p=89"},"modified":"2016-08-25T16:47:05","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:47:05","slug":"89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/89\/","title":{"rendered":"The Act of Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the conclusion of \u00a0Massimiliano Morini’s intricate and and provocative book The Pragmatic Translator<\/em> (2013, Bloomsbury), the act of translation is given the following definition:<\/p>\n

“Translation is an operation of interlingual rewriting which affects the performative, locative, and interpersonal functions of texts.\u00a0 The definition encompasses each and every kind of rewriting, even though all societies reserve the term ‘translation’ for texts displaying a limited range of performative, locative and interpersonal shifts.”<\/p>\n

In this regard, let us consider how the following Slovak paragraph, the first paragraph in chapter nine of Michal Hvoreck\u00fd’s\u00a0latest novel\u00a0Dunaj v amerike, <\/em>is\u00a0rewritten in English.\u00a0 Can you detect subtle differences in the relationship between the author\/translator and the targeted\u00a0audience with respect to the material presented?\u00a0 For example, how do the writers differ in terms of how much they think their readers are familiar with the references to time and place?\u00a0 How “close” are they to the things they refer to and what social roles do they take on?\u00a0 How do objectives differ for the writers of the Slovak and English texts?<\/p>\n

Slovak text:<\/p>\n

Martin sa po gymn\u00e1ziu rozhodol \u0161tudova\u0165 prekladate\u013estvo z franz\u00faskeho a talianskeho jazyk.\u00a0 Otec s rozhodnut\u00edm nes\u00fahlasal a mama sa k nemu pridala: m\u00e1lo zarob\u00ed, neu\u017eiv\u00ed sa, nikdy nedosiahne postavenie, aj keby akoko\u013evek drel, zni\u010d\u00ed si bud\u00facnos\u0165, ujde mu vlak. . . Vyrastal v rodine, kde nik ne\u0161tudoval.\u00a0 Na prij\u00edmac\u00edch pohovoroch skon\u010dil tret\u00ed a dvadsa\u0165ro\u010dn\u00fd za\u010dal chodi\u0165 na bratislavsk\u00fa filozofick\u00fa fakultu.\u00a0 Rodi\u010dov to \u0161okovalo, ale \u010dasy boli pln\u00e9 \u0161okov (99).<\/p>\n

English text:<\/p>\n

After high school Martin decided to pursue translation studies in French and Italian.\u00a0 His father didn\u2019t agree with the decision, and his mother joined forces against him:\u00a0 he would earn little, not enough to make a living; he would never be able to get ahead, no matter how hard he worked at it; he would destroy his future, miss the boat . . . None of his family members had any higher education.\u00a0 When the 20-year-old took third place at the entrance exams at Comenius University in Bratislava in the Department of Philosophy, his parents were shocked, but the times were full of shocks.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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[1]<\/a> Although the name does not have the cachet of Harvard or Yale, Slovaks consider Comenius the premier university in the Slovak Republic. The \u201ctimes . . . full of shocks\u201d referenced here were the years shortly after the declaration of Slovak national sovereignty in 1993.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I invite you to compare Morini’s definition of translation with your own understanding of the act, or with how translation is commonly understood among its practitioners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the conclusion of \u00a0Massimiliano Morini’s intricate and and provocative book The Pragmatic Translator (2013, Bloomsbury), the act of translation is given the following definition: “Translation is an operation of interlingual rewriting which affects the performative, locative, and interpersonal functions … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56561,56562,56563],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-performative-dimension","tag-social-deixis","tag-spacial-deixis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}