Lingua inglese II - appunti prof Wardle

Lingua inglese II

06/03/2018 - Prima lezione

Translation – how does the text change?

My name is “Mi chiamo” “Il mio nome è”. Es. è meglio tradurlo con invece di che calco. sarebbe un Touch wood – toccando ferro.

World Health Organisation WHO (Oms, Organizzazione mondiale per la sanità)

Sam could be either a female or a male name, we don’t really know so we have to find a way to express it neutrally in our translation.

Skills needed: linguistic, cultural and general knowledge. A flexible mind to think outside the box is very useful.

Linguistic abilities: reading, writing, listening, speaking. The passive ones (listening, reading) are the easiest.

Jakobson makes a distinction concerning translation:

• Intralinguistic translation (e.g. from Italian to Italian), for example a paraphrasis or the subtitles for a film in the same language of the film;
• Interlinguistic translation from one language to another one;
• Intersemiotic translation, that is, from a code to another (e.g. from a book to a film).

Terminology:

• Source text (ST) → testo di partenza (st)
• Source language → lingua di partenza
• Source culture → cultura di partenza
• Target text (TT) → testo di arrivo
• Target language → lingua di arrivo
• Target culture → cultura di arrivo

Translation – written texts

Interpreting – spoken/oral texts

There are:

• Simultaneous interpreting, that is at the same time the text is listened (perhaps the most stressful one);
• Consecutive interpreting – usually a small group of people, often the interpreter writes notes (important skill: know how to make notes);
• Chuchotage (French for sussurrare), often among politicians. It’s like simultaneous interpreting;
• Community interpreting – working in a community, our “mediazione linguistica”.

Translation and fidelity

Fidelity/faithfulness – infidelity/unfaithfulness, that is far from the original but still linked. But faithful to what/to whom?

Les belles infidèles – if you want a « beautiful » translation, you have to be unfaithful. Traduttore – traditore Translator trader – you can gain something in a translation and lose something else.

Cultural differences – Do you fancy a coffee? Ti va un caffè?

• In London: Coffee shop > order at the counter (bancone) > large cup/mug of coffee > sit down > chat for half an hour
• In Rome: Bar > pay at till (cassa) > order at counter > small cup/glass of coffee > drink standing up (5 minutes all)

Cicero, one of the first people to write about translation, distinguished between word-to-word translation (literal translation) and free translation. He is interested in style, enriching Latin literature. Every translation has a different purpose.

To drink like a fish: bere come una spugna. Eugene Nida talks about formal equivalence or dynamic equivalence, that is, you have to create the same effect created by the original language text with your translation.

Rhythm (poetry, song, slogan), laughter (e.g. introduce a new joke to create a comical effect) and length (layout, that is the physical space you have, subtitle) can influence the translation.

The lamb of God would probably be for Inuits, it is a cultural equivalent.

12/03/2018 - Seconda lezione

Dog and lead:

Metaphor – the dog can be close or not to its owner, it depends on what we decide to privilege (original text or translation). Giochi di parole – difficili da tradurre.

The rabbit sends in a little Bill (Alice in Wonderland). Bill is the name of the lizard but also « conto », in Italian is not a name.

Il coniglio presenta un conticino. Aldo Busi is one of the most famous Alice in Wonderland’s Italian translators. His dog is a long way far from the original text. He is quite innovative in his solutions. Senza Billyetto non si può entrare → faithful to the humour, not to literal translation.

Mine is a long and sad tale, Tale tail the mouse says that. is homophone of racconto-coda. When he says that, Alice thinks it is talking about his tail. It is a long tail, but why do you call it sad? On the page, the mouse’s tale has the shape of a tail. Upside down/back to front/inside out La mia storia è lunga e triste La mia storia è triste con una lunga coda it’s not particularly funny but it links the joke and explains the shape of the tail. La mia storia è una lunga e triste coda.

Il mio è un lungo codazzo di miserie we’ve been faithful to the homophone elements to English that make sense in the original language but not in Italian.

Schleiermacher (1813) – German theorist who writes about translation, his essay is « On the different methods of translation ».

Basically, there are two different ways of translating, the 1st one is to move the reader towards the author (e.g. reader towards Carroll).

Sir Williams and Lady Lucas, Pride and 1813 Schleiermacher doesn’t talk about Prejudice but it was written in the same year of his essay. We can understand that Sir Williams and Lady Lucas are probably rich people, he is William Lucas, his wife has become Lady Lucas.

Sir William e Lady Lucas, Possible translation → avvicinare il lettore al mondo di Jane Austen, leaving as much as possible as it was in the original text. Other alternative suggested by Schleiermacher: move the author towards the reader → Sir and Lady Don and Donna.

This translation was made during Fascism, when there was censorship in translation. Sir Lady It depends on the couple of languages we are using: and are words that have probably been heard various times by an Italian native speaker; but if they were Japanese words, they would probably be unheard words. So, there is not a standard rule, we have to consider the couple of languages.

Lawrence Venuti updates Schleiermacher’s theory

Reader >>> Author Sir Williams e Lady Lucas foreignization Venuti calls that → we’re preserving the different source text.

Author >>> Reader Don Guglielmo e Donna Lucas Venuti calls that domestication → you bring it towards the translator/reader’s home.

Mrs Fox La signora Fox/Volpe would be a domesticating choice, leaving Mrs Fox would be a foreignizing choice. Usually, we don’t translate people’s names. It was done in certain circumstances (e.g. Fascism). Principe Carlo Principe William- are translated differently because there were two different translation trends: 70 years ago everything was translated into Italian, nowadays we tend to use the original forms.

Elements you can be faithful to (or no, it’s a choice):

• Period of ST (source text). E.g. translating Shakespeare or Dante: do we have to use an old English/Italian form or the current one?
• Update language? If there are already a lot of translations, do we need another one? In translation, the language need to be updated.
• Retranslation – why the same book gets translated over and over again.
• Unusual collocation (way that words go together) e.g. bianco e nero – black and white. If I say “it is white and black”, everybody understands but it doesn’t sound natural.

The grey nurse is unusual, there could be a white nurse, or a black one (skin colour). Woolf put these words together in order to force the reader to create a mental picture. We could directly say « l’infermiera sciatta » but Woolf could have said « the graffy nurse »; she didn’t. We have to be faithful.

Use of repetition. It could be an effect we might want to maintain in our translation.

Les testaments trahits Milan Kundera (1993) - he comments some translations from German to other languages and then he talks about other people’s translations about his works.

Bisogno di sinonimizzare del traduttore usando parole che apparentemente non tradiscono l’autore ma che in realtà sono frutto di una elaborazione personale. Questa pratica, se applicata in modo sistematico, finisce per attenuare il pensiero originale.

Rhythm and rhyme (poetry, lyrics) I am sixteen going on seventeen – The Sound of Music (Tutti insieme appassionatamente) Unusual syntax and vocabulary Quindici anni, quasi sedici Maggiorenne tra due anni – come traduzioni per mantenere il ritmo

Language – there are various elements that make it complex to translate

• Register: formal, informal language
• Jargon: words to use with a specific community/meaning (e.g. verbalizzazione at university)
• Technical language: tends to be extremely specific, we don’t often have synonyms for this kind of words. You need to recognize these elements/words
• Dialect: one of the huge problems in translations, a regional variety of language. It is often used to characterize the people, we have cultural associations with parts of the country we are talking about
• Non-standard forms: baby talk (conjugate all verbs in a regular way, e.g. I taked the book); in a book a Spanish character who speaks English might make some « mistakes ».

Suspension of disbelief → quando leggo un romanzo in traduzione o guardo un film, se tutti gli attori sono in Spagna non devo chiedermi perché parlino l’italiano, lo prendo come fatto e basta.

13/03/2018 - Terza lezione

Examples of dialects, non-standard forms

Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh (1993) set in Scotland, (Edimburgo). The way they express themselves is different from standard English and from the language we expect to find in a book. Jargon of drug dealing. Score: gear: comprare la droga; roba. A translation into standard Italian would make it lose every dialect connotation.

Cockney (Rhyming Slang) – East End of London, where you can hear the sound of Bow Bells (St. Mary-Le-Bow). It’s a poor part of London. It is a language that was born to communicate within cockney in order to avoid policemen to understand them. This jargon works thanks to rhymes e.g. instead of talk, rabbit and pork; for phone, dog and bone; for believe, Adam and Eve; for look, butcher’s hook. Come and have a butcher’s « vieni a dare un’occhiata ». Today, in colloquial English, to rabbit on means to talk about something.

Tank balance – bank balance (saldo)

George Bernard Shaw (1913) tried to replicate this Pygmalion (opera teatrale). The Flower Girl is a typical cockney who tries to sell some flowers in Covent Garden (once it was like our « mercati generali »). There is an evolution throughout the play: from cockney to standard English. Fewd: if you had. Scelta controversa: introdurre traducendo, invece del dialetto presente nell’originale, errori grammaticali.

Humour: it may be difficult to translate it, it depends on the type of humour.

Situational humour (Laurel and Hardy, Stanlio e Ollio). It also called slapstick “schiaffeggiare”, strumento che si usava per dare finti schiaffi. It’s more or less universal and doesn’t present big problems.

Verbal humour – what did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt. It’s translatable, so, just because there’s language it doesn’t mean we can’t translate that.

The problem arrives with linguistic humour: puns, wordplay. How do you make a cat drink? Put one in a liquidizer. We can’t translate these jokes into Italian in the same way. We could choose another joke concerning similar points. How do you encourage a bear to eat cheese? Camembert! (Come on, Bear!)

Charles Dickens (in a bar): « A martini, please. » Bartender: “olive or twist?” The use of language that underlies the jokes is quite sophisticated. You are not going to be able to translate it literally (almost always), so you’ll probably need to produce your own jokes to fit the context.

Compensation: you don’t translate the joke where it was originally but you can put that where it wasn’t in the original text.

Visual + Linguistic Humour Even more difficult Computer Graphic Image CGI nowadays changes various « images » that are in film, TV series, etc. while the old movies, TV series were not changed. Ads, cards, shop names, etc. we use puns everywhere, especially in English because the languages allows it thanks to its homophones.

Cultural references: These things change from a culture to another, therefore there are no direct equivalences e.g. legal or educational system (I got a two one degree), food and drink (panettone, noodles, rock style). It’s not just a question of learning vocabulary but of understanding what something means.

Teoria dello scopo → bisogna pensare all’uso finale della traduzione e farsi guidare da questo per tradurre. Se so che il menù serve al cliente che non parla italiano e quindi probabilmente non può comunicare, la funzione principale &