Vol 23, No 2 (2019): Translation studies today and tomorrow

The article presents a review of the key trends in modern Translation Studies (TS) made after thorough analysis of the most fundamental works written in various fields of TS. The review proves that not only the range of problems within TS is now more diversified, which is related to many changes in the nature of translation activity, but Translation Studies are an interdisciplinary science now and uses data from neighboring disciplines. Specific “turns” have occurred in Translation Studies, and new paradigms of translation investigation have emerged. The most important phenomena in Translation Studies include “cultural turn” and the so called “anthropocentric turn” that has given birth to communicative-functional approach to translation. This approach implies “plunging” into the communicative situation of translation, and its analysis aimed at realizing the goal of translation by the translator/interpreter. It allows a more precise formulation of tasks solved by translators in both traditional types of translation (literary translation, religious translation, interpreting) and relatively new kinds of translation activity (audiovisual translation, localization). The article proves that translation proper is the main element of any activity performed by translators while any translation activity implies cultural adaptation of the text to the perception of the source text audience. The principal feature of Translation Studies is being practice-oriented, and their focus on the study of objective laws of translation activity. It enables translation scholars to understand peculiarities of various types of translation and to realize the essence of translation as a human activity.

The landscape in translation and interpreting is changing deeply and rapidly. For a long time, but not necessarily everywhere, translation was denied as a need (except for the political and religious powers), as effort (translation being defined as a kind of mechanical work, as substitution of words), and as a profession (translators embodying a subaltern position). Technology is bringing in certain changes in attitudes and perceptions with regards international, multilingual and multimodal communications. This article tries to define the changes and their consequences in the labelling and characterisation of the different practices. It is organised in five sections: first, we recall that translation and interpreting are only one option in international relations; then, we explain the different denials of translation in the past (or the refusal to recognize the different values of translation). In the third section, we consider how and to what extent technology is transforming today practices and markets. The ongoing changes do not boil solely to developments in Machine Translation (which started in the 1960s): community, crowdsourced/collaborative translation and volunteer translation encompass different practices. In many cases, users provide their own translations, with or without formal qualifications in translation. The evolution is not only technical but also economic and social. In addition, the fragmentation and the diversity of practices do have an impact on a multi-faceted market. In the fourth section, we emphasize that there are nowadays different concepts of translation and competitive paradigms in Translation Studies. Finally, we tackle the organisational challenge of the field, since the institutionalisation of translation and Translation Studies cannot remain the same as when there was a formal consensus on the concept of translation.

Ideology is an important component of text production and reception, and therefore of translation. In the paper, we address the translation of ideology through the prism of the intergroup threat theory. The resulting intergroup mediation perspective is a practical framework aimed at helping translators to evaluate whether an ideological recontextualisation may be desirable when dealing with divergence in ideological contexts between the author, the source text readership and the target text audience. The framework includes ideology shifts analysis in terms of the roles ideology can play in a text: it can constitute a part of the message (foreground) or belong to the background. Although applicable rather generally, the framework is derived from an example-based study of news translation. The study focuses on translation between French, English and German using examples form online versions of major European news media, such as the French Le Monde and Le Figaro , the German Zeit Online and Die Welt , and the British The Independent , The Telegraph and Guardian . The paper allows for a better understanding of ideology-related problems in translation, helps identify essential factors influencing translator’s choices and could be used as a guidance in translation practice. Also, considering the formal character of the framework, it could eventually serve as a basis for handling ideology-related issues in machine translation in the news industry.

The present paper examines intersemiotic translation of magic folk tales. Research objective is to show the structural identity of the surface structure which can be described as a sequence of plot elements (“functions”) of fairy-tale characters; in semiotic terms it is explained by the existence of a universal matrix defining the law of genre. The authors go on to the cognitive-culturological aspect of fairy tales in terms of N. Chomsky. This research paper has clearly shown that “functions” of the surface structures correspond to plans, scenarios and frames of the deep structures, which differ in British and Russian magic fairy folk tales (wonder folk tales). Numbers and proper names are the main permanent elements of fairy tale narrative: on the level of the surface structures they connect the universal matrix of a fairy tale discourse organizing space and rhythm and at the level of the deep structures - they help to understand the main features of the national character. The study is based on 13 fairy-tale film corpus, under the common theme “Beauty and the Beast”, film adaptations of the fairy tales “La Belle et la Bête” by J.-M. Leprens de Beaumont (1757) and “The Scarlet Flower” by S.T. Aksakov (1858). Hence, the analysis of the latter based on the works of R. Jacobson and W. Eco and understood by the authors as a kind of intersemiotic translation / interpretation that, on the one hand, proves universality of the proposed algorithm for studying fairy discourse in synchrony and diachrony. On the other hand, it plays the most important role in intersemiotic translation of diachronic aspect because it deals with changing the “integral model of reality”, which is reflected, in particular, in changing the on-screen presentation / interpretation of certain aspects of the fairy-tale narrative. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the conclusions can be used to study plurality of film adaptation as a form of intersemiotic translation.

The paper deals with studying language deviations of different types in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake . Deviations in general are known to be a departure from a norm or accepted standard; in linguistics deviations are viewed as an artistic device that can be applied in different forms and at various textual levels. The author’s language deformation is analyzed as a form of deviation used for expressing the writer’s language knowledge. It is concluded that in Ulysses the destruction of the language is thoroughly thought out and multi-aimed. For instance, occasional compound units that dominate the novel imitate the style of Homer, reviving the ancient manner in contemporary language. Despite the use of conventional word-building patterns, rich semantic abundance being the basic principle of Joyce's poetics seriously complicates interpretation of the new words in the source language. The attempt is also made to systematize deviation techniques in Finnegans Wake . In particular, multilinguality is found to be the base of the lexical units created by J. Joyce. Such hybrid nonce words produce the polyphony effect and trigger the mechanism of polysemantism together with unlimited associativity of the textual material, broadening the boundaries of linguistic knowledge as a whole. Additionally, certain results of a deeper comparative analysis of the ways to translate the author’s deviations into Russian are given. The analysis of three Russian versions of Ulysses and the experimental fragmentary translation of Finnegans Wake show that there exists some regularity in the choice of translation method, particularly its dependence on the structural similarities/ differences of the source and the target languages, as well as the language levels affected by J. Joyce in the process of lingual destruction. The impossibility of complete conveyance of the semantic depth of the text and stylistic features in the target language is noted.

The purpose of this article is to study the issue of key features of the so-called cultural words (realia) in sacred texts (the Bible is taken as an example) as well as a distinctive nature of their cross-language transfer. This problem is essential not only for the Bible translation as such but it also enables to clarify some aspects related to the representation of the vocabulary with cultural identity in the target language that is explained by the very nature of the Old and New Testaments containing a wide variety of the realia that refer directly to a religious cult and to the everyday life of Palestinian people and their neighborhood in the Bible times. The material for the present research includes versions of the Holy Writ created in different periods in a number of languages (Latin, Church Slavonic, Russian and English). While analyzing, the classical translations labelled often as “national” ones have been used (the King James Bible, Synodal Translation), as well and the versions created in the 20th and 21st centuries. The main approach applied herein is the identifying of the corresponding units in the said Bible texts, the ascertainment of the possibility of their ambivalent interpretation, the correlation within the considered versions of translation, the determination of translation strategies used for representing the realia and their comparative analysis. When considering the options presented, special attention has been paid to extra-linguistic factors, since they often play a decisive role in solving the said task. The key results of the made survey can be formulated as follows: 1) since translations could have been made from different versions of the source text, there are cases when certain realia are available in some translations but are missing in others; 2) the use of transcription / transliteration of the realia in Russian versions of the Old Testament in some cases is determined by their representation in the Greek and Church Slavonic texts of the Bible and therefore in both the Synodal and the new translations they can be presented in a form different from that available in European languages; 3) the representation of the Greek word diopetês ( fallen from heaven ) as the proper name Diopet in the Synodal Translation is usually qualified as an elementary mistake, but it could have been also provoked by an intention to follow Greek and Church Slavonic traditions; 4) the existence of the so-called ‘undefined realia’ in the source text, an exact meaning of which is not known, causes their various interpretations in the target language; 5) during the analysis of the units of the target language used in the translation of the Holy Writ, the diachronic aspect must be taken into account considering, on the one hand, the possibility of losing or changing the meaning in the course of linguistic evolution, and on the other hand, avoiding vesting the reality with the meaning that it could not have; 6) a number of translations made in recent decades are characterized by a pronounced pragmatic orientation, in some cases causing a significant neutralization of the national-cultural specificity or its adaptation to the corresponding cultural environment, the degree of admissibility of which in some cases is controversial. The above items enable to clarify a number of aspects related to the methods of translating the realia and the importance of such aspects for attaining the translation adequacy.

Actuality. Our time is characterised by the penetration of egalitarian ideas of Western liberalism and political correctness in the sphere of language. Language, speech, communication practices are reviewed and revised to determine if they are politically correct. Religious and sacred texts of Christianity and Judaism do not stand aside from the careful examination of the followers of the ideas of compiling a politically correct Bible. The purpose of this article is to find out if it is possible to change the texts of English translations of the Christian Bible, from a theological and linguistic point of view, and if it is possible to consider gender-neutral versions of Messianic passages of the English Bible as authentic, suitable for the correct transmission of meaning, i.e. reading, theological and historical analysis, as well as liturgical practice. The object of the research is represented by the texts of several widely used in modern Anglicanism gender-neutral English versions of the Bible: The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation by Priests for Equality (IBFET, 2009); New English Translation (NET, 1998); New International Version Inclusive Language Edition (NIVI, 1995). King James’ Bible original version (KJV) of 1611 edition is used as a reference point. Research techniques include the method of contextual analysis, comparative method, structural method, comparative historical method. Such taxonomic units of sacred Messianic texts as son of God, son of man, the lord, the master, the king, heaven kingdom , constructions of common grammatical gender are analysed. It is demonstrated that in almost all cases of gender-neutral constructions use, the meaning of the text changes: from insignificant changes to the reproduction of openly heretical views from the viewpoint of traditional Anglicanism. Our study shews that gender-neutral language introduces new feminist meanings into Messianic sacred texts, which were not previously contained there. Gender-neutral English translations of the Christian Bible cease to be canonical from the point of view of Christian theology. Nevertheless, gender-neutral philological strategies of modifying the ways of modern Anglican preaching can be an extremely interesting and instructive example of the fact that in the modern world certain social and political discourses can stand behind Christian homiletics.