Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), to three translations of a classic Chinese text, Zhao proposes a new model for linking translator positioning with translational norms in the target culture. Zhao combines the Appraisal model from SFL with a characterisation model to describe the role of translator positioning in character construction. Looking at three different translations of the classic Chinese novel Luotuo Xiangzi, she uses corpus tools to compare the opening and ending chapters of each translation, identifying textual patterns of translator positioning. She then analyses and compares the cover designs of the translated novels and reconstructs the translational norms governing the translator’s positioning in characterisation. In doing so she contributes to DTS by developing a systematic and consistent framework to analyse verbal and visual elements in translated novels. Her multimodal analysis also provides insights into the broader patterns of translated language. An insightful read for scholars interested in both theoretical and empirical approaches to translation studies.

This book traces the translation history of twentieth-century German philosophy into English, with significant layovers in Paris, and proposes an innovative approach to long-standing difficulties in its translation. German philosophy’s reputation for profundity is often understood to lie in German’s polysemous vocabulary, which is notoriously difficult to translate even into its close relative, English. Hawkins shows the merit in a strategy of “differential translation,” which involves translating conceptually dense German terms with multiple different terms in the target text, rather than the conventional standard of selecting one term in English for consistent translation. German Philosophy in English Translation explores how debates around this strategy have polarized both the French-language and English-language translation landscapes. Well-known translators and commissioners such as Jean Beaufret, Adam Phillips, and Joan Stambaugh come out boldly in favor, and others such as Jean Laplanche and Terry Pinkard polemically against it. Drawing on Hans Blumenberg’s work on metaphor, German Philosophy in English Translation questions prevalent norms around the translation of terminology that obscure the metaphoric dimension of German philosophical vocabulary. This book is a crucial reference for translators and researchers interested in the German language, and particularly for scholars in translation studies, philosophy, and intellectual history.

This book builds on Marais’s innovative A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation to explore the implications of this conceptualization of translation as the semiotic work from which social-cultural reality emerges and chart the way forward for applications in empirical research. The volume brings together some of the latest developments in biosemiotics, social semiotics and Peircean semiotics with emergent work in translation studies towards better understanding the emergence of trajectories in society-culture through semiotic processes. The book further develops lines of thinking around thermodynamics in the work of Terrence Deacon to consider the ways in which ideas emerge from matter, creating meaning, and its opposites, namely the ways in which ideas constrain matter. Marais links these theoretical strands to empirical case studies in the final three chapters towards operationalizing these concepts for further empirical work. This book is aimed at academics in the fields of translation studies, semiotics, multimodal/multimedial studies, cultural studies and development studies. It will also be applicable to postgraduate students in these fields.

This volume applies digital humanities methodologies to indirect translations in testing the concatenation effect hypothesis. The concatenation effect hypothesis suggests that indirect translations tend to omit or alter identifiably foreign elements and also tend not to identify themselves as translations. The book begins by introducing the methodological framework to be applied in the chapters that follow and providing an overview of the hypothesis. The various chapters focus on specific aspects of the hypothesis that relate to specific linguistic, stylistic, and visual features of indirect translations. These features provide evidence that can be used to assess whether and to what extent the concatenation effect is in evidence in any given example. The overarching aim of the book is not to demonstrate or falsify the veracity of the concatenation effect hypothesis or to give any definitive answers to the research questions posed. Rather, the aim is to pique the curiosity and provoke the creativity of students and researchers in all areas of translation studies who may never have considered indirect translation as relevant to their work.

This volume showcases different forms of natural and non-professional translation and interpreting at work at multilingual sites in a single city, shedding new light on our understanding of the intersection of city, migration and translation. Flynn builds on work in translation studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic ethnography and anthropology to offer a translational perspective on scholarship on multilingualism and translation, focusing on examples from the superdiverse city of Ghent in Belgium. Each chapter comprises a different multilingual site, ranging from schools to eateries to public transport, and unpacks specific dimensions of translation practices within and against constantly shifting multilingual settings. The book also reflects on socio-political factors and methodological considerations of concern when undertaking such an approach. Taken together, the chapters seek to provide a composite picture of translation in a multilingual city, demonstrating how tracing physical, linguistic and social trajectories of movement in these contexts can deepen our understanding of the contemporary dynamics of multilingualism and natural translation and of translanguaging, more broadly. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation and interpreting studies, sociolinguistics, multilingualism, linguistic anthropology and migration studies.

This volume sets out a new paradigm in intersemiotic translation research, drawing on the films of Ang Lee to problematize the notion of films as the simple binary of transmission between the verbal and non-verbal. The book surveys existing research as a jumping-off point from which to consider the role of audiovisual dimensions, going beyond the focus on the verbal as understood in Jakobsonian intersemiotic translation. The volume outlines a methodology comprising a system of various models which draw on both translation studies and film studies frameworks, with each model illustrated with examples from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Lust, Caution; and Life of Pi. In situating the discussion within the work of a director whose own work straddles East and West and remediates between cultures and semiotic systems, Zhang argues for an understanding of intersemiotic translation in which films are not simply determined by verbal source material but through the process of intersemiotic translators mediating non-verbal, quality-determining materials into the final film. The volume looks ahead to implications for translation and film research more broadly as well as other audiovisual media. This book will appeal to scholars interested in translation studies, film studies, media studies and cultural studies in general.

Comprising 11 countries and hundreds of languages from one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world, the chapters in this collection explore a wide range of translation issues. The subject of this volume is set in the contrasted landscapes of mainland peninsulas and maritime archipelagos in Southeast Asia, which, whilst remaining a largely minor area in Asian studies, harbors a wealth of textual heritage that opens to inquiries and new readings. From the post-Angkor Cambodia, the post-colonial Viantiane, to the ultra-modern Singapore metropolis, translation figures problematically in the modernization of indigenous literatures, criss-crossing chronologically and spatially through different literary landscapes. The peninsular geo-body gives rise to the politics of singularity as seen in the case of the predominant monolingual culture in Thailand, whereas the archipelagic geography such as the thousand islands of Indonesia allows for peculiar types of communication. Translation can also be metaphorized poetically to configure the transference in different scenarios such as the cases of self-translation in Philippine protest poetry and untranslatability in Vietnamese diasporic writings. The collection also includes intra-regional comparative views on historical and religious terms. This book will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students of translation studies, sociolinguistics, and Southeast Asian studies.