ni bad om det... men eftersom texten är 2000+ ord har jag valt ut vissa bitar som kan tänkas vara av nytta här. kom ihåg att teorin om 'foreignization' bara är några år gammal, och kan te sig djärv - men jag tycker absolut att det behövs nytänkande inom översättning.
Domesticating and foreignization – key concepts.Contemporary translation theorist Lawrence Venuti has in recent years led somewhat of a revolution in the field of translating foreign texts into the Anglo-American. His increased frustration with the way translations are meant to appear as though they are the original instead of recognising the foreign and bringing it to the front, has led to his introduction of the words ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignazation’. These concepts have their roots in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s ideas that a translation either moves the author towards the reader (Venuti’s domestication), or – in the opposite – the reader towards the author (foreignization). Essentially, a domesticating approach to a text will make a text as readable as possible in the TL, without any traces of the ST linguistics or unfamiliar expressions, making it fluent and, as Venuti puts it, transparent. Both Venuti and Schleiermacher are partial to the foreignizing approach, which tries to constantly remind the reader that the text is not in the original by for example allowing some words and expression to stay in the SL, changing the syntax or in other ways making the reader feel that the text is foreign. Indeed, it would seem that most translations in the Anglo-American world put little or no trust in the readers’ ability to embrace a foreign culture. Instead, one could argue, the readers are ‘dumbed down’, constantly being presented with texts that are made to flow as easily into their consciousness as possible. Foreignization is certainly the controversial strategy, but even Venuti himself questions its practicality:
Jeremy Munday skrev:
Although Venuti advocates foreignizing translation, he is also aware of some of its contradictions, namely that it is a subjective and relative term that still involves some domestication because it translates an ST for a target culture and depends on dominant target-culture values to become visible when it departs from them. (Munday 2001: 148)
This means that in order for a foreignized translation to have an impact, it must first acknowledge the target culture, then move away from it. The process would not then only take the reader towards the author, but perhaps take the reader towards the reader, and then onwards to the author.
Domesticating Middle-earth – Tolkien’s approach to translation.Is then foreignization the best approach for every translated text? Probably not. There are times when text needs to flow as smoothly as possible. Consider a subtitled film. If the translator littered the subtitles with foreign expressions, literally translated collocations and references to the source culture, the audience would be so busy trying to understand all these references that the experience of watching the film would be taken away. Subtitles are there as an aid for the viewer, and a 1-2 second glance at the text strip should tell the audience what someone is saying, and what it means, and in this case, a domesticating approach does just this. Besides, the audience will hear the original language being spoken, and see the pictures to which the words belong, and although subtitles are seldom “good” translations, they fulfil their purpose. Another example might be novels or other kinds of fiction where the story is set in another world. Science Fiction and Fantasy writing often have clear connections with our world, but in some cases, the author himself demands domestication from the translators. One of the best-known books of our time, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, came with a complete guide to the translation of names and places from the author. Tolkien claimed that the language of Middle-earth (the otherworldly realm in which the trilogy takes place) was not English, but Westron, otherwise known as The Common Speech. He as an author had merely ‘translated’ it into English. Therefore, he said, each translator should take special care to translate every proper name as best as they could into the TL. (Lobdell, 1975) Of course, this calls for a general domestication of the book. In the same way as Tolkien used Old English, the translators are encouraged to use a more archaic form of their own tongue. This particular case could be questioned in terms of how much power an author can have over a translation. Perhaps Tolkien bordered on intentional fallacy when he demanded such superior control over the translation of his work, but regardless, he has succeeded in most languages. Effectively, turned the novel away from being a part of English culture and heritage, to a part of the culture and heritage in every culture it was translated into.
...
Foreignizing Vittula and the cold Swedish language.Just as there are some texts that call for domestication, there are those who are in desperate need of foreignization in order to even begin to give the TL reader a gist of the implication of the text in the SL. In 2000, Populärmusik från Vittula, the debut novel from author Mikael Niemi became an instant bestseller in Sweden. Unashamedly confirming some of the stereotypical views that those in southern Sweden have towards their northern neighbours, whilst just as resolutely crushing others, it resounded with the Swedish people – from the metropolitan yuppies in Stockholm to the quiet reindeer-herders in Lapland, because it embodied Swedishness. As is sometimes the case with such successful books from abroad, Populärmusik från Vittula was translated into English. Since the very essence of the book is so foreign that even the thought of domesticating it seems like an impossible task, foreignization must surely be the correct approach to take. The first thing one will notice when comparing the ST and TT is that translator Laurie Thompson has preserved all the proper names, place names, and also a number of specific words in either Swedish or Tornedalen Finnish (the novel is set on the Swedish side of the border dividing Sweden and Finland). One such word is knapsu, meaning something like ‘unmanly’:
Mikael Niemi skrev:
You could say that in Tornedalen the male role boils down to just one thing: not being knapsu… Certain activities are basically knapsu and hence should be avoided by men. Changing curtains, for instance; knitting, weaving carpets, milking by hand, watering the houseplants and that kind of thing… the rules change from village to village. Hasse Alatalo from near Tärendö told me that where he comes from it’s regarded for some reason as knapsu to turn down the tops of your wellies. (Niemi 2003: 311)
While one could argue that Thompson uses a foreignizing strategy in his juxtaposition of such different words as knapsu and ‘wellies’, the latter being a typically English word (the Swedish word for Wellington boots is gummistövlar – rubber boots). However, when looking at the rest of the text, it becomes evident that Thompson has consistently turned colloquialisms and slang into the British equivalent: kille (young man) becomes ‘bloke’, pirre (children’s word for penis) becomes ‘willy’, pimpa (children’s word for backside) becomes ‘bum’ and “Nu era jävla kaniner!” (lit. “Now you devil’s rabbits!”) is rendered “Now, you bloody pansies!”. In fact, as one reads on, signs of Thompson customising the text for the British reader becomes more and more evident.
The language in the ST is raw, almost brutal at times, and little of this is reflected in the TT. Already on the cover of the book, the difference is striking. The title has been shortened from Populärmusik från Vittula (Popular music from the Cunt mire/marshes) to simply ‘Popular Music’. Perhaps the Britsh publishers felt ‘cunt’ too strong a word to have on the cover of a book. In a similar manner, most swear words and strong language is markedly toned down, often giving the impression that Swedish is a rather tame, quiet language when it is in fact quite the opposite. Swedish and Finnish are hardly the most beautiful of languages, and Niemi makes use of that, and perhaps he is doubly right when writing about the English language:
Mikael Niemi skrev:
Even worse was doing it [singing] in English, a language much too lacking in chewability for hard Finnish jaws, so sloppy that only little girls could get top marks in it… invented by mud-sloshing coastal beings who’ve never needed to struggle, never frozen nor starved. (Niemi 2003: 314)
One gets the feeling that the translator feels that dotting a few Swedish or Finnish words here and there is enough to make the novel feel foreign – instead, the reader sees something that is both clearly Scandinavian and British, as if these northern Europeans have their English language counterparts in Britain. Perhaps it would have been an idea to not simply retort to the British when there are different kinds of English in each of the five continents of the world.
Invisibility.Of course, you understand that the text is translated (as is not the case with Andersson’s rendering of The Lord of the Rings), but the translator remains invisible all the same. The text remains transparent. Venuti says
Lawrence Venuti skrev:
A translated text should be the site where a different culture emerges, where a reader gets a glimpse of a cultural other, and resistancy, a translation strategy based on an aesthetic of discontinuity, can best preserve that difference, that otherness, by reminding the reader of the gains and losses in the translation process and the unbridgeable gaps between cultures. (Venuti 1995: 306)
While Popular Music comes across as a foreign text, that is mainly because of the novel’s content rather than as a result of resistancy or discontinuity. Had these strategies been employed, the reader might have discovered something that goes further than learning a few words in a different language.
...
Final wordsAs so many others, Venuti too realises that translation “is utopian” (Venuti 2000: 498), and we have seen that neither domestication nor foreignization is a complete strategy. If one were to make a diagram akin to
Word for word - Sense for sense
it might, one is compelled to think, look like this:
Domestication - Foreignization
To those who chose a safe, comfortable translation option, foreignization might seem like a more ‘free’ form of translation. However, these two scales could never run parallel, and to some, word for word might represent foreignization. Instead, domestication and foreignization should stand alone, as concepts to bear in mind when we as struggling translators try once more to complete the impossible task of taking a text from one language into another.
ber om ursäkt för eventuella fel i texten. om jag hade tid och ork skulle jag översätta den till svenska
Logga in
Bli medlem
FAQ
Sök
) diskutera denna Guide, och hur vi bör läsa och förhålla oss till denna.