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Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies Adaptation This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 28 Sep 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies Mona Baker, Gabriela Saldanha Adaptation Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315678627-3 Georges L. Bastin Published online on: 09 Oct 2019 How to cite :- Georges L. Bastin. 09 Oct 2019, Adaptation from: Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies Routledge Accessed on: 28 Sep 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315678627-3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 10 Adaptation interpreting; research methodologies, The initial divide between adaptation and translation; social systems; structura- translation dates back to Cicero and Horace, tion; symbolic interactionism; technology, both of whom referred to the interpres (trans- interpreting; technology, translation lator) as working word for word and distin- guished this method from what they saw as freer Further reading but entirely legitimate alternatives. The different Buzelin, H. (2005) ‘Unexpected Allies: How interpretations given to the Horatian verse Nec Latour’s network theory could complement verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus interpres (and Bourdieusian analyses in translation studies’, you will not render word for word [like a] faith- The Translator 11(2): 193–218. ful translator) – irrespective of whether they An overview of ANT’s main concepts, merits were for or against the word-for-word precept – and limitations, its relevance to translation effectively reveal the logic by which adaptations and interpreting studies and how it could be could be recognized. combined with Bourdieu’s social theory to The golden age of adaptation was in the sev- bypass some of its pitfalls. enteenth and eighteenth centuries, the epoch Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An of the Belles infidèles, which started in France introduction to actor-network theory, Oxford: and then spread to the rest of the world. The Clarendon. very free translations carried out during this Explains ANT’s main concepts and assump- period were justified in terms of the need for tions, and offers clarifications based on mis- foreign texts to be adapted to the tastes and understandings and abuses that ANT has habits of the target culture since those tastes experienced since the 1980s. and habits were considered superior. The nine- teenth century witnessed a reaction to a free- MARÍA SIERRA CÓRDOBA SERRANO dom that was seen as infidelity, but adaptation continued to predominate in the theatre. In the twentieth century, the proliferation of techni- cal, scientific and commercial documents has Adaptation given rise to a preference for transparency in translation, with an emphasis on efficient com- The notion of adaptation has often been dis- munication; this could be seen as licencing a cussed, supported or severely criticized in the form of adaptation which involves rewriting field of translation studies. But despite being a text for a new readership while maintaining frequently dismissed as an abusive form of some form of equivalence between source and translation, or not translation at all, adapta- target texts. tion is frequently listed among the possible Many historians and scholars of translation valid solutions to various translational diffi- continue to take a negative view of adaptation, culties. Moreover, the idea that all translators dismissing the phenomenon as a distortion, fal- engage in adaptation, consciously or otherwise, sification or censorship, but it is rare to find clear is implicit in the recognition that translations definitions of the terminology used in discuss- always undergo what Venuti calls a process of ing this and other related controversial concepts. domestication. Adaptation may be understood as a set of translative interventions which result in a text Main definitions that is not generally accepted as a translation but is nevertheless recognized as representing Bastin (1998) offers a comprehensive defini- a source text. As such, the term may embrace tion of adaptation applied to texts used for numerous other notions such as appropriation, teaching purposes and in handbooks, but the domestication, imitation and rewriting. Strictly concept continues to be part of a fuzzy meta- speaking, the concept of adaptation requires language used by translation studies scholars. recognition of translation as non-adaptation; for Today, adaptation is considered only one type this reason, the history of adaptation is parasitic of intervention on the part of translators, with on historical concepts of translation. a distinction being drawn between deliberate Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:52 28 Sep 2021; For: 9781315678627, entry3, 10.4324/9781315678627-3 Adaptation 11 interventions (Bastin 2007) and deviations from while such writers start from the principle that literality. nothing is untranslatable, others like Berman As one of a number of translation strategies, (1984) claim that the adaptation of metalan- adaptation can be defined in a technical sense. guage is an unnecessary form of exoticism. The best-known definition is that of Vinay and Definitions of adaptation reflect widely Darbelnet (1958), who list adaptation as their varying views vis-à-vis the issue of remaining seventh translation procedure. This definition ‘faithful’ to the original text. Some argue that views adaptation as a local rather than global adaptation is necessary precisely in order to keep strategy, employed to achieve an equivalence the message intact (at least on the global level), of situations wherever cultural mismatches are while others see it as a betrayal of the original encountered. author’s expression. For the former, the refusal Adaptation is sometimes regarded as a form to adapt confines the reader to an artificial of translation which is characteristic of partic- world of foreignness; for the latter, adaptation ular genres, most notably drama. Indeed, it is is tantamount to the destruction and violation in relation to drama translation that adapta- of the original text. Even those who recognize tion has been most frequently studied. Brisset the need for adaptation in certain circumstances (1986:10) views adaptation as a reterritorializa- are obliged to admit that, if remaining faithful tion of the original work and an “annexation” to the text is a sine qua non of translation, then in the name of the audience of the new version. there is a point at which adaptation ceases to be Santoyo (1989:104) similarly defines adaptation translation at all. as a means of naturalizing the play for a new Another author who questions the systematic milieu, the aim being to achieve the same effect differentiation of adaptation and translation is that the work originally exercised, but with an Gambier (1992), who points out that there is an audience from a different cultural background evident gap in defining the notion of adaptation, (Merino Àlvarez 1992, 1994). Adaptation is also and in clarifying which line a translation has to associated with advertising, audiovisual and cross to become an adaptation. Gambier notes inter-semiotic translation, and localization. The that many translation procedures suggested by emphasis here is on preserving the character Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), other than adap- and function of the original text, in preference tation (such as omission and condensation), to preserving the form or even the seman- are adaptations nonetheless. He examines clas- tic meaning, especially where acoustic and/ sic examples of translations that are commonly or visual factors have to be taken into account. regarded as adaptations and concludes that the Other genres, such as children’s literature, also labelling of any text produced by a translator as require the re-creation of the message according an adaptation is often a hasty personal judge- to the sociolinguistic needs of a different read- ment that has little to do with reasoned anal- ership (Puurtinen 1995, Oittinen 2000; O’Sul- ysis. Asking a translator to produce a text that livan 2005; Alvstad 2008a; Lathey 2015). The favours the target audience at the same time as main features of this type of adaptation are the avoiding any kind of linguistic, semiotic or cul- use of summarizing techniques, paraphrase and tural adaptation is untenable. This is precisely omission. the ambiguity of adaptation Gambier refers to in Adaptation is, perhaps, most easily justified the title of his paper: ‘Adaptation: une ambiguïté when the original text is of a metalinguistic à interroger’. nature, that is, when the subject matter of the text is language itself. This is especially so with didactic works on language
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