The Translation Process Series Multiple Perspectives from Teaching to Professional Practice
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The Translation Process Series Multiple perspectives from teaching to professional practice Mariona Sabaté-Carrové and Lorena Baudo (Eds.) Volume 1 The Translation Process Series Multiple perspectives from teaching to professional practice Mariona Sabaté-Carrové and Lorena Baudo (Eds.) Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida Lleida, 2021 Edited by: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida, 2021 Layout: Edicions i Publicacions de la Universitat de Lleida Cover photo: Leone, Ulrike (2017). Gear. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/es/users/ ulleo-1834854/. Date of last visit: May 7th, 2021 ISBN 978-84-9144-281-3 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommer- cial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, DOI 10.21001/translation_process_series_volume1.2021 visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/. Table of contents Foreword ...................................................................................................................7 The editors PAPERS Two teaching experiences in translation: Aiming to enrich differing university programs through an integrated and cross-cultural project ..............19 Lorena Guadalupe Baudo and Mariona Sabaté-Carrové Everyday language in Harold Pinter’s The Applicant. Theatrical translation challenges in online classroom teaching ............................................................29 Mariazell-Eugènia Bosch Fábregas Preconceptions from pre-professionals about MTPE ...............................................41 Laura Bruno, Antonio Miloro, Paula Estrella and Mariona Sabaté-Carrové A Founding Father’s Translation: Manuel Belgrano and How Translation Can Shape a Continent .......................................................................................45 Antuel D’Adam Inexperience and Experiences of an Interpreter and Translator .............................55 Gabriela Lorenzo Translation of Perrault’s fairy tale “Peau d’Âne” (1694) in Revista literaria: novelas y cuentos (1940) from French into Spanish ..............................................61 Marina Pedrol-Aguilà The Pathetic Translator: Dialect as Untranslatable ..................................................69 Anushiya Ramaswamy INTERVIEWS A professor’s views on translation ...........................................................................79 An interview with Marta Susana Baduy A student’s perspective on the translation process. A current EFL teacher with a solid philological background who’s dabbed her toes on translation ......83 An interview with Gemma Benseny Bonet A personal experience of the lights and shadows of translating literature .............89 An interview with Marta Giné Janer The musical possibilities of translation as a creative activity ..................................93 An interview with Annjo Klungervik Greenall The power of intuition in translating literature ....................................................101 An interview with Miguel Koleff Reflections on translation and philology ...............................................................105 An interview with Matías López López Passion and happiness, key elements of a vocational translator ...........................113 An interview with Txema Martínez The importance of reflecting dialect in translation ...............................................119 An interview with Anushiya Ramaswamy Revisiting my experience with literary translation ...............................................123 An interview with Cristina Solé Castells An approach to translation from a Germanist’s point of view ..............................127 An interview with Eduard Tapia Yepes The translation process in a globalised world ........................................................133 An interview with Isabelle Weiss Reflections on literary translation .........................................................................143 An interview with Brian Worsfold INDEX OF AUTHORS .........................................................................................153 Foreword The editors Today, as I was coming back from my local coffee shop, after a nice chat with Gemma, the shop owner, something she said was still spinning around in my mind. It was 7:45, and I made a remark about how marveled I was at how everything was so nice and tidy every morning, and at such an early time. “Well, you know, the secret is,” she said. “we’re here at 6”. I’m still reflecting on what she said, and I think to myself … ‘this is it, this is exactly what translation is about’. Certainly, what everybody sees, the translated text (oral or written), is only part of the whole translation task. Searching for words, understanding the text, transferring it successfully and naturally into the target language is an essential part of translation without which the product would never see the light of day. What we, the customers, see is the latte, the crunchy croissants, the fingerlickingly delicious slices of marble cake, the cinnamon rolls. The journey from home to the workplace, the hustle and bustle in the kitchen, the rolled-up sleeves, the broom sweeping the floors, and the cloth cleaning the table tops … these are the things we do not see when we visit the local coffee shop. But without them, my morning joy would not be complete. This e-volume focuses on this quiet, backroom task … on the secrets that go on behind the scenes in translation. We want to thank everyone who participated in this volume for their generous contribution in revealing their techniques, their strengths and their weaknesses behind their production. We hope to bring out a second volume on this topic, as we feel there is much interest in discovering how each of us have such different approaches to this much-needed and essentially human activity. Is translation really a process? Translation is a process by which the genetic code contained within a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule is decoded to produce a specific sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide chain. THE TRANSLATION PROCESS SERIES 7 FOREWORD In this definition of the word “translation” as applied to biology, one word stands out: process translatio is a “carrying across” or “bringing across”, as the Latin “translatio” derives from the perfect passive participle, “translatum,” of “transferre” (“to transfer” — from “trans,” “across” + “ferre,” “to carry” or “to bring”). In fact, the modern Romance, Germanic and Slavic European languages have generally formed their own equivalent terms for this concept after the Latin model, i.e. after “transferre” or after the kindred “traducere” (“to bring across” or “to lead across”). In fact, this is precisely what translation actually means, in its purely linguistic sense. A translation is indeed a process, a series of actions that produce a change or a development from its source to its target. While on the one hand everyone would agree that translation is a mentally- demanding task, on the other hand, every single translator will follow a different translation process. And it is precisely the latter that can be considered the scope of this volume. What is the rationale behind this volume? Over the years, writers, scholars, translators, linguists, and language teachers have expressed their opinions on how to accomplish a successful translation. Although many of them argue that translation is an impossible task, for example, Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, others find it a necessary and feasible endeavour, for example, those supporting the functionalist and the skopostheorie approaches like Christiane Nord, Hans J. Vermeer, and Katharina Reiss. Among the many quotes on translation, there is one which encapsulates its mysterious and ambiguous nature, and it is one by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin: Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches. Regardless of the views on translatability vs. untranslatability, the history of mankind would not be complete without the existence of a mediation of sorts between cultures that bridges gaps and brings people together. If only for that reason, translation is already worth investigating. As translators, lecturers and researchers, we have come across plenty of professionals and amateurs who produce target texts, teachers and students involved in translation pedagogy, and other actors who are paid for a marketable product. Surprisingly, although the essence of translation is the procedure whereby a text undergoes a THE TRANSLATION PROCESS SERIES 8 FOREWORD series of changes, most attention is devoted to the final result at the expense of its most interesting part: the actual process. Added to that, the process of translation is more akin to an art than a skill in that it converts feelings and thoughts from the source language into a target language. Regarding this, Mona Baker quoted Lanna Castellanos in In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation (1992, London: Routledge). Castellanos wrote in 1988: Our profession is based on knowledge and experience. It has the longest apprenticeship of any profession. Not until thirty do you start to be useful as a translator, not until fifty do you start to be in your prime. The first