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6 Translation Analysis ……………………………………………………………………77 MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God Translation and Analysis Master Thesis Brno 2009 Author: Lucie Laníková Supervisor: PhDr. Tamara Váňová Bibliografický záznam LANÍKOVÁ, Lucie. Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Translation and Analysis: master thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2009. 107 pages. The supervisor of the master thesis is PhDr. Tamara Váňová. Anotace Stěţejním úkolem magisterské práce nazvané „Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Translation and Analysis“ je český překlad prvních tří kapitol románu afro-americké autorky Zory Neale Hurstonové Their Eyes were Watching God a jeho následná analýza. Práce dále v kapitolách věnovaných teorii pojednává o překládání příznakového jazyka, především afroamerické angličtiny, tradici pouţívání dialektu v dílech amerických autorů a jeho zachycení v českých překladech, kapitola s názvem Translation analysis se potom zabývá problémy a potíţemi, které se při překladu objevily. Annotation The primary objective of the master thesis “Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching - Translation and Analysis“ is a Czech translation of the first three chapters of the novel written by an African-American author Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God and its subsequent analysis. Further, the translation of non-standard language varieties, particularly the translation of the African American Vernacular English, the tradition of the use of dialect in American works and its rendition in Czech translations are dealt with in the theoretical chapters, problems and difficulties of the translation are discussed in the chapter called Translation analysis. 2 Klíčová slova Zora Neale Hurstonová, Their Eyes Were Watching God, afro-americká angličtina, dialekt, tradice, překlad, teorie překladu, analýza Keywords Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, African-American Vernacular English, dialect, tradition, translation, translation theory, analysis 3 Declaration I declare that I wrote this master thesis on my own and all the materials used are stated in the bibliography. I agree with the placing of this thesis in the Library of the Faculty of Education at the Masaryk University and with the access for academic purposes. Brno, December 10 2009 Lucie Laníková .............................................. 4 Acknowledgement In the first place, I would like to thank heartily to my supervisor PhDr. Tamara Váňová for her helpful comments, advice and suggestions while I was writing the thesis. Secondly, my thanks are to all the amateur readers, especially to my mother, Lenka Laníková, who helped me with their remarks on the translation. Thirdly, I thank my native speaker consultant, Robert Johnson Rogers, M.A. for explanation and demonstration of problematic expressions and finally my thanks are to all those who supported me in any way while I was working on the thesis. 5 Table of Contents Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………..9 1 Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God ……………………………12 1.1 Zora Neale Hurston‟s Life ………………………………………………………….12 1.1.1 List of Zora Neale Hurston‟s published books ………………………………..13 1.1.1.1 Their Eyes Were Watching God ………………………………………..14 2 Perspectives on translation …………………………………………………………….16 2.1 What is translation? ………………………………………………………………...16 3 Translation of non-standard language varieties ……………………………………...19 3.1 Translating African American Vernacular English (AAVE) ………………………21 3.1.1 Translating African American Vernacular English into Czech ……………….23 4 Tradition of African American Vernacular English in American literary works and dealing with the translation of dialect into Czech …………………………………..25 4.1 Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin ……………………………………….25 4.2 Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ………………………………..28 4.3 Langston Hughes: The Best of Simple and Ku Klux ………………………………..29 4.4 Richard Wright: Native Son ………………………………………………………...31 4.5 John Oliver Killens: And Then We Heard the Thunder ……………………………32 4.6 Ishmael Reed: Flight to Canada ……………………………………………………33 4.7 Alice Walker: The Color Purple …………………………………………………...34 4.8 Toni Morrison: Beloved …………………………………………………………….35 4.9 Octavia E. Butler: Wild Seed and Dawn ……………………………………………36 6 4.10 Barbara Neely: Blanche among the Talented Tenth ………………………………36 5 The translation of the first three chapters from the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston …………………………………………………………38 6 Translation analysis ……………………………………………………………………77 6.1 Style of Their Eyes Were Watching God …………………………………………..77 6.1.1 Style of my translation ………………………………………………………...78 6.1.1.1 Rendition of the white mistress‟s speech in Czech …………………….80 6.1.1.2 Tense changes in English ………………………………………………82 6.1.1.3 Punctuation in a part of direct speech ………………………………….82 6.2 Translation of proper names ……………………………………………………….83 6.2.1 Translation of “Nanny” …………………………………………………….....83 6.3 Understanding of a text ………………………………………………………….....84 6.3.1 Understanding individual words but not in context …………………………...84 6.3.2 Difficulty with Czech expressions ………………………………………….....84 6.3.2.1 Personal difficulty with Czech expressions ………………………….....87 6.3.3 Specific terms ……………………………………………………………........88 6.3.4 Different linguistic and paralinguistic experience ………………………….....88 6.3.4 1 Omitting information …………………………………………………...89 6.3.4.2 Adding information ………………………………………………….....90 6.3.4.3 Analogy ………………………………………………………………...90 6.3.5 The relation of a thought and an expression ………………………………......92 6.3.6 Rendering metaphorical expressions ……………………………………….....93 6.3.7 Ambiguity in the text ……………………………………………………….....94 6.4 Neologisms …………………………………………………………………………95 6.5 Up-to-date non-standard expressions ………………………………………………96 7 6.6 „Unfindable‟ words …………………………………………………………………97 6.7 Amateur readers‟ perception of the translation of Their Eyes Were Watching God………………………………………………………………………………………99 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………102 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………….103 8 Introduction When I was to choose the topic of my bachelor thesis I was rather helpless and therefore peeked at topics that were suggested by the English department. Even though I did not want to write a literary thesis, one woman author caught my eye. At the time, I did not know that Zora Neale Hurston was such an established American writer. I had not heard about her before so I immediately started to do a little research in order to find out more information about her. After some investigation, I was surprised to discover that she was an important African-American author of the beginning of the twentieth century, a member of a literary, cultural and social movement called Harlem Renaissance, who was very famous at the beginning of her career but who felt into oblivion and died completely forgotten. I felt embarrased because of the lack of knowledge and decided to dedicate my bachelor thesis to the investigation of her life as well as to the cognition of the African-American history, tradition and culture. Throughout the whole investigating and writing process I was constantly remembering a respectable and honorable black woman, Tyjuana Thomas, I briefly encountered and who I will never forget for her attitude to life. When collecting sources for my bachelor thesis, I naturally came across Hurston‟s most acclaimed as well as discussed work Their Eyes Were Watching God published in 1937 and after reading it I tried to find its Czech translation. Not entirely surprised, I realized that there has not been a Czech translation of the book. I let it be for a while and when I started to think about the topic for my diploma thesis, I swiftly remembered the book and my supervisor of the bachelor thesis, Rita Collins, who had mentioned that a translation of the book could be a good idea for me for the future. Since then I did not consider working on anything else but translation for my master thesis. I wanted Czech people to know about this author and her most famous work. I was a bit worried about being able to translate as I had not had much experience with translating but I was told that I can do a translation thesis even if I am not an experienced translator. 9 I gathered books, enrolled in the translation seminars and hoped to get better before I started to work on the translation. There was one moment when I panicked. It was just before submitting the topic to the information system when my teacher, Martin Němec, I thought I was going to consult my thesis with, told me that he could not be my supervisor as he already had too many students. I was desperate and my “dream almost changed into a nightmare“. I had no idea what to do because doing a translation thesis was a sort of a package deal for me. Fortunately, he advised me to contact another teacher, Tamara Váňová, who agreed to be the supervisor of my diploma thesis. I am very thankful to her for the opportunity. At the very beginning I was told that the translation I had chosen was rather difficult and I did not know how to interpret it but once I started translating, I completely understood. Even though Their Eyes Were Watching God is, in my opinion, an amazing book, translating it is very different from just reading it. As a reader I understood the story without knowing every single word, however, in translation, details mattered much more. I found out that some expressions are impossible to find anywhere or if found they make no sense in context. I had quite a problem with finding a correct and commonly used Czech expression of an English utterance. Nevertheless, in spite of all the troubles and hours spent on it, I am very glad that I attempeted to tackle the translation. It was very creative and I enjoyed working on it most of the time. I sometimes got desperate and thought I was going to change the book and translate something else, something easier, but a few minutes, hours or days later I could not help myself and I had to get back to it and as a matter of fact many times I was successful to come up with new and better ideas.
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