Research Articles in Interpretation and Translation
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KSU - COLT’s RAIT King Saud University Research Articles In Interpretation and Translation Issue 1 Spring 2014 - Spring 2014 2 Contents To Our Dear 4 Readers… Articles in the Field of 6 Translation RAIT MAGAZINE Articles in the Field of 171 Interpretation Issue 1, Spring 2014 Brief APA Guidelines 184 3 TO OUR DEAR READERS... RAIT is a compilation of research articles in the fields of translation and interpretation. All the articles presented in this magazine are written by a new generation of researchers; students enrolled in the "Research Methodology" course offered at the College of Languages & Translation, KSU. I am overjoyed to have been part of this wonderful research journey with my fellow research students. Their enthusiasm and dedication was beyond impressive which gives me great hope for a brighter, better-informed generation. I'm truly proud of my Spring '14's "Research Methodology" students; a huge thanks goes out to them for their great efforts. Also, my deep gratitude to Mrs. Dania and Dr. Shadia for their continued support in such endeavors. Happy reading! ~ Dina M. Al-Sibai, Course Instructor 4 5 KSU - COLT’s RAIT Difficulties in Translating Humor By Fatma El Shafie ne of the most popular human traits is having a good sense of humor. Whether read, or heard, a good joke is welcomed by most people, since a good hearty laugh can help them O forget about the negative things in their lives. As wonderful as that might be, unfortu- nately, humor can also be a cause for aggravation, tension, or even conflict if the culture behind it is not un- derstood by the receiver. Therefore, many difficulties face translators when attempting to translate humor. Maybe a good place to start is by defining humor. Attardo and Raskin define humor as: "An act per- formed through linguistic or nonlinguistic means by any of the participants. This act is the result of two in- congruous scripts. The producer of this act may or may not have had the intention of creating laughter or smile(s)." (as cited in Ziyaeemehr & Kumar, 2014, p. 92). According to this definition, there are two types of humor: linguistic and non-linguistic humor. Although translating non-linguistic humor can be hard, it is not impossible most of the time. However, translating linguistic jokes can cross the line into the realm of untranslatability. Linguistic humor relies on rhetoric in which the humorous effect comes from the witty use of the lan- guage itself (Han, 2011). This witty use of language can have many forms like the use of puns, idioms, homonyms, grammatical structures, prosodic features, etc. (Khair, 2009). A good example of a humorous remark using homophones is: "A: Please put on your clothes. I don’t want to see you in front of me without wearing anything. B: I’m wearing the perfume." (Han, 2011, p. 149). However the linguistic aspects of a sentence is not the only obstacle that faces translators; culture also plays a huge role in making the transla- tors' job harder when translating humor (Vandaele, n.d.). Indeed, there is a great amount of pressure placed upon the shoulders of translators in translating hu- mor. For instance, Thomas O'Neal stresses that professional translators must be able to identify the factors that contribute, or cause a funny effect in a text, and on top of that they must be able to recreate that effect in the target text (as cited in Tisgam, 2009). An opinion like that poses many problems because the ability to understand a joke, or a humorous remark, is fundamentally different from the ability to reproduce that funny effect, since producing such effect is a pure talent, that cannot be taught, nor learned, not to mention that the appreciation of humor differs from one person to another (Tisgam, 2009). 6 Tisgam also points to another difficulty that faces translators which is the old dilemma of whether to stay loyal to the source text or stray away from it when needed. When translators are confronted with a bad joke, they might ask themselves; is it their place to change it when translating into a funnier one? Or should they just stay loyal to the source text, and translate the bad joke as it is? This dilemma becomes even worse when some jokes that may seem "bad" are more connected to the source text's culture, which renders them unfunny after translation because the cultural aspect of the joke is missing (2009). Culture does not pose a problem in translating humor just because it sometimes cannot be trans- ferred, but because this particular culture can be ethically, and/or politically offensive to the target lan- guage's culture (Vandaele, n.d.). A joke like this: "Mom and Dad were trying to console Susie, whose dog, Skipper, had recently died. "You know," Mom said, "it's not so bad. Skipper's probably up in Heav- en right now, having a grand old time with God. "Susie stopped crying and asked, "What would God want with a dead dog?"" ("Funny Jokes," n.d.) would at the very least cause a level of uneasiness to Mus- lim translators, as to how they should go about translating such a joke. Although humor might be loved by most people, translating it surely is not a walk in the park, as some people might think. The process of translating humor involves facing many obstacles, and making many considerations to reach the best possible finished result. Translators who are placed under the pres- sure of having to reproduce humor, even though they might not have the talent to do so, have to consider the linguistic aspects of both languages, and they have to consider the cultures of both languages. References Funny Jokes | God's Dead Dog Joke | Comedy Central. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2014, from http:// jokes.cc.com/funny-god-jokes/06xoz6/god-s-dead-dog Han, Q. (2011). On Untranslatability of English Linguistic Humor. Retrieved from ACADEMY PUB- LISHER website: http://ojs.academypublisher.com/index.php/tpls/article/view/0102149152 Khair M. (2009). Translating arabic jokes into english. Retrieved from Yarmouk University website: http://repository.yu.edu.jo/handle/123456789/3263 Tisgam, K. H. (2009). Translating Cultural Humour: Theory and Practice. Wasit journal for humanities, 5 (9), 79-121. Retrieved from http://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=search&query=au:%22Khalida% 20Hamid%20Tisgam%20%22&uiLanguage=en Vandaele, J. (n.d.). Humor in translation. Retrieved from University of Oslo website: http://folk.uio.no/ jeroenv/Vandaele%20Humor%20in%20Translation_proofs.pdf Ziyaeemehr, A., & Kumar, V. (2014). The Relationship between Instructor Humor Orientation and Stu- dents' Report on Second Language Learning. International Journal Of Instruction, 7(1), 91-106. 7 KSU - COLT’s RAIT Translation in Films: Subtitles By Noura S. AL-Dokhayel uman eyes and ears are useful channels for collecting information from our physical world and transducing it into sensations. Media translation is an extremely difficult pro- H cess which causes translators many problems. Rendering, for example, media into a dif- ferent language becomes even more complicated when the translator translates film dialogues for the pur- pose of dubbing or subtitling. Bruździak (2012) stressed that ”translation strategies and techniques applied in the process of humour” (p. 2). The aim here is that its dubbed and subtitled in film. In fact, a deeper look into translation in films is very difficult but it is quite interesting. There are two major types of film translation: dubbing and subtitling; each of them interferes with the original text to a different extent. On the one hand, dubbing is known to be the method that modifies the source text to a large extent and thus makes it familiar to the target audience through domestication. On the other hand, subtitling, is the form that alters the source text to the least possible extent and enables the target audience to experience the foreign language and be aware of its 'foreignness' at all times (Dries, 1995). Figure 1. An example of subtitles in movies (“Lost In Translation,” n.d.) The relationship between image and word and the interplay of the signification systems of audiovisu- al texts shows itself in terms of cohesion and coherence between the two simultaneous narratives, the visual and verbal, in such a way that the translator finds himself/herself obliged to put into practice translation strategies capable of transmitting not only the information contained in each narrative and each code –as has been noted throughout this work– but the meaning that erupts as a result of this interaction: an added value or an extra meaning that goes beyond the mere sum of both narrations (Rabiger& Cherrier, 2013). 8 The translator that carries out the synchronization of the translation, as well as the translator of subti- tles, also represents, within the translation, changes in lighting, in perspective, or in the use of color (i.e. color vs. black and white, intentional use of certain colors, conventional meaning of colors). Changes in lighting can make necessary the different uses of orthotypography in subtitling (italics in dark scenes in which we do not know the identity of the character speaking and the order of the subtitles according to the characters ap- pearance). In these cases, the translator’s solution to this problem will then be necessarily restricted or subor- dinated to this visual code (Connolly, 2002). Film translation in the era of globalization also needs to be taken into consideration. The issue of pow- er in translation seems to be especially pertinent and applicable to contemporary cinema. As a host of transla- tion scholars have agreed recently, translation does not take place between words but rather between cultures.