A LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE MAKING An in-depth investigation into the process of a literary translation from French into Maltese CLAUDINE BORG Doctor of Philosophy ASTON UNIVERSITY October 2016 © Claudine Borg, 2016 Claudine Borg asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this thesis This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without appropriate permission or acknowledgement. 1 ASTON UNIVERSITY Title: A literary translation in the making: an in-depth investigation into the process of a literary translation from French into Maltese Name: Claudine Borg Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Date: 2016 Thesis summary: Literary translation is a growing industry with thousands of texts being published every year. Yet, the work of literary translators still lacks visibility and the process behind the emergence of literary translations remains largely unexplored. In Translation Studies, literary translation was mostly examined from a product perspective and most process studies involved short non- literary texts. In view of this, the present study aims to contribute to Translation Studies by investigating in- depth how a literary translation comes into being, and how an experienced translator, Toni Aquilina, approached the task. It is particularly concerned with the decisions the translator makes during the process, the factors influencing these and their impact on the final translation. This project places the translator under the spotlight, centring upon his work and the process leading to it while at the same time exploring a scantily researched language pair: French to Maltese. It aims to provide further insights into the different phases of the process, and written alternative translation solutions and self-revisions. A translation process research framework is adopted, and particular attention is given to the post-drafting phases of the process as the translator was closely studied while he self-revised an entire literary text. The research applies a multi-method approach by collecting data through think-aloud, ethnographic observations, interviews, draft versions, the ST and the final translation. The data elicited were triangulated and analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. A rich description of the evolution of a literary translation from first draft to publication is provided. The results show that the translation went through eight phases and nine drafts before it was published, indicating that the translation process may not necessarily be composed of three phases. Amongst other notable findings, results also challenge the deliteralisation hypothesis. The thesis concludes by underscoring the significance of thorough investigations into individual translator behaviour. Keywords: translation process research, translatorial decisions, self-revision, alternative translation solutions, phases of the translation process 2 Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank for helping me in one way or another during my PhD journey. First of all, my two supervisors, Séverine Hubscher-Davidson and Christina Schäffner, for believing in me from the very beginning. I am particularly grateful to Séverine, my main supervisor, for her constant support and encouragement, timely feedback, the many Skype meetings, for being an excellent supervisor and a kind person. I am also greatly indebted to Christina for her expert advice, inspirational comments and for continuing to advise me even after going into retirement. Thanks, too, to Olga Castro for her assistance during the final steps of the PhD, and to Dan Thomson for the sterling administrative support throughout. A special mention goes to Toni Aquilina for accepting to be part of this project and for giving so generously of his time despite his very busy schedule. This project would not have been possible without his collaboration and the data he made available. I have been very fortunate to receive invaluable advice from many prominent scholars in the field. The project was first presented during the TREC seminar in Barcelona in 2013: this was a fantastic opportunity to discuss the project in its early phases with key process researchers many of whom are quoted in this thesis. Another wonderful and enriching experience was the CETRA research summer school at KU Leuven where I received feedback and guidance from Andrew Chesterman, Dirk Delabastita, Lieven D’hulst, Peter Flynn, Yves Gambier, Daniel Gile, Arnt Jakobsen, Reine Meylearts, Franz Pöchhacker, Sara Ramos Pinto, Luc van Doorslaer and Judy Wakabayashi. I would also like to express my thanks to Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova, Ricardo Muñoz Martín, Hanna Risku and Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva with whom I had consultations as part of the Distinguished Visitors Scheme hosted by the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University. My thanks are also due to my sponsor, the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme for funding the degree, and to the School of Languages and Social Sciences for funding my conference papers at the TREC seminar, Barcelona, July 2013 and at CETRA, Antwerp, August 2015. I am grateful to colleagues at the University of Malta and the Junior College for their support over the years, especially Joseph Eynaud, Paul Xuereb, Margaret Gilson and Mario Cassar. Most importantly, I thank my family, particularly my parents, Joseph and Mary, whose support, love and patience have been unconditional, and my husband Trevor, for simply everything. This thesis is dedicated to them. 3 Table of Contents List of Abbreviations …………………………………………………………………………….7 List of Tables and Figures………………………………………………………………………..8 Chapter 1 - Introduction ...........................................................................................................11 1.1 Aims, rationale and significance of the study...............................................................11 1.2 Research Questions ......................................................................................................14 1.3 The backdrop................................................................................................................15 1.3.1 The coming into being of Maltese .......................................................................15 1.3.2 The local scene: the book market and literary translation in Malta .....................18 1.3.3 The translator .......................................................................................................19 1.3.4 The ST and its author...........................................................................................20 1.4 Structure of the thesis ...................................................................................................21 Chapter 2 – Conceptual Framework........................................................................................22 2.1 Translation process research: an overview...................................................................22 2.2 The three phases of the translation process ..................................................................25 2.3 Decisions in the translation process..............................................................................27 2.3.1 Definitions............................................................................................................27 2.3.2 The structure of decisions ....................................................................................29 2.3.3 Conscious and unconscious decisions..................................................................32 2.4 Alternative translation solutions, postponed decisions and choices.............................34 2.4.1 Choosing between ATSs......................................................................................36 2.4.2 Written ATSs: empirical evidence from the literature.........................................37 2.5 Revision in TPR: an underresearched topic .................................................................38 2.5.1 Definitions............................................................................................................39 2.5.2 Self-revision.........................................................................................................41 2.5.3 The post-drafting phase........................................................................................46 2.5.4 The post-translation process and other-revision ..................................................48 2.6 Individual variation in translation processes ................................................................51 2.7 Literary translation in TPR...........................................................................................53 4 2.8 Studies of draft translations..........................................................................................54 2.9 Ethnographic approaches in TPR .................................................................................55 2.10 Case studies and generalisation in TS and TPR ...........................................................57 2.11 Summary and contribution ...........................................................................................58 Chapter 3 – Methodology and Data .........................................................................................59 3.1 Research design............................................................................................................59