Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce 2011 Mgr. Kristýna Staňková 1 Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English-language Translation Mgr. Kristýna Staňková Environmental Literature in Czech Translation: Six Case Studies Master‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D. 2011 2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. 3 I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D., for her guidance, inspiration, suggestions and encouragement. I would also like to thank Prof. Erazim Kohák and PhDr. Rudolf Kolářský for suggestions of the translation of Silent Spring, and my husband for his patience and support. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 6 2. Theoretical Part .................................................................................................... 9 2.1. Translation Studies and Environmental Literature ........................................ 9 2.2. Strategies and features in the translation ................................................... 10 2.2.1. Explicitation ............................................................................................. 10 2.2.2. Simplification and normalization .............................................................. 11 2.2.3. Compensation ......................................................................................... 12 2.2.4. Interference ............................................................................................. 12 2.2.5. Terminological issues .............................................................................. 13 2.2.5.1. Standardized terminology ........................................................................ 14 2.2.5.2. Literal translation ..................................................................................... 15 2.2.5.3. Neologisms .............................................................................................. 15 2.2.6. Translating culture: Domestication and foreignization strategies ............ 16 3. Practical Part ...................................................................................................... 18 3.1 Research project .......................................................................................... 18 3.2 Corpus ......................................................................................................... 18 3.3 Methodology ................................................................................................ 20 4. Translation analysis ........................................................................................... 20 4.1 Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac ....................................................... 20 4.2 Rachel Carson: Silent Spring ....................................................................... 39 4.3 John Seed: Thinking like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings ...... 50 4.4 Arne Naess: Ecology, community and lifestyle: outline of an ecosophy ...... 61 4.5 Gary Snyder: A place in space: ethics, aesthetics and watersheds ............ 81 4.6 Jared Diamond: Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed .......... 102 5. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 119 6. Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 123 7. Summary .......................................................................................................... 129 8. Resumé............................................................................................................ 130 5 1. Introduction Ever since a nature-writing classic, H. D. Thoreau‟s Walden, was first translated into Czech in 1902 (by Zdeněk Franta as Walden, čili, Život v lesích), English-written literature dealing with nature, environment and ecology has been more or less successfully transmitted to the Czech readership. Walden is an exemplary case of publishing interest in this topic, with the total of three different translations (in 1924 by Miloš Seifert and in 1991 by Josef Schwarz) and six editions. However, the historical circumstances interrupted the development of translation of nature writing and environmental literature in Czechoslovakia during the period between 1948 and 1989, presumably for the reason that the citizens of a socialist country were not supposed to indulge in things natural rather than to develop a socialist paradise and, more importantly, were definitely not to question the self-righteousness of the industrial urban society, let alone its impact on the environment. Nevertheless, the affairs changed radically in 1990s„ and both publishers and translators quickly discovered new opportunities, trends and movements in literature. As independent publishing houses were established, environmentally-oriented literature became an alternative and with environmental issues gaining more publicity, this type of literature attracted readers. Despite this development, it is still considered a minor genre, which relies mostly on translated works (mostlly from English) with only a little national production (exceptions exist, Václav Cílek being one of the most prolific and well-known authors dedicated to environmental writing). 6 Differences in publishing exist as well – most of the books dealing with environment and ecology are published in small and specialized publishing houses, while large publishers only focus on bestsellers or promising titles (e.g. the case of Jon Krakauer‟s Into the Wild that has had already two editions in Czech, the second one (published by Columbus) clearly motivated by the launch of the eponymous movie rather than by, let‟s say, growing interest in the phenomenon of American wilderness). In this thesis my aim is to introduce the problematics of Czech translation of English-written environmental literature and analyse six non- fiction works by various authors (Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, John Seed, Arne Naess, Gary Snyder and Jared Diamond) and their translations into Czech, each of which is characterized by different translation strategies. However, the analysis is also intended to show whereas universal features appear as well and whether these could be seen as direct effect of the fact that these translations are restricted to the topic of ecology. The theoretical background of my research is based on some of the central issues of translation studies, namely translation universals with particular focus on cultural explicitation, taking into account also simplification and normalization. Moreover, terminology is in many aspects the core theme of the research and domestication and foreignization strategies, as well as the problems of interference and literal translation, are discussed as well. As for the structure of the thesis, the theoretical aspects are discussed in the first, theoretical part. The practical part is divided into two chapters – chapter 3 offers a short introduction to the corpus material and the methods and chapter 4 is concerned exclusively with the translation analysis, 7 represented by six case studies ordered chronologically according to the date of publishing of the source text, each of which deals with one work and its translation. The conclusion then sums up the main findings and proposes areas for further research and discussion. 8 2. Theoretical Part 2.1.1. Translation Studies and Environmental Literature It is evident that certain genres and fields have received much greater attention within the discipline of translation studies than others – Bible translation or translation of poetry are some of the examples of popular topics in the study of literary translation, while medical and legal translations have long occupied top position in the study of non-literary translation. On the other hand, ecology and environmental studies are more of a niche in translation studies, represented by only a few research projects that focus exclusively on terminology (e.g. Pascaline Dury‟s compilation of a bilingual diachronic corpus of ecology) (Dury 5). With regard to environmental literature1 and its relation to translation studies, one most probably arrives at the conclusion that this particular type of literature is so marginal that it can hardly gain any interest of TS scholars. Nevertheless, translation and environmental literature are closely related as the latter is becoming more widespread and therefore needs to be translated into other languages, and the problems faced by the translators go beyond the simple terminological issues. The reason is that environmental literature, particularly its non-fiction component, is characterised by multidisciplinarity, which requires additional skills from the translators, but it is 1 As a working definition of the concept „environmental literature‟ I would draw on definitions by Scott Slovic, Bill McKibben and Patrick D. Murphy: environmental literature can be understood as encompassing various genres (Slovic 888) in which celebration of nature is one of the main aspects, but “it moves beyond it, seeking answers as well as consolation, embracing controversy, sometimes sounding an alarm” (McKibben xxii) Finally, it is not limiting itself to the description of the natural world and/or