Imagination is greater than knowledge.      "Einstein"

آرام آرام خواهید مرد اگر عشق نورزید و با آنها که نمی شناسید صحبت نکنید.

آرام آرام خواهید مرد اگر آغاز نکنید و از شروع کردن هراس داشته باشید. 

آرام آرام خواهید مرد اگر عزت نفستان را از دست بدهید و کمک دیگران را رد کنید.

The productions of literary translations fall into two categories:

1. Translation of contemporary works                 (the reason for this is known)

2. Retranslation of classical literature

Why should we retranslate what has been translated in the past.

A culture in a society is a product of its age. [1] By aging cultures undergo change. So does the acceptance of some cultural norms.[2] This is why literary works of classic should be translated every now and then.

Different ways to assess a translation quality:

1. Subjective, personal, intuitive, approach. Advocates of this model are practical translators and publishers who know a little about theories of translation. They assume that some one who has practically dealt with translation can be a good evaluator of translations. This is the model used in Italy.

2. Based on Nida's "dynamic equivalent" a translation should make the same reaction in the reader as the original makes in the SL readers.

A. we cannot measure the amount of this so called reaction in the readers of the TT.

B. In case we were able we would get a marked acceptable text for the receiving culture and not adequate to the original.

3. Wilss' model is full of furtive rules when a translation is far away from the use rules widespread in the receiving culture such variance is considered as a fault of the translator.

4. Koller's method is very similar to Wilss' and has got three stages:

a. Critical analysis of the prototext

b. Comparison of ST  & TT

c. Evaluation of the translation by speakers.

5. Reiss and Vermeer's method is based on functional theory and is not applicable to literary criticism.

6. House's method is more detailed and two factors are of importance:

a. overt vs. covert translation

b. cultural filter

[1] (You may refer to Popovic's notion about aging Logos 35)

2 (For norms and acceptance refer to Toury's theory of norms in "encyclopedia of translation" Mona Baker.)

Translation evaluation seems to be formed years after critical approach to translation. Translation and translation criticism existed many years before translation assessments came to importance McAlester refers to translation evaluation as:" the placing of a value on a translation, i.e. awarding a mark, even if a binary pass/fail one." (McAlester:231) he explains translation criticism: "consisting in stating the appropriateness of a translation ; this also implies a value judgment, which need not however be a quantified one." he further continues to explain translation analysis: "is taken to be a descriptive study of the process of creating a target text out of a source text or of the relationship between the target and source texts without ascribing a value." (ibid: 231) in the end he refers to translation assessment and explains this term is used "to cover all other three procdures" (ibid: 231)

word meaning

Meaning is the kingpin of translation. What is essentially important in translation is meaning. A translator's job during translation is transferring meaning from SL to TL. How is it possible for the translator to do this multidimensional, complicated process while s/he has not realized the meaning of the ST? A translator therefore should be a semanticist. A translator may offer that the number of words in a language is large and that s/he has to allocate a lot of time to realize the meaning of words. But the problem of meaning is somewhat more complicated and more troublesome.

What is the most challenging of all is not the meaning of words in isolation but meaning of words within text. Meaning of single words in relation to other words in a text determines textual meaning of words.' The king pin of translation studies, without understanding what the text to be translated means for L2 users the translator would be hopelessly lost. This is why the translation scholar has to be a semanticist over and above every thing else. But by semanticist we mean a semanticist of text, not just of words, structures and sentences. The key concept for the semanticist of translation is textual meaning.' (Bell 1991. 79)

The translator may begin believing that the major problem is the word; It may be that there are words in the text which are new to the translator and whose meaning s/he does not know. However it soon becomes clear that, although the meaning of words are problematic in themselves, the greater problem is in meaning which derives from relationship of word to word rather than that which relates to the word in isolation. (ibid 83)

 There is no one word to one word semantic relation between different languages. A word may have many meanings and in several cases numerous meanings of a word will cause confusion and this will become worse if the words' meaning is studied in collocations, idioms, etc. In the process of translation the meaning of a word shall be recognized then by considering the semantic, syntactic and textual role of the word translation should be taken place.

Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that there is no mutual correspondence between a word and a thing, to ascribe significance becomes much more complicated. The meaning in each situation appears as an effect of the underlying structure of signs. These signs themselves do not have a fixed significance, the significance exists only in the individual. "Sign is only what it represents for someone."

Moreover words tend to have meanings which seem not to be found in any dictionary. According to relevance theory the cognitive process of achieving cognitive effects takes place in the following way:

'The perceptual input systems respond automatically to stimuli which are very likely to have cognitive effects, quickly converting them into the sort of representational formats that are appropriate  inputs to the conceptual inferential systems; these systems then integrate them, as efficiently as possible, with some accessible subset of existing representations to achieve as many cognitive effects as possible.' Sperber & Wilson (1986) and Sperber & Wilson (1995, 261-66). We find meaning by using imagination, reason, and trial and error. In the case of Time is like a river. The meaning may be that both life and a river go on endlessly.

However it seems Nida's approach to word meaning is more specific; he classifies word meaning into two categories: 1. referential meaning 2. connotative meaning. In chapter four of his book he proposes that most words have got more than one meaning and a translator should differentiate the meaning of words in two ways: syntactic and semotactic marking. "In many cases, the particular meaning of a word that is intended is clearly specified by the grammatical constructions in which it occurs; this is what we will refer as syntactic marking. In other cases, the specific meaning of a word which is intended is marked by the interaction of that term with the meaning of other terms in its environment. That is, the fact that term A is found in the context of term B means that only sense X of term A will fit. This condition by the meanings of surrounding terms we will call semotactic marking." (Nida, 56)

"As Russian formalists believe, in literature nothing is created new but recreated after many recreations." (Blanc, 1991: 10) [my translation] Nothing is written new when the new thing was written in the past. It seems as if Gilgamesh has affected many epics that were written after it. The well-known epic of Hercules is deemed to overlap the epic of Gilgamesh in many cases: "When he was eighteen he killed the Cithaeron lion". (Eliade, 1992: 100) [my translation] Killing of lions was a trait for every hero in many epics. Gilgamesh as the first epic ever known is identified to have exerted its effect in this regard. The following parts are of the epic of Gilgamesh (Monshizadeh, 1383: 81):   

"If you are Gilgamesh, who killed the Guardian,

Who destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,

Who slew lions in the mountain passes,

Who grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and

Killed him" [my translation]

every person deserves a private life.....

Iran denounces McCain's remarks about cigarettes

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's 1Foreign Ministry has condemned remarks by Republican presidential 2candidate John McCain that exporting cigarettes could be a way of killing Iranians.

The state-owned English language IRAN daily has quoted ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini denouncing the remarks as "inappropriate" and describing McCain's attitude as "regretful."

Last week, McCain was asked about an Associated Press report that the U.S. exported $158 million worth of cigarettes to Iran during the Bush administration in spite of restrictions on U.S. imports.

"Maybe that's a way of killing them," McCain said. He then said that he was joking.

Iran has officially announced that it supports neither U.S. presidential campaign but does hope the election will bring a change in U.S. foreign policy.

1

Foreign Ministry:

Secretary of state  

Ministry of foreign affairs

Foreign office:

U.K. government department: in the United Kingdom and some other countries, the department of the government that is responsible for relations with other countries

State Department:

U.S. department of foreign affairs: the department of the United States government that deals with foreign affairs and is headed by a Cabinet secretary and staffed by career foreign service officers

 2

Candidate:

[Early 17th century. Directly or via French candidat from Latin candidatus , literally “clothed in white”; from the white togas worn by candidates for election in ancient Rome.]

History never stops. It progresses ceaselessly day and night. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop Geography.

Augusto Monterroso (1921 - )

Guatemalan-born Mexican writer.

The Rest is Silence, "Aforismos, dichos, etc."

I'm trying to hold on to some old, useful feelings of obscurity. If I had to do it over again, I'm pretty sure I'd use a pseudonym during publication years. It's a great pity that noms de plume have gone out of fashion.

J. D. Salinger (1919 - )

U.S. novelist.

Declining to appear in one of critic Kenneth Tynan's British television programs.

Letter to Kenneth Tynan

In discussing extremes of unorthodoxy in science I consider it a waste of time to give rational arguments. Those who are in agreement do not need to be educated about such trivial matters, and trying to enlighten those who disagree is like trying to write on water.

Martin Gardner (1914 - )

U.S. philosopher, mathematician, and writer.

Science: Good, Bad and Bogus

باعث خوشحالیمه که آمار باز دیدکنندگان امسال از وبلاگم رو بهتون ارایه می کنم. از اینکه به این وبلاگ علاقه نشون می دید ازتون متشکرم و امیدورام مطالب اون تا اندازه ای براتون قابل استفاده باشه.

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