Wòch Nan Dlo a

This week we looked at three ‘historical statements’ on translation: John Dryden’s “ Preface to Ovid’s Epistles ” (1680), Friedrich Schleiermacher ’s thorough investigation “On the different methods of translating” (1813) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s short essay on translation (1819). Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the latter two works were translated from early-nineteenth-century German, while the first, written in late-seventeenth-century English, presents its own challenges for the modern reader. Each of these works attempts to delineate and assess the value of different approaches to the act of translation. Dryden and Goethe both identify three kinds of translation. Dryden’s spectrum ranges from Metaphrase, or a word-for-word translation, to Paraphrase, which maintains the meaning of the text but diverges from the words themselves, to Imitation, whereby the translator assumes the freedom to diverge from the content and form of the text, to “write like one who has wr...

In his article “The Significance of Hypotheses,” Andrew Chesterman presents an enlightening new take on how we go about producing theories in Translation Studies. Chesterman acknowledges the importance of ‘Empirical Hypotheses’—propositions that can be falsified against available data—but goes on to propose the use and the usefulness, and indeed the ubiquity, of ‘Interpretive Hypotheses.’ He defines interpretative hypotheses as a way of understanding or describing some complex thing by comparing it to something simpler and more familiar. He notes that we do this all the time; we constantly make use of metaphors in academic and non-academic discourse. Chesterman suggests that this use of metaphors—of seeing something as something else—is a useful and undervalued aspect of theory production in Translation Studies. This being the case, it opens up exciting avenues for research within the discipline, since any metaphor one may encounter presents an opportunity for analysis. Consider...

This week’s readings were an informative look at the origin and the approximate structure of the Translation Studies discipline. Holmes’s influential 1972 article is a useful, if limited, examination of the various components of the nascent discipline as it existed at the time. Venuti’s introduction from the 2012 Reader adds important nuances and additional consideration to Holmes’s earlier description, and also sheds light on some trends and historical shifts within the discipline. In my opinion, however, the most interesting and the most significant point raised by the three texts was Pym’s comment on the 1958 debate in the Soviet Union, and what followed. He describes the schism between the “literary people” and the “linguists” who both wanted to have the final say in how translation should be studied. In 1958 they came to a compromise, realizing that both methods could effectively be used in conjunction in order to study the works and processes relating to translation. The key he...

Hello everyone. Bonswa tout moun, and bonsoir à tous et à toutes. My name is Matt Robertshaw and I'm a first year PhD student in history here at York. I am permitted to take a course outside of history and I'm passionate about language and communication and I'm interested translation for its own sake, so I thought I might benefit from this course. I've studied French since Kindergarten and, more recently, have been learning Haitian Creole, or Kreyòl. I wrote my MA thesis on language politics in twentieth-century Haiti. I've dabbled in translation. I took a few translation courses during my undergrad at Guelph. I published an English translation of a Haitian novel through a micro-press in Quebec, and more recently I co-translated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe  into Haitian Creole, along with a Haitian friend. The name of my blog refers to a Haitian Creole proverb: "Wòch nan dlo pa konnen doulè wòch nan solèy." The rock in the water does...