Conference Presentations by Owen Harrington Fernández
Culturally-orientated translation studies no longer consider the source text and the target text ... more Culturally-orientated translation studies no longer consider the source text and the target text as purely linguistic samples of language (Ritva Leppihalme, 1997). In recent decades, the ‘cultural turn’ has established a trend in translation scholarship that regards translation as a medium for intercultural communication. The focus of this paper, then, is an empirical analysis of the intercultural transposition of references to popular culture from the source text, John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1959), to the Spanish target text, ‘Corre, Conejo’ (1990). This paper will discuss the translation strategies used to represent popular culture in the translation. In this regard, the analysis will employ semiotic and intertextual theories as a means to analysing cultural losses when the source reference is omitted in the target text, or when the translation strategy fails to transfer the reference with all its sociocultural polysemic meanings. The transposition of popular culture references requires a consideration of the dual function of the references in the source text: (1) they are representative of contemporary, quotidian source culture, and (2) the references also function as a leitmotif that binds a character to a theme in the narrative. Thus a misrepresentation or non-representation of the references would result in a target text that is impoverished in two ways: the target text will be less representative of the source culture, and the target references will not function as a leitmotif that binds a character to a theme.
Culturally-orientated translation studies no longer consider the source text and the target text ... more Culturally-orientated translation studies no longer consider the source text and the target text as purely linguistic samples of language (Ritva Leppihalme, 1997). In recent decades, the ‘cultural turn’ has established a trend in translation scholarship that regards translation as a medium for intercultural communication. At present, however, there is a paucity of research aimed at exploring the transposition of how characters in a novel communicate amongst themselves, and how their social identity is forged in said communications. To that end, this paper will carry out an empirical analysis on the John Updike’s novel Rabbit Redux and its Spanish translation, ‘El regreso de Conejo’ (2003, trans. by Iris Menéndez).
Character identities are constructed through various literary devices, but among these, dialogue is of special interest because it is through the graphic representation of characters’ speech patterns that the reader may discern culture-specific idiolects and sociolects. These sociolinguistic paradigms of dialogue translation have always represented something of an impasse in Translation Studies. This, no doubt, is due to the interlinguistic and intercultural differences that oftentimes lead this type of scholarly work into the vacuum of ‘untranslatability.’ This paper takes the view that the C.S Peirce’s theory of signs, and in particular, his tripartite of signs (symbol, icon, and index) offers translation scholars a valuable methodological tool that can shed new light on the subtle intricacies involved in the process of translating dialogue.
Papers by Owen Harrington Fernández
Translation and Literature, 2021
Doctoral thesis by Owen Harrington Fernández
Despite the vast amount of research on translation in recent decades, the issue of fictive dialo... more Despite the vast amount of research on translation in recent decades, the issue of fictive dialogue has yet to gain prominence in the field. Viewed from a monolingual perspective, dialogue is already problematic in that it defies a concrete definition. It is written language, yet its function is to represent oral discourse. From a translation perspective and beyond this ontological conundrum, dialogue warrants consideration because it is a crucial characterisation device. The illusion of communicative immediacy that authors create by removing themselves as proxy not only allows characters to interact with one another directly, but also allows readers to observe the behaviour of characters without the intrusion of the narrator, thus raising the issue of how characters perform their identity through language. With this in mind, the overarching question this thesis asks is the following: if the language characters use in dialogue changes, as it must do in translation, how does this change affect how they perform their identity through language?
This project compares John Updike’s “Rabbit” books and their Spanish translations to explore whether the linguistic identity of the main character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, his wife, Janice, and the African-American community, are codified in the target dialogue. With regards to translating Harry Angstrom’s voice, the focus is on transposing his source text idiolect in order to reflect salient character attributes; the focus with regards to the African-American characters is on finding a suitable target language vernacular that constructs an intratextual speech community; finally, the focus for Janice’s voice is on reflecting her gender in Spanish. Informed by a theoretical framework constructed with translation, sociolinguistic and semiotic theory, the analyses describe the translation shifts and losses that are in evidence in the professional translations, and put forward alternatives that recast the voice of the characters in line with the identity described in the source narrative.
Book Reviews by Owen Harrington Fernández
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Conference Presentations by Owen Harrington Fernández
Character identities are constructed through various literary devices, but among these, dialogue is of special interest because it is through the graphic representation of characters’ speech patterns that the reader may discern culture-specific idiolects and sociolects. These sociolinguistic paradigms of dialogue translation have always represented something of an impasse in Translation Studies. This, no doubt, is due to the interlinguistic and intercultural differences that oftentimes lead this type of scholarly work into the vacuum of ‘untranslatability.’ This paper takes the view that the C.S Peirce’s theory of signs, and in particular, his tripartite of signs (symbol, icon, and index) offers translation scholars a valuable methodological tool that can shed new light on the subtle intricacies involved in the process of translating dialogue.
Papers by Owen Harrington Fernández
Doctoral thesis by Owen Harrington Fernández
This project compares John Updike’s “Rabbit” books and their Spanish translations to explore whether the linguistic identity of the main character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, his wife, Janice, and the African-American community, are codified in the target dialogue. With regards to translating Harry Angstrom’s voice, the focus is on transposing his source text idiolect in order to reflect salient character attributes; the focus with regards to the African-American characters is on finding a suitable target language vernacular that constructs an intratextual speech community; finally, the focus for Janice’s voice is on reflecting her gender in Spanish. Informed by a theoretical framework constructed with translation, sociolinguistic and semiotic theory, the analyses describe the translation shifts and losses that are in evidence in the professional translations, and put forward alternatives that recast the voice of the characters in line with the identity described in the source narrative.
Book Reviews by Owen Harrington Fernández
Character identities are constructed through various literary devices, but among these, dialogue is of special interest because it is through the graphic representation of characters’ speech patterns that the reader may discern culture-specific idiolects and sociolects. These sociolinguistic paradigms of dialogue translation have always represented something of an impasse in Translation Studies. This, no doubt, is due to the interlinguistic and intercultural differences that oftentimes lead this type of scholarly work into the vacuum of ‘untranslatability.’ This paper takes the view that the C.S Peirce’s theory of signs, and in particular, his tripartite of signs (symbol, icon, and index) offers translation scholars a valuable methodological tool that can shed new light on the subtle intricacies involved in the process of translating dialogue.
This project compares John Updike’s “Rabbit” books and their Spanish translations to explore whether the linguistic identity of the main character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, his wife, Janice, and the African-American community, are codified in the target dialogue. With regards to translating Harry Angstrom’s voice, the focus is on transposing his source text idiolect in order to reflect salient character attributes; the focus with regards to the African-American characters is on finding a suitable target language vernacular that constructs an intratextual speech community; finally, the focus for Janice’s voice is on reflecting her gender in Spanish. Informed by a theoretical framework constructed with translation, sociolinguistic and semiotic theory, the analyses describe the translation shifts and losses that are in evidence in the professional translations, and put forward alternatives that recast the voice of the characters in line with the identity described in the source narrative.