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Contextual factors when reading a translated academic text

The effect of paratextual voices and academic background
  • Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov and Maarit Koponen
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Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation
This chapter is in the book Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation

Abstract

This study builds on Taivalkoski-Shilov’s (2015b) work on the reception of Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité in Finland, as translated by Kaisa Sivenius in 1998. It examines how two non-interdependent factors that proved central to the reception of Sivenius’s translation in Taivalkoski-Shilov’s study – paratexts and readers’ academic background – affect how readers react to a translated academic text. Our empirical study on Finnish university students reading Sivenius’s translation consisted of two parts: an eye-tracking study followed by short interviews and a reading task given to some participants with a request to write a narrative report. The participants were divided into five different groups with six to eight participants. We studied the effect of paratexts on three groups in an eye-tracking study, prior to which each group read a different paratext. The effect of academic background was studied by an analysis of narrative reports that two groups with different academic backgrounds (translator students and non-translator students) wrote about their reading experience. The analysis of the eye-tracking data gives some evidence that the paratexts read prior to reading the text sample influenced the participants’ perspective in regard to the translation. The narrative reports indicate that the participants’ academic background affected the way they reacted to Sivenius’s translation. Consequently, this study suggests that voices that surround both texts and their readers influence how these readers respond to translated academic texts.

Abstract

This study builds on Taivalkoski-Shilov’s (2015b) work on the reception of Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité in Finland, as translated by Kaisa Sivenius in 1998. It examines how two non-interdependent factors that proved central to the reception of Sivenius’s translation in Taivalkoski-Shilov’s study – paratexts and readers’ academic background – affect how readers react to a translated academic text. Our empirical study on Finnish university students reading Sivenius’s translation consisted of two parts: an eye-tracking study followed by short interviews and a reading task given to some participants with a request to write a narrative report. The participants were divided into five different groups with six to eight participants. We studied the effect of paratexts on three groups in an eye-tracking study, prior to which each group read a different paratext. The effect of academic background was studied by an analysis of narrative reports that two groups with different academic backgrounds (translator students and non-translator students) wrote about their reading experience. The analysis of the eye-tracking data gives some evidence that the paratexts read prior to reading the text sample influenced the participants’ perspective in regard to the translation. The narrative reports indicate that the participants’ academic background affected the way they reacted to Sivenius’s translation. Consequently, this study suggests that voices that surround both texts and their readers influence how these readers respond to translated academic texts.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Part I. Opening the field
  4. Introduction 3
  5. Part II. Charting the field
  6. The Scandinavian singer-translator’s multisemiotic voice as performance 21
  7. Translators, editors, publishers, and critics 39
  8. The making of a bestseller-in-translation 61
  9. Contextual factors when reading a translated academic text 81
  10. When poets translate poetry 101
  11. Translators in search of originals 119
  12. Part III. Traveling the field
  13. Unraveling multiple translatorship through an e-mail correspondence 133
  14. Silenced in translation 159
  15. The voice of the implied author in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe 181
  16. Three voices or one? 201
  17. The voices of Cieza de León in English 223
  18. References 241
  19. Index 263
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.137.05tai

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Part I. Opening the field
  4. Introduction 3
  5. Part II. Charting the field
  6. The Scandinavian singer-translator’s multisemiotic voice as performance 21
  7. Translators, editors, publishers, and critics 39
  8. The making of a bestseller-in-translation 61
  9. Contextual factors when reading a translated academic text 81
  10. When poets translate poetry 101
  11. Translators in search of originals 119
  12. Part III. Traveling the field
  13. Unraveling multiple translatorship through an e-mail correspondence 133
  14. Silenced in translation 159
  15. The voice of the implied author in the first Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe 181
  16. Three voices or one? 201
  17. The voices of Cieza de León in English 223
  18. References 241
  19. Index 263
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