Iconicity in translation
-
Imogen Cohen
Abstract
This article reports on a workshop in which translators explored how particular iconic features present in a literary text might be translated into another language. In advance of the workshop the participants translated two short passages from Tobias Hill’s novel The Hidden into (mostly) their own native language; their translations preserved the text’s iconic features as fully as possible. The article starts with a brief introduction highlighting the iconic features in the passage. It focuses on those parts of the two passages that turned out to be not only most interesting from an iconic point of view but also the most challenging to translate since their iconic features could not always be transferred into the target language in a straightforward way. The languages involved were Dutch, German, Japanese, Polish (2 versions), Serbian, and Swedish. Apart from discussing the translations and the translation difficulties, a further aim was to find out whether we can distinguish any general or language-specific strategies in translating iconic features involving sound, (morpho)syntax or the lexicon.
Abstract
This article reports on a workshop in which translators explored how particular iconic features present in a literary text might be translated into another language. In advance of the workshop the participants translated two short passages from Tobias Hill’s novel The Hidden into (mostly) their own native language; their translations preserved the text’s iconic features as fully as possible. The article starts with a brief introduction highlighting the iconic features in the passage. It focuses on those parts of the two passages that turned out to be not only most interesting from an iconic point of view but also the most challenging to translate since their iconic features could not always be transferred into the target language in a straightforward way. The languages involved were Dutch, German, Japanese, Polish (2 versions), Serbian, and Swedish. Apart from discussing the translations and the translation difficulties, a further aim was to find out whether we can distinguish any general or language-specific strategies in translating iconic features involving sound, (morpho)syntax or the lexicon.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
General
- Three paradigms of iconicity research in language and literature 13
- Iconicity of logic - and the roots of "iconicity" concept 35
-
Sound Meets Meaning
- Iconic inferences about personality 57
- Phonemes as images 71
- Synaesthetic sound iconicity 93
- What’s in a mimetic? 109
- Iconicity in the syntax and lexical semantics of sound-symbolic words in Japanese 125
- A corpus-based semantic analysis of Japanese mimetic verbs 143
-
Language Meets Literature
- Iconicity in translation 163
- The days pass … 185
- Visual, auditory, and cognitive iconicity in written literature 207
- Don’t read too much into the runes 219
-
Grammar Meets Iconicity
- Iconicity in question 241
- Rethinking diagrammatic iconicity from an evolutionary perspective 259
- Author index 275
- Subject index 277
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
General
- Three paradigms of iconicity research in language and literature 13
- Iconicity of logic - and the roots of "iconicity" concept 35
-
Sound Meets Meaning
- Iconic inferences about personality 57
- Phonemes as images 71
- Synaesthetic sound iconicity 93
- What’s in a mimetic? 109
- Iconicity in the syntax and lexical semantics of sound-symbolic words in Japanese 125
- A corpus-based semantic analysis of Japanese mimetic verbs 143
-
Language Meets Literature
- Iconicity in translation 163
- The days pass … 185
- Visual, auditory, and cognitive iconicity in written literature 207
- Don’t read too much into the runes 219
-
Grammar Meets Iconicity
- Iconicity in question 241
- Rethinking diagrammatic iconicity from an evolutionary perspective 259
- Author index 275
- Subject index 277
