Collaboration in translation. An analysis of the translation of cultural attitudes  as seen in post-war retrospective fiction.

In this thesis, I have analysed the encoding of cultural attitudes in the translation of post-war retrospective fiction, as displayed in the speech and thought presentation of the characters in Erwin Mortier’s 1999 Flemish novel, Marcel. The novel contains a fascinating insight into the cultural attitudes of everyday Belgian citizens who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. For the purposes of my research, I have used Antoine Berman’s 1985 model of translation tendencies in order to identify and subsequently analyse the effect of the process of translation on the representation of the cultural attitudes of the Belgian collaborators as displayed the English translation of the novel when juxtaposed with the original Flemish version of the novel. In my final analysis, I have both justified the importance of the source text over the translation in its irreplaceability with regard to the conveyance of cultural attitude. In addition to this, I have drawn fresh conclusions...Show moreIn this thesis, I have analysed the encoding of cultural attitudes in the translation of post-war retrospective fiction, as displayed in the speech and thought presentation of the characters in Erwin Mortier’s 1999 Flemish novel, Marcel. The novel contains a fascinating insight into the cultural attitudes of everyday Belgian citizens who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. For the purposes of my research, I have used Antoine Berman’s 1985 model of translation tendencies in order to identify and subsequently analyse the effect of the process of translation on the representation of the cultural attitudes of the Belgian collaborators as displayed the English translation of the novel when juxtaposed with the original Flemish version of the novel. In my final analysis, I have both justified the importance of the source text over the translation in its irreplaceability with regard to the conveyance of cultural attitude. In addition to this, I have drawn fresh conclusions about the role and function of the translations of culturally-bound source texts. More specifically, I have highlighted the status of culturally-bound works of post-war fiction as foreign texts in their own right. In doing so, I have argued that these texts serve to make more explicit the cultural attitudes displayed in original works of post-war fiction.Show less

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Collaboration in translation. An analysis of the translation of cultural attitudes as seen in post-war retrospective fiction.