This thesis explores whether ecological considerations are capable of influencing translation choices and thus form a valid area of special attention for translators in their translation practice....Show moreThis thesis explores whether ecological considerations are capable of influencing translation choices and thus form a valid area of special attention for translators in their translation practice. The existing scholarly literature that has investigated the relationship between translation and ecology has either defined ecology rather narrowly (Hu; Scott) or conceived of a translation ecology that remains theoretical and passive, in spite of the urgency and the severity of the ecological predicament that peoplekind finds itself in (Cronin). A practical and ethical approach to language ecology by Stibbe provides concrete methods to judge the ecological stance of texts by and identify linguistic features in texts which cluster to form ecological ‘stories’. The study identified occurrences of these linguistic features in the ecologically beneficial text Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie and explored ways in which they could be translated into Dutch, making use of Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation procedures to analyse the translation shifts. The analysis showed that ecological considerations may conflict with other features of the text that the translator may want to preserve in the translation, such as style, internal cohesion and grammatical correctness. Giving precedence to ecological considerations may thus produce a different target text than when leaving these considerations out of the translation process. The implication is that there is a way of doing ecotranslation and that preserving the ecologically beneficial world view of a source text is a valid purpose in translation.Show less
