With all the media attention that has been going out to the American presidential election and the Trump administration, newspapers and TV broadcasters in the Netherlands repeatedly come across...Show moreWith all the media attention that has been going out to the American presidential election and the Trump administration, newspapers and TV broadcasters in the Netherlands repeatedly come across language related to the political media circus surrounding Donald Trump. For concepts that are culturally and politically specific to the U.S., a translator would need to possess a certain cultural and historical understanding of the source culture, as there is ultimately no preferred model for translating political terminology and jargon. Therefore, this thesis analyses the Dutch translations of political terminology and words uniquely related to Trump (i.e. Trumpisms) in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House and its official Dutch translation, Vuur en Woede: In het Witte Huis van Trump. By using Pedersen’s taxonomy of translation strategies and Mark and McCutcheon’s six political language categories, the results of the case study show that most findings (total: 862) belong to the categories ‘Terminology’ (269), ‘Personalities’ (134), and ‘Expressions’ (182). The Dutch translators adhered to both a source-oriented and a target oriented approach, making use of generalisations (target-oriented, 22,66%), direct translations (source-oriented, 21,86%), retentions (source-oriented, 18,12%), and cultural substitutions (target-oriented, 12,98%). As generalisation was the most common strategy, one could argue that to convey the meaning of a word or phrase was ultimately more important than preserving its original form. This also applies to the direct translations, as the translators preferred to use these literal or close to word-for-word translations when a generalisation was deemed too neutral or simplistic. Retentions and cultural substitutions filled the gaps when both direct translations and generalisations were not appropriate. Through this, Fire and Fury’s Dutch translation preserved some of its original American subtexts.Show less
In my thesis I analyzed the Dutch subtitles of the puns and wordplay in Duck Soup and several examples from other Marx Brothers movies. I used two different criteria to examine the Dutch subtitles....Show moreIn my thesis I analyzed the Dutch subtitles of the puns and wordplay in Duck Soup and several examples from other Marx Brothers movies. I used two different criteria to examine the Dutch subtitles. The first was: does the subtitler manage to come up with a translation that remains true to the absurdism of the Marx Brothers’ humor, to the characters, and to the time in which the movies were made? The second was based on Dimitris Asimakoulas’s ‘ideal translation’: a translation that remains faithful to all aspects of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. What my analysis has shown, on the basis of the two above-mentioned criteria, is that the subtitler frequently managed to come up with a translation that retained the absurdism of the humor and remained faithful to the time in which the movies were made, but that the subtitles do not remain faithful to the individual characterizations. Furthermore, in this thesis I also argued that a successful translation does not have to remain faithful to all elements of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. My thesis question “What makes for the ‘best’ translation of the puns and wordplay in the Marx Brothers movies, considering they rely heavily on puns and wordplay” can thus be answered as follows: a successful translation does not have to be a literal translation of the puns and wordplay or remain faithful to the aspects of the General Theory of Verbal Humor, but it should remain faithful to the characteristic absurdism of the Marx Brothers’ humor, to the time in which the movies were made, and to the personality of the characters.Show less
This thesis explores the translation choices that have been made in the dubbing of the 2005 film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The original film was approved for...Show moreThis thesis explores the translation choices that have been made in the dubbing of the 2005 film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The original film was approved for audiences of 12 years and older. In the Netherlands, a Dutch spoken version was released which was approved for 6 years and older. Establishing whether the dubbed version of the film uses simpler language in order to cater for a younger audience than the original version, was done by comparing commonly used procedures in both the field of audiovisual translation and translation of children's literature. Translation theories by Mieke Desmet, B.J. Epstein, Frederic Chaume and Irene Ranzato form the foundation of the theoretical background.Show less
Translating a novel that contains one or more regional or social dialects can be a daunting task for a literary translator. It is therefore surprising that little research has been done by well...Show moreTranslating a novel that contains one or more regional or social dialects can be a daunting task for a literary translator. It is therefore surprising that little research has been done by well-known translation theorists on the translation of dialects. One of the few scholars who has written about this subject is Peter Newmark in his A Textbook of Translation. He urges translators faced with this challenge to produce ‘… possibly classless speech’ and to leave out most of the dialect words (p. 195). This strategy of normalization is also suggested by Andrew Chesterman, where he names dialect normalization as one of his potential S-universals, which is a term used to ‘formulate a generalization about a difference between translations and source texts’ (Chesterman, p. 40). Although numerous scholars have written on the strategy of normalization in general (See e.g. Baker 1996; Kenny 1998; Mauranen 2007; Xia 2014), almost none have linked this procedure specifically to translating dialect. In fact, no clear strategy or procedure has emerged that could help translators overcome this challenge of translating dialectal elements in the source text. Therefore, this thesis will examine the question to what extent literary translators faced with regional and/or social dialects apply the strategy of normalization on several linguistic levels (syntax, lexical items, morphology, and orthography) in their translations. In order to examine this question, source text excerpts and their corresponding target text excerpts from two novels that contain a specific dialect were compared, namely Trainspotting and The Help. While Trainspotting is almost exclusively written in Scottish English, The Help contains examples of the African American Vernacular English dialect (AAVE) of some of the characters. These excerpts were compared with each other, focusing not on the entire text as a whole, but on specific linguistic levels within the text: syntax, lexical items, morphology, and orthography. This enabled me to examine to what extent (on which levels) the strategy of normalization was applied. Throughout my research, I will approach the notion of normalization as being ‘the tendency to conform to patterns and practices which are typical of the target language, even to the point of exaggerating them’ (Baker, pp. 176-177). I will therefore focus on those dialectal source text features that have been completely standardized to the norms of the target language in the translations of Trainspotting and The Help. The results seem to confirm that dialect normalization is an universal strategy used by literary translators to overcome the difficulty of translating specific dialectal elements in the source text. Normalization also seems to be used on all linguistic levels. However, the results show that dialect normalization is not exclusively used in these situations. Other procedures such as modulation and omission are also used to translate dialect speech, although most of these procedures work together with the strategy of normalization to standardize the Dutch target text. Furthermore, an important factor seems to be the original approach of the source text author in representing the original dialect in his or her novel. Irvine Welsh focused on the orthography in Trainspotting, resulting in a higher degree of dialect normalization on the orthographical level in the target text. Kathryn Stockett took a syntactical approach on dialect representation in her novel, The Help, resulting in a higher degree of dialect normalization on the syntax of the translation. Very few examples can be found in both novels where the author had used either an existing Dutch dialect, or had used irregular or marked language to create a similar dialect (or an effect of such) in the target text.Show less
The main focus of this thesis will be to research in which ways the translator of Persepolis deals with CSIs and whether the models of Javier Franco Aixelá (different media), Jan Pedersen ...Show moreThe main focus of this thesis will be to research in which ways the translator of Persepolis deals with CSIs and whether the models of Javier Franco Aixelá (different media), Jan Pedersen (subtitles) and Ritva Leppihalme (allusions and realia) are suitable and sufficient for the categorization of CSIs and translation procedures. The thesis will determine how the translator has rendered CSIs in Persepolis and assess to what degree the translation models of Aixelá, Pedersen and Leppihalme are suitable for the categorization of CSIs and their translation procedures in comics. The thesis will also determine whether it is possible to assess if the translator rendered CSIs with source language oriented or target language oriented strategy.Show less
This thesis tries to answer the question of what constitutes ‘good’ translation in order to help translators (and translator students) gain insight into the various academic perspectives on the...Show moreThis thesis tries to answer the question of what constitutes ‘good’ translation in order to help translators (and translator students) gain insight into the various academic perspectives on the nature of a high-quality translated text. It seeks this answer by way of examining the work of renowned translation theorists from across the five perspectives found in Translation Studies. The distinction and definitions of these perspectives are made by Hurtado Albir (1994) in his work Perspectivas de los Estudios Sobre Traducción. This thesis uses Ordóñez-Lopez’ (2008) English translations of these definitions. The five perspectives are named as follows: the Philosophical and Hermeneutic perspective, the Textual perspective, the Communicative and Socio-cultural perspective, the Cognitive perspective,and the Linguistic perspective. Each perspective approaches the field of Translation Studies in a different manner, which is the cause for many different interpretations and idea regarding translation practice. As this thesis seeks to unite opinions from across the academic field, and a number of perspectives only deal with written texts, multimodal translation will only lightly be touched upon. It will be shown that no more than three aspects are shared by more than one perspective, and none are shared by all.Show less
This thesis will discuss the differences between professional and non-professional Dutch and English texts informing the readers of the dangers of sugar and tobacco consumption. While the hazards...Show moreThis thesis will discuss the differences between professional and non-professional Dutch and English texts informing the readers of the dangers of sugar and tobacco consumption. While the hazards of smoking are widely known, the anti-sugar lobby is a fairly recent phenomenon. The thesis demonstrates how this has affected the articles written about either subject. The analyses in the first chapter reveal several differences between professional and non-professional texts as well as Dutch and English texts, especially where the use deixis and modal verbs are concerned. It pays special attention to the various persuasion strategies used by the authors, which are not only influenced by the manner in which the author is involved in the issue, but also by the audience’s culture. The second chapter indentifies and attempts to solve the various translation problems which occur on pragmatic, cultural, linguistic and text-specific levels when translating articles into the Target Language. Chapter three contains a critical analysis of the translation tool used to identify the articles’ text type: the Text Type Triangle by Dr. Chesterman, which is based on the nowadays outdated text typology developed by Katharina Reiss. Reiss’s text typology, and in extension the Triangle, was developed long before the Internet, which has a profound effect on the manner in which people communicate, became available to the average person. This chapter introduces an updated version of the Triangle, which does take the Internet as a means of communication into account. Finally the conclusion will summarise the questions answered and the data presented in the thesis and will also ask several questions which were raised by the analyses, but which could not be answered.Show less
This thesis explores the difficulties faced when translating American Young Adult Fiction into Dutch. P.C. Cast’s House of Night series contains many elements of American everyday-life, such as a...Show moreThis thesis explores the difficulties faced when translating American Young Adult Fiction into Dutch. P.C. Cast’s House of Night series contains many elements of American everyday-life, such as a Western accent, references to American celebrities, to typical American stores, and to the American school system. The cultural identity and the representation of dialect is explored extensively in that the situatedness of the novel in America determines the identity of the novel’s characters. It is therefore interesting to compare the first book of the series with its Dutch translation, in order to see how the translator dealt with the specific American elements of the source text. This task has become more difficult for the translator, because apparently there is no consensus on the literary category of Young Adult fiction and the thereto belonging age group. Whereas the original novels are marketed towards a readership of 16 years and older – as they are not suitable for young readers’ –, the Dutch translations are marketed towards different audiences, all considerably younger than the original novels. If the translator has taken this intended readership into account, it will have had considerable consequences for the vocabulary use in the novel. My aim is therefore to examine various possible translation-problems in order to see how much the intended readership has influenced the translation-process and therefore the novel as a whole.Show less
This thesis argues that the concept of style, here defined as the distinctive set of linguistic features that characterize a particular text, is currently underprioritized in the field of literary...Show moreThis thesis argues that the concept of style, here defined as the distinctive set of linguistic features that characterize a particular text, is currently underprioritized in the field of literary translation studies and should be given a more central position for three main reasons: the inextricability of form and content; the primarily aesthetic function of literature; and the representative function of translation. It proposes a style-centered approach to literary prose translation, which involves thorough stylistic analysis of the source text and the identification and meticulous application of translation procedures that fit within its stylistic framework, as well as the avoidance of translation procedures that would interfere with the source-text style. My analysis of two passages from Cormac McCarthy's (2006) novel The Road and its Dutch translation revealed that a style-centered approach would have significantly improved the degree of what I termed 'stylistic correspondence' between source text and target text. The style-centered approach could thus help improve the degree of stylistic correspondence between literary source texts and target texts and hereby aid style in assuming its rightful, more central position in literary translation studies.Show less
This thesis explores three articles on humour in translation, which define and attempt to resolve the problems surrounding the field of humour translation studies, and applies these to a piece of...Show moreThis thesis explores three articles on humour in translation, which define and attempt to resolve the problems surrounding the field of humour translation studies, and applies these to a piece of literary writing to find out to what extent culture is relevant when translating humour. The three articles on humour translation differ in purpose to some extent; Vandaele (year) justifies the existence of the field of humour translation as being a separate entity of either humour or translation studies, whereas Attardo (year) and Zabalbeascoa (year) each give their separate solutions on how to deal with humour in translation. The knowledge offer by these three articles is then combined with the general translation strategy from Venuti (year) and applied to an excerpt from Adams’ ‘Life, the Universe and Everything Else’ (year), chosen for its humour and the degree to which it is interwoven into British culture, resulting in two opposing translations which allow for an analysis on the relevance of culture when translating humour.Show less
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the existence and behavior of translation universals in Dutch subtitles. The corpus that will be used in this research is the television series Sherlock....Show moreThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the existence and behavior of translation universals in Dutch subtitles. The corpus that will be used in this research is the television series Sherlock. The reason of this choice of corpus is that I believe that the distinctive vocabulary and attitude of the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, will provide interesting translation issues. This thesis will explore how the subtitles deal with these issues and whether translation universals are present in the solutions. In chapter one, the concept of ‘translation universals’ will be explained and a variety of different categories will be put forward. Chapter two will examine the Dutch subtitling process to understand the possibilities and constrictions of this form of audiovisual translation. Finally, chapter three will combine the theory presented in chapter two and three by analyzing instances of translation universals found in the subtitles of Sherlock.Show less
The present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of the translation of idiolect in narrative dialogue. Idiolect found in three characters (two villains and one hero) from Roald...Show moreThe present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of the translation of idiolect in narrative dialogue. Idiolect found in three characters (two villains and one hero) from Roald Dahl’s children’s novels Matilda and The Witches is analyzed by means of Juliane House’s model for translation quality assessment. Central to this discussion is the way in which the idiolects function regarding character portrayal, and how the Dutch translations affect this, if at all. The analyses demonstrate that idiolect is retained in all translations, although slight shifts have occurred in the translation process. These alterations mainly affect the humorous effect of the villains. The hero is less notably affected, because her idiolect is less explicitly present. Concluding, retaining idiolect in translation texts is salient for character portrayal.Show less
This thesis analyses the English borrowings in a corpus of Dutch original and translated cookbooks. The main purpose is to determine whether translators’ tendency to explain and clarify causes them...Show moreThis thesis analyses the English borrowings in a corpus of Dutch original and translated cookbooks. The main purpose is to determine whether translators’ tendency to explain and clarify causes them to produce translations that contain fewer anglicisms than similar original Dutch texts. The results show that the anglicisms found in the translations and original texts are similar in terms of type, function, and degree of conventionality, but the total number of anglicisms is larger for the corpus of original texts.Show less
