(hereafter referred to as Vraa) dealt with selected items in his translation of Dan
Brown's The. Lost Symbol. My choice of subject is, however, not a result of ...
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CONTENTS List of abbreviations ........................................................................................................
4
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................
5
1.1
Problem statement.............................................................................................
6
1.1.1
Focus .....................................................................................................
7
Methodological and theoretical framework ......................................................
8
1.2.1
Empirical basis and delimitations – an overview .................................
9
2. The Danish media attention ....................................................................................
12
1.2
2.1
Media text collection (MTC) ............................................................................
12
2.1.1
Selection criteria and delimitations.......................................................
13
2.1.2
Words on transcription..........................................................................
15
2.1.3 Main issues of attention/criticism and possible explanations of the
2.2
sudden media interest............................................................................
17
2.1.3.1
Presentation of the identified press coverage.........................
17
2.1.3.2
Interpretation of the identified press coverage.......................
22
Translation-related aspects of book reviews of literature - A small-scale questionnaire study ...........................................................................................
26
2.2.1
Questions - and interpretation of the answers.......................................
28
Partial conclusion..............................................................................................
32
3. On literary translation.............................................................................................
34
2.3
3.1
From a theoretical point of view – functionalism or not (skopos or not)? .......
34
3.2
From the point of view of various practitioners................................................
37
3.3
Partial conclusion..............................................................................................
40
4. Introducing The Lost Symbol ..................................................................................
41
4.1
The author .........................................................................................................
41
4.1.1
Thriller fiction bibliography in a Danish perspective ...........................
42
4.2
The genre ..........................................................................................................
43
4.3
The plot .............................................................................................................
46
5. Introducing the translator.......................................................................................
46
5.1
Professional background and personal qualifications.......................................
47
5.2
Working conditions...........................................................................................
48
5.2.1
48
Brief, and general recommendations ....................................................
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5.2.2
Cooperation with the publishers, and research .....................................
49
Working processes ............................................................................................
50
6. Translation analysis and results .............................................................................
54
5.3
6.1
The Lost Symbol/the source text – characteristics and functions......................
54
6.2
Det forsvundne tegn/the target text – what is expected?...................................
61
6.3
Expected macrostrategy ....................................................................................
62
6.4
Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies – and then some...........................
63
6.5
Main source text translation problem ...............................................................
65
6.5.1
‘Square’ indeed!....................................................................................
66
6.5.1.1
‘Square’ data categories.........................................................
67
6.5.1.2
The actual problem and its relevance.....................................
67
6.5.1.3
Microstrategical solutions explained and exemplified – a ‘guided tour’.....................................................................
69
Partial conclusion – wrapping up the ‘square’ analysis........................
75
Intratextual data categories subjected to comparative analysis ........................
77
6.6.1
Proper names.........................................................................................
78
6.6.1.1
85
6.5.2 6.6
6.6.2
Place names............................................................................
Partial conclusion – wrapping up the proper name/place name analysis ................................................................................................
89
7. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................
92
Works cited .....................................................................................................................
96
Abstract
..................................................................................................................... 103
Appendix 1 Media text collection (MTC) ................................................................... 105 Appendix 2 English translation of Jakob Levinsens Danish review of the TT ........... 136 Appendix 3 E-mail inquiries to reviewers Levinsen, Michaëlis and Andersen .......... 137 Appendix 4 Questionnaires completed by reviewers Levinsen, Michaëlis and Andersen ........................................................................................... 140 Appendix 5 E-mail answer from Chairman Ellen Boen, Danish Translators Association (Dansk Oversætterforbund), concerning the average daily norm for translation......................................................................... 149 Appendix 6 Summary and storyline overview of The Lost Symbol ............................ 150 Appendix 7 E-mail inquiry to Mich Vraa.................................................................... 153 Appendix 8 Interview/conversational guide for the interview with Mich Vraa.......... 155
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Appendix 9 Adapted version of interview/conversational guide sent to Mich Vraa prior to interview...................................................................................... 161 Appendix 10 Transcript of personal interview with Mich Vraa.................................... 165 Appendix 11 E-mail answer from Rights Assistant Corinne Lucas, Transworld concerning intralingual translation .......................................................... 207 Appendix 12 Source text tenor and mode: implications in overview............................ 209 Appendix 13 Overall target text facts and expectations, including skopoi ................... 211 Appendix 14 Microstrategical labelling – the translation problem involving ‘square’. 213 Appendix 15 Microstrategical labelling – proper names, place names excluded.......... 218 Appendix 16 Microstrategical labelling – place names................................................. 229
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS In general:
ST
Source text – The Lost Symbol
TT
Target text – Det forsvundne tegn
SC
Source culture
TC
Target culture
SL
Source language
TL
Target language
MTC
Media text collection
PN
Proper name
CN
Common noun
Microstrategies:
The translational effect of each of the strategies below is outlined in sec. 6.4, Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies – and then some.
DTF1/DTF2 Direct transfer 1/Direct transfer 2 DAN
Danicization
CAL
Calque
DTL
Direct translation
OBL
Oblique translation
EXP
Explicitation
PAR
Paraphrase
CON
Condensation
ADAP
Adaptation
ADD
Addition
SUB
Substitution
PERM
Permutation
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1.
Introduction
Translation-theoretical studies, similar to this one, dealing with the application of functionalist approaches to literature by way of literary empirical examples, seem to share the common feature of a fascination towards a particular literary genre, a particular author or a particular piece of literature.1 That is, however, not a feature shared by this thesis. My fascination rather stems from an appreciation of functionalism as a toolkit in translation, whether the tools contained are needed for translating or, as in this case, for explaining how others translated; here specifically how the Danish professional translator Mich Vraa (hereafter referred to as Vraa) dealt with selected items in his translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
My choice of subject is, however, not a result of fascination alone. Motivation and the ability to further define the subject of this thesis originated from a combination of curiosity and wonder brought about by the following facts and circumstances: in 2009, as many as 2103 pieces of imaginative literature (213 pieces more than in 2008) were translated from a foreign original language into Danish, and published.2 Nonetheless, it seems that professional literary translators lead quiet professional lives since they themselves (or any other translator for that matter) and/or their translations are rarely the subjects of publicity. However, in September 2009, Vraa suddenly appeared on Danish TV and reappeared in the Danish media on several occasions. TV and radio reporters as well as newspaper reporters all wanted to know about Vraa’s approaching work with this particular translation, and he suddenly found himself surrounded by media hype.
Part of the follow-up on the hype consisted of a critical review brought to Danish readers by the daily Danish national newspaper Jyllands-Posten. As a future translator on the way to choosing a career path within translation and on behalf of those who may eventually have to make a similar choice, all this hype followed by criticism made me wonder about the reasons for such unusual focus of the media on the translator in connection with literary translation. Furthermore, the hype and criticism made me curious to zoom in on selected parts of Vraa’s translation choices and strategies, his working conditions, processes and methods, and it also made me curious to examine the (potentially!) increased media/reviewer interest in 1
E.g. studies by Lund and Van der Plaas, see Works Cited. According to book statistics prepared by ‘Dansk BiblioteksCenter’, DBC; and published by ‘Bogmarkedet’, a periodical for the DK book industry. 2
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translation in general, including aspects of reviews dealing with literary translation. As a consequence of my curiosity and wonder, I have thus decided to make the above issues the subject of my thesis. The subject will be dealt with according to 1) the problem statement, including focus; and 2) the methodological and theoretical framework, including empirical basis and delimitations which conclude this introductory chapter. Chapter 2 constitutes a presentation of the media attention in two parts. The first part is a presentation of the media text collection compiled for the purposes of this thesis, and the second part is an account of a small-scale questionnaire study which I conducted in the pursuit of knowledge about translation-related aspects of book reviews of literature. Chapter 3 deals with literary translation from two different points of view and thus places literary translation in a theoretical context of functionalism as well as in a practical context. Chapter 4 is an introduction to the The Lost Symbol, the author, the genre and the plot. Based on the information obtained through my personal interview with Vraa, chapter 5 gives readers some background information on Vraa as well as a first-hand insight into the working conditions and processes of the hyped translator. Chapter 6 constitutes the analysis and the results, including descriptions of applied theory and methods as well as descriptions of the data selected for analysis. Finally, chapter 7 is my conclusion.
1.1
Problem Statement
The purpose of this thesis is threefold3 a) to identify, discuss and give an account of the main issues of the media attention/criticism and the possible reasons for the sudden media interest in Vraa and his Danish translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, b) to identify, analyse and discuss the applied translation strategies, with a focus on the microstrategical solutions applied in the Danish TT to selected translation problems4 among those pinpointed by a specific newspaper critic, i.e. the chosen rendition of proper names in general, including place names in particular, and the related linguistic ambiguity of ‘square’ and other relevant ST units which include the term ‘square,’ and c) by way of partial and final conclusions, to relate the reasons found in a to the results found in b and to discuss end results and put them into perspective.
3
The order of the 3 purposes mentioned is not indicative of the focus of this study but rather of the necessary chronology of carrying it out. As implied by the subheading of this thesis, focus will be on the translator’s microstrategical choices, see sec. 1.1.1, Focus. 4 For definitions of the concept of ‘translation problem’, see. sec. 6.5, Main source text translation problem.
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Further questions which are implicitly present in the above statements can be made explicit as follows: a) The time available for carrying out the task seems to be the primary centre of media attention. How long did the Danish translator really have? (Time stated in sources differs). Time wise, what is the norm for carrying out this type of task as a professional translator? Exactly what kind of criticism is pinpointed – what kind of translation problems are addressed? Who is the critic and what is his professional background? What kind of professional backgrounds do reviewers have in general, and what are the actual elements of book reviews of translated literature? What is the translator’s professional background? b) Keeping in mind the delimitations mentioned above and further defined in section 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations, how was the translation of The Lost Symbol actually done? How was the translator’s actual working process? Was he provided with a translation brief? What seems to have been his overall macrostrategical choice – and his microstrategical solutions to specific translation problems? In the view of the translator, what was the main translation problem and how did he choose to deal with it? Was it identical to that observed by the critic – or was it quite different? Can translation theory back up the translator’s choices - and perhaps even refute part of the criticism? c) What were the results? Is there a growing need for translation theory, and if so, why is this? Could a possible explanation be a(n untraditional) trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews and/or a growing media interest in translations in general?
1.1.1
Focus
The focus of this thesis is to address some of the translation-related issues raised by the Danish media prior to and in connection with the release of the Danish translation of The Lost Symbol. Particular focus will be on the identification, analysis and discussion of some of the microstrategical solutions to translation problems which have caused the media attention and/or criticism, i.e. the microstrategical TT solutions to the rendition of proper names in general, including place names in particular, and the translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square,’ including relevant ST units which include the term ‘square’ in preparation for a brief discussion of the (growing) need for translation theory. (For delimitations applying, see sec. 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations).
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1.2
Methodological and theoretical framework
To fulfil the purposes mentioned in section 1.1, Problem Statement, and to keep the intended focus mentioned in section 1.1.1, Focus, I intend to perform an empirical study and thus to: •
Compile a collection of Danish oral and written media texts dealing with Mich Vraa’s Danish translation of The Lost Symbol. Specifics about selection criteria, e.g. sub-genres included etc., and delimitations will be dealt with separately in section 2.1.1, Selection criteria and delimitations.
•
Extract translation-related expressive and/or informative elements/text passages from the media text collection, i.e. expressive and/or informative elements/text passages dealing with the translator’s work and working conditions and do English in-text translations of the excerpts accordingly.
•
Carry out a translation analysis, including a) a textual analysis of the ST as a text in its own right, b) an analysis of what is expected of the TT (i.e. characterisation of the TT and identification of skopos c) identification of the expected macrostrategy, and d) definition and identification of the main ST translation problem according to the categories defined by the instrumentality of the English excerpts mentioned above. These analyses will be based on Schjoldager’s “Four-point model for translation analysis” in combination with Schjoldager’s “Checklist for textual analysis”. Furthermore, b will be theoretically based on Schjoldager (Understanding 27-36 and 151-182), c will be carried out on the basis of Schjoldager’s Model of macrostrategies (Understanding 72), and d will lean on Nord (Text Analysis 165-177) and Schjoldager (Understanding 174-180). Applicable delimitations to my translation analyses appear from sections 1.1, Problem statement, and 1.1.1, Focus, above and from section 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations below, in particular.
•
Include, as part of my translation analysis, identification and analysis of the microstrategies applied by the translator. Theoretical basis will be Schjoldager’s Taxonomy of microstrategies (Understanding 92). These microstrategies and a few purposeful additions will be briefly explained in section 6.4, Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies.
•
Approach the main critic and 2 additional book reviewers with Danish newspapers and have them fill in questionnaires focusing on the book reviewers’ professional backgrounds/knowledge of English, and a potential trend towards an element of
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translation criticism/assessment in future book reviews. For the purposes of this thesis, I have chosen to limit respondents to 3 persons only. I will, however, use the quantitative approach of a questionnaire prepared using mainly closed format questions for reasons of comparability and to show indications towards a trend, if any. •
Set up a personal qualitative interview with the Danish translator in order to understand his working process and in order to validate my analytical findings, - or to invalidate them as the case may be. An interview guide/conversational guide will be prepared and will be the point of departure for the interview. My sources of theoretical and methodological inspiration for the preparation of the interview guide/conversational guide and for the conduct of the interview will be Kvale (129-135) and Rubin and Rubin (108-122 and 129-151) who all give good guidance on conversational conduct, including the linked stages of the semi-structured interview with open-format, thematically arranged questions which will be relevant for the purposes of this thesis. Further inspiration for questions to include in the interview guide/conversational guide will be found in the compiled media text collection.
•
Demonstrate or dismiss the idea of a growing need for translation theory as a result of a trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews. Basis will be my findings resulting from the book review questionnaire.
1.2.1
Empirical basis and delimitations – an overview
The empirical basis of my thesis is in fact implicitly covered by the list of methodological and theoretical framework above, sec. 1.2, Methodological and theoretical framework. The table overleaf, however, serves to give a schematic and more detailed overview.
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Empirical basis
Delimitations
Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol
For obvious reasons the overall extratextual ST analysis deals with the whole book. To ensure full subject matter coverage, analytical examples concerning the intratextual register variable of field will be taken from the whole book as well. However, analytical examples concerning the intratextual register variables of tenor and mode will be taken from the prologue and the first four chapters cf. William’s and Chesterman’s recommendations on concentrating on the first chapter or opening scene5 when researching prose fiction, “since this often sets the tone for the remainder of the work” (10).
Mich Vraa’s Danish translation of
As stated in section 1.1.2, Focus, analysis, including microstrategical
The Lost Symbol
labelling and discussion will concentrate on:
(Det forsvundne tegn) 1. the microstrategical TT solutions to the rendition of proper names in AND
general, 2. including place names in particular, and
Dan Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol
3. the translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square’ and other relevant ST units which include the term ‘square.’
Further delimitations applying: Re: 1 and 2
For reasons of time and space, I have considered the first third part of the book a representative sample. Microstrategical labelling and discussion thus concentrates on Prologue – ch. 45, both chapters included. Regarding the rendition of proper names in general, further delimitation by category applies. Delimitation according to category will be accounted for in section 6.6.
Re: 3
For obvious reasons, the examination of the ‘squarerelated rendition’ is delimited to the 14 chapters in which the problem potentially exists, namely chs. 90-93, 95, 97, 99, 101-102, 105-106, 113, 115 and 126.
5
Despite my argument for the delimitations made, I have found it necessary to include four chapters, since chapters are very short (4.10 pages per chapter, on average) compared to books of other authors of the same genre. (In comparison, Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ nest contains 23.07 pages per chapter, and Mankell, Henning. Sidetracked contains 10.65 pages per chapter). Obviously, no generalizations about the length of chapters in crime novels can be made from only 2 counts. However, for the purposes of this study, the 2 counts suffice to give me an idea of the number of pages to include in order to provide me with a representative sample for the intratextual register analysis. All counts were made in the Danish translations, Luftkastellet der blev sprængt and Ildspor, respectively.
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A media text collection of the
For genre-related reasons (e.g. reasons of topicality/event-related
Danish media coverage surrounding
reasons) applying to the media texts in question (i.e. reviews, discussion
the Danish translator’s work with
article(s), interview transcripts etc.) searches for relevant texts will be
the translation
limited to press coverage between Aug. 1, 2009 and Dec. 1, 2009 dealing with the Danish reception of the translator’s Danish TT.
English in-text translations of data
In-text translations of expressive and/or informative elements/text
extracted from the Danish media
passages dealing with the translator’s work and working conditions,
text collection
including working processes and methods will be done when contextually relevant. One text (Levinsen, “sprog”)6 is considered a key text and will be translated in its entirety.
Interview with:
A qualitative interview on the basis of an interview guide/conversational
• Mich Vraa
guide containing mainly open format questions for reasons of the best possible insight into the translational/sociological aspects raised in the problem statement, 1.1, including Focus 1.1.1.
Questionnaires to:
3 respondents only.
• The critic and 2 additional
The quantitative approach of a questionnaire prepared using mainly
reviewers
closed format questions will be used for reasons of comparability and to show indications towards a trend, if any.
6
“Det forsvundne sprog” [The Lost Language]; my translation.
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2.
The Danish media attention
First and foremost, this chapter serves to present the media text collection compiled for the purposes of this thesis, and thus to give readers a lead into the main issues of specific media interest and the media-related background which motivated the translation-theoretical analyses that follow in later chapters. Secondly, this chapter aims to shed some light on translation-related aspects of book reviews of literature, since the genre of book reviews – and one book review in particular – plays an important role in the media text collection and in the delimitation of the microanalysis.
I will begin by giving a definition of what I intend media text collection to mean, sec. 2.1, before I present selection criteria and delimitations applying, sec. 2.1.1, and my methodological approach to the transcription of oral media texts included, sec. 2.1.2. Following a brief introduction, sec. 2.1.3, I will turn to the actual press coverage identified, sec. 2.1.3.1, and offer my interpretation of the identified press coverage, sec. 2.1.3.2. In section 2.2 I will introduce a small-scale questionnaire study which I conducted in order to shed some light on general and specific translation-related aspects of book reviews of literature, followed by a presentation of the questionnaire questions and my interpretation of the answers, sec. 2.2.1.
Finally, I will conclude chapter two by offering a partial conclusion.
2.1
Media text collection (MTC)
I have compiled a media text collection (hereafter referred to as the MTC) for the purposes of being able to identify, discuss and give an account of the media attention/criticism and the possible reasons for the sudden media interest in Vraa and his Danish translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The MTC is found in Appendix 1. Inspired by part of Evans’ definition of a corpus (Evans 1), the MTC can be broadly defined as a principled collection of naturally occurring media texts to permit investigation of any translation-related issues raised by the Danish media prior to and in connection with the release of the Danish translation of The Lost Symbol. The MTC is principled because texts have been selected for inclusion according to pre-defined purposes of answering part of my questions posed in section 1.1, Problem Statement. The MTC is thus compiled for particular purposes and according to explicit criteria in order to ensure the best way possible that it holds part of the
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data needed as empirical basis for this thesis. Selection criteria and delimitations will be dealt with in more detail in section 2.1.1 below.
2.1.1
Selection criteria and delimitations
The MTC shares some of the characteristics of a specialised corpus thus containing texts from a particular genre (here: non-fiction journalism media text), time (here: Aug 1, 09 – Dec. 1, 09) and context. However, as opposed to usual corpora text collection7 focusing on external criteria such as representativeness, texts are rather included on internal criteria of content, i.e. expressive and informative content dealing with Vraa’s work with the translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, i.e. content concerning the working conditions, processes and methods of a particular professional translator and a particular translation.
The choice of inclusion on internal criteria was made, because the MTC is not needed for purposes of linguistic analyses, i.e. the occurrence of a particular linguistic phenomenon (statistical frequency, vocabulary, collocation etc.) but merely for purposes of enabling me to form an overview of the extent and nature of the press coverage surrounding Vraa and the Danish TT.
The texts, written as well as oral, included in the MTC, were mainly identified through extended online searches via remote access to the Infomedia database.8 Further searches were done through the homepages of Danish national TV stations dr.dk and tv2.dk. References to all the texts included are provided under the separate heading of Media Text Collection on the Works Cited page.
In confirmation of my intuitive expectations, preliminary searches suggested that the relevant texts were centered around the release dates of the ST and the TT, respectively, due to the interdependent connection between extratextual factors of communicative situation (context, i.e. senders, receivers, medium and time and place of text production), communicative purpose, i.e. motive/reasons for the text productions (including language functions), and the extratextual factor of genre/sub-genre. 7
As described by Evans (1). “… the leading Danish provider of ‘media intelligence’…” that covers “a wide range of Danish print media, broadcast media and online media.” http://www.infomedia.dk/dk/ServiceMenu/English - accessible to anyone for payment. I, however, accessed it through the free of charge online access provided to students of the Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University. 8
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The most important sub-genres represented in the MTC include: • Factual and evocative interviews (radio and TV broadcast transcripts and newspaper interviews). • Newspaper profile stories/portrait interviews/background articles. • News articles/announcements. • Reviews. • Discussion article/letter to the editor.
In conclusion, selection criteria and delimitations in relation to the media texts compiled for the purposes of this thesis are to some extent inherent in nature, i.e. determined by overall characteristics and functions such as extratextual factors of communicative situation (context), communicative purpose and the intratextual factor of genre. This means to say that the texts included in the MTC all share the following overall characteristics:
MTC overall communicative situation and communicative purpose Senders
Journalists (except for the discussion article/letter to the editor – Vraa, though a journalist, wrote it in his capacity as a translator and is not employed by the addressed newspaper).
Receivers
Actual: a (heterogeneous) mass audience – composed of individuals who are unknown to the writers. The whole Danish population in their capacity as newspaper readers/TV viewers/radio listeners/internet users. Intended: potential readers of the TT.
Medium
The mass media.
Production time and place
Between Aug. 26, 2009 and Nov. 27, 2009, both dates included. One single exception of a review dated Feb. 1, 2010. (For key dates, see below). All texts are produced in DK.
Motive(s) for the text
Texts are triggered by special occasions: the release of the ST, Sept. 15 (US:
productions
Sept. 14, 2009, midnight/DK: Sept. 15, 2009, 6:00 a.m.) and the release of the TT, Nov. 16, 2009.
To be continued overleaf
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Language functions9 intended
Further shared motives (reasons) for the text productions: 1) to inform
by the sender
readers that the books (the ST and the TT, respectively) are now available; reflected in the informative language function 2) to express opinions on all conceivable aspects surrounding the release of the TT; reflected in the expressive language function, and 3) to persuade or dissuade the potential readers to read the book and/or to arouse and keep the interest of potential readers; reflected in the appellative language function.
Intended predominant
The informative the transmitting sub-category of the assertive function,
language functions
because the overall purpose is to communicate a simple topic of knowledge focusing on facts of the matter being in a certain way. However, most of the texts are so wrapped in value judgements and implied judgements that they lean towards expressiveness, and the appellative function is strong in the case of the reviews (‘reading the book is (not) worth your while!’).
Genre
2.1.2
LSP texts journalism media texts.
Words on transcription
As mentioned in sections 1.2, Methodological and theoretical framework, 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations, and 2.1.1, Selection criteria and delimitations, above, part of my empirical data consists of recorded radio/TV broadcast interviews and personal interviews. These interviews of course have to be translated from oral conversations to written texts in order to be accessible to analysis and theorizing – a process involving the procedure of transcription (Kvale 160), i.e. listening to recordings and typing what was said (Rubin and Rubin 203). According to Kvale (169-170) there are no correct standard answers to questions of how to go about transcription. The important thing in this respect, Kvale states, is to make some standard decisions about transcription style, i.e. decisions regarding verbatim (literal), condensed or summarized reproductions – in other words, what to include and what not to include in the written texts/the extent of detail and the reproduction style, i.e. informal oral style or the more formal written style. Such decisions, Kvale claims, depend on two factors: 1) the audience for which the transcribed texts are intended, and 2) the use10 of the transcriptions. Furthermore, one basic rule in transcription applies, according to Kvale (169): the explicit written statement of how the transcriptions were made, and Rubin and Rubin 9
Throughout this thesis, categorisations regarding language functions are done using Bühler’s functional theory of language, in the interpretation of the authors of Sprog på arbejde (Ditlevsen et. al 40) that all texts comprise all three language functions: the expressive, the informative and the vocative/appellative (see Newmark 39-42 for elaboration), and that one language function can always be said to be predominant. Bühler’s theory is used in combination with the functional typology of textual functions in Sprog på arbejde (Ditlevsen et. al 69-73) for a more elaborated categorisation. 10 Rubin and Rubin (203) agree on intended use as a decision factor but do not explicitly mention the audience.
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point out the importance of a clear distinction between interviewee statements and own interpretations and summaries (204).
The above theoretical considerations have led to the following standard decisions and subsequent reflections concerning transcripts suitable for the purposes of this thesis: •
Interview particulars are stated above each transcript in English, because any reader should be able to get an idea of what is included in the appendices. The interviews themselves, however, were conducted in Danish and are therefore transcribed in Danish. Transcript elements used in the thesis text have of course been translated.
•
Transcripts are reproduced as precise and verbatim as possible and the informal oral style is maintained implying the inclusion of grammatical errors, digressions, abrupt changes of focus, profanity, indications of mood such as laughter and background music, stalling words, fillers and events that interrupt the interview.
•
The transcripts are basic transcripts in the sense that no specialized notation has been used except for indication of doubts and comments11. Questions are indicated by question marks, finished sentences are indicated by full stop, unfinished or interrupted sentences are transcribed without punctuation. Brackets (what) indicate that it cannot be heard whether ‘what’ is being said or not, ( ) indicate that it cannot be heard what is being said, and ( (papers rustling) ) are my comments on what happens. Hyphens are used for insentence breaks, and the number of hyphens indicates the length of the breaks.
Transcript audience and use: The transcripts are mainly for my own personal use as a necessary aid in remembering the interviews and their content, and as a necessary basis of extracting the elements/text passages relevant for answering the questions posed in section 1.1, Problem Statement. Secondary users are readers who read and understand both Danish and English and who want documentation or who would want to check the basis upon which I translated12, summarized, condensed, interpreted and/or concluded. In my opinion, a verbatim reproduction of a text has numeral advantages: 1) it easily permits later identification of interviewee statements and own interpretations, 2) it minimizes editing 11
Inspiration for transcription symbols indicating doubts and comments was found in an online excerpt translated from Asmuß, Birte, and Steensig, Jakob. Samtalen på arbejde, see Works Cited. 12 Translation here refers to both interlingual and intralingual translation, since the use of oral data in a written thesis text may inevitably involve a raised level of formality, unless translations are done as translations of quotes only.
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during the transcription process (which is desirable, because editing adds yet another distractor - and possible risk of error - to the process which already involves the tasks of listening and typing, 3) it is a resource for further language investigation, i.e. it permits the use of my compiled data by others, e.g. the inclusion of the texts in a corpus, since texts could still be characterised as “a principled collection of naturally occurring texts.”13
2.1.3
Main issues of attention/criticism and possible explanations of the sudden media interest
When identifying the main issues of attention/criticism and the resulting explanations of/reasons for the sudden media interest in Vraa and his translation of The Lost Symbol, and when making this identification on the basis of the MTC texts, I will of course have to focus on the texts in their entirety. However, genre analytic knowledge of move structure (the inverted pyramid approach to journalism, i.e. the approach of conveying core information in the beginning of the text, including catchy headings and subheadings of sensational promotion - hype) has been a valuable aid in the immediate identification of the relevant text passages below. Any quotations throughout sections 2.1.3.1, Presentation of the identified press coverage, and 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage, below originated in Danish and so translations in square brackets were all done by me.
2.1.3.1 Presentation of the identified press coverage In Berlingske Tidende, on Aug. 26, under the subheading of “Der spekuleres heftigt i handlingen i Dan Browns nye bog. Når den udkommer på dansk 16. november, sker det i et Danmarkshistorisk højt oplag på over 100.000 eksemplarer” [“Intense speculations in the plot of Dan Brown’s forthcoming book. When released in Danish on November 16, an impression exceeding 110,000 copies makes it a history-making event in Denmark”], J. Andersen said that the American publishing house’s fear of leakages and web copies meant that no other publishers in the world would get to see the book until the American date of publication and that this created a bit of a challenge as regards the translation. Andersen further said that the translational challenge was solved differently around the world - that publishers in Germany and Sweden had assigned the task to six translators, whereas in Denmark only one translator, Mich Vraa, had the pleasure of being assigned to the task. Andersen further said that in return, Vraa promised to work day and night for a month. He also said that the book could be
13
Evans’ main constituent of corpus definition (Evans 1).
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published as early as two months after the English edition due to an efficient translator, industrious editors and a kindly assisting printing house.
On berlingske.dk, Aug. 30, under the subheading of “Den 15. september udkommer Dan Browns nye thriller I USA og England i et rekordstort førsteoplag. Svensk forlag har hyret hele seks oversættere” [“Record-breaking first edition of Dan Brown’s new thriller in USA and England published on September 15. Swedish publishers hired as many as six translators”], J. Andersen said that the team of six translators hired by the Swedish publishers would attend to 100 pages each. He also said that the Swedish publishers were as indignant as publishers in the rest of the world that the translators were not allowed advance copies of The Lost Symbol due to the American publishing house’s fear of pirated editions and that this led to a frustrating situation for translators all over the world.
In Politiken, on Sep. 13, in an article based on an interview with Mich Vraa, under the heading of “… Dan Brown er jo ikke ligefrem Proust” [“… Well, Dan Brown is not exactly Proust”], and under the subheading of “Tirsdag morgen klokken 6 får Mich Vraa teksten til Dan Browns nye roman ‘Det forsvundne tegn’. Hver dag i en måned skal han oversætte 1820 sider for at få den danske udgave klar til tiden” [“Tuesday at 6 a.m., Mich Vraa will be receiving the text of Dan Brown’s forthcoming novel The Lost Symbol. Every day for a month he must translate 18-20 pages to get the Danish version ready on time”], C. Andersen said that Vraa would have to work in the area of 30 days in a row and that his children would have to take a good look at their father on that Tuesday morning, because they would not get to see much of him until some time in October. C. Andersen further said that Vraa had to work overtime for a month, because the Danish publisher, Hr. Ferdinand, wanted the translation done as fast as at all possible. C. Andersen informed that expectations to the long awaited book, ‘The Lost Sign’, were high, because the book’s predecessor, the global bestselling ‘The Da Vinci Code’, was also a huge bestseller in Denmark with 600,000 sold copies, and as a result the publisher as well as the translator would have to use untraditional methods to solve the task of having the book published as quickly as possible. According to C. Andersen the Swedish publisher chose to solve the task by the simultaneous effort of six translators, whereas the Danish publisher chose the solution of one translator and the delegation of part of the editing and research to editor Lotte Kirkeby Hansen (C. Andersen). C. Andersen also quoted Vraa for having said that he would have to translate 18-20 pages a day to solve the task, and that he would have to refrain from being the control freak that he
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usually is. “For Mich Vraa er det … usædvanligt at oversætte mere end 500 sider på en måned. Ofte vil det tage godt to måneder“ [The translation of more than 500 pages in a month is unusual for Vraa and would often take more than two months”], C. Andersen said.
An online article by Ioannou on Sep. 14, presenting a video-recorded interview with Vraa, was subheaded by a statement saying that Vraa was not particularly stressed by the fact that he had 28 days to translate the latest Dan Brown book (implying that he might have to be). During the actual interview Vraa (“Ny Dan Brown”) agreed with the interviewers that the task and he himself had been surrounded by intense hype, but he assured the interviewers who focused on the potential problem of having to complete the task in 28 days that the only thing which seemed a bit terrifying was the idea of not having any days off during that 28day period.
The introduction of a similar interview with Vraa (“Ekspresoversættelse”) the following day also focused on time and workload by stating that the release of The Lost Symbol was a major workload kickoff for the translator who would have to work fast and warn his friends and family that he could no longer be reached.
In an online news article on Sep. 16, Nørtoft stated that “de udenlandske oversættere” [“the foreign translators”] - Mich Vraa included - had not been able to get the book until the date of the English release, because the American publishing house was afraid that the book would be copied by somebody prior to publication. “Derfor har Mich Vraa nu ualmindelig travlt. Bogen skal være oversat om bare en måned” [“That is why Mich Vraa is now extraordinarily busy. The book must be translated in just a month from now”], Nørtoft said. Nørtoft further quoted Vraa for having said that he would not be doing anything else in the subsequent 28 days with regard to work, because the 509 pages for translation would keep him busy.
In a background article on Sep. 18, Seymour’s introductory focus was “postyr” [“the fuss”] surrounding “den amerikanske successforfatters seneste udspil” [“the American success author’s latest move”] – “move” referring to The Lost Symbol in its capacity of being the sequel to the bestselling Da Vinci Code. According to Seymour, the fuss, i.e. “marketingmaskinen og hemmelighedskræmmeriet var ved at nå potterske dimensioner op til udgivelsen i Amerika” [“the marketing machine and the secretiveness almost reached Harry Potter dimensions in the days leading up to the release in America”]. The same background
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article included a sub-article under the heading of “For fuld skrue i 28 dage” [“At full speed for 28 days”]. This sub-article was also used as an independent online news article and led off with the information that it normally takes Mich Vraa two months to translate a book, but that he would have to complete the translation of The Lost Symbol by October 13, i.e. in only 28 days, weekends included. The article further focused on the translator’s tight working schedule implying the day-to-day delegation of tasks such as collecting the translated pages, proofreading etc.
For genre-specific reasons of newsworthiness there was a natural time-gap in the MTC between late September and late October, while Vraa was working. However, once the manuscript had been handed in, Vraa became a public figure all over again, yet the focus of the MTC texts changed only slightly.
A news article on Oct. 21 by Korsgaard in Helsingør Dagblad under the heading of “Hr. Ferdinand har bestilt kæmpe-oplag” [“Hr. Ferdinand ordered a gigantic impression”] and an announcement on Oct. 22 by Terkelsen in Berlingske Tidende both focused on the impression of 145,000 Danish copies of the book – “et helt usædvanligt stort førsteoplag på dansk” [“a quite unusually large first edition in Danish”], said Korsgaard. Both Korsgaard and Terkelsen subsequently informed readers, as did Larsen on kpn.dk, Nov. 2, in identical wordings that Dan Brown’s thriller “… er på rekordtid blevet oversat til dansk af Mich Vraa. 25 døgn tog det ham at oversætte de 562 sider til dansk” [“has been translated into Danish in record time by Mich Vraa. It took him 25 days and nights to translate the 562 pages into Danish.”] “… en bemærkelsesværdig bedrift” [“… a remarkable feat,”] Korsgaard and Terkelsen added.
In a portrait article in Kristeligt Dagblad on Nov. 13 under the heading of “Dan Brown tur retur på 25 dage” [“A 25-day return journey to Dan Brown”], Hornemann said that expectant readers owed it to Vraa and his work-worn fingertips that they could throw themselves into bestselling author Dan Brown’s latest book in Danish. Hornemann further informed readers that Vraa had never before translated such a long novel in such a short time. According to Hornemann, Vraa had 30 days to translate 560 pages but sent the last page of the translation to the publisher five days before the deadline and only took one day off during the 25-day period.
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In an interview given by Vraa on Nov. 13 in a Danish TV feature titled “Dan Brown på rekordtid” [“Dan Brown in record time”] – an interview focusing mainly on Vraa’s working process - Vraa’s accomplishment of having completed “det 562-sider lange manuscript” [“the full 562-page manuscript”] in 25 days, “… de 25 hårdeste arbejdsdage i hans liv” [“… the 25 hardest working days of his life”] was being hyped by means of one of the interviewer’s metaphorical introductions in which he created the image of a Danish football player reaching for the sky after having scored the victory goal in a very important football match. Introductorily, the interviewer stated that Vraa had had to translate the book in half the time of what he usually had for similar tasks, and subsequently the interviewer wanted to know about “… det sværeste ved, at det skulle gå så stærkt” [… “the hardest part of having to do it so fast”].
In another interview given by Vraa on the following day in a Danish radio feature titled “Den afhuggede hånds hemmeligheder” [“the secrets of the severed hand”] – another interview focusing mainly on Vraa’s working process – the presenter added to the hype by focusing on the initial printing of 145,000 copies and stating that no other initial printing of publications but that of the Yellow Pages or the Ikea catalogue seemed to have ever surpassed the initial printing of The Lost Symbol – “… en ny Danmarksrekord” [“… a new record in Denmark”], the presenter said. “Så mange bøger har ingen forlægger nogensinde før sendt i trykken med én eneste bestilling” [“No other publisher has ever before had so many books printed in only one single order”], he said. “… hos forlaget… Hr. Ferdinand… ved de udmærket godt, at de har en guldkalv i båsen… vi hopper op på Brown-bølgen et par dage inden den rammer kysten, men da vi har en klar fornemmelse af, at bogen næppe har samme dybde i det kunstneriske, som den har højde i det kommercielle, har vi valgt at kigge nærmere på forbindelsesleddet mellem Dan Brown himself14 og de danske læsere, nemlig romanens oversætter” [“… at the publisher… Hr. Ferdinand … they are perfectly aware that they have a golden calf in their backyard. … we hit the Brown wave before it hits the coast, but since we have the clear impression that the book hardly has the artistic depth to it as it has height commercially, we have chosen to have a closer look at the link between Dan Brown himself and the Danish readers, namely the translator of the novel,”] he metaphorically stated. On the basis of a statement by Vraa himself during the subsequent interview, he further introduced Vraa by informing listeners that “… Vraa… brugte lige præcis 24 døgn på at oversætte de
14
‘himself’ was actually used by the Danish presenter.
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562 sider” [“… Vraa … spent exactly 24 days and nights translating the 562 pages …”] and referred to the task as “en oversættermarathon” [“a translator’s marathon”].
2.1.3.2 Interpretation of the identified press coverage As seen from the above excerpts, quotes and paraphrased renderings, and as anticipated in the problem statement, sec. 1.1, the major part of the MTC texts address the issue of the translator’s time available for solving the task of translating more than 500 pages from English to Danish in less than a month. Curiously enough, some of the MTC texts refer to 562 translated pages when in fact the original ST contains only 509 pages to translate. However, there is no telling whether this is just yet another conscious part of adding to the hype (the higher the number of pages, the greater the feat), or whether it simply reflects the ignorance of and/or a lack of interest in the fact that Danish TTs are often longer than English-language STs due to linguistic reasons of structural differences between the two languages. Either way, there seems to be a consensus of MTC opinion to question the reasonableness of the time available for the task.
The above data extracted from the MTC texts thus enable me to sum up on identified main issues of media attention/explanations of the sudden media interest in random order as follows: •
The limited time available for carrying out an extensive task due to factors such as: o
The secretiveness, i.e. the American publishing house’s fear of pirated versions prior to publication as a result of:
•
Readership’s speculations in the plot.
Readership’s expectations to a long awaited book.
The book being a sequel to a global bestseller.
o
No advance copies of the text for translation to assigned translators.
o
Narrow deadline set by the Danish publisher.
An unusual, Danish history-making, record-breaking number of Danish first editions of a book.
•
High expectations of huge commercial success in spite of low expectations of artistic depth. In the introduction to a radio interview with Vraa (“Den afhuggede hånds
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hemmeligheder”), one journalist even indicates that the book as such is uninteresting and that this is the reason why the media interest shifts to the translator and his work. •
The issue of the assigned translator working alone as opposed to sharing the task with other translators (teams of 6 in Sweden and Germany).
•
The translator’s tight working schedule (daily deadlines and day-to-day delegation of research, proofreading etc.).
•
The degree of difficulty of the task.
Furthermore, the below reasons found in a later MTC text by Levinsen (“sprog”) fully support some of the main issues of media attention/explanations of the sudden media interest identified above: •
That the book had been “lynoversat” [“translated at a lightning pace”].
•
That the Danish publisher wanted the book translated and ready for sale in due time before the Christmas shopping season.
•
That the American original was published under a “latterligt stort hemmelighedskræmmeri” [“ridiculously extensive mystery-mongering”], which left the translator with no more than a month to do the translation.
•
That the international publishing trade suffers from propensity for overdramatized marketing.
A few of the MTC texts also deal more thoroughly with other aspects of Vraa’s working process, such as: •
His approach to the task.
•
His applied methods.
These issues are interesting and relevant, yet still considered secondary in respect of the focus of this thesis and are therefore not dealt with under the heading of this section, but under the headings of the respective relevant sections of chapter 5.
During my compilation of the MTC, I was surprised to find that my defined delimitations, see sec. 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations, only resulted in two texts of the review genre
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despite the preceding media hype. This may of course be a consequence of inadequate web/database search skills on my part, but the indication is that Danish reviewers either mainly read and reviewed the original (the ST)15 or read and reviewed the TT16 but without addressing translational issues and/or the translator at all, and this of course stresses the point that the interest was not in translation proper but in the hype surrounding the parties involved.
Of the two MTC texts by reviewers who actually dealt with the fact that their reviews concerned translated literature, one, Jensen in her review of the Danish version of the The Lost Symbol in Helsingør Dagblad, only superficially touched upon the issue: “Nu vel – Dan Browns sprog, eller oversætterens, er ikke specielt fængende, måske af og til lidt tungt og knudret, fordi der hele tiden refereres til verdenslitteratur, videnskabsmænd og steder, som I hvert tilfælde for mig ikke alle er lige kendte og derfor intetsigende i sammenhængen…” [“Well, Dan Brown’s language, or the translator’s language, is not particularly catchy, perhaps a little cumbersome and obscure from time to time, because of the constant references to world literature, scientists and places which are not all exactly familiar, to me at least, and therefore contextually meaningless… ”] (Jensen “Mysterier”).
The ambiguousness of this excerpt, however, makes it hard for readers or the translator to relate to. Does the linguistic criticism concern 1) one or the other, 2) one as a result of the other, or 3) one as well as the other? All interpretations are possible and this may be the reviewer’s way of acknowledging the fact that the review concerns a translation, but without relating to the issue of who is to blame for asserted linguistic inadequacies. In my opinion, this kind of service information to the readers only serves to raise doubts about the translator’s work on an unsubstantiated basis and easily gives the impression of a kind of hearsay criticism.
15
Reviews of the ST were found in: Jyllands-Posten (Levinsen, “Dan Brown”), Berlingske Tidende (Strømfeldt 3), Fyens Stiftstidende (Koch 14) and Ekstra Bladet (Hansen 9). 16 Reviews of the TT with no mentioning of translational issues and/or the translator were found in: Kristeligt Dagblad (Henriksen 11), Metroxpress (Vandal, “Basal spænding”) and Weekendavisen (Bonnevie 2).
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The other review included in the MTC, Levinsen’s review of the Danish version of The Lost Symbol in Jyllands-Posten17, not only differs from the rest of the MTC texts in respect of subgenre but also in respect of content in that Levinsen critically addresses microstrategical solutions applied in Vraa’s translation. Levinsen’s criticism concerned:
1. The rendition of American concepts and place names, cf. “Nogle amerikanske begreber og stednavne oversættes, andre ikke … ” (Levinsen, “sprog”). [“Some American concepts and place names are translated, others are not … ”]
2. The rendition of wordplay and ambiguities, exemplified by the rendition of the term ‘square,’ cf. “ … de ganske mange ordspil og tvetydigheder … kommer ikke til deres ret … Eksempelvis er det et sted helt afgørende, at ’square’ både kan betyde et kvadrat og en offentlig plads. Her oversættes skiftevis til begge dele, så kun den engelskkyndige læser muligvis kan tænke sig tilbage til pointen” (Levinsen, ”sprog”). [ … the fair amount of wordplay and ambiguities … is not given its proper weight … As an example, it is entirely decisive in part of the text that “square” can mean a foursquare as well as a public square. In that part of the text, the Danish translation alternates between the two meanings so that only Danish readers with proficiency in English may possibly recall the point.”]
3. Non-translation (direct transfer) of proper names, place names included, cf. “Uoversat engelsk. Det fremmer … ikke forståelsen, at der tales om den katolske helgen Sankt Jerome (der hedder Hieronymus på dansk) eller den engelske Kong James (hertillands bedre kendt som Jacob I) … Capitol i Washington, D.C. … bibeholdes … konsekvent … som ‘U.S. Capitol Building’, mens kuplen på toppen af bygningen konsekvent kaldes ’Capitol Rotunda’.” (Levinsen, ”sprog”). [”Untranslated English language. … it does not add to the understanding that the catholic Saint Jerome is referred to as ‘Sankt Jerome’ (when he is actually called Hieronymus in Danish) or that the English King James is referred to as ‘Kong James’ (when he is better known in this country as ‘Jacob I’) … the Capitol in Washington
17
See Appendix 2 for a translation of the text in its entirety.
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D.C. … is consistently maintained in Brown’s pompous wording as ‘U.S. Capitol Building’, whereas the dome on the top of the building is consistently called ‘Capitol Rotunda’”.]
4. One instance of mistranslation, cf. “ … den teosofiske orden, hvis danske aflægger hed ‘Stjernen i øst’, bliver til ‘Den østlige stjernens orden’” (Levinsen, ”sprog”). [” … the theosophical order of which the Danish offshoot was called ’Stjernen i øst’ (the Star in the East) becomes ’Den østlige stjernes orden’ (the Order of the Eastern Star)”.]
The above identification and account of Levinsen’s criticism enables me to further delimit issues relevant for further discussion and research. For the purposes of this thesis, I have chosen to delimit further discussion and research to the general criticism, cf. my headings of items 1 and 3; and to the specific criticism addressed in item 2. Discussed and researched issues thus concern the criticism levelled at: 1) the rendition of American place names, 2) the implied inconsistency in the solution to the translation problem involving ‘square,’ and 3) the non-translation of proper names, place names included.
As a consequence, further analysis, apart from the analysis involving ‘square,’ will not include the few other specific examples given by Levinsen and commented on by Vraa.18 In stead, examples will be generated from my own categorical delimitation in order to ensure maximum attention to the general points of criticism. Categorical delimitation applying is found in secs. 6.5.1.1, ‘Square’ data categories, and 6.6, Intratextual data categories.
2.2
Translation-related aspects of book reviews of literature - A small-scale questionnaire study
In the pursuit of answers to the questions posed in the Problem Statement, sec. 1.1 a) and c), i.e. questions concerning the professional background of the critic in particular and of reviewers in general, the elements of book reviews of translated literature, and a possible trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews; and to fulfil the intentions mentioned in section 1.2, Methodological and theoretical framework, I conducted 18
Vraa’s reaction to the specified criticism was brought to Danish readers by MTC texts in Jyllands-Posten (Vraa, “Debatindlæg”) and Politiken (Fyhn), see Works Cited.
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a small-scale questionnaire study with the participation of three selected respondents. The questionnaire study was conducted according to the description in section 1.2 (quantitative approach/qualitative interpretation).
One respondent, Jakob Levinsen, Jyllands-Posten, referred to as either Levinsen or ‘the critic’ throughout this thesis, was chosen for obvious reasons of having reviewed and given detailed criticism of the Danish translation of The Lost Symbol. However, common selection criteria for all three reviewers were: Their employment with leading Danish daily national newspapers and their capacity of being reviewers of Danish translations of English/American novels within the genre of thriller fiction. Bo Tao Michaëlis, Politiken, was thus identified through Politiken’s literature editorial office and Jens Andersen, Berlingske, was identified through Berlingske’s culture editorial office. E-mail inquiries (see Appendix 3 – in Danish only) with attached questionnaires preceded responses (response rate: 100%).
The aim of the questionnaire study is to look into certain aspects of book reviews of literature which apply specifically to translated works for a Danish readership. Much literature can be found about the book review genre in general and also about the sub-genre of book reviews of literature. I have, however, not been able to find sources dealing with the translationrelated questions raised in my mind, as no explicit differentiation between book reviews of Danish literature and book reviews of translated works seems to be made (i.e. no well-defined genre description of book reviews of translated works as a separate sub-genre of book reviews of literature seems to exist). Answers to my questions are therefore relevant if we want to discuss and add to the understanding of the premises of translation-related criticism in book reviews (negative value judgements) – criticism which is part of reality for translators of literature.
Inspired by Hansen’s (35-44) approach to documenting questionnaire results in Hermes Journal of Language and Communication Studies - types of questions included in the questionnaire, my interpretation of the answers and a brief discussion of the terms of translation-related criticism/assessment will follow below, sec. 2.2.1. The three original completed questionnaires can be found in Appendix 4 (in Danish only).
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2.2.1 Questions - and interpretation of the answers The questions included in the questionnaire were grouped into four categories containing the questions listed and translated below: 1. The reviewer’s educational and practical background in general. a. What is your professional (educational and practical) background? b. Approximately, how many foreign novels (translated literary works) do you review on a yearly basis? 2. The reviewer’s level of language education/experience (English/American English language only). a. Do you have a formal language education? (If ‘Yes’, which education)? b. Do you have practical experience in translation? (If ‘Yes’, please describe briefly). c. Do you have any other kind of language experience/linguistic background? (If ‘Yes’, please describe briefly). 3. Book reviewing of foreign translated literature in general. a. Do formal educational requirements for reviewers of translated literature exist? (If ‘Yes’, which requirements)? b. Does a ‘template’ for book reviews of translated literature exist? c. Which elements are typically included in your book reviews of translated literature? d. Comments, if any. 4. Book reviewing of foreign translated literature, specifically. a. When reviewing a translated novel, how often do you include your OVERALL opinion of the translation/the translator’s work? (‘good translation/bad translation’ etc.)? b. Do you personally decide whether or not you wish to include OVERALL criticism (positive/negative) of the translation/the translator’s work? (If ‘No’, who decides)? c. When reviewing a translated novel, how often do you include your DETAILED opinion (specified by examples etc.)? d. Do you personally decide whether or not you wish to include DETAILED criticism (positive/negative) of the translation/ the translator’s work? (If ‘No’, who decides)?
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e. If you include DETAILED criticism (specified by examples etc) of the translation/the translator’s work in a book review, how was your point of departure for reading the novel? f. Do your book reviews include an element of translation criticism/assessment more often now than before? g. In general, is it your impression that book reviews include an element of translation criticism/assessment more often now? h. Comments, if any. I shall now turn to a summarised interpretation of the answers:19 Re: 1.a
Levinsen summarises his educational and professional background as follows: MA in musicology and Danish20, critic since 1984 and publishing editor 20022006. Michaëlis lists MA (honours) in literature studies21, and MA in Danish and classical studies. Andersen summarises his educational and professional background as follows: PhD in Scandinavian philology, critic since 1985, literary editor since 1995, and an author (of biographies in particular). These responses correspond to and thus serve as an update of the statement that editors who employ reviewers do not favour a certain professional background (Jørgensen 97) as reviewers seem to be a diverse group of people, professionally. Interestingly, formal knowledge of the Danish language seems to be a decisive qualifying factor as a reviewer, whereas formal knowledge of the English language does not.
Re: 1.b
Levinsen writes a total of approx. 30 book reviews of translated literary works a year. In comparison, the three respondents write between 15 and 52 reviews a year, an average of approx. 33 reviews a year. Levinsen thus writes an amount of reviews just above average. However, this figure only serves to give an idea of the average amount of book reviews of translated works written by a reviewer on a yearly basis, as no general conclusion can be made from a study this size – especially not since the amount of reviews written by each of the respondents differs markedly.
19
The answers originated in Danish. Consequently, all translations of the answers were done by me. My translation of cand. mag. i musikvidenskab og dansk. 21 My adapted translation of mag. art. i litteraturvidenskab. The degree of mag. art – a degree between MA and PhD - is no longer awarded in DK (“Magister (Degree)”). 20
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Re: 2.a
None of the respondents have a formal education in English/American English language. Accordingly, theoretical knowledge of the English language does not seem to be a decisive qualifying factor as a reviewer.
Re: 2.b/c
Levinsen has practical experience in translation but does not specify his experience (missing item). 2.c is a missing item as well. Andersen has done some translation in connection with his own publications (quotations etc.) but has never translated an entire work. Michaëlis has no practical experience in translation, and neither Michaëlis nor Andersen have any other kind of language experience/linguistic background within the English language.
Re: 3.a
The three respondents all agree that no formal educational requirements for reviewers of translated literature exist. Accordingly, no formal English qualifications are required.
Re: 3.b
All three respondents agree that no ‘template’ for book reviews of translated literature exists. Consequently, any translation-related content (amount and order) seems to depend on the reviewing individual. This is also reflected in the very different answers to question 3.c.
Re: 3.c
Levinsen lists the following overall move structure of the elements which are typically included in his book reviews of translated literature: -
A brief outline of the plot.
-
A discussion of the literary work.
-
The literary work in perspective.
-
A discussion of the translation.
There is a discrepancy between theory and practice here. Levinsen’s review of the TT (Levinsen, “sprog”) does not include an outline of the plot. This may be due to the inclusion of such outline in his review of the ST (Levinsen “Dan Brown”) two months earlier, and this again may (or may not) indicate that TT reviews are not fully considered reviews in their own right. Michaëlis summarises his included elements in one sentence: -
Linguistic and literary quality assessment based on the background and premises of the book.
In my interpretation this may or may not imply the inclusion of the ST. Emphasis seems to be on the TT. Andersen lists his included elements as: -
Comments on form and content.
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Re: 3.d
Comments on the language and the tone.
Further comments were given by one respondent (Andersen) only. He stresses his attention to the extra layer of translation: his readiness to act on a feeling of ‘two voices’ which should really be one.
Re: 4.a – 4.d Two respondents sometimes include their OVERALL opinions. One always does. All three respondents sometimes include their DETAILED opinions of the translation/the translator’s work, and personally decide whether or not they wish to include their OVERALL and/or DETAILED criticism of the translation/the translator’s work. No policy within the area seems to exit. Translators and/or their work may or may not be mentioned, appreciated or criticised (branded as good or poor). Re: 4.e
Two respondents (Levinsen and Michaëlis) do comparative readings of the ST and the TT as their points of departure, if they decide to include DETAILED criticism. The fulfilment of a prerequisite for critical judgement.22 Andersen reads the ST as his point of departure.
Re: 4.f – 4.g
None of the three respondents find that their book reviews include an element of translation criticism/assessment more often now than before, nor is it their impression that book reviews generally include an element of translation criticism/assessment more often now than before. In conclusion, a status quo concensus.
Re: 4.h
Levinsen adds that his book reviews have always included an element of translation criticism/assessment, and Andersen adds that nothing has changed, - neither for the better or for the worse. Based on the answers to questions 4.f - 4.h, NO (untraditional) trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews/or growing media interest in translations in general seems to exist.
Any concluding interpretation above is of course subject to reservations concerning the very limited number of respondents.
22
As discussed by Harder in Hasselbalch (44-52).
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2.3
Partial conclusion
So far, part of my empirical data enables me to conclude on aspects pertaining to the media hype dealt with in this thesis and also on translation-related aspects of book reviewing of literature:
The task: Even though sources differ, the MTC data, the ST and last but not least, my personal interview with Vraa permits me to establish that the actual task discussed in the media concerned the translation of 509 pages (Brown 509) in 28 days, weekends included, i.e. less than half the time of Vraa’s normal time spent on similar tasks (C. Andersen; Seymour; and Vraa, “Personal” 7). Moreover, Vraa in fact completed the task in only 25 days, including one day off, and translated an average of 21.21 pages a day as opposed to his usual average of 12-14 pages a day (Vraa, “Personal” 7). Thus the main issue of the sudden media interest and attention (the hype) was the demanding nature of the task involved – the issue of time vs. workload. The MTC data further enabled me to identify a vast number of other main issues explanatory of the media hype. These issues were listed in section 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage.
The criticism: In my opinion, the media were not questioning Vraa’s professional ability to carry out the task, but were really questioning the reasonableness, i.e. whether or not such task was at all solvable under the given circumstances. A reasonable concern, it seems, when comparing with Vraa’s usual average and with the expected/estimated average norm of approx. 10 pages a day, according to information received from Ellen Boen, chairman of the Danish Translators Association (Dansk Oversætterforbund), see Appendix 5. Boen, however, stressed that the indicated average norm is subject to the indefinable factor of individual working speed, and of course also to the degree of difficulty of the ST.23
Vraa assumed the task, and due to the nature of hype (exhibiting a snowball effect) the media really had no choice but to follow up on the outcome – the TT – and for inexplicable reasons that gap was filled by Levinsen who personally chose the approach of a detailed adverse judgement in a kind of TT book review follow-up to his previous book review of the ST.
23
My summarised interpretation of Boen’s Danish e-mail reply.
Andersen 33
Being part of the MTC, Levinsen’s TT book review enabled me to identify the pinpointed criticism, as listed in section 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage, items 14, and make it the point of departure for further delimitation and for the selected microanalysis found in sections 6.5 and 6.6, Main source text translation problem and Intratextual data categories subjected to comparative analysis, subsections included.
The translation-related aspects of book reviewing of literature: During my compilation of the MTC, I found indications that Danish reviewers, apart from Levinsen and Jensen, either mainly read and reviewed the ST or read and reviewed the TT, but without dealing with the fact that their reviews actually concerned translated literature, and this led me to conclude that the media interest was not in translation proper but in the hype surrounding the parties involved (snowball effect)!
Furthermore, my questionnaire data, as summarised and interpreted in full in section 2.2.1, Questions – and interpretation of the answers, indicate that decisive qualifying factors as a book reviewer of English/American fiction include formal knowledge of the Danish language but do not include theoretical or formal knowledge of the English language. This may point in the direction of general emphasis on the TT and the reviewers’ possible preference for covert translation, i.e. translation that does not read like a translation. The expression “readiness to act on a feeling of ‘two voices’ which should really be one”24 certainly supports such assumption.
The data further indicated that the reviewing individual personally decides what or what not to include in a TT book review as regards overall or detailed translation-related criticism regardless of formal/theoretical background. In my opinion this calls for some kind of interdisciplinary cooperation (reviewers/translators) in the development of policies in the field of TT reviews, in order to avoid the reviewer authority to brand a translation as good or poor. Finally, the data did not seem to indicate a trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews/or a growing media interest in translation in general.
24
My somewhat interpretive translation of Andersen’s expression: [Lydhørhed overfor fornemmelsen af ‘to stemmer,’ som jo gerne skulle være én], see Appendix 4.
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Partial conclusion in short: The task of translating sequels to global bestsellers has implications which differ from those of other translating tasks – time-wise, professionally or otherwise. Assuming such task may involve media hype and may even involve the risk of adverse judgement.
3.
On literary translation
The translation theories and the analytical and conceptual framework applied throughout this thesis - and to my analyses in particular - were devised or further developed by theorists25 who all adhere to functionalism, i.e. functionalist approaches to translation as opposed to historical ideas of translation proper/ideas of equivalence-based translation (Schjoldager, Understanding 145). I will thus begin this chapter by giving the briefest of definitions of ‘functionalist approaches’ followed by a very brief introduction to some of the functionalist concepts and theories applied in this thesis, sec. 3.1. The application of functionalist approaches to literary texts, however, has been made the object of criticism in the translation of literature,26 and I shall therefore end section 3.1 by briefly substantiating the application of functionalism to literature. Section 3.2 on the other hand, deals with practitioners’ theoretical and less theoretical recommendations on the predominant macrostrategy applicable to literary texts and will be introduced by a few aspects of literary translation which are important in the understanding of the translational challenge of literature. I will conclude chapter 3 by summing up on my findings in section 3.3.
3.1
From a theoretical point of view – functionalism or not (skopos or not)?
The briefest of definitions of ‘functionalist approaches’ may be given as follows:
… A general label for those approaches [- t]hat see translation as an act of communication and a form of action involving not only linguistic but also social and cultural factors … [- that] place particular emphasis on the function(s) of the TT … as the essential factor in determining how choices are made in translation … [, i.e. - that] attach particular importance to the function(s) served by a TT in its environment, which may or may not coincide with the ST function(s) … [, and]
25
Theorists such as Nord, Schjoldager, Eggins etc., see Works Cited. As accounted for and discussed by Nord (Translating 109-122), and by Schjoldager (Understanding 180182).
26
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[- that] always see the TT function(s) as the overriding factor(s) in determining the choices made during the translation process (Palumbo 50-51; my adapted version).
Theories and models associated with functionalist approaches include skopos theory27 and the model of translatorial action (Palumbo 50). However, a full account of these concepts is beyond the scope of this thesis in which it suffices to define ‘skopos theory’ as “see[ing] translation as a form of action … governed by a certain aim or purpose” (Palumbo 107), ‘skopos’ as: “The aim of the target text; the top-ranking principle in translation” (Schjoldager, Understanding 153), and ‘translatorial action’ as the concept of combining communication theory and action theory “to emphasise the functional and communicative nature of translation” (Schjoldager, Understanding 155). It is important to note that “skopos theory does not ultimately reject equivalence – it implies a change of focus such that equivalence between the ST and the TT is seen as hierarchically inferior to the purpose of the translated text …” (Palumbo 108).
When applying the functionalist approaches to translation, i.e. when working within a skopos-theoretical framework, the translator must make the overall predominant choice (the choice of an overall translation strategy) of either documentary (word-for-word) or instrumental (sense-by-sense) translation, in the terminology of Nord28 (corresponding to Schjoldager’s source-text oriented/target-text oriented macrostrategies, respectively).29 ‘Predominant choice’ refers to the idea that “there may well be times when the designated skopos [or skopoi dictate approaches] that [are] neither documentary nor instrumental, but may be seen as a mixture of the two” (Schjoldager, Understanding 167-168), i.e. a predominant choice of one macrostrategy in the certain knowledge that either choice is part of a continuum which manifests itself in the compromises that any translator will have to make. As regards the distinction between the documentary and the instrumental translation strategies it is further worth noticing that “literary translations may be multifunctional in the sense that they make use of both strategies in various ways for various purposes” (Klitgård in Schjoldager, Understanding 252).
27
Developed by Hans J. Vermeer with the contribution of Katharina Reiss (Palumbo 107), and presented and discussed by Schjoldager (Understanding 151-186). A highly influential theory within translator training (Schjoldager, Understanding 145), and indeed influential during my own translator training at Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus. 28 As explained in Nord (Translating ch. 4). 29 As explained in Schjoldager (Understanding chs. 5 and 9).
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The two overall translational choices/strategies mentioned (and seen as polar extremes) are given in overview by Schjoldager (Understanding 72) in my explicated version as follows:
Macro-level decision Source-text oriented macrostrategy -
Target-text oriented macrostrategy -
Documentary translation
Instrumental translation
Focus on source-text form and content
Focus on target-text effect
Communication of somebody else’s communication
Mediation between primary parties in a communication
Overt translation –
Covert translation –
… presents the text explicitly as a translation.
… the creation of a text that ‘enjoys the status of an
[Applicable to] ‘timeless’ [and] clearly source-culture
original source text in the target culture’ [, and the
specific [texts] ... (House in the interpretation of
reproduction of] the function of the ST where this
Palumbo 81).
function has no particular ties to the source culture … [Applicable to] ‘authorless texts or texts that have dispensable authors’ … (House in the interpretation of Palumbo 28).
Nord, in the interpretation of Schjoldager, further divides documentary translation into four different types and instrumental translation into three different types. These seven types are given in overview and explained by Schjoldager (Understanding 168-171) and by Nord (Translating 47-52). However, my combined version of Schjoldager’s and Nord’s overviews and explanations, as found below, only elaborates on the skopoi and the foci of the macrostrategical translation types which are expectedly chosen (predominantly! And one as predominant over the other) in the Danish translation of The Lost Symbol, also see section 6.3, Expected macrostrategy.
Translation
Type
Documentary
Interlineal
Skopos
Focus
Relevant to
To reproduce ST form, content and
Textual units
Modern
situation, i.e. to:
of the ST -
literary prose
Literal Philological Exoticising
- Preserve the SC setting, exotic strangeness, and cultural distance; and - to show readers what the SC is like
(fiction)
Andersen 37
Instrumental
Equifunctional Heterofunctional
To achieve similar functions as those of
Transferable
Literature/
the ST, i.e. to achieve the dominant
functions of
fiction
function(s) if the whole range of
the ST
functions cannot be achieved for reasons of cultural and/or temporal distance. Homologous
The above macro-level decisions will then be followed by a range of micro-level decisions influenced by/supportive of the macro-level decision(s) made. Schjoldager’s taxonomy of such micro-level options will be dealt with in section 6.4.
As briefly touched upon by way of introduction, the application of functionalism to literature, including skopos theory, has been criticised in the translation of literature. Among a number of criticisms on the part of literary translators or literary scholars interested in translation, one of the main criticisms with respect to literature concerns critical reservation that literary texts and their translations lack communicative intention and purpose (Nord, Translating 120). According to Nord, however, this reservation can be ignored as far as literary translation is concerned. She maintains that even if a ST has been written with no particular purpose or intention “the translation is always addressed to some audience … and is thus intended to have some function for the readers” (Nord, Translating 83). In addition, Enghild concludes in her study of 2001 on the application of the skopos theory as a model for literary translations - that the skopos theory is in fact advantageous in the application to literature because it embraces translations on either end of the ST/TT continuum and often forces a translator’s final decision to rest on the loyalty principle (i.e. considerations concerning ST sender’s intentions and TT receivers’ interpretations). Furthermore, at least three previous recent studies30 have theoretically justified the skopos approach to literature and refuted skopos criticism.31 3.2
From the point of view of various practitioners
In his guide to literary translation, Landers - an experienced translator of literature - points out a few of the translational aspects of literary translation which he considers to be 30 31
Studies by Lund, Van der Plaas and Nørgaard Kristensen, see Works Cited. (Lund 31-33; Van der Plaas 18-19; and Nørgaard Kristensen 16-18).
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especially unique (challenging) compared to non-fictional translation (translation of LSP texts). First and foremost, he argues, by way of what he calls “the freight train analogy” that literary translation is the most demanding type of translation:
In technical translation the order of the cars is inconsequential if all the cargo arrives intact. In literary translation, however, the order of the cars - … the style – can make the difference between a … readable translation and … [an] artificial rendering [of the ST] … (Landers 7).
He further argues that literary translation, more than in other branches of translation, entails an unending skein of choices and that the role of choice in literary translation cannot be overemphasized (9). As for the distinction between ideal and reality, Landers claims that a translator’s best effort will never result in a TT containing the richness of the ST, and consequently, the ideal is to produce a TT that approximates the ST or stands as a literary work in its own right (8), because according to Landers literary translation denotes:
The attempt to render faithfully into one language … the meaning, feeling, and … the style of a piece written in another language [- an attempt which] … can only be an ideal. Translation … is an art of the possible; compromise is inevitable and universal (Bester qtd. in Landers 10).
A common preference in literary translation among readers is that the TT does not read like a translation, i.e. that there is as little evidence as possible of the translation process. This preference is shared by some translators, though not by all (Landers 49). According to Landers especially those translators who are academics are more receptive to a visible role for theory (49), i.e. what I would interpret as receptiveness to the translator’s choice of overtness (documentary micro-level choices) if skopos gives the translator reasons to make such choices. As an example of such choice relevant for this thesis, Landers in fact mentions the important choice of whether to render proper names into the TL or leave them in the SL (91).
The goal in literary translation, according to Landers is to translate what was meant by the ST author and not what was written, and the superior vehicle for accomplishing this goal is to translate thought-by-thought32 in stead of word-by-word (54-55).
32
Sense-by-sense in the terminology of Nord (Translating ch. 4).
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As far as Landers is concerned, style (faithful rendering), approximation, compromise (‘the art of the possible’), transparency (covertness), and thought-by-thought translation are thus key terms which clearly point in the direction of predominant TT orientation as an overall recommendation with respect to literary translation. The question of overt/covert choices, however, seems to remain open to discussion, e.g. the choice of some degree of overtness in a translation which is otherwise predominantly TT oriented.
Though expressing themselves differently, Danish practitioners (experienced literary translators) in general seem to agree on the recommendation of predominant TT orientation and they all seem to be highly preoccupied with the constant delicate balance on the macrostrategical continuum. Hasselbalch thus comments on the impossible task of the constant need to be loyal to the ST without failing the reader (72), and she claims that any literary translation is really a rewording (73), - a paraphrase. According to Hjørnager Pedersen, freedom of action in translation is necessary in order to compensate for any stylistic losses which inevitably occur in a quite ST oriented translation of details. Otherwise, the TT ends up boring and thus disloyal in the most important respect: It fails by not being literature as the ST (Hjørnager Pedersen in Hasselbalch 16). An overall recommendation from Bjørnvig in the interpretation of Bjerg is to stick closely to the ST and then write the TT as the original author would have done if he or she had thought and written in the TL. Bjerg goes on to say that all translation is approximation, an attempt, an interpretation, and that there is no such thing as a definitive correct translation of a literary work (Bjerg in Hasselbalch 77). The right choice of words in the TT, however, may create a convincing illusion that ST and TT realities are equal (Bjerg in Hasselbalch 78). Harder stresses the importance of understanding that the TT is not identical with the original work of author. On the contrary, the TT is a representation of the original ST created by a person beyond the control of the author and under different premises than those of the author (Harder in Hasselbalch 44).
With respect to choice of macrostrategy (and aiming for overtness or covertness in translation) consensus existed among members of the jury of the Aristeion Prize33 in 1994 that a translation should preferably appear as though it originated in the TL (Harder in Hasselbalch 57). According to Harder, who represented Denmark in the jury that year, 33
The jury of the European Aristeion Prize - a prize awarded to exceptional translations of contemporary literature (Harder in Hasselbalch 52-53). The prize was discontinued in 1999 (“Aristeion Prize”).
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consensus in this respect is by no means a matter of course. All European countries have translators and especially theorists who argue in favour of overtness in the TT and who consider the attempt of making a TT appear as though it originated in the TL a forgery and a stillborn project (Harder in Hasselbalch 53-57). This only stresses the importance of the translator’s ability to make competent choices concerning the overall predominant macrostrategy, including the ability to find the delicate balance on the continuum of ST/TT orientation.
3.3
Partial conclusion
My findings in sections 3.1 and 3.2 above enable me to conclude that literary translation may be regarded the most demanding type of translation due to aspects of style. Furthermore, the literary translator needs to observe the multifunctional nature of literature when balancing on the ST/TT continuum which appears to be an act of extreme delicacy compared to other branches of translation.
Though common preference identified among readers and also the preference among some practitioners and theorists clearly point in the direction of predominant TT orientation, the question of overtness/covertness is less unambiguous. This of course has a knock-on effect on micro-level choices which may then to a large extent turn out to be supportive of a macrostrategy other than the predominant one.
Interestingly, practitioners representing the SL and the TL, Landers and Harder respectively, seem to agree that practitioners who are academics tend to argue in favour of overtness. This, if anything, could be an interesting sign that translation theory strengthens the professional confidence and enable practitioners to opt for functional choices which have not traditionally been made or approved of in literary translation.
Andersen 41
4.
Introducing The Lost Symbol
A literary analysis is beyond the scope of this thesis in which I have also found it reasonable, for reasons of time and space, to limit macroanalysis to the provision of a general overview and microanalysis to selected media motivated issues. However, basic knowledge about the author and his authorship, the genre and the storyline will be needed in order to be properly introduced to later sections on the translator involved and on specific translation analyses. This chapter thus aims to provide brief background information about the author, sec. 4.1; bibliographical aspects, sec. 4.1.1; genre aspects, sec. 4.2; and the storyline, i.e. the plot, sec. 4.3.
4.1
The author
This biographical section is based on my adapted version of Wikipedia’s Brown biography (“Dan Brown”)34 which relies on a vast variety of what I consider to be valid and relevant sources of information. My adapted version further includes sources of specific relevance to Brown’s background, authorship and the circumstances related to The Lost Symbol and Brown’s work with the book.
Dan Brown was born as the eldest of three siblings on June 22, 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire, US. He spent his early years with his family on the Campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father taught mathematics and wrote mathematical textbooks (“Dan Brown”). Brown’s mother, a professional musician, principally performed sacred music and served as a church organist (“Dan Brown”; Rogak). Though Brown attended local public schools until the ninth grade he thus participated in a college related life which was also influenced by Christian values involving spending summers at church camp, attending Sunday school and singing in the church choir (Rogak; Hayes). He is quoted for having said the following about how his childhood shaped him:
Since I grew up the son of a mathematician and a church organist, I was lost from day one. Where science offered exciting proofs of its claims … religion was a lot more demanding, constantly wanting me to accept everything on faith. Faith takes a fair amount of effort, especially for young children and especially in an imperfect world. So as a boy, I gravitated toward the solid foundations of science. But the further I progressed into this solid world of science, the mushier the ground started to get (Rogak).
34
See Works Cited.
Andersen 42
With the above quotation Brown thus credits his parents’ different backgrounds with his interest in both science and religion.
Likewise, Brown’s interest in secrets and puzzles is a result of his upbringing which included numerous elaborate treasure hunts involving treasure maps with codes and clues prepared by Brown’s father (“Dan Brown”). All of the interests mentioned above have indeed had a particular influence on Brown’s authorship, The Lost Symbol included.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy (1982), spending a year at the University of Seville, Spain, studying art history (1985) and graduating from Amherst College, US, with a degree in English and Spanish (1986), he spent several years in pursuit of establishing a career as a singer-songwriter and pianist, but with only marginal success. Then in 1993 he returned to his home town and started teaching English at the Academy where he grew up and giving Spanish classes at a nearby school (“Dan Brown”; Hayes).
Brown’s writing career started in 1993, and his first inspiration to become a thriller writer came from reading Sidney Sheldon’s novel The Doomsday Conspiracy35 during a holiday in Tahiti. In 1996 he then decided to become a full-time writer. In addition to Sheldon, Brown attributes his inspiration to Shakespeare’s witty and humorous dialogues, to mystery writer Harlan Coben, and to Ludlum’s Bourne series36 which aroused his interest in the genre of big-concept, international thrillers - ‘big-concept’ referring to the “big idea”, i.e. the importance of choice of theme/subject matter (“Dan Brown”) - another important feature of Brown’s authorship.
4.1.1 Thriller fiction bibliography in a Danish perspective Thriller novels by Brown, listed in order of publication, include the titles below. The Danish translations of the titles, the DK year of publication, and my offers of back-translations of the DK titles are provided in square brackets following the US year of publication. The initials ‘MV’ indicate that Vraa did the Danish translation. • Digital Fortress, 1998 (”Dan Brown”). [Tankados Kode/2006/MV; Tankado’s Code]. 35
Danish title: Bellamys hemmelighed [Bellamy’s secret; my back-translation]. Danish titles: The Bourne Identity: Manden uden navn [The man with no name; my back-translation]; The Bourne Supremacy: Bourne duellen [The Bourne duel; my back-translation]; The Bourne Ultimatum: Bournekomplottet [The Bourne conspiracy; my back-translation].
36
Andersen 43
• Angels and Demons, 2000; (Langdon 1, i.e. the first novel to feature protagonist Robert Langdon) (“Dan Brown”). [Engle og dæmoner/2004; Angels and Demons]. • Deception Point, 2001 (“Dan Brown”). [Morderisk bedrag/2005; Murderous Deception]. • The Da Vinci Code, 2003; (Langdon 2 – an all time bestseller with 81 million copies sold worldwide as of 2009) (“Dan Brown”). [Da Vinci mysteriet/2003; The Da Vinci Mystery] • The Lost Symbol, 2009; (Langdon 3 – with sales exceeding one million copies in the US, the UK and Canada on its first day (“Dan Brown”) – making it the fastest selling novel in the adult fiction market) (Pauli). [Det forsvundne tegn/2009/MV; The Lost Sign].
4.2
The genre
If in doubt, the quotation “this novel … “ from the ST Acknowledgments page gives the translator the designation of the ST and a subgenre specification is given on the inside of the dust jacket front cover, “lightning-paced thriller”. Furthermore, common knowledge about Dan Brown’s authorship hardly makes it difficult to categorize the ST as belonging to the thriller fiction subgenre of crime fiction, and this is also how it is listed on the websites of both Random House and Transworld,37 the US and the UK publishers, respectively. My immediate suggestion for a linear genre representation of The Lost Symbol is thus given below:
Literary prose
B
novel (long narrative)
B
crime fiction
B
thriller fiction (suspense fiction) (mystery fiction)
The Danish academic crime fiction expert Meyhoff claims that crime fiction is genre literature to a pronounced degree, i.e. based on a number of literary conventions, a so called template, invented, improved and refined by certain authors and subsequently applied and varied by other authors (16). The originality of genre literature, Meyhoff claims, usually consists of a particular combination of the conventional elements or the author’s personal touch on the conventional elements (16-17).
37
See Works Cited.
Andersen 44
The overall template, i.e. ‘working definition’ of crime fiction, referred to by Meyhoff consists of the crime, the partnership investigation; and finally the outcome (17). This basic ‘working definition’/common overall structure is certainly applicable to The Lost Symbol.
Meyhoff further identifies the following three overall characteristics of crime fiction:
1. The author’s ability to entertain. Achieved through the creation of fascinating characters, a thrilling plot and cliffhangers (9). 2. The author’s ability to tell a good (and often conspiratorial) story which is worth reading, i.e. the ability to spellbind and surprise readers. Achieved through skilful plotting and the disclosure of the true nature of people and institutions; or at least an idea of what the true facts may be (12). 3. The author’s ability to make the novel reflect its era, portray society and its contemporary issues. Achieved through the description and discussion of current social environments, existing social circles and social issues and conflicts (12-13).
The most powerful trademark of the genre is the thematization and the staging of the dark sides of society, i.e. secrets, crime, brutalization and violence; and the genre is preoccupied with shady and sinister phenomena which take place behind closed doors (Meyhoff 13).
When dealing with literary genre conventions (as opposed to non-literary conventions), Nord, claims that conventional elements are less frequent in literary texts (Text Analysis 21). She points out that even though literary texts can be said to have a common designation, e.g. novel; to possess certain common genre features; to differ in subgenres, extension, era and style; it is important to remember that “its (artistic) significance lies precisely in the fact that it does not reproduce existing text models …, but represents an original innovation” (Text Analysis 21-22). In my interpretation this also serves as a warning to translators to pay close attention to the particular structure of any literary text for translation.
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Hilton, a published ITW38 thriller author, seems to agree with Nord and Meyhoff on the crucial importance of structure. In an article about the characteristics of thrillers Hilton stated that “thriller books transcend genre … [and that] it’s the structure and driving force behind the book that defines it as a thriller.” However, Hilton does mention a number of characteristics which may be added to the overall characteristics of the crime fiction genre and which are shared by the crime fiction subgenre of thrillers. These characteristics may be summed up as follows: • A fast pace/plenty of action. • A sense of impending menace, doom and/or violence. • A focus on the emotion of the protagonist. • A protagonist -
with some kind of weakness which must be overcome;
-
exposed to very dangerous and life-threatening situations;
-
who faces overwhelming odds;
-
who needs to save someone or something else;
-
who eventually triumphs over the danger.
• A mystery to be solved. • A ‘ticking bomb’. • A conflict. • Plot twists or surprises.
The above subgenre specific characteristics are also applicable to The Lost Symbol.
In conclusion, both theorists and at least one practitioner thus seem to agree on the presence of common structure features and common characteristics, but also on the variety and flexibility within the genre, e.g. the lack of a narrow definition.
Apart from the commonalities mentioned above, I would suggest that the constituent stages (the moves of the move structure) of The Lost Symbol follow the stages of the traditional
38
International Thriller Writers Inc., an organisation representing professional thriller authors from around the world.
Andersen 46
narrative model39 on an overall level. I have thus applied the model to the ST, see section 4.3, The plot, for an ultimate overview following the summarised presentation of the ST which is also found in section 4.3 below.
4.3
The plot
The summary of the plot is based on my own reading experience and my adapted version of online summaries of The Lost Symbol by Wikipedia and Garran at eNotes. Following this summary, I will apply the traditional narrative model to the story, as mentioned in section 4.2 above, for an ultimate overview of the storyline in preparation for the chapters that follow. The summary and the storyline overview are both found in Appendix 6.
I should perhaps add that presentations of characters and subordinate characters in particular are found throughout most of the book as well as parallel subplots and leaps in time. Consequently, the storyline representation found in Appendix 6 is by no means meant to be definitive but just one of many possible versions.
Having introduced the ST, I shall turn to aspects pertaining to the TT in chapter 5 below.
5.
Introducing the translator
To fulfil my intentions communicated in the introductory chapter to this thesis, I conducted a personal interview with Vraa for purposes of understanding and imparting relevant aspects of a his work with The Lost Symbol and for purposes of being able to validate or invalidate my analytical findings. The interview was preceded by a letter of inquiry (Appendix 7), and subsequent e-mail correspondence, and the necessary contact info was obtained through Vraa’s
website,
palmtree.dk.
Preparation
for
the
interview
included
an
interview/conversational guide (Appendix 8), and an adapted version of the guide was sent to Vraa beforehand (Appendix 9). A transcript of the two hour long taped interview is available in Appendix 10, and the transcription procedure applied equals that of the MTC texts, as described in section 2.1.2, Words on transcription. All the appendices mentioned exist in Danish only.
39
My translation of ’Berettermodellen’ [the narrative model]. A seven-stage model developed by the Swedish media researcher Ola Olsson for the purpose of identifying and analysing the plot structure within the genre of suspense and crime fiction (Fibiger and Lütken 502-503; my paraphrased translation).
Andersen 47
Chapter 5 thus aims to put the task of translating The Lost Symbol in a more factual and practical perspective and gain insight into the work of this particular literary translator’s work with this particular piece of literature. Section 5.1 below serves as an introduction to Vraa’s professional background and how he got started as a literary translator. Section 5.2, including subsections, touch upon aspects of Vraa’s working conditions, and section 5.3 deals with his working processes, including his approach to the task and his applied methods.
5.1
Professional background and personal qualifications
In Denmark, ‘Literary translator’ is not a protected job title by law. Consequently, literary translators have all kinds of different practical and educational backgrounds and do not have a formal education or formal training in literary translation (Hasselbalch 63-64), and Vraa is no exception (Vraa, “Personal” l. 4). He is a qualified journalist and was previously employed with Ekstra Bladet for a number of years while translating literature on the side. (C. Andersen “Interview”).
Only a small number of people can make a living by literary translation alone (Hasselbalch 64) – Vraa can. He has translated literature full-time since 1995 (C. Andersen “Interview”): an estimated 700 titles, including children’s picture books, juvenile books and 300 titles categorised by Vraa as ‘proper’ novels (“Personal” ll. 52-64).
Furthermore, he is himself an author of a number of children’s books and literature for adults, and through his authorship he became acquainted with the publishing business which was also his way into the business of literary translation. It is common practice that Danish publishers help their associated authors supplement their earnings by translating books. In 1988, Vraa was thus asked by a publisher if he would be interested in translating a book into Danish. He accepted the offer, and due to his proficiency in written Danish and his ability to write Danish literature in a fluent style – singled out by Vraa as one of the most important qualifications - he soon felt comfortable as a translator sensing that he had a talent for this particular line of work (“Personal” ll. 7-44; l. 153; l. 1935; ll. 1945-1950). From that time on, he has always had a client base of 4-7 alternating publishers by whom he is commissioned, whenever they have books for translation (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 107-122). With respect to The Lost Symbol, Vraa was contacted and commissioned by the Danish publisher, who was also his commissioner of the Brown novel ‘Digital Fortress’ which was published in Denmark immediately prior to The Lost Symbol (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 67-99).
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Apart from the personal and professional qualifications above, Vraa stresses his ability and the importance of being a ‘craftsman,’ of being able to assume any role required by a particular text for translation, i.e. to let go of one’s own ego and produce a text which is unmarked by one’s own language and ways of expression. He gave an example of a famous Danish author who was simply unable to do translations because everything he translated ended up sounding as if the text had originally been written by him (“Personal” ll. 139-150; ll. 632-635). For any task, - and for this task in particular, Vraa further points out the important qualification of being able to write Danish lines of dialogue and make them sound authentic and contemporary (“Personal” ll. 1934-1943; ll. 1963-1974).
Though Vraa characterises himself as a rather unacademic person (“Personal” l. 630) and though he does not make use of translation-theoretical terms, he does in fact thoroughly consider very theoretical aspects of translation, i.e. aspects of overtness/covertness and degrees of ST/TT orientation etc. These considerations will be further dealt with in section 5.3 following the brief introduction to Vraa’s working conditions below.
5.2
Working conditions
As mentioned in section 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage, the secretiveness surrounding the plot of the book resulted in no advance copy of the text for translation and, consequently, in a narrow deadline for Vraa as an assigned translator (for an elaboration of the time aspect, see sec. 2.3, Partial conclusion on the Danish media attention). On the date of the Danish publication, Vraa could not even gain access to the PDFfile for translation, and he thus had to go to a bookstore and buy the book, before he could get started (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 167-183). For further important aspects of Vraa’s working conditions, see secs. 5.2.1 and 5.2.2 below.
5.2.1
Brief, and general recommendations
Functional translation theory implies the skopos-theoretical concept of ‘brief’, i.e. accurate, explicit, written translation instructions to the translator from the commissioner. Such instructions should contain any necessary communicative information about the assignment as an important tool for determining the skopos and deciding on which translation strategies to apply. However, the pieces of information contained in a brief may be apparent to professional translators who may in fact also often need to rely on implicit instructions, their previous experience or routine (Schjoldager, Understanding 153; 157-158), and this was also
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the situation for Vraa. He was not provided with a written brief – and would also have considered it superfluous information due to his pre-existing cooperation with the commissioner and his familiarity with the genre in question and with Brown’s authorship and prose style (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 306-406):
… well, his language is simple … [and] scores low on the LIX readability index … [-] an author who wants a very large audience cannot afford to make use of extremely difficult words and complicated sentence structures, so of course he doesn’t do that. My advantage is that I knew about it beforehand … I know how he writes … and that the [translation] task [was] solvable within a period of a month … (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 395-404).
Accordingly, Vraa was not provided with general recommendations on how to approach his task apart from being contractually obliged to comply with the wording in clause 8 of the translation agreement [Oversættelsesaftale], a model agreement prepared on the basis of a standard form which was approved of by the Danish Writers Association and the Danish Publishers Association in 1980 (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 929-996). Clause 8 concerns the translator’s warranty:
The translator warrants that the translation is an adequate rendering of the original as regards contents and style and that no omissions or alterations exist without prior approval by the publishers40 (“Oversættelsesaftale”).
The above few lines constituted Vraa’s written instructions – the practical reality for a literary translator, it seems.
Working condition factors like his close cooperation with the publishers and his favourable agreement concerning personal assistance with research related to the translation, sec. 5.2.2, seemed far more decisive, particularly with regard to meeting the deadline.
5.2.2
Cooperation with the publishers, and research
According to Vraa, the publishing business is characterised by very close relations and influenced by the phenomenon of the life of ‘weisure,’ i.e. the intertwinement of work and leisure time. Accordingly, Vraa could approach his commissioner by e-mail or phone in case 40
My translation of [Oversætteren indestår for, at oversættelsen er en indholdsmæssigt og stilistisk dækkende gengivelse af originalen og at ingen udeladelser eller ændringer forekommer uden forlagets forudgående godkendelse].
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he had any questions. However, the key figure in his cooperation with the publishers was an editor, Lotte Kirkeby Hansen – an MA in literary history and French with previous journalist, editor and book reviewer positions. Lotte was temporarily employed by the publishers during ‘the Brown project’ with the primary functions of coordinating, editing and collating the text - and last but not least - doing the necessary research. Vraa thus had the privilege of not having to do any time-consuming research and only checked up on issues which could be promptly dealt with or which needed to be clarified before he could get on with his work. At the end of the day he would send the translated pages to Lotte along with a list of questions and unresearched issues. She would then take action, i.e. answer questions, research and edit the text accordingly, and Vraa would then only have to relate to previously translated pages if something needed to be further discussed or agreed upon. In principle, their agreement implied that Vraa would not have to ‘rewind’ but could always go forward (“Personal,” ll. 1027-1191; Vraa, “Ny Dan Brown”).
In conclusion, frequent e-mail/telephone contact, smooth informal cooperation and a rather untraditional agreement characterised the work with the translation and provided Vraa with the best possible working conditions in terms of being able to meet the narrow deadline.
5.3
Working processes
Vraa’s woking processes in connection with his translation of The Lost Symbol are best described by outlining a typical working day exemplified by what I have chosen to call translating Brown, day 1 (all line references found below refer to my personal interview with Vraa (Vraa, “Personal”): •
As seen above, sec. 5.2, day 1 turned out not to be a typical working day, as Vraa actually had to go and buy the book. That aside, Vraa usually starts work in his office, an annexe in the backyard of his private home, at around 8:30 a.m. (ll. 555-557).
•
He does not spend time reading the book beforehand. He never does. Most of all because he enjoys the element of surprise (ll. 325-329). The necessity of reading a text for translation beforehand is a much discussed issue among literary translators. Some claim that “… you certainly have to read the book in order to recognise the style … Ellen Boen and I agree that … you do need to read a few pages, but if you do not recognise the style after having read two pages, well, then you … never will” (ll. 609-614).
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•
He then follows his usual habit of: 1. Photocopying and magnifying the pages planned for translation that day and placing them in his manuscript holder in front of his monitor. Single sheets of paper are easier to handle and the magnified letters ease the eyes (ll. 424-440; 707-721). 2. Preparing a PC document with a header containing the following standard information: the title of the book, file name, month, date of commencement, and name of publisher – all part of an automatic act (ll. 777-786).
•
As a matter of standard procedure, he has his preparatory considerations with respect to: -
Style, genre and degree of difficulty. He performs no actual translation-oriented analysis as such (ll. 587-595).
-
Degrees of facts vs. fiction. His pre-existing knowledge about Brown’s habit of thorough research for his books is important, because translation problems related to facts can be researched. Separating facts from fiction however is not always possible – facts cannot always be taken at face value (ll. 371-389).
-
The ST/TT continuum (function vs. loyalty). He considers how closely he needs to stick to the ST: “… there is no doubt that a Danish text is improved, the more nonchalant you can be about the English text… but how much [freedom of action] is permitted? That also depends on the type of book.” (ll. 637-645). Generally, he considers the freedom of action of translating thrillers larger compared to other genres of literature (depending on the degree of literariness – judged by terminological choices and sentence structure). His most important parameter for translating this particular ST is the effect in the TC – that the TT presents itself as a Danish thriller – as if written in Danish. Preferably, readers should think of the TT as a book by Dan Brown and completely forget that somebody did a translation (ll. 649-701). On the other hand, he favours preservation strategies to some extent (what he likes to think of as borderline cases – applicable to certain place names in particular, as e.g. University of…). He likes the idea of realisation among readers that the story actually takes place in the U.S and that the ST actually originated in the U.S, but still his primary concern is that readers understand what is going on (ll. 1749-1768).
-
Aspects of authenticity. He considers the extent to which the ST may be ‘danified’41 without losing its authenticity - and the extent to which English terms may be used in the TT without the TT appearing not to have been translated (ll. 1989-1994).
41
Used throughout this thesis in the sense of being made to appear less foreign.
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In conclusion, his preparatory considerations obviously point in a predominantly TT oriented direction and towards covertness on an overall macrostrategical level, though they also involve some degree of overtness and ST orientation. Such considerations are very much in line with the recommendations identified in section 3.3, Partial conclusion on literary translation.
He then starts to write.
Interestingly, he refers to the whole process as a writing process and not as a translation process (ll. 1082, 1085, 1139, 1935). This may be due to the fact that he is an author, but it may also reflect a(n) (un)conscious macrostrategical attitude towards predominant TT orientation in the translation of literature, as seen above. •
He can skip the title. The translation of the title had already been determined by the publishers as the book title was part of the whole marketing process, including decisions on cover/dust jacket etc. – a process which preceded the actual translation process. According to Vraa; authors, publishers and literary agents have a common preference for direct translation of titles provided that a direct translation is at all possible, and Vraa shares their view of such documentary approach. Most of all out of loyalty to the author who spent time and artistic effort coming up with the title in question. The criterion, however, is that if a title is not immediately translatable by direct translation, the title just needs to work in the TL (a functional approach). As an example he mentions a book about narcotics and white supremacy, “Skin Privilege”, which became “Den hvide død” [The White Death] by adaptation (ll. 817-903).
•
Back to translating Brown, day 1, his most important tools are: o The Internet – his consciousness of his distinct visual orientation makes him look for pictures of things he does not understand as opposed to large quantities of descriptive text. The possibility of seeing and sensing is provided by Google Earth and Google Maps and provided the author is true to what he researched this is as close as one can get (ll. 455-469).
AlltheWeb - the preferred search engine. Less user-friendly than Google (fewer irrelevant hits) and more suitable for people who know what they are looking for, according to Vraa (ll. 474-494).
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OneLook – simultaneous access to a collection of online monolingual English dictionaries. If a word is not there, it probably does not exist (ll. 504-513).
o Gyldendal’s Danish/English, English/Danish bilingual electronic dictionaries Vinterberg & Bodelsen and Kjærulff Nielsen, respectively (ll. 498-501). •
He does not keep any kind of glossaries or termbases but keeps an electronic archive of previous translations (ll. 407-417).
•
As he goes along, he makes use of the ASCII sign (#) followed by ST page number whenever some kind of translation problem occurs. The ASCII signs left in the TT at the end of the day are “please research-signs” for the relevant editor (ll. 1170-1178). (See also section 5.2.2, Cooperation with the publishers, and research).
•
He translates during the daytime until approx. 3:30 p.m. and he then skim reads at night (ll. 555-562). Usually he spends a lot of time proofreading his text, but given the circumstances surrounding this assignment, priority was not given to proofreading (ll. 266-268).
•
The 20 pages “give or take” are then sent to the editor (ll. 260-261), and 20 new pages for translation await him on day 2 and onwards.
Having introduced the ST and aspects surrounding the TT, I shall turn to the analysis in chapter 6 overleaf.
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6.
Translation analysis and results
As stated in the problem statement, sec. 1.1, b), one of the purposes of this thesis is to determine how the translation of The Lost Symbol was actually done. Schjoldager proposes a model for translation analysis which is applicable “whether you translate yourself or study what other translators have done,” (“Four-point model”). This model naturally combines with another model proposed by Schjoldager (“Checklist”), and these two models in combination are the basis of the structure of this chapter as well as of the translation analysis performed. Section 6.1 thus deals with the ST characteristics and functions, i.e. extratextual factors of communicative situation and purpose as well as intratextual factors of genre and register. Section 6.2 deals with the characteristics and functions of the TT, and section 6.3 includes considerations leading to a determination of Vraa’s applied macrostrategy, i.e. his overall method for carrying out the translation. In section 6.4 a presentation of Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies (Schjoldager, Understanding 92) will be given along with a few purposeful additions. In section 6.5 the concept of ‘translation problem’ will be theoretically defined, and the specific translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square’ will be subjected to microanalysis and mapped in order to shed some light on Vraa’s strategical solutions. Comparative analysis of the intratextual data category of proper names will follow in section 6.6 in order to examine if general observations of the microstrategical approaches can be made and to establish whether or not the applied microstrategies can be theoretically explained and justified, including whether or not they support the predominant macrostrategy.
6.1
The Lost Symbol/the source text – characteristics and functions
According to Schjoldager’s “Four-point model for translation analysis” applied for the purposes of this thesis, the first step of the analysis concerns analytical definitions and discussions of the characteristics and functions of the ST. Such definitions and discussions will be found below.
The extratextual factors are analysed as follows:
Communicative situation The sender (the addresser) of the ST is identical with the author of the book, Dan Brown, an author known as a writer in the literary context of the ST culture community as well as in the
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TT culture community. The information about the sender is provided by the text environment by way of the dust jacket and the engraving on the backstrip. In this case, there may be no point in distinguishing between the intended and the actual receivers. Built on the fact that the book was released in the U.S., the UK and Canada on the same date (“The Lost Symbol”) 42 and globally accessible on that date, I would argue that hardly only intended receivers (addressees) exist, namely the adult readers who belong to the general global public and who are either native English speakers or who have a sound command of the English language, i.e. a heterogeneous group of receivers with varying literary competence and with an interest in this particular genre. The idea of a broad readership also falls nicely in line with Meyhoff’s statement in his crime fiction guide/work of the history of crime fiction literature that crime fiction is no longer written for readerships of the dedicated few but appeals to many different kinds of people (13). Among the actual receivers of this particular book, however, there may be an overweight of those of the intended readers who read the prequels to The Lost Symbol. The print medium was used to present the text in the form of a hardcopy book. The text was produced in the U.S., and Dan Brown said in an interview by Steve Bertrand on bn.com that it took him six years to write the book which allows me to infer that the text was produced in the years between 2003 and 2009.
Communicative purpose In the case of the ST at hand, motives (reasons) for the text production seem to be numerous. Dan Brown is reported in Kristeligt Dagblad of having said in an interview that his purpose of writing is to make readers postpone sleep at night (Henriksen 11), a statement which is indicative of his overall wish TO ENTERTAIN and THRILL readers by telling a good story and by keeping readers in suspense; sub-motive 1 (all sub-motives are in unprioritised order). One way in which suspense is created is by the many cliffhangers ending many of the chapters throughout Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, e.g.: “… a lone figure was eagerly preparing for Robert Langdon’s arrival” (9), “… his final pawn had entered the game” (12), “Something was very, very wrong”, “he was looking at the severed … hand of Peter Solomon” (41), “Where is Peter?” (46), “Tonight you will tell me all your secrets …” (126), “To his horror, something was staring back” (148), “… before her face hit 42
The US and UK versions bear different covers and therefore led to considerations concerning a potential intralingual translation between American English and British English, even though the simultaneous US and UK release dates related to the secretiveness mentioned in section 2.1.3 made it highly unlikely to have happened. The answer from Rights Assistant Corinne Lucas to my inquiry to Transworld (the UK publisher) on that subject also maintained that no intralingual translation had been done, see Appendix 11.
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the cold ground.” (236), “It was time to attend to matters of the mortal world.” (325), “… you have not yet grasped the true nature of your predicament” (431), just to mention a few. These cliffhangers are linguistically interesting because they reflect expressiveness and appellativeness at the same time, e.g.:
ST examples of intended language functions – sub-motive 1 Expressiveness (underlined) –
appellativeness –
Focus on the sender
Focus on the receiver
“A lone figure was eagerly preparing for Robert
Reader must wonder: Who? Preparing what?
Langdon’s arrival” (9). (Loaded terms) “ … his final pawn had entered the game” (12).
Reader must wonder: What game? How will he play
(Imagery)
his piece; and will he succeed?
“To his horror, something was staring back” (148).
Reader must wonder: What/who is staring back?
(Loaded terms) Influence function Reader must feel in a particular way (Ditlevsen et. al 71); here suspenseful (WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT)? Appellative function Reader must TURN THE PAGE!
Further sub-motives which may in fact rather be intentions deriving from the motives are found in the ST and are verifiable through various internet sources. In a letter written by Dan Brown to the Scottish Rite Freemasonry, U.S., Brown ends his letter by stating: “it is my sincere hope that the Masonic community recognizes The Lost Symbol for what it truly is…” an earnest attempt to reverentially explore the history and beauty of Masonic Philosophy (Brown, “Letter”). A quote which reveals Brown’s expressive, informative and perhaps even appellative intentions with the ST and makes it safe to say that sub-motive 2 is to convey Masonic history and philosophy to readers in a positive way. As an example, such positive representation reflecting all three language functions is found in some of the lines of an alternating dialogue between Langdon and a student during one of his lectures; Brown’s use of the Langdon character as a conveyor of his own personal views; see the schematic representation overleaf:
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ST examples of intended language functions – sub-motive 2 Expressiveness (underlined) –
Appellativeness –
Informativeness –
focus on the sender
focus on the receiver
focus on the text
Langdon: “My friends, the Masons are not a secret society
Underlying message
Informing/teaching
… they are a society with secrets” (30).
to readers:
readers.
Student: “… Masonry is some kind of strange religion.”
LOSE YOUR
The explanatory sub-
Langdon: “A common misperception” (30).
PREJUDICES
category of the assertive
(Loaded terms – negativity rejected)
AGAINST THE
function (Ditlevsen et al.
Langdon: “ … The difference between Masonic spirituality
FREEMASONS!
69-70; my translation).
(Positive attitude)
and organized religion is that the Masons do not impose a specific definition or name on a higher power …” (30).
The stabilizing sub-
(Positive attitude)
category of the
Student: “… sounds a little far-out” (31).
influence function
Langdon: “Or, perhaps, refreshingly open-minded”? (31)
(Ditlevsen et al. 69-
…
71; my translation).
Langdon: “… the Masonic tradition of tolerance and openmindedness is commendable.” … “Masonry is open to men of all races, colors, and creeds, and provides a spiritual fraternity that does not discriminate in any way” (31). (Loaded terms – negativity rejected) Langdon: “Masonry is a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols” (31). (Loaded terms – expressive literary style)
The above example showing Brown’s specific educative use of the Langdon character (a professor and a teacher) is suggestive of a general intent of educating readers which will then be sub-motive 3.
As yet an additional sub-motive; sub-motive 4, I would suggest the motive of promoting Washington D.C. as a literary tourist destination. The ST contains many detailed descriptions of places, buildings (some even with specified addresses) and rooms, because these are central to the plot, see examples below. Brown said in an online interview by Daphne Durham on amazon.com that his books are always about location first; that location is the underlying pulse of the book and what gives the excitement. He further said that he chooses exciting locations that the readers can learn about. This, related to the fact that
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literary tourism in Rome and Paris was a result of two of Brown’s previous books43 makes it reasonable to assume that the choice of an American location for his latest book was no coincidence. This assumption is backed by an online article in which it was stated that “Brown has another agenda in The Lost Symbol, which is to rehabilitate Washington, D.C., as one of the great world capitals of gothic mystery, one that can hold its own with Paris or London or Rome” (Grossman, “How Good”). The motive/intention of literary tourism promotion is reflected in the informative and expressive detail richness found throughout the ST. A few illustrative examples are given below:
ST examples of intended language functions – sub-motive 4 Expressiveness
Informativeness –
Appellativeness –
(underlined) –
focus on the text. Informing readers.
focus on the receiver
focus on the sender
(Ditlevsen et al.; my translation).
“House of the Temple” (3). “This colossal edifice, located at 1733 Sixteenth Street
Underlying message
NW in Washington, D.C., was a replica of a pre-Christian temple – the temple of
to readers:
King Mausolus, the original mausoleum” (3). “Two seventeen-ton sphinxes guarded the bronze doors” (3-4).
US ARCHITECTURE,
“The Temple Room” (4). “A perfect square … cavernous … The ceiling soared an
ART, AND
astonishing one hundred feet overhead, supported by monolithic colums of green
SYMBOLISM IS
granite …” (4). “A thirty-three-foot-tall throne … ” (4). “The walls were a
WORTH NOTICING
kaleidoscope of ancient symbols … ” (4).
“The U.S. Capitol Building stands regally at the eastern end of the National Mall … ”
GO SEE THE
(18).
SIGHTS!
“The world’s largest and most tehnologically advanced museum … ” (21) “Located at 4210 Silver Hill Road … ” (21).
The stabilizing subcategory of the
“U.S. Capitol!” … An unparalleled feat of architectural ingenuity … “ (37)
influence function. (Ditlevsen et al.; my translation).
43
”Both Rome and Paris received an avalanche of visitors that were searching for the landmarks described in Dan Brown’s books ”The Da Vinci Code” and ”Angels and Demons” and Whasington [sic] DC is ready to receive its share of visitors caused by the publication of Dan Brown’s new novel “The Lost Symbol” which revolves around some of the most emblematic Washington DC monuments” (“A Guide to Washington DC”).
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Langdon, after having called for a show of hands among his students during a lecture - Brown seems to use the voice of the Langdon character to convey his own personal views, e.g.: “It appears many more of you have visited Europe than have visited your own capital … Seriously … Washington has some of the finest architecture, art, and symbolism. Why would you go overseas before visiting your own capital? … Washington has every one of those things … Castles, crypts, pyramids, temples … “ (27-28). “Despite containing what many have called “the most beautiful room in the world,” The Library of Congress is known less for its breathtaking splendour than for its vast collections … it easily claims the title of largest library on earth.” (181). “Washington National Cathedral … the sixth-largest cathedral in the world … embellished … masterpiece …” (304). “Cathedral College … an elegant, castlelike edifice located adjacent to the National Cathedral” (331).
As illustrated above, there is an intended flow of random bits of information, i.e. sender’s aim of making the receiver know or believe particular things/matters, reflected in the informative language function; an intended implied purpose of influencing the receiver’s emotional attitude towards certain matters of the world, reflected in the appellative language function; and everything is wrapped in expressiveness, reflected in the expressive language function. The reflections of these three language functions neatly support Bühler’s theory, in the interpretation of the authors of Sprog på arbejde that all texts comprise all three language functions (Ditlevsen et. al 40) where it is also claimed that one language function can always be said to be predominant. As focus mainly seems to be on the sender, I would suggest that the intended predominant language function is the expressive one.
The intratextual factors are analysed as follows:
Genre The genre-related move structure was made an integral part of the plot presentation and overview in section 4.3 for purposes of giving readers a short cut to the most important parts of the storyline. As an obvious consequence, the analytical element of genre which is in fact part of Schjoldager’s applied model at this point was dealt with under the heading of The genre, sec. 4.2.
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Register Contextually important aspects, i.e. “three aspects in any situation that have linguistic consequences: field, mode and tenor … [the] three register variables” (Eggins 90).
Field:
“What the language is being used to talk about” (Eggins 90). The subject matter can be paraphrased into the following thematic sentence covering the thematic essence of the ST: The mystique of the global spiritual organization, the Freemasons, including secret Freemason rituals, beliefs and philosophies; combined with noetic science and code-cracking/symbology/ investigation. The overall subject matter of freemasonry also includes recurring sub-themes (underlying messages) such as atonement, universal thoughts, openmindedness, ideas of universality, freedom of thought, religious tolerance and the idea that apotheosis is possible, etc. As indicated by the suggested thematic sentence above, several fields of language are at play, but the archetypal characters and the structure of the ST, i.e. the very short chapters dealing with only one or a few characters at a time due to the many sub-plots, more or less signal any change of field throughout the ST. To give a few examples, Peter Solomon, Mal’Akh (aka Zachary Solomon/Dr. Christopher Abaddon/Inmate 37/Andros Dareios), Warren Bellamy and reverend Colin Galloway, who are all freemasons, signal the vast field of freemasonry and consequently, many lexical items associated with this field are found in chapters in which these characters appear. An example of such field-specific lexis is: “the god within you… man as god”, “Freemasonry”, “Masons” (492) etc.
Katherine Solomon, a noetic scientist and her lab assistant Trish Dunne signal the field of noetic science and research and the presence of scientific research-related lexical items (including LSP language) associated with this particular field of science. An example of such field-specific lexis is: “… quantitative equipment: paired electro-encephalographs, a femtosecond comb …, and quantumindeterminate electronic noise REGs…” (55) etc.
Nola Kaye and Mark Zoubianis, CIA analyst and hacker respectively, signal the field of computer-aided investigation and the consequent presence of IT-related lexical items (including LSP language), whereas Robert Langdon, symbologist,
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signals the presence of lexical items related with the field of religious symbology. Examples of IT-related/symbology related field-specific lexis, respectively: “I ran a delegator that tapped a search engine at this IP…” (117); “inscription”, “code”, “decipher”, “unsolved” (164) etc. Tenor/
“The role language is playing in the interaction” (Eggins 90)/
Mode:
“The role relationships between the interactants” (Eggins 90). According to Eggins (90-92) the overall tenor of a novel, the tenor of author/reader, represents the mode of the polar extremes on the continua of distance, i.e. the situation of no visual/aural contact and no immediate feedback on the continuum of spatial/interpersonal distance, and the situation of language as reflection, as opposed to action, on the continuum of experiential distance, i.e. the situation of ‘language is all that there is’. This of course implies the characteristics of a written language situation involving a certain style. However, zooming in on tenor and mode of the ST on an intratextual level (according to the delimitations made in section 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations) it becomes evident that several types of communication exist due to frequent changes in tenor and narrative voice, and this of course has linguistic implications as well as an impact on formality. See Appendix 12 for a table of illustrative examples categorised according to Joos’ five levels of formality: intimate, casual, consultative (neutral), formal and frozen (Five Clocks 11ff).
As seen from the many examples in Appendix 12, the ST is characterised by communication to a lay audience (understandable by any adult reader of literature) and ranging from low to high in respect of formality level.
6.2
Det forsvundne tegn/the target text – what is expected?
According to Schjoldager’s “Four-point model for translation analysis” applied for the purposes of this thesis, the second step of the analysis concerns the overall TT facts and expectations, including determination of skopoi, i.e. information of which some would have been specified by the translation brief, if any, and information which would help the translator make responsible and competent decisions concerning translation strategy/type. Such facts, expectations and determination will be presented in overview and may be regarded as a(n extended) translation brief reconstruction (when disregarding verbal tense and info of evident character to the translator). However, since I set out to study how Vraa
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translated, I will not rely on such translation brief reconstruction alone, but relate and verify my analytical findings to the data obtained through my interview with Vraa, whenever possible.
The analytical overall TT overview is found in Appendix 13.
6.3
Expected macrostrategy
Having looked at what is expected of the TT, Schjoldager’s third step in her “Four-point model for translation analysis”, applied for the purposes of this thesis, concerns the identification of the expected macrostrategy; here: the determination of Vraa’s applied macrostrategy.
Based on the analytical findings in secs. 6.1, ST - characteristics and functions, and 6.2, TT what is expected, it is obvious that the overriding purpose (skopos) of the TT (conveying expressive functions) is best fulfilled by focusing on the TT effect rather than on the semantic meaning of the individual words. That being said, such focus in this case naturally involves preservation of ST form and content in terms of appellative functions such as suspenseful and page-turning cliffhangers, chapter structure/sub-plot shifts, and also in terms of conveying the style, e.g.: the formality variations found.
With respect to the main ST translation problem involving the ambiguity of square, see sec. 6.5 and onwards; and the pragmatic translation problems found in the translation of SCbound items like proper names, including place names, see sec. 6.6 and onwards, focus needs to change between achieving a similar function of the wordplay in the TT as that of the ST, and informing TT readers to the greatest possible extent what the SC is like.
Knowing that the TT was meant to be translated right from the beginning and that Brown is most likely to be known to the TT audience, the TT will function as communication between primary parties, i.e. as direct contemporary communication between Brown and the Danish audience. Vraa is thus expected to assume the role of a mediator.
As seen in sec. 6.2, including Appendix 13, the overtness of the TT is not entirely clear-cut and may be discussed. On the one hand, the analysis predominantly pointed towards covertness, yet on the other hand made it clear that presuppositions of ST readers/
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connotations of proper names, including place names should be made available to TT readers to the highest possible degree depending on function(s) and other factors, see sec. 6.6.2, Partial conclusion on proper name/place name analysis.
In conclusion, analysis points towards a predominantly TT oriented (heterofunctionally instrumental) macrostrategy but also towards some degree of ST orientation (mainly towards the exoticising subcategory of documentary translation). Vraa is thus expected to move back and forth on the continuum of macrostrategies primarily depending on communicative and functional factors. This will of course have to influence his micro-level choices as well, resulting in choices supportive of TT orientation or ST orientation, as the case may be.
6.4
Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies – and then some
As mentioned in section 1.2, Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies and the fourth and thus last step of her “Four-point model for translation analysis” will be my points of departure for the identification, analysis and discussion of Vraa’s solutions on the microstrategical level. The twelve microstrategies proposed by Schjoldager will be presented and briefly explained below. Explanations will be based on my paraphrased rendering of Schjoldager’s explanations (Understanding 92) combined with summarised comments based on Schjoldager’s elaborate explanations (Understanding 93-110). For the purpose of being able to distinguish, do counts and thus generalise about subtypes of ‘direct transfer,’ I added a subdivision of that particular strategy. ‘Direct transfer 1’ thus constitutes Schjoldager’s original strategy of ‘direct transfer,’ whereas ‘direct transfer 2’ constitutes my added subdivision. Inspired by van der Plas (53) and Lund (42), I have found it further helpful and purposeful to add the strategy of ‘danicization.’ Accordingly, details concerning ‘danicization’ and ‘direct transfer 2’ have both been incorporated into Schjoldager’s original taxonomy. My slightly adapted version of Schjoldager’s taxonomy, constituting the model used in my examination of Vraa’s microstrategical approaches, may thus be presented as follows:
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No. 1
Microstrategy
Translational effect of decision
Direct transfer 1
Involves an unchanged transfer of the ST item to the TT – a copy of the ST item to the TT.
Direct transfer 2
Similar to ‘direct transfer 1’ but with the omission of the definite article.
2
Danicization
Involves a transfer of the ST element which is slightly modified in the TT in spelling or inflection to match the norms of TL morphology and phonology.
3
Calque
Involves a transfer of the ST structure or a very close translation. Similar to unidiomatic direct translation.
4
Direct translation
Involves idiomatic and correct translation in a word-for-word procedure and the closest possible translation on a linguistic level by means of the most readily found TL solution.
5
Oblique translation
Involves translation in a sense-for-sense procedure by means of functional equivalence. Covers the contextual meaning of a ST item – slightly different semantics but renders the sense.
6
Explicitation
Involves the explicitation in the TT of implicit information of the ST. Explanatory effect.
7
Paraphrase
Involves a rather free translation. ST and TT items are contextually more or less the same.
8
Condensation
Involves the rendition of the contextual meaning of the ST in a shorter way, which may involve implicitation. (Though ST elements may be deleted, they are implicitly present in the TT).
9
Adaptation
Involves creativity – recreation of the ST effect, entirely or partially. Tends to be used to replace a cultural reference or presupposition in covert translation.
10
Addition
Involves an addition of a unit of meaning in the TT that cannot be directly inferred from the ST itself.
11
Substitution
Involves a change of the connotative/denotative meaning.
12
Deletion
Involves that ST units are missing altogether – a unit of ST meaning is left out.
13
Permutation
Involves recreation of ST effect by means of translation in a different place in the TT (i.e. compensation). Mostly applied in literary translation, e.g. in connection with wordplay/alliteration etc.
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6.5
Main source text translation problem
‘Translation problem’ is broadly defined by Palumbo as: Any element or aspect found in the ST or related to the translation task for which the translator does not readily find a TL solution or rendering to be adequate on the basis of the translation norms … he is adhering to (Palumbo 129). [‘Norms’ referring to] a social notion of correctness or appropriateness, one that states (or expects) what acceptable translations should look like, thus influencing the decisions taken by the translator … (Palumbo 79).
Nord defines ‘translation problem’ as “an objective … transfer task which every translator (irrespective of their level of competence and of the technical working conditions) has to solve during a particular translation process” (Text Analysis 166-167). By defining the task as ‘objective’ Nord thus adds the important point of the obstacle resulting from the nature of task itself as opposed to ‘translation difficulties,’ which may arise due to lacking skills or knowledge on the part of the translator44 or to working conditions such as pressure of time45 or media hype, i.e. subjective transfer tasks (subjective translation problems) which were dealt with earlier.
This section and the subsection that follows are both dedicated to objective translation problems only, and further narrowed down to one particular translation problem which can be classified as text-specific and non-generalisable, i.e. only present in one concrete translation task, using Nord’s classification (Text Analysis 174-177).
Nord, in the interpretation of Schjoldager, classifies the objective translation problems in the following four categories: pragmatic, cultural (convention-related), linguistic and textspecific translation problems (Understanding 174-180). In the table below, however, I shall present my combined version of Nord’s and Schjoldager’s elaborations on and solution approaches only to the text-specific, non-generalisable translation problem relevant to the one which will be analysed and discussed in section 6.5.1 below.
44 45
As discussed by Schjoldager (Understanding 174). As discussed by Nord (Text Analysis 166).
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Translation problems Classification
Elaboration
Solution approach
A particular textual phenomenon, i.e. a
Text-specific, according to ST
pun, a figure of speech or an individual
function(s) and TT skopos/skopoi
word creation etc. (Nord, Text Analysis
requirement(s) (Schjoldager,
167).
Understanding 175; Nord, Text Analysis
Occur in and are bound to one particular
167).
Pragmatic Cultural (convention-related) Linguistic Text-specific
ST and cannot be classified as pragmatic, cultural or linguistic (Nord, Text Analysis 176; Schjoldager, Understanding 175).
As any text for translation The Lost Symbol posed a number of objective translation problems. However, as mentioned above, and for reasons accounted for in the problem statement and the delimitation section, secs. 1.1 and 1.2.1, respectively, and further elaborated in the section dealing with the interpretation of identified press coverage, sec. 2.1.3.2, item 2 in particular, I have decided to concentrate the following section, sec. 6.5.1 including subsections below, on:
-
the nature of and Vraa’s microstrategical solutions to Brown’s text-specific use of the terminological ambiguity of ‘square,’ e.g. ‘Eight Franklin Square’ etc.
6.5.1
‘Square’ indeed!
I shall begin this section by briefly introducing the ST units, i.e. the ‘square’ data categories involved in the translation problem, sec. 6.5.1.1, before I move on to explaining why the problem is at all interesting, and what actually constitutes the problem, sec. 6.5.1.2. I shall then account for the approach to the microanalysis and subsequently give ‘a guided tour’ of Vraa’s micro-level solutions, sec. 6.5.1.3, before I conclude section 6.5 by offering a partial conclusion which will contain my personal opinion of Vraa’s solutions in a purposetheoretical perspective.
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6.5.1.1 ‘Square’ data categories The microstrategical analysis of the text-specific translation problem dealt with in this section and the sections that follow quite specifically involves the term ‘square’ (noun) as used in the following ST item: ‘Eight Franklin Square,’ and consequently as in the ST items: ‘The Order Eight Franklin Square,’ and ‘Franklin Square’/’One Franklin Square,’ i.e. proper name use, including place name use only. Furthermore, a few examples of the common noun use of ‘square’ will be included to bring out the contrast between the common noun use and the proper noun use of the term in translation.
6.5.1.2 The actual problem and its relevance The translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square’ and the consequent ambiguity of the semantic ST items of which ‘square’ is a constituent, is interesting for three main reasons: •
First of all, because the TT solution(s) to the problem caused adverse criticism:46
Some American concepts and place names are translated, others are not … [and] … the fair amount of wordplay and ambiguities … is not given its proper weight … As an example, it is entirely decisive in part of the text that “square” can mean a foursquare as well as a public square. In that part of the text, the Danish translation alternates between the two meanings so that only Danish readers with proficiency in English may possibly recall the point (Levinsen, “sprog”; my translation).
•
Secondly, because it was the main translation problem of the ST according to Vraa, who deemed the problem “untranslatable” and “insoluble” (Vraa, “Personal” ll. 1198, 1241, 1842; my translation).
•
Thirdly, because even though the noun ‘square’ is an ambiguous term in the SL with eight different semantic meanings according to the lexical database WordNet (Miller),47 rendering the term ‘square’ and any of the above semantic units involving ‘square,’ i.e. whether used as a common noun or as a part of a proper name/place name, is unproblematic as such. Usually, the term and the combinations mentioned are easily rendered in a TT by terms which are contextually relevant in the respective TT situation even though no ambiguous equivalent exists in the TL.
46 47
As identified in section 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of identified press coverage, items 1 and 2. See Works Cited.
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The problem arises and turns into a translation problem because of Brown’s deliberate play on words – his deliberate use of the ambiguity of two of the senses of the term ‘square’ which I shall refer to in the following as senses 1 and 2:
SENSE 1: [lexical relation] … (n) public square, square (an open area at the meeting of two or more streets) [semantic relation] SENSE 2: [lexical relation] … (n) square, foursquare (geometry) a plane rectangle with four equal sides and four right angles; a four-sided regular polygon) [semantic relation] (Miller).
More importantly, what really adds to the complexity of the problem is the fact that this deliberate play on words is made an integral part of the plot. The problem is thus distributed on no less than 37 chapters (90-126), but with actual presence in 14 chapters, namely chs. 9093, 95, 97, 99, 101-102, 105-106, 113, 115 and 126 (due to the many parallel subplots and leaps in time). Accordingly, the translation problem is found during the conflict escalation, the climax and the resolution, in terms of plot line (as identified in section 4.3, Plot).
In brief, and in terms of immediate contextual surroundings, as opposed to the overall contextual surroundings mentioned above, the problem is integrated in the plot as follows:
In order to find Peter, the characters first need to solve the symbolism of a pyramid capstone with an inscription arranged as follows: The secret hides within The Order Eight Franklin Square (Fig. 1)
Langdon, after first mistaking the clue ‘Eight Franklin Square’ for an address, finally ends up realising that it refers to Franklin’s mathematical square.48 The SL ambiguity of ‘square’ thus allows Brown to make it part of an address as well as part of a puzzle for the character (and for the mathematically qualified SL reader!) to solve.
48
In the ST, the eight-by-eight Franklin Square (an eight-by-eight grid) provides the sequence for deciphering a series of mystical symbols. The eight-by-eight grid thus forms a central puzzle enabling Langdon to solve the arrangement of 64 symbols that form a map pointing to the location of the “lost” symbol (Cox 70; 132-133).
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Apart from involving microstrategical decisions concerning how to (or how not to) render the wordplay under due consideration of skopos and loyalty, the problem thus concurrently involves the challenge of distinguishing instances of ambiguity from instances of unambiguity and instances of constraints due to a textual image, i.e. the combination of nonverbal/verbal language. The mapping of how the translation was actually done, and my approach to the mapping, will follow below.
6.5.1.3 The microstrategical solutions explained and exemplified – ‘a guided tour’ The mapping of the applied TT solutions to the translation problem involving ‘square’ included microstrategical labelling of all occurrences of the PN data categories mentioned in section 6.5.1.1, see Appendix 14 for a complete overview. All occurrences were listed in order of appearance. Each labelling included a chapter/ST/TT reference, a ST item, its corresponding TT item, the microstrategy applied and comments or ‘contextual markers’, if any, as shown in the header below:
Ref.
ST item
TT item
+ Contextual marker of character’s awareness
Microstrategy applied
Comment and/or contextual marker of character’s awareness
For reasons of space, the above header will be shown with the first example only. For an elaboration of ‘contextual markers,’ see below. Microanalyses were done in accordance with the definitions found in section 6.4, Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies. When relevant, i.e. for reasons of later reference or exemplification, the analysed items included part of the ST/TT context in parentheses. Such parenthetical context may occasionally be identical with a ‘contextual marker’.
In the process of my comparative reading of the ST and the TT, and in the process of mapping the applied microstrategies, the importance of yet another factor at play became evident. This factor, resulting from the nature and the uniqueness of literature, appeared in the ST as ‘contextual markers’ of the fictitious character’s awareness of ambiguity and wordplay - an awareness which also ultimately led to the solution of the puzzle. This additional ‘awareness factor’ in the form of these contextual markers were therefore added during analysis and proved useful as a kind of ‘identification tool’ for identifying an overall change in the predominant choice of microstrategy.
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After this brief introduction to the methodology surrounding the microstrategical labelling, I shall now turn to the ‘microstrategical tour’ of Vraa’s solution to this complex text-specific translation problem.
As it appears from section 6.5.1.2, The actual problem and its relevance, the problem is first identified in chapter 90. On this first mention of ‘Eight Franklin Square’ the term is translated by what I would analyse as permutation (arguably direct transfer combined with ‘explicating addition’, but labelled permutation here, because the TT item is placed in a position which is different from that of its ST item – a different section of the text). At any rate, both categorisations qualify, I believe, as what may also be seen as compensatory translatorial action:
Ref.
ST item
TT item
+ Contextual marker of character’s awareness 90: 337/376
Eight Franklin Square (A street address, he whispered…)
Eight Franklin Square Franklin Square otte (Det er en adresse, hviskede han …)
Microstrategy applied PERM
Comment and/or contextual marker of character’s awareness Parenthetical context
The above choice implies selection of sense 1 by rejection of sense 2. This has no informational impact and no impact on the story as such. TT readers who understand some English (and who are mathematically qualified!) are still allowed the possibility of solving the puzzle as an extra entertainment value, whereas TT readers who know no English at all are deprived of such possibility once and for all. However, the choice of permutation as opposed to e.g. direct transfer offers a translation of ‘eight’ to ‘otte’ (here, the number of a house) as well as elucidation that ‘Franklin Square’ is a proper name (here, the name of a location) by way of the Danish order of street name/house number. This choice is crucial to ‘English weak readers,’ because it helps them cope with the direct transfers that follow. In respect of ‘awareness factor,’ the small piece of parenthetical context clearly tells us that the fictitious character associates ‘Franklin Square’ with an address/a location and not with a clue/part of a puzzle.
According to my analysis, Vraa’s overall solution to the problem subsequently follows a clear, consistent and systematic translation pattern consisting of two parts separated by the
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fictitious character’s awareness and revelation to the TL reader. This may be schematically illustrated as follows: Overall microstrategy the fictitious character’s
PART I
PART II
awareness and revelation to the TL reader – ‘contextual markers’ Ref. 90: 337/376 - 106: 387/430
Ref. 106: 387 - 388/430-431
Ref. 106: 387/430 - 126: 467/516
Ambiguity OR sense 1 –
“Ten minutes earlier… the
Unambiguity OR sense 2 –
mainly DTF1
Harvard professor had figured out
mainly DTL
the key to solving the pyramid.” – “It’s not an address!” Langdon yelled… ª Change of overall microstrategy Microstrategical frequency and distribution of occurrences PERM
1
2%
DTF1
40
80%
DTL
5
10%
CON
3
6%
EXP
1
2%
DTF1
1
11%
DTL
8
89%
As seen above, parts I and II both contained significant predominance of one particular microstrategy each. PART I contained 5049 occurrences of the ‘square’ data categories of which 40 occurrences (80%) were translated by direct transfer, DTF1, e.g.:
90: 337/376
49
(He knew) Franklin Square (was one of the older sections of Washington, but he wasn’t familiar with the address)
(Han vidste at) Franklin Square (lå i et af de ældre kvarterer af Washington, men selve adressen sagde ham ikke noget)
DTF1
Parenthetical context
The actual total number of occurences were 45. However, 5 occurrences were counted twice, i.e. included in the count of both DTF1 and DTL occurrences, respectively, since they each represented a combination of those two different microstrategies. Consequently, the total number of occurrences adds up to 50.
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90: 337/376
91: 341/381
The secret hides within The Order Eight Franklin Square (Is there some kind of Order on Franklin Square) “Eight Franklin Square?”
The secret hides within The Order Eight Franklin Square (Er der en eller anden orden på …)
DTF1
Parenthetical context
“Eight Franklin Square?”
DTF1
“And the address…Is this what the guy wants?” “… the location of a great treasure…”
It is obvious from all the above three examples of translation by DTF1 that the above items of which ‘square’ is a constituent are locations in the mind of the fictitious character (ref. to sense 1). However, translations by anything but DTF1 would ‘kill the wordplay’ (the author’s intention) and ‘spoil the fun’ for those of the readers who know a little English (and quite a lot of math). Furthermore, translating PNs as ‘Franklin Square’ by e.g. ‘Franklins Plads’ would be going completely against the author’s motive/intention of literary tourism promotion (here, also identical with one of the skopoi). How is a Danish tourist supposed to find/learn about American places if he/she is not provided with the American PN? After all, TT readers with no English skills at all are not completely left in the dark, as the key to transferred terms were given from the outset by way of permutation, as seen earlier.
The second of the above examples is interesting because translation not only involves ambiguity but is also restrained by non-verbal/verbal language in combination, i.e. text arranged to form a triangle thus creating the illusion of the inscribed capstone, see 6.5.1.2, fig. 1. By choosing direct transfer of the text (1st and 2nd mention/constrained by textual image), Vraa gives priority to the textual capstone image AND to the preservation of the play on words. This has, however, no significant informational impact, since direct translation of the text ‘The secret hides within the Order’ [Hemmeligheden er skjult i Ordenen], contained in the textual image, follows the textual image later in the TT in a literary contextual environment which makes the semantic meaning of the inscription obvious to the reader (a kind of compensation which seems to exist in literature by nature). To ‘the English weak’ reader, however, one may of course argue that such use of DTF1 creates unnecessary ‘noise’ in a TT and should be avoided, if possible.
The example below is interesting and was included, because I considered ‘Square’ to be implicitly present. ‘Eight’ was thus left with an ambiguous function (part of a sequence of the
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fictitious character’s thoughts while trying to solve the pyramid/become aware of the ambiguity), e.g.:
102: 378/420
Eight Franklin (…eight)
Eight Franklin (…otte)
DTF1
“Langdon had no idea”
Due to the ambiguous function and because a translation of ‘Eight’ exists in the context, the skopoi requirements are best fulfilled by direct transfer. The contextual marker shown in the rightmost column supports my idea that the fictitious character still relates to sense 1.
Instances of direct translation, DTL (10%), were used in combination with DTF1 only, e.g.:
101: 372/414
… The Order – Eight Franklin Square
… Ordenen – Otte Franklin Square
DTL/ DTF1
“What is the address on the capstone?”
In these combined instances, ‘Franklin Square’ was consistently transferred and thus preserved as a foreign place name. In order to help the TT reader as much as possible, the noun ‘(the) Order’ was consistently translated by DTL and consistently treated as a PN in the TT [Ordenen], and the numeral ‘eight’ was consistently translated by DTL [otte].
Instances of condensation, CON (6%), were applied to ‘Eight Franklin Square’ only. Condensation seems to have been used as a tool to minimise the number of transferred terms (DTF1) in order to make the TT appear less ‘untranslated’ - or simply because the contained information was considered superfluous and/or implied, e.g.
101: 372/414
(It’s) Eight Franklin Square
(Det er) nummer otte
CON
“That’s all I know … That’s the address!
All instances of condensation included contextual markers of ‘square’ being a location in the mind of the fictitious character (ref. to sense 1).
The ambiguity of the various PN ‘square’ categories in PART 1 of the translation problem may be discussed, see Appendix 14 for the full list of data. In contrast, the unambiguity of ‘square’ when appearing as a common noun usually may not - instances of the common noun ‘square’ only refer to sense 1 and pose no translation problem. Consequently, common noun occurrences were all consistently translated by DTL, except for one instance which I shall
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revert to later. What may be a bit confusing to the TT reader though is that ‘square’ is rendered somewhat inconsistently in terms of semantics, i.e. the Danish term chosen within sense 1, e.g.:
92: 346/386 93: 349/388 101: 374/416
(Center of) the square
(Midt i) parken
DTL
(peering down at) the square (below…) (only one building on that) square
(så ned på) torvet (under sig…) (kun en bygning på den) plads
DTL DTL
CN ST unambiguous - refers to sense 1 only
The above inconsistency is inexplicable and seems to be unintended.
The example of deviation from the consistent choice of DTL, however, seems to be highly intended:
102: 378/420
squares…
square… kvadrat
PERM
CN
The example is found towards the end of PART 1 of the translation problem and the choice of translation by permutation seems to have been made due to ambiguity. Vraa’s compensatory translation thus functions as an introduction of sense 2 - a link between the two senses and a hint to TT readers of the SC clue.
In contrast to PART I, PART II contained 9 occurrences of the ‘square’ data categories of which 8 occurrences (89%) were translated by direct translation, DTL, e.g.:
106: 387/430 106: 388/431 106: 388/431
“The Order Eight Franklin Square!” (he had shouted) (The secret hides within) The Order Eight Franklin Square “The Order Eight Franklin Square! (It’s a magic square)
“Orden Otte Franklins Kvadrat!”
DTL
(Hemmeligheden er skjult i) Orden Otte Franklins Kvadrat “Orden Otte Franklins Kvadrat! (Det er et magisk kvadrat!”)
DTL
DTL
As seen from the above examples, DTL was used consistently because the terms are no longer ambiguous. They can no longer be sense 1 and refer to sense 2 only, i.e. there is a change of lexical relation from location to shape as well as a change of semantic relation
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from place name to name of mathematical concept. The ST item in the second of the above examples is equal to an example given in PART 1 in which it was translated by DTF1. Apart from being unambiguous here, it is no longer constrained by non-verbal language. The third of the above examples is included to draw attention to what I consider a finer point, namely the exchange of italicized words. By choosing to italicize differently, i.e. ‘Kvadrat’ (square, sense 2) in stead of ‘magic’, which is obvious anyway, Vraa makes the most of the opportunity to emphasize the change of senses to the TT reader.
The only occurrence of DTF1 translation found in PART 2 of the translation problem is seen below:
115: 426/472
(… from his time outside in) Franklin Square
(… efter ventetiden udendørs på) Franklin Square
DTF1
This choice was obviously made because of the contextual reference to sense 1 – an unambiguous reference to an actual address.
6.5.2 Partial conclusion – wrapping up the ‘square’ analysis As seen from the above analysis, sec. 6.5.1.3; the overall microstrategical approach (the predominant choice of DTF1 over DTL and vice versa) changes with the fictitious character’s awareness of the facts of the matter AND his revelation of this awareness to the reader. The fictitious character’s awareness and revelation thus defines the transition from overall ambiguity to overall unambiguity. In other words, the ambiguity of the term(s) here correlates with ‘the fictitious awareness factor,’ and Vraa seems to have made this his solution to the very complex text-specific translation problem found in the ST. Accordingly, part of what seemed on the surface to be an inconsistent and casual alternation between microstrategical approaches really appeared to be a consistent range of deliberate microstrategical solutions supportive of the overall macrostrategies of exoticising documentary translation on the one hand
and
of
heterofunctional
instrumental
translation
on
the
other
hand
(cf.
multifunctionality, sec. 3.1, on literary translation from a theoretical point of view).
Obviously, the TT is not as open to interpretation as the ST. TT deviations though seem to have been made for good and justifiable reasons of constraints and otherwise insoluble
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translation problem complexity – an example of the art of the possible by way of inevitable and universal compromise, cf. sec. 3.2, on literary translation from the point of view of various practitioners. In consequence, TT readers are deprived of the possibility of ‘guessing along’ and solving the clue – except for those who possess knowledge of English as well as mathematical competence. As a consequential effect, TT readers with no knowledge of English and no mathematical competence are kept in suspense longer than mathematically competent ST readers and must wait for the fictitious character’s revelation of the clue. However, keeping Brown’s broad readership in mind (sec. 6.1/ST, sec. 6.2/TT) knowledge of mathematical concepts is hardly a precondition for reading Brown anyway. Keeping readers in suspense, however, is an important skopos requirement. Furthermore, knowing that Langdon is a professor and a symbologist, i.e. a specialist within his field, I expect he is supposed to be much wiser than most of us. Therefore, I am not convinced that Brown actually intended ST readers to guess ahead of Langdon, - and if not, the ambiguity was not meant as part of the entertainment and thereby not necessarily required ambiguous in translation.
My findings do not enable me to generalise about the solutions to translation problems. They do however serve to illustrate that microstrategical labelling may be one approach to the mapping of complex text-specific translation problems.
Another interesting conclusion which may be drawn from my analysis is that the professional unacademic50/hands-on experienced translator does in fact unconsciously apply translation strategies in the sense that translation theory can be used as a tool to examine how his translation was actually done. This is interesting because it serves as a confirmation that theory (i.e. the application of microstrategical labelling) works in practise whether used consciously (theoretically acquired) or unconsciously. In other words, this is a way of proving the practicability of translation theory – and thereby its legitimacy and value, because microstrategical choices made by a professional unacademic translator on the basis of practical hands-on experience may nevertheless be explained by way of translation theory. This of course adds to the value of acquiring and applying translation theory, because it enables theorists to learn from practitioners as well as vice versa.
50
Vraa’s own words, see sec. 5.1, Professional background and personal qualifications.
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6.6
Intratextual data categories subjected to comparative analysis
Further intratextual analysis relevant to this thesis is focused on the rendition of proper names in general, including place names in particular. As was the case with the translation problem dealt with above, relevance arose from the adverse criticism identified in section 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of identified press coverage, items 1 and 3 under my headings, as follows:
The rendition of American … place names “Some American … place names are translated, others are not … ” (Levinsen, “sprog”; my translation).
Non-translation (direct transfer) of proper names, place names included ”Untranslated English language” (Levinsen, “sprog”; my translation).
I should perhaps mention that the above quote originally included reference to specific proper names and place names which have been excluded here for reasons accounted for earlier, see sec. 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage.
As outlined and justified in section 1.2.1, Empirical basis and delimitations, data collection and microstrategical labellings/analyses were limited to the first third parts of the ST/TT, respectively. In order to examine how the translation of PNs was done, i.e. to 1) examine whether or not the microstrategies applied in the TT were in fact theoretically explainable (and justifiable), and 2) establish if general observations of the microstrategical approaches could be made (translation-theoretical perspective), I found it purposeful to make certain subdivisions, as follows: Categories and subcategories
DTF-ratio (%)
Proper names (main category); see Appendix 15 for a full overview of labellings • Names of things, including brand names and LSP-terms
66.7%
• Book titles
61.5%
• Company names
66.7%
• Peoples and historical persons
68.3%
• Deities, religious concepts and denominations
40.0%
• Symbolism and mysticism
22.7%
• Names of fictitious characters
100.0%
• Paintings and other kinds of artwork
42.9%
Average DTF-ratio (%)
58.6%
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Place names (main subcategory); see Appendix 16 for a full overview of labellings • Names of buildings, architectural structures and monuments
42.1%
• Names of rooms, interior parts of buildings
37.5%
• Names of institutions, institutes, societies and councils
36.8%
• Addresses and street names
100.0%
• Names of cities, countries, states, parts of the world
60.0%
• Other geographical sites.
52.6%
Average DTF-ratio (%)
54.8%
NB: The DTF-ratios (%) include occurrences which contain an element of direct transfer though labelled differently, e.g. Cartier watch [Cartier-ur] (DTL), Blackberry [Blackberry-telefon] (EXP), Bluetooth headset [bluetooth-headset] (DAN), Bookspan TV [Bookspan] (CON) etc. This measure was taken in due account of the TT-reader’s (and the reviewer’s) sense of ‘untranslated English language’, and in order to avoid combined labellings. Occurrences to which this applies are marked with * in the appendices.
Due to the vast amount of data, I decided to do further delimitation by selecting half of each of the subcategories within each of the above 2 main categories. This selection was made on the basis of categories which had the highest proportionate percentage of direct transfer (“untranslated English language”, cf. the above quote).
The intratextual data categories subjected to further comparative analysis and commenting, in the section and subsection that follow are thus narrowed down to:
Proper names Names of fictitious characters
100.0%
Peoples and historical persons
68.3%
Company names
66.7%
Names of things, including brand names and LSP-terms
66.7%
Average DTF-ratio (%)
75.4%
Place names Addresses and street names Names of cities, countries, states, parts of the world
6.6.1
DTF-ratio (%)
DTF-ratio (%) 100% 60%
Other geographical sites
52.6%
Average DTF-ratio (%)
70.9%
Proper names
There are no rules for the translation of proper names (Nord, “Proper Names” 185; par. 12). Theorists studying the field of PNs have been eager to find prescriptive rules, but have only
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found trends and conventions.51 This of course at best impedes refutation of criticism in the translation of PNs, and makes it impossible at worst. However, keeping functionalist approaches in mind, skopos considerations and assessment of the TT audience may lead us some of the way. Furthermore, we can and should at least observe, analyse and describe practise, and draw conclusions accordingly in order to provide guidance by way of the trends and conventions found (Chesterman and Wagner 6). As per delimitation, sec. 6.6, my microstrategically focused observations and descriptions, supplemented occasionally by the trends and conventions observed and described by others, are found below. Findings will be concluded upon along the way and summed up in section 6.6.2, Partial conclusion.
ST/TT in-text page references will be provided only when a PN is part of a quotation. Otherwise, ST/TT references are provided in the respective appendices, Appendices 15 and 16, next to the PN in question. Examples provided in table form, include ST/TT references, ST/TT items and applied microstrategy. Square brackets indicate my back-translations, unless the brackets are part of added words in a quotation. •
Names of fictitious characters The 15 fictitious names found in the first 45 chapters were all consistently transferred directly (DTF1) from the ST to the TT. It thus seems safe to assume that fictitious names were transferred directly throughout the TT as the general strategy. Even though “there is no name in fiction without some kind of auctorial intention behind it [and] no name … [without] informative function at all …” (Nord, “Proper Names” 183; par. 4/185; par. 13), Brown’s choice of names most importantly seems to function as gender markers (Robert –
Katherine)
and
markers/indicators
of
(intended)
geographical
origin
(e.g.
Nuñez/Spanish – Zoubianis/Greek – Sato/Japanese). In this respect, ST and TT readers are on equal terms.
The names analysed are not descriptive, i.e. do not include explicit information which can be translated.52 They do, however, include intentional implicit information due to
51
As discussed by Nord (”Proper Names” 183-186), Albin (“Juliet’s Question”), and Särkkä, see Works Cited. As seen in e.g. the translation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in which Alastor Moody (‘MadEye’) became Alastor Dunder [he who fulminates] (‘Skrækøje’) [‘Dread-Eye’] in order to obtain an effect similar in the TT as that of the ST (Van der Plaas 56). To that end, only 87.8% of the personal names were transferred (My calculation; no calculation was done in the study). 52
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etymology53 (e.g. Robert - bright fame; Langdon - from England; Peter - rock; and one of Jesus’s most prominent apostles; Solomon - descendant of Solomon; peaceful and wise; Katherine - pure - Solomon; Warren - protector/defender; Bellamy - fine/beautiful friend; and Christopher Abaddon, one of the pseudonyms used by Mal’Akh, and a name encompassing the names of Jesus Christ and the demon Abaddon (Cox 1)). In literature, such etymological meaning of names will appear from the characters’ behaviour and from the situational context as a whole. Furthermore, considering the target group of the TT, ST and TT readers are once again on common ground - either they know or want to research the etymology, or they simply do not care or give it much thought. Another interesting example of Brown’s implicitness is the name Jonas Faukman, a very diligent publisher, and an anagram of Brown’s real life publisher Jason Kaufman (“Trivia”). It does, however, seem to be some kind of hidden tribute which is probably no more obvious in the SC than in the TC. In conclusion, no argument is found for anything but direct transfer of the fictitious names used. Fictitious names were probably not what the criticism was aimed at anyway, but they could not be ignored in terms of “untranslated English language” and delimitation criteria. •
Peoples and historical persons 28 of the 41 names found in this category were transferred by DTF1, and those which were not directly transferred were either translated by DTL or danicized. Only 5 names were dealt with creatively by either explicitation or substitution. I shall revert to a few of these later, for brief comments.
Even though we deal with fiction, our common education and our knowledge about Brown’s background and educative intentions enable us to reasonably assume that PNs within this category refer to real-life peoples and historical persons (non-fictional). Most of the transferred names used are either internationally well-known, e.g. Celsius, Newton, Bohr, Darwin, Pythagoras etc., or equally known or unknown to ST/TT readers, i.e. of non-American origin, e.g. Dante, Clarke, Bacon, Boyle, Heisenberg, Schrödinger etc.
Those of the transferred names of American origin or names that play a particular part in American history may of course raise connotations in the mental lexicons of ST-readers 53
Etymological meanings were researched through behindthename.com (Campbell) and Meaning-ofNames.com.
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which are different from those raised in the mental lexicons of the TT-readers. However, the connotations (intended!) and needed to fulfil skopos requirements are provided by way of contextual ST explanations and/or titles which are also conveyed in the TT, e.g. ‘byplanlæggeren Pierre L’Enfant’, ‘city designer …’; ‘vicepræsident Henry Wilson’, Vice President …’; ‘… førende frimurere - George Washington, Ben Franklin magtfulde personligheder’, ‘… Master Masons - … - powerful minds’; ‘Joseph Smith, der … overs[a]tte Mormons Bog’, ‘Joseph Smith … [who] translate[d] the Book of Mormon’; ‘vores nations store opfindere - … Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse’, ‘Horatio Greenough(‘)s statue’; ‘Abraham Lincolns yngste søn, Tad’, ‘Abraham Lincoln’s youngest son, etc. As far as I am concerned, the only objections relevant here concern the transferred use of first names ‘Tad’ (short for Thomas), ‘Ben’ (short for Benjamin), and ‘Teddy’ (short for Theodore). Some TT-readers may not be familiar with the American tendency to abbreviate American first names and would therefore benefit from translation by explicitation, e.g. Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt etc.
On one occasion, the connotations needed are provided in the TT by way of adding ‘selveste’ to ‘Teddy Roosevelt’ [Teddy Roosevelt himself] (connotations of importance). To the advantage of TT-readers, the ST item ‘the Duke of York’, which seems to be used connotatively (an important person), is changed into a CN, ‘en hertug’ [a duke], and thus ‘neutralised’ by way of substitution. A similar advantage is gained by the oblique translation of ‘The Father of Our Country’ (PN) to ‘vores nations fader’ [the father of our nation] (CN). The pronoun ‘our’ however occurs in a sentence in which Langdon addresses a group of American students. Langdon is English and thereby not part of the reference group. Consequently, translation could have been done successfully either by substitution – ‘George Washington’, or by simply changing the pronoun to ‘jeres’ [your].
The deletion of the PN ‘Jews’ strikes me as odd. I do however consider it an unintentional act rather than a deliberate strategy, since three lines of the text are missing altogether. Fortunately, the missing part does not interfere with the flow of the TT and can only be caught in a comparative reading.
In conclusion, the cultural transfer needed was solved contextually or by creative translation and consequently, I found no further arguments but the few ones stated above, for anything but transfer of the transferred items. The few critical comments made are not
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all relevant in terms of microstrategical choice but in terms of proof-reading and the working conditions identified. •
Company names 12 of the 18 company names found included an element of direct transfer. Seven of these were transferred directly to the TT – five by DTF1 and two by DTF2. Three of those transferred by DTF1 (Coca-Cola, CNN and CIA) are very well known entities with international recognition – an argument for transference (Albin, “Juliet’s Question”). Other arguments, however, are needed for the transference by DTF1 of the last two PNs. The transference of ‘Beltway Limousine’ is supported by the skopos of promoting literary tourism and is supportive of the overtness and ideas of preservation which are part of an exoticising documentary strategy. Furthermore, it is apparent from the context that Beltway Limousine is a company. Any SC connotations and presuppositions, however, are not conveyed, but probably considered secondary. The transference of ‘ACME Storage’ is somewhat surprising, as there is no TC recognition of that PN at all, and no help from the context either. The PN is part of the comparison ‘ACME Storage meets the Catacombs of Domatilla’ which completely looses its effect in the TT. In a TT with predominance of PN covertness, the PN could have been substituted by its Danish counterpart, but in order not to introduce a TC-rooted PN, my suggestion would be the strategy of substitution, i.e. substitution of ‘ACME Storage’ by a descriptive superordinate CN like ‘opmagasineringsfirma’ [storage company] preceded by an adjective ‘beskedent’ [modest] to convey the connotative meaning. The covertness of such substitution would not interfere with the overall idea of ‘PN overtness whenever possible’, and has also been used frequently in the TT, e.g.: ‘the FAA’ – ‘luftfartsmyndighederne’ [the aviation authority], ‘ESPN’ – ‘noget sport’ [some sports], and ‘DMV’ – ‘motorkontoret’ [the department of motor vehicles] etc.
The two instances of DTF2 found in the TT were ‘OS’ (‘the OS’) and ‘KGB’ (‘the KGB’). ‘KGB’ was directly transferred because it is a well known entity with international recognition. The transference of the SC-rooted ‘OS’ was preceded by contextual explanation, see below, and subsequently taken as learnt by TT readers. In both instances the definite article was not part of the SC name and therefore omitted.
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Five PNs included an element of direct transfer but were labelled differently. Three of these were translated by explicitation in order to combine the idea of leaving SC settings unchanged and making sure TT-readers know what is going on, e.g.:
63/75
the CIA’s Office of Security
65/77
the CIA’s Office of Security
110/130
Sterling Dental
140/163
the Central Intelligence Agency
CIA’s Office of Security – sikkerhedskontoret, forkortet OS CIA’s sikkerhedskontor OS Sterling Dental tandlægeklinik CIA, Central Intelligence Agency
EXP*
1st mention
EXP*
Context-dependent
EXP/ADD*
Explicating addition
EXP*
On the first mention of ‘the CIA’s Office of Security’, Vraa chooses the strategy of transferring (DTF2) the PN while adding an explanation of what is implicitly present. Furthermore, he wisely takes advantage of the opportunity to introduce the abbreviation ‘OS’ for further reference in the TT. What may at first seem like unnecessary repetition of the abbreviation, when comparing example one and two, is really just an example of the need for context-dependent translation – the first mention being part of a description, and the second being part of a piece of dialogue in which the fictitious character is handed the phone and presented to a caller who is completely unknown to him. The third example is supportive of an exoticising macrostrategy, and the explicating addition of ‘tandlægeklinik’ [dental clinic] lets TT-readers in on the kind of company referred to in the ST. ‘Sterling Dental’ however is not part of the TT-reader’s mental lexicon and therefore might as well have been translated by ‘en tandlægeklinik’ (substitution). The fourth example involves transfer by DTF2 which is justified by the addition of a PN familiar to the TT-reader - the abbreviated form of ‘CIA’.
The last example containing an element of direct transfer is the condensed transfer of ‘Bookspan TV’ to ‘Bookspan’. The example, though supportive of an exoticising macrostrategy, nevertheless seems to be an overestimation of the TT-reader’s SCknowledge. The more covert, yet less educating solution would be ‘amerikansk tv’ [American TV].
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•
Names of things, including brand names and LSP-terms 22 of the 33 PNs, identified in this category, included an element of direct transfer. I shall however limit my analysis of these to a few general or otherwise noteworthy observations. Only two of the 22 PNs were categorised as direct transfer (DTF1), namely ‘Classic Coke’ and ‘iPhone’. The latter is an example of a global brand name (an internationalism) for which no Danish term actually exists. ‘Classic Coke’ also seems to have been perceived as a brand name, but keeping the older part of the target group in mind – and the fact that an official translation of this brand name exists (identical with the company name), I believe ‘den klassiske Coca-Cola’ [the classic Coca-Cola] would have been a better, yet more covert choice.
12 of the 22 PNs, of which 11 were brand names, included an element of direct transfer and were actually labelled by DTL (one by CON, referred to below). Each of these 12 PNs consisted of 1) what Särkkä54 refers to in his Introduction as a central proper noun, “a noun which is not further analyzable in terms of internal syntactic structure”, - plus 2) “a descriptor denoting the semantic category of the entity concerned”. This is what Särkkä refers to under the heading of General considerations as extended PNs (EPNs), and his general recommendation as to the translation of EPNs is to transfer the first part by DTF1 and to translate the descriptor part. This approach was the one followed by Vraa, e.g.: ‘Otis-elevatoren’ (‘the Otis elevator), ‘Savonarola-stol’ (‘Savonarola chair’), ‘Bugarini-olielampe’ (‘Bugarini oil lamp’), ‘Cartier-ur’ (‘Cartier watch’) etc. A few choices though struck me as odd: 1) ‘the Kiryu silk robe’ [Kiryu-silkekåben] was condensed in translation to ‘Kiryu-silken’ (‘the Kiryu silk’) for no obvious reason, and 2) ‘the gold Cartier watch’ became ‘det gyldne Cartier-ur’ [the golden Cartier watch]. ‘Gyldne’ [golden] in this context denotes fakeness, and thus should have been translated by Cartier-gulduret [the Cartier gold watch].
Of the last eight PNs which included an element of DTF1, but which were labelled differently, various microstrategies, i.e. PAR, CON, DTL, EXP, and DAN were used to combine the strategy of leaving the settings unchanged with the strategy of achieving similar functions as the ST by helping TT-readers cope with the overtness (the transferred terms). ‘BlackBerry’, ‘Pirate’s Booty’ and ‘the World Wide Web’ were thus explicitated
54
No page numbers are provided in the source, see Works Cited.
Andersen 85
by adding a descriptor/classifier, e.g. ‘BlackBerry-telefon’ […-phone], ‘Pirate’s Booty snacks’, and ‘adgang til alle databaser på World Wide Web’ [access to all databases on …]. ‘Bluetooth headset’ (brand/technology) was ‘danified’ by turning the brand name into a hyphenated CN ‘bluetooth-headset’ (technology only), and two PNs which were constituent parts of complex noun phrases were dealt with as follows: Quantumindeterminate electronic noise REGs … Random Event Generators was paraphrased to en kvantebaseret Random Event Generator (REG) en frembringer af vilkårlige begivenheder [a quantum-based … a generator of random events]. The LSP-term and its abbreviation are thus preserved, and TT-readers are provided with a classifier and a somewhat simplified Danish explicitation of its function as a result of the deleted premodifiers. ‘Specialised Optical Character Recognition translation modules’ were condensed on the first mention to ‘specialiserede OCR-oversættelsesmoduler’ and translated by DTL on the second mention (‘OCR translation modules’ ‘OCRoversættelsesmoduler’). The choice of preserving the LSP-abbreviation, translating the classifier and deleting the meaning of the abbreviation in the TT was apparently made because of the simplified second mention in the ST and justified by the explanatory effect of the surrounding context, i.e. ‘… to generate English text from obscure languages’ (Brown, “Symbol” 72). The TT-readers are however deprived of the technology involved, i.e. ‘Optical Character Recognition’ [optisk tegngenkendelse].
6.6.1.1 Place names Compared to the main category of PNs, a little less PNs were directly transferred, or included an element of direct transfer, in the main sub-category of place names; namely 54.8% as opposed to the 58.6% found in the main category. The three sub-categories with the highest ‘DTF-ratio score’ will be further commented on below: •
Addresses and street names The nine addresses and street names found in the first 45 chapters all included an element of direct transfer. Six of these were labelled by DTF1, and three were labelled by DAN or OBL, respectively. The three addresses which were not directly transferred all included a street number. Danizication was used in order to comply with the Danish order of street numbers following street names, e.g.: ‘Kingston Drive 357’, ‘Silver Hill Road 4210’; and the strategy of oblique translation was used as a grammatical consequence of the Danish
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relative sentence structure ‘… der havde nummer 1733 på …” [… which had number 1733 on …] substituting ‘located at …’.
With respect to important specifics in the translation of street names, i.e. addresses, Särkkä mentions that TT-readers should be allowed to infer from the context that a given name is a street name (a place name). In a literary context, Särkkä’s recommendation needs to be supplemented by Albin’s warning to observe that hidden meanings or connotations,
if
any,
are
conveyed
(“Juliet’s
Rose”).
Vraa
followed
these
recommendations by simply conveying what was already contextually present in the ST, e.g.:
8/16
Windsock Drive
Windsock Drive
DTF1
91/109
Kalorama Heights
Kalorama Heights
DTF1
123/144
Dorchester Arms
Dorchester Arms
DTF1
Contextual indication of place name ‘accelererede op ad…’/’gunned up…’
Connotations of exclusivity ’den private adgangsvej’/’a private access road’ AND ’sådan her levede de rige altså’/’so this is how the other half lives’ ‘de statelige gader i…’/’the stately streets of…’
’konsultationen er i…’/‘my office is in…’ ‘sin penthouse lejlighed på det eksklusive…’/’his penthouse apartment at the exclusive…’
The above three examples are considered interesting for these reasons: •
They represent the only three occurrences in which connotations were important, and all other occurrences were accompanied by the necessary contextual indications, e.g.: ‘parkerede på First Street’/’parked on …’, etc.
•
They all represent places where the fictitious characters live or work, and Brown thus means to reveal something about a specific character by way of the address.
•
In a translation perspective, they are all examples of the beauty of Brown’s writing (unless ‘beauty’ in a literary context is associated with the need for creativity on the part of the translator).
The overtness found in this category is thus justified in terms of fulfilling skopoi requirements, and no argument is found for nothing but transfer of the transferred elements.
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•
Names of cities, countries, states, parts of the world 12 of the 20 occurrences found in this category included an element of direct transfer, and 10 of these were labelled by DTF1. Eight occurrences were translated by DAN and two by DTL. All of the occurrences are easily recognised as real-life places (non-fictional), and they all have Danish conventional or official names used in the TT. Some of these names do not differ from the ones used in the SC, e.g. ‘Washington D.C.’, ‘London’ etc., and were thus transferred directly. Some differ slightly in terms of spelling, inflection or genitive case marking55 and were thus danicized in order to comply with Danish TL norms, e.g.: ‘Europa’, ‘Vatikanet’, ‘Alexandrias’ etc; and some are extended PNs with descriptor parts for translation and were thus translated by DTL, e.g.: ‘Ny Guinea’/’New Guinea’ and ‘Bermuda-trekant’/’Bermuda-triangle’.
In terms of generalising about the microstrategical choices made in the TT, the microstrategical labelling of occurrences within this category may be considered somewhat of a misrepresentation. As mentioned above, the translational choices within this category depend on compliance with conventions, i.e. the use of existing official translations rather than an actual choice. Consequently, this may be considered an example by which the limitations of the applied taxonomy are seen. Nonetheless, the very application of the taxonomy enabled me to draw comparisons with other categories and also enabled me to conclude that no argument was found for anything but direct transfer of the transferred items. •
Other geographical sites 10 of the 19 place names found in this category included an element of direct transfer. Seven of these were transferred directly to the TT - five by DTF1 and 2 by DTF2 - and three were labelled differently. The remaining 9 occurrences were either translated by DTL or creatively by EXP, SUB, DEL or OBL. I shall revert to a particularly interesting example of these later but start out by commenting on the DTF occurrences:
18/27 24/33 29/39 44/56
55
the National Mall Disney World Federal Triangle the Grand Canyon
National Mall Disney World Federal Triangle Grand Canyon
DTF2 DTF1 DTF1 DTF2
Whether examples including genitive case marking should be labelled DAN or DTL may be discussed, but since the main issue here is direct transfer, I shall give it no more consideration.
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53/65 64/76 171/197
Capitol Hill Manzanar Castel Sant’Angelo
Capitol Hill Manzanar Castel Sant’Angelo
DTF1 DTF1 DTF1
Considering conventions, the TT audience and the skopos of literary tourist promotion, some of the transfers were made for obvious reasons, and some may be discussed as far as I am concerned, e.g.: •
‘Disney World’, ‘Grand Canyon’ and ‘Capitol Hill’ may be considered internationally well-known places and thus transferred.
•
‘Grand Canyon’ however could be partly translated by translation of the descriptor, i.e. ‘Grand Canyon-kløften’, without offending those who actually know the place.
•
Metaphoric connotations of ‘Capitol Hill’ are apparent from the context “Police officers who worked near Capitol Hill were never certain what power broker they might mistakenly…” (Brown, “Symbol” 53). ‘Capitol Hill’ here connotes ‘the place of those in power’, i.e. the Congress, and could thus be substituted by ‘Capitolbygningen’ [the Capitol building] or kongresbygningen [the Congress building].
•
‘Castel Sant’Angelo’, a name from outside the SC, is equally known or unknown by ST and TT readers and may thus be transferred.
•
Though ‘Mazanar’ is probably completely unknown by TT readers, contextual ST explicitation rendered in the TT
“… i en japansk interneringslejr i Manzanar,
Californien…” (Brown, “tegn” 76)/“inside the fences of a Japanese internment camp in…” (Brown, “Symbol” 63-64) gives readers the clues necessary in terms of the skopos requirement of entertaining readers. •
‘National Mall’ and ‘Federal Triangle’ may be unknown to quite a few of the Danish readers and should at least be added a descriptor, i.e. ‘arealet Federal Triangle’ [the area of the Federal Triangle] and ‘området (or) parkområdet National Mall’ [the National Mall area (or) park area] in order not to appear as mere ‘noise’ in the TT.
As seen earlier, the choice of DTF2 (omission of the definite article) as opposed to DTF1 was used, because the definite article was not part of the SC name.
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The three occurrences which included an element of direct transfer were translated according to conventions, as mentioned earlier:
13/21 13/21
the Potomac the Tidal Basin
53/65
the Anacostia River
•
Potomac-floden The Tidal Basin – Tidevandsbassinet Anacostia-floden
EXP* EXP* DTL*
‘Potomac-floden’ [the Potomac river] – an addition of a descriptor which is implicitly present in the ST.
•
The second example – transfer of the place name added an implicitly present direct translation of that place name.
•
‘Anacostia-floden’ – direct transfer of the first part of the EPN and a direct translation of the descriptor.
The instance of oblique translation found, i.e. ‘Foggy Bottom’/’Den Tågede Flodbred’ [The Foggy Riverside] may seem as an inconsistent choice at first. However, ‘Foggy Bottom’ is not a sight to visit as such but the descriptive name of the grounds of a whole neighbourhood. Connotations are provided in the ST and rendered in the TT, i.e. “Aptly named… a peculiar site on which to build the nation’s capital… a soggy riverside marsh” (Brown, “Symbol” 13)/”… som stedet meget passende var navngivet… et sært sted at bygge nationens hovedstad… en sumpet marsk” (Brown, “tegn” 21). These contextual connotations could serve as an argument for direct transfer. However, priority seems to have been given in the TT to render the semantic meaning in the form of a PN – though by slightly different semantics.
In conclusion, different choices were made for different reasons. Still, examples were found in which less overt solutions would have served to lessen the TT readers feeling of ‘noise’ and ‘untranslated English language’.
6.6.2 Partial conclusion – wrapping up the proper name/place name analysis According to my analysis based on the first third parts of the ST/TT (and grouped in 14 categories), an average of more than half of all the microstrategically labelled proper names and place names were either transferred directly to the TT, or included an element of direct transfer – corresponding to average DTF-ratios of 58.6% and 54.8%, respectively. The seven
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categories for further analysis and comment were selected for reasons of ensuring maximum attention to “untranslated language” (DTF), and consequently showed average DTF-ratios of 75.4% and 70.9% respectively.
Despite the high DTF-ratio, TT-solutions ranged from the very documentary ones like DTF and DTL to the more creative and instrumental ones like EXP, DEL, SUB and CON etc. Vraa thus made use of the whole continuum of translation strategies, though seemingly with a preference for overt solutions with respect to proper names, including place names. In other words, refutation of the general criticism is not possible - some place names were translated whereas others were not, and untranslated English language was certainly found - though in most cases for explainable and justifiable reasons. Microstrategical choices were thus made, though perhaps unconsciously, under due consideration of a number of different factors, such as: •
TT-skopos and assessment of the TT-audience, with implicit consideration of a variety of factors56 depending on the PN in question, e.g.: o Fictional or non-fictional referents. o Auctorial intention. o Informative function. o Descriptiveness. o The need to/or not to convey connotations or etymological meaning. o Differences in the mental lexicons of ST/TT-readers; cultural differences. o The extent of contextual explicitation. o Internationalism. o Existing official translations.
The employment of microstrategical labelling as a theoretical tool in combination with the above considerations enabled me to sum up as follows:
In three of the seven proper name/place name categories subjected to thorough analysis in secs. 6.6.1 and 6.6.1.1 I found no argument for anything but direct transfer of the transferred elements. In the remaining four categories I did, however, find a few arguments for:
56
The list is meant to be exemplifying and not exhaustive.
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•
An increased need for explicitation and substitution (more covertness).
•
An increased need for attention towards differences in ST and TT situations.
•
Overestimation of the TT-reader’s SC-knowledge.
•
Unintended deletion.
The above arguments may be indicative of either insufficient proof-reading, unavoidable slips due to working conditions, i.e. time-pressure - OR simply personal attitude.
With regard to instances of DTF2 – omission of the definite article, these occurred only when the definite article was not part of the SC name. The omission thus serves to ‘danify’ the foreign name when introduced in the TL language, i.e. make the foreign name appear less foreign.
In terms of macrostrategical supportiveness, Vraa’s microstrategical choices ranged between supportiveness of a heterofunctional (instrumental) macrostrategy with the purpose of achieving similar functions as those of the ST; and supportiveness of an exoticising documentary strategy for purposes of leaving ST settings and situation unchanged. Such balance on the ST/TT continuum seems to be very much in line with the multifunctional nature of literature, referred to in section 3.1, and is fully backed by theory.
In fairness, I should stress that this partial conclusion is of course subject to the delimitations applying to this thesis.
Following this partial conclusion, I shall conclude on the entire thesis below.
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7.
Conclusion
Due to professional curiosity and the aim of a humble contribution to knowledge about translational phenomena and phenomena that surround translation, and, as stated in my introductory chapter, I decided that the three overriding purposes of this thesis were: •
to examine the main issues of the media attention/criticism and the reasons for the seemingly unprecedented hype surrounding the professional Danish translator Mich Vraa’s work with the Danish translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol,
•
to determine Vraa’s underlying macro-level strategy, including skopoi, and explain his micro-level solutions to selected categories of proper names, including place names, as well as his solution to the very complex text-specific translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square,’
•
to demonstrate or dismiss the idea of a growing need for translation theory as a result of a trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews and to gain knowledge about the premises of translation-related book reviews.
Conclusions to the results of my work with each of the three mentioned purposes are as follows:
Based on the data retrieved through my personal interview with Mich Vraa and the media text collection which I compiled for the purposes of this thesis, I was able to identify a number of different possible reasons for the hype. As per my interpretation, these reasons were mainly issues of limited time vs. heavy workload, issues pertaining to the task of translating a sequel to a global bestseller and to the task of translating what some perceive as literary commercialism, see sec. 2.1.3.2, Interpretation of the identified press coverage, for the full list. In my interpretive view, the identified reasons prepared the way for the snowball effect of hype and ultimately led to a follow-up on the TT. Having reviewed the ST, newspaper critic Levinsen made the personal choice of a detailed adverse judgement in his TT follow-up book review. In my interpretation, Levinsen’s criticism mainly concerned what he referred to as ‘untranslated English language,’ (non-translation/direct transfer) exemplified by proper names and places names and the solution to the translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square.’ The media text collection, including Levinsen’s critical review thus formed a natural and suitable basis for my delimitation and selection of intratextual data categories for further micro-level analysis.
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Micro-level analysis was, however, preceded by speculations about skopoi and considerations concerning the expected underlying macrostrategy. From my interview with Vraa, it was obvious that he is an example of the professional unacademic hands-on experienced translator who neither consciously employs a certain translation strategy nor refers to it as instrumental (TT oriented), documentary (ST oriented) or balancing on the ST/TT continuum. Nonetheless, it was equally obvious from my interpretation of his statements and from my analysis that he does of course translate according to considerations which may be determined and explained according to theoretical concepts, on a macrostrategical as well as on a microstrategical level. The results from the combined use of Schjoldager’s “Checklist for textual analysis” and “Four-point model for translation analysis” compared with the interview data allowed me to infer that the expected and actual macrostrategy would have to be characterised as predominantly heterofunctionally instrumental. This strategy fulfilled the overriding skopos requirement of giving the TT audience similar entertainment and thrill value to that of the ST audience, including a similar feeling of being kept in suspense and wanting to turn pages. On the other hand, the analysis also showed that fulfilment of e.g. educative and promotional sub-skopoi of showing what the SC is like/preserving SC settings, required Vraa to employ the exoticising subcategory of documentary translation. This multifunctional situation explained why Vraa moved back and forth (balanced) on the continuum of macrostrategies and was also expected to do so from a skopostheoretical/functionalist point of view.
The focus of this thesis concerned micro-level solutions in the TT, i.e. Vraa’s micro-level solutions to 1) the translation problem involving the ambiguity of ‘square,’ and to 2) the translation of selected proper names, including place names. The application of my slightly adapted version of Schjoldager’s taxonomy to the ST/TT data and a subsequent examination of the microstrategically labelled data enabled me to draw conclusions, as follows:
Re: 1) Vraa’s overall microstrategical approach (the predominant choice of direct transfer over direct translation and vice versa) apparently changed with the fictitious character’s awareness of the facts of the matter AND with his revelation of this awareness to the reader, i.e. the awareness AND revelation that ‘Eight Franklin Square’ referred to a mathematical concept and not to a street address. The fictitious character’s awareness and revelation thereby defined the transition from overall ambiguity to overall unambiguity. In Vraa’s solution, the ambiguity of the term(s) thus simply seemed to correlate with ‘the fictitious
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awareness factor.’ Accordingly, what seemed to the reviewer to be an inconsistent and casual alternation between microstrategical approaches really appeared to be a consistent range of deliberate microstrategical solutions supportive of the multifunctional balance on the ST/TT continuum (here: mainly supportive of the exoticising subcategory of documentary translation). These findings not only confirmed that Vraa’s solution could be explained using microstrategical analysis, but also illustrated that microstrategical labelling may be one approach to the mapping of complex text-specific translation problems.
Re: 2) With respect to categories subjected to thorough analysis, my selection criteria, i.e. categories displaying the highest proportionate rates of direct transfer (DTF-ratios) ensured maximum attention to “untranslated English language.” However, despite average DTF-ratios as high as 75.4% (proper names, excluding place names) and 70.9% (place names) Vraa made use of the whole continuum of translation strategies and TT solutions ranged between supportiveness of the heterofunctional subcategory of instrumental translation and supportiveness of the exoticising subcategory of documentary translation, though seemingly with a preference for overt (documentary) solutions with respect to the rendition of proper names, including place names. Such preference also appeared from my interview data, see sec. 5.3, Working processes. The general criticism that some place names were translated whereas others were not (inconsistency) is of course non-refutable. Microstrategical choices representing “untranslated English language” were certainly made, but in most cases for explainable and perfectly justifiable reasons which were listed in sec. 6.6.2, Partial conclusion on the proper name/place name analysis. In four of the analysed categories I did, however find arguments for: an increased need for explicitation, substitution and attention towards differences in ST and TT situations; overestimation of the TT-reader’s SCknowledge; and unintended deletion. Such examples may of course be indicative of either insufficient proof-reading or unavoidable slips due to working conditions (time pressure), but they may in fact also simply be indicative of a personal attitude.
Findings concerning the use of what I defined as DTF2, i.e. direct transfer but with the omission of the definite article, indicated that this strategy served the purpose of introducing a foreign name in the TL in a ‘danified,’ i.e. less foreign way.
Microstrategically focused translation analysis once again proved to be a useful tool for explaining the choices made in the TT with only one guarded reservation concerning the
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category consisting of: names of cities, countries, states and parts of the world. It could be argued that this category constituted one example of the limitations to the applied taxonomy, because TT choices within this category generally depend more on compliance with conventions rather than on actual choices.
Turning to the third purpose of this thesis, my work with the media text collection and the results of the small-scale questionnaire which I conducted among reviewers enabled me to draw main conclusions of interest in a translational perspective as follows: •
With the exception of two Danish reviewers, Levinsen included, the general media interest seemed to concern the hype and not translation proper as anticipated.
•
The most decisive qualifying factor as a book reviewer of English/American fiction turned out to be formal knowledge of the Danish language and not theoretical or formal knowledge of the English language. This is highly indicative of a general emphasis on the TT and a general reviewer preference for covert translation.
•
No ‘template’ for book reviews of translated literature exists. As a result, translationrelated content fully depends on the reviewing individual who singlehandedly possesses the authority to brand a translator/translation as good or poor based on preferences rather than on theory.
•
Contrary to my expectations, no trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in book reviews was found and neither was a growing media interest in translation in general. The idea in my mind of a growing need for translation theory in this respect may then of course be dismissed.
Although my results did not serve to demonstrate a growing need for translation theory in the chosen perspective, they served to establish the great value of using translation theory and microstrategically focused translation analysis for explaining the choices of others (as well as one’s own choices), learning from the choices of others, and refuting criticism in part or full. Translation theory thus offers a means of explanation and/or defence - or simply of being at professional peace with one’s choices in times when “no one forgets.”
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WORKS CITED “A Guide to Washington DC Lost Symbol Landmarks.” DANBROWN The Lost Symbol. danbrownthelostsymbol.com, 22 Sep. 2009. Web. 8 June 2010 < http://danbrownthelostsymbol.com/guide-washington-dc-lost-symbol-landmarks/ >. Albin, Verónica. “Does Juliet's Rose, by Any Other Name, Smell as Sweet?” Translation Journal 8.1 (2004): n. pag. Accurapid. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. < http://accurapid.com/journal/27names.htm >. ---. “What’s in a Name: Juliet’s Question Revisited.” Translation Journal 7.4 (2003): n. pag. Accurapid. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. < http://accurapid.com/journal/26names.htm >. “Aristeion Prize.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia, 18 Apr 2010. Web. 25 June 2010. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristeion_Prize >. Asmuß, Birte, and Steensig, Jakob. Trans. “Transcription Glossary.” Samtalen på arbejde. Konversationsanalyse og kompetenceudvikling. ASB, n.d.: 341-343. Web. 26. May 2010. < http://movinarbejdspapirer.asb.dk/pdf/ transcriptsymbols.pdf >. Bonnevie, Lars. “Konspirationer: Trafikkaos af forskruet vås.” Weekendavisen 27 nov. 2009: 2nd sect., 2. Infomedia. Web. 15. Jan 2010. < http://www.infomedia.dk.www.baser.dk/ms/ViewPDFlauncher.aspx?dockey=//10.45.16.2 00/y/NewsML-Repository/WAA/2009/11/27/e1c8f084.xml@db2009 >. Brown, Dan. “Brown Writes a Letter to the Scottish Rite Freemasonry.” Pietre-Stones Review of Freemasonry. Freemasons-Freemasonry.com, 20 Oct 2009: n. pag. Web. 7 June 2010 < http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/phpnews/show_news.php?uid=149 > ---. Interview by Daphne Durham. amazon.com. n.d. Web. 7 June 2010. < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385504225?ie=UTF8&tag=nikond90plusc20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0385504225 > ---. Interview by Steve Bertrand. Meet the Writers. bn.com, n.d. Web. 2 June 2010. < http://media.barnesandnoble.com/ index.jsp?fr_story=19119bd7b08577c3f9eb211c30530ba6f26586e1 > ---. The Lost Symbol. London: Bantam Press, 2009. Print. ---. Det forsvundne tegn. Trans. Mich Vraa. København: Hr. Ferdinand, 2009. Print. Campbell, Mike. Behind the Name. The Etymology and History of First Names. 9 Jan. 1996. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. < http://www.behindthename.com >.
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Chesterman, Andrew, and Emma Wagner. Can Theory Help Translators? A Dialogue between the Ivory Tower and the Wordface. Manchester, UK/Northampton, MA: St. Jerome Publishing, 2002. Print. Cox, Simon. Decoding the Lost Symbol. New York: Touchstone, 2009. Print. ”Dan Brown.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia, 27 June 2010: n. pag. Web. 28 June 2010. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Brown > Dansk BiblioteksCenter. “DBC Titelstatistik 2009 - DBC 2009.pdf.” Bogmarkedet. Web. 1 Apr. 2010. < http://www.bogmarkedet.dk/sw1379.asp >. Ditlevsen, Marianne Grove, et al. Sprog på arbejde – kommunikation i faglige tekster. Frederiksberg: Forlaget Samfundslitteratur, 2007. Print. Eggins, Susanne. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, 2nd ed. London: Continuum Int., 2004. Print. Enghild, Trine. “The Skopos Theory – a Model for Literary Translations?” MA Thesis. Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, 2001. Print. Evans, David. “Corpus Building and Investigation for the Humanities: An Online Information Pack about Corpus Investigation Techniques for the Humanities.” Unit 1. University of Birmingham, Centre for Corpus Research (n.d.): 1-9. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. < http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/corpus-building.shtml >. Fibiger, Johannes & Gerd Lütken. Litteraturens Veje, 2.udg. Århus: Systime, 2009. Print. Garran, Daniella. "The Lost Symbol: eNotes Synopsis." eNotes: The Lost Symbol. Ed. Penny Satoris. Seattle: Enotes.com Inc, 2009. eNotes.com. 19 July 2010. < http://www.enotes.com/the-lost-symbol/enotes-synopsis >. Grossman, Lev. “How Good Is Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.” Time, 15 Sep. 2009. Web. 2. June 2010. < http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1923182,00.html >. Hansen, Carsten.”(U)formulerede anmeldelsespolitikker ved en række lingvistiske tidsskrifter.” Anmeldelsens teori og praksis. Ed. Carsten Hansen. Århus: Det Erhvervssproglige Fakultet, Handelshøjskolen i Århus, 1997. 35-44. Print. Hansen, Frank Sebastian. “Stakåndet action.” Ekstra Bladet, 15 Sep. 2009: 1st sect., 9. Infomedia. Web. 10 May 2010. < http://ekstrabladet.dk/flash/anmeldelser/diverse/article1222292.ece >. Hasselbalch, Iben, ed. Glas kaster skygge: om litterær oversættelse. København: Gyldendal, 1999. Print. Hayes, Brian J. ”Dan Brown – Biography.” age-of-the-sage.org, 2002: n. pag. Web. 28 June 2010.
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< http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/da_vinci_code/dan_brown_biography.html >. Henriksen, Michael Bach. “Litteratur: Der var engang i Amerika.” Kristeligt Dagblad, 14 Nov. 2009: 11. Infomedia. Web. 15. Jan. 2010. < http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/345902:Anmeldelse--Der-var-engang-iAmerika >. Hilton, Matt. “What Is a ‘Thriller,’ Anyway?” International Thriller Writers. n.d. Web. 10 June 2010. < http://www.thrillerwriters.org/debut_authors/2009/08/what-is-a-thrilleranyway.html#more >. Joos, Martin. The five clocks. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967. Print. Jørgensen, John Chr. Dagbladskritikeren. Frederiksberg: Fisker & Schou, 1994. Print. Koch, Marianne. “Ørkenvandring i Washington D.C.” Fyens Stiftstidende, 20 Sep. 2009: 14. Infomedia. Web. 10 May 2010. < http://www.fyens.dk/article/1324622:Boeger-ogtegneserier--Oerkenvandring-i-Washington-D-C >. Kvale, Steinar. InterViews. An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1996. Print. Landers, Clifford E. Literary Translation. A Practical Guide. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2001. Print. Levinsen, Jakob. “Dan Brown: ’The Lost Symbol’”. kpn.dk, 14 Sep. 2009: n. pag. Web. 7 May 2010. < http://kpn.dk/boger/article1815983.ece >. Lund, Marianne. “His Dark Materials in Translation. A Skopos-theoretical Analysis of Hanna Lützen’s Danish Translation of Philip Pullman’s Fantasy Trilogy.” MA Thesis. Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, 2009. Print. ”Magister (Degree).” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia, 9 Aug 2010. Web. 10 Aug 2010. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magister_(degree) >. Meaning-of-Names.com. n.p. 2004. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. < http://www.meaning-of-names.com >. Meyhoff, Karsten Wind. Forbrydelsens elementer: kriminallitteraturens historie fra Poe til Ellroy. Kbh.: Information, 2009. Print. Miller, George A. "WordNet - About Us." WordNet. Princeton University. 2009. < http://wordnet.princeton.edu >. Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990. Print. Nord, Christiane. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis. 2nd ed. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005. Print.
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---. “Proper Names in Translations for Children Alice in Wonderland as a Case in Point.” Meta: Translators’ Journal 48.1-2 (2003): 182-196. Erudit. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. < http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2003/v48/n1-2/006966ar.html >. ---. Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1997. Print. Nørgaard Kristensen, Annette. “Oversættelse af sangtekster: En komparativ analyse af undertekster til sange i filmmusicaler.” MA thesis. Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, 2009. Print. “Oversættelsesaftale.” Dansk Forfatterforening. n.d. PDF-file. 23 July 2010. < http://danskforfatterforening.dk/images/kontrakt%20oversaetter.pdf >. Palumbo, Giuseppe. Key Terms in Translation Studies. London: Continuum, 2009. Print. Pauli, Michelle. ”Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol breaks records for first week sales.” guardian.co.uk, 22 Sep. 2009: n. pag. Web. 7 May 2010. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/22/dan-brown-lost-symbol-record-sales >. Purdue OWL. "MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 10 May 2008. Web. 27 Jan. 2008. < http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/1/ >. Random House, Inc. n.d. Web. 10 June 2010. . Rogak, Lisa. “The Man Behind The DA VINCI CODE.” danbrownbio.com, 2005: n. pag. Web. 28 June 2010. < http://www.danbrownbio.com/excerpt1.html >. Rubin, Herbert J., and Irene S. Rubin. Qualitative Interviewing: the Art of Hearing Data. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Print. Schjoldager, Anne. “Checklist for Textual Analysis”.57 Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University. 17 Aug. 2009. Handout during lecture. ---. “Four-point Model for Translation Analysis.”58 Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University. 25 Aug. 2009. Handout during lecture. 57
A checklist based on the following literature: Bhatia, Vijay K. Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. Harlow: Longman, 1993. Print. Bülow-Møller, Anne Marie and Karsten Pedersen. The View from the Bridge – Text Analysis for Translators and other Communicators, 1994. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur. Print. Collins, Peter and Carmella Hollo. English Grammar. An Introduction. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 2000. Print. Eggins, Susanne. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2nd ed. London: Continuum, 2004. Print. Fiske, John. Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Routledge, 1990. Print. Jakobson, Roman. “Linguistics and Poetics.” Style in Language. Ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge, Mass./New York/London: MIT Press, 1960. 353-357. Print. Nord, Christiane. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis.. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005. Print.
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Schjoldager, Anne et. al. Understanding Translation. Aarhus/Copenhagen: Academica, 2008. Print. Strømfeldt, Mette. “En amerikansk affære.” Berlingske Tidende, 16 Sep. 2009: Kultur & Debat, 3. Infomedia. Web. 10 May 2010. < http://www.berlingske.dk/boeger/dan-brownskuffer >. Särkkä, Heikki. “Translation of Proper Names in Non-fiction Texts.” Translation Journal 11.1 (2007): n. pag. Accurapid. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. < http://accurapid.com/journal/39proper.htm >. “The Lost Symbol.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia, 18 July 2010. Web. 19 July 2010. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_Lost_Symbol >. Transworld. A Division of the Random House Group Limited. n.d. Web. 10 June 2010. < http://www.booksattransworld.co.uk/fiction/crime.htm >. ”Trivia for Da Vinci mysteriet.” Imdb.com. IMDb.com, Inc. n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/trivia >. Vandall, Jan. “Basal spænding fra Dan Brown.” metroxpress.dk, 17 Nov. 2009: n. pag. Web. 5 Feb 2010. < http://www.metroxpress.dk/dk/article/2009/11/17/10/4333-83/index.xml >. Van der Plas, Caroline B. ”Harry Potter og oversætterens univers. En skoposteoretisk analyse af Hanna Lützens oversættelse af Harry Potter og fønixordenen med fokus på proprier og opfundne ord.” MA Thesis. Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, 2005. Print. Vraa, Mich. Personal Interview. 25 may 2010. Vraa, Mich. Website for Mich Vraa og PalmTree Ltd. n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2010. < http://www.palmtree.dk >. William, Jenny, and Andrew Chesterman. The Map: a Beginner's Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome, 2002. Print.
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A model based on the following literature: Nord, Christiane. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis. 2nd ed. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005. Print. Scholdager, Anne, Henrik Gottlieb, Ida Klitgård. Understanding Translation. Aarhus/Copenhagen: Academica, 2008. Print.
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Media Text Collection:
Andersen, Carsten. “Interview: Dan Brown er jo ikke ligefrem Proust.” Politiken, 13 Sep. 2009: Kultur 3. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Andersen, Jens. “Dan Brown feberen stiger.” Berlingske Tidende, 26 Aug. 2009: Kultur 5. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. ---. “Svenskere kaprer Dan Brown.” berlingske.dk, 30 Aug. 2009: n. pag. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. Fyhn, Mikkel. “Levinsen havde helt klart galt fat i sin anmeldelse.” Politiken, 21 Nov. 2009: Kultur 7. Infomedia. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. Hornemann, Johanne Duus. “Dan Brown tur retur på 25 dage.” kristeligt-dagblad.dk, 13 Nov. 2009. n. pag. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Ioannou, Lisa. “Ny Dan Brown bog udkommer.” TV 2 Nyhederne. TV2 News. 14 Sep. 2009. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. Jensen, Lilly. ”Mysterier uden indhold”. helsingordagblad.dk, 1 Feb. 2010. n. pag. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. Korsgaard, Gunhild. ”Hr. Ferdinand har bestilt kæmpe-oplag.” Helsingør Dagblad, 21 Oct. 2009: 32. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Larsen, Jesper Stein. “Lille forlag i medvind.” kpn.dk, 2 Nov. 2009: n. pag. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Levinsen, Jakob. “Det forsvundne sprog.” Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, 16 Nov. 2009: 1st sec., 16. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Nørtoft, Magnus. “Danmarks Dan Brown er fynbo.” DR Radio, P4 Fyn, Odense, 16 Sep. 2009: 5:05 a.m. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Seymour, Martin Erik. “Den sproglige kamæleon.” FyensStiftstidende, 18 Sep. 2009: NU 9. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Terkelsen, Mette, J.E.A. “Dan Brown ud til folket.” Berlingske Tidende, 22 Oct. 2009: Kultur 03. Infomedia. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. Vraa, Mich. “Dan Brown på rekordtid.” TV 2 GO’morgen. TV2. 13 Nov. 2009. Web video. 3 Apr. 2010. Vraa, Mich. “Debat: En strid om ord.” Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, 20 Nov. 2009: 1st sect., 21. Infomedia. Web. 15 Jan. 2010. Vraa, Mich. ”Den afhuggede hånds hemmeligheder.” Skønlitteratur på P1. DR radio, København, 14 Nov. 2009. Internet Radio. 20 Apr. 2010.
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Vraa, Mich. ”Ekspresoversættelse af Dan Brown.” P1 Morgen, 2. time. DR radio, København, 15 Sep. 2009. Internet Radio. 1 Apr. 2010. Vraa, Mich. “Ny Dan Brown bog udkommer.” TV 2 Nyhederne. TV2 News. 14 Sep. 2009. Web video. 1 Apr. 2010.
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ABSTRACT The present thesis is concerned with translational issues motivated by the media hype which surrounded the Danish professional hands-on experienced translator Mich Vraa and his work with the Danish translation of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
Drawing on a media text collection compiled for the purposes of examining the main issues of the media attention and the criticism levelled against the Danish translation, the thesis offers possible explanations of the sudden hype by way of an interpretation of the identified press coverage.
Taking the pinpointed criticism as a starting point for further delimitation, translationtheoretical microanalyses, with the aim of explaining Vraa’s micro-level solutions, are focused on Vraa’s solutions to selected proper names, including place names and particularly on his solution to the very complex text-specific translation problem involving Brown’s deliberate use of the source language ambiguity of ‘square,’ as in ‘Eight Franklin Square,’ i.e. a play on words referring to Franklin’s mathematical square, but mistaken by a fictitious character for an address.
By way of microstrategical labelling and subsequent analysis, it will be shown how Vraa’s overall microstrategical approach changes with the fictitious character’s awareness of the facts of the matter AND with his revelation of this awareness to the reader. In other words, microstrategical analysis will be used not only to explain Vraa’s solution, but also to illustrate one approach to the mapping of a complex text-specific translation problem.
In terms of proper name and place name rendition, microstrategical labelling as a theoretical tool in combination with one or more relevant factors listed in the thesis, will be used to explain and justify Vraa’s choices and to refute criticism whenever possible. However, a few arguments for alternative solutions will be put forward as a result of having related analysis results to the identified reasons for the media hype.
Microanalyses are based on my slightly adapted version of Anne Schjoldager’s taxonomy of microstrategies, and the overall preparatory analysis aiming at establishing Vraa’s macrolevel strategy and skopoi (translation purposes) is carried out according to Schjoldager’s
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proposed tools for translation analysis, i.e. “Four-point model for translation analysis,” including “Checklist for textual analysis.” The applied translation-theoretical tools build on functionalist approaches proposed by theorists like e.g. Christiane Nord, Susanne Eggins and others; and are therefore a natural part of the theoretical, analytical and conceptual framework applied throughout the thesis. One of my adaptations to Schjoldager’s taxonomy, i.e. the introduction of a second kind of direct transfer (non-translation, but with the omission of the definite article) appears to be a useful means of distinction between direct transfer in full, and a strategy of introducing a foreign name in the target text in a less foreign way.
Results from the analyses combine with the interpreted data from my personal interview with Vraa to prove a multifunctional situation in which Vraa moves back and forth (balances) on the continuum of macrostrategies with a knock-on effect on the applied microstrategies. Based on the interview data, the thesis not only offers an insight into Vraa’s translation choices and strategies, but also an insight into his working conditions, processes and methods applicable to this particular piece of literary translation.
Based on the hype, I would have expected a growing need for translation theory as a result of an equally expected trend towards an element of translation criticism/assessment in Danish book reviews. These expectations are dismissed in the thesis, by way of results from the small-scale questionnaire conducted among Danish reviewers for the purposes of gaining knowledge about the premises of translation-related book reviews.
