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Translingual Worlds: Diaspora, Translation and the Greeks
Writers such as Vladimir Nabokov or Yoko Tawada who are born in one language and publish in another, show us that Diaspora literature gets much of its creative energy from importing foreign languages and displaying the effort of translation as the stuff of literature. Diaspora literature impresses upon national literatures the importance of translingualism, infusing them with a linguistic materiality that gives them the ability to conjure using all five senses. The experience of moving from one place to another place triggers a multisensory and synesthetic response. Migrants are aware of everything because everything is information for survival. Diaspora literature exhibits this urgency offering translators ways of working between languages in their translations. The rich tradition of literature about and by the Greeks of the Diaspora over the past two centuries shows how the impasse of untranslatability expressed in the popular expression “It’s all Greek to me!” can also be an invitation to rethink the cultural translation of migration through the nitty-gritty practices of linguistic translation.
Gender representation in translating Jeanette Winterson’s 'The Daylight Gate'
The aim of the research is to investigate how translation shapes the identity of a historical figure (the 17th c. witch) for a Greek audience. Jeanette Winterson’s novella, The Daylight Gate, deals with the 17th century Lancaster witch trials and the misogyny inherent in patriarchal society. Hutcheon’s (2010) theory on historiographic metafiction explains how Winterson draws both on history and fiction, thus creating a self-reflexive novella. The study uses pragmatic theories (Grice 1975, Sperber and Wilson 2006, Culpeper 1996) in order to flesh out misogynistic connotations that underlie what is clearly stated. The author of the presentation produced a Greek translation of the novella to try her hand in handling misogynistic inferences and the offensive language of the source text. A questionnaire confirmed the hypothesis that a Greek audience would appreciate foregrounding inferences and enhancing impoliteness in rendering the novella into Greek. Findings are attributed to changing attitudes of Greek society regarding women, through raised social awareness on female positions. These attitudes are possibly harbored by the rise of feminism and the upsurge of femicides in the country, particularly after the emergence of COVID-19. The study highlights the importance of metanarratives in redeeming historical figures, as well as the significance of pragmatic inferencing and discourse analysis in translation practice. Incorporating literary texts in translation curricula can be beneficial for the study of gender identity construction through discourse. Keywords: 17th c. witch hunts, misogyny, pragmatic inferen¬cing, gender, feminism, literature.
Female representations in translating Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
The novel, like many other Dostoyevsky’s works presents a subtle multi-layer depiction of characters. The author, who believed that moral principles may be more developed in women than in men, placed great emphasis on the female characters in the novel. The aim of the study is a comparative analysis of the discoursal portraits of Sonia Marmelandova, Katerina Ivanovna and Alyona Ivanovna in the Russian ST with their representations in four Greek and three English versions of Crime and Punishment. The research examines identity formation, in the context of Brewer’s and Gardner’s (1996) theory of identity and confirms the hypothesis that identity levels undergo transformati¬on in the TTs, which leads to a partial shift in the representation of the female figures. Analysis of naturalistic and elicited data, namely of the discoursal portraits of the heroines confirm linguistic relativity in the way the author's ideas and unique style are transferred. The significance of the study is that the comparison of the representation of female figures highlights the peculiarities of identity formation in the Russian culture and its transfer to the English and Greek contexts. Keywords: Dostoevsky, female figures, Crime and punishment, theory of identity.
Transferring multimodal humor in TV remakes: English, Greek, Russian
Humor is a central component of human communication, and audiovisual translation has occasionally transcreated humorous implications in target film versions or TV series, in other language contexts. The study examines the workings of transferring humor in TV remakes, where the visual make-up and the whole multimodal experience also changes across cultures, and potentially contributes to humor creation. The study examines humor transcreation in 4 first-season episodes of the American television series The Nanny (1993-1999) and its adaptati-ons into the Greek and Russian remakes (Η Νταντά 2003-2005 and Моя прекрасная няня 2004-2006) to observe how intercultural transfer can achieve an analogous humorous effect in target environ¬ments. The study uses both naturalistic and experimental data to examine rendition of pragmatic phenomena producing humorous effects on two levels: at the fictional (horizontal) level and at the vertical level, in the communication between text producer and audience. As verbal humor depends on incongruities, the study examines multimodal strategies scriptwriters and directors use in order to transfer/recreate humor in other cultural environments. Results show that, although all three versions are humorous and attract viewer’s attention, the Greek version artfully combines verbal, visual and acoustic aspects of meaning-making to create a genuinely humorous effect. The research offers insight into understanding how adaptation of the whole multimodal experience operates in different target cultural environments and enriches cross-cultural understanding of variation in interpersonal contexts and relational dynamics. Keywords: humor, im/politeness, TV series, localization, in/directness, cultural references, intertextuality.
Shaping identities in Greek versions of Winnie-the-Pooh
Translated children’s literature has attracted a growing interest among scholars (Oittinen 2000, O’Sullivan 2005, Lathey 2010), however, little research has been conducted on the pragmatics in children’s translated discourse. The study explores the translation of the English children’s fiction Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne (1926), into Greek. It examines socio-cultural norms and con-ventions revealing age-related perception of children’s identity, preferred ways of fictional character representation and of intended target readers. The author of the presentation translated the first book of Winnie-the-Pooh into Greek and contrasted it to Pampoudi’s translation (1996). The study reveals varying treatment of pragmatic phenomena contributing to Pooh’s identity construction and different ways of approaching intended target readers. A questionnaire testing the validity of the analyst’s etic view, shows that, TTa (1996, by Pampoudi) rather addresses a younger audience, whereas TTb (2021, by the author of this presentation) has had a fairly older child audience in mind. Moreover, TTb depicts Pooh’s identity as more confident and dynamic bearing consequences for the intended message. The study emphasizes the significance of exploring identity formation through discourse and the significance of the pragma¬tic parameter of addressee age in shaping discourses. Keywords: translation of children’s literature, “Winnie-the-Pooh”, English, Greek, translation strategies, pragmatic shifts, “dual addressee”.
Eastern popular media in the West: Scanlating manga into Greek
“Manga”, the so-called Japanese comics, have progressively become an immensely popular entertainment source all over the world. The study presents their unique characteristics, their reception and popular appeal, a historical overview of the genre and its categories, and examples of manga storylines. Then, the study examines the role of the manga translator as a cultural mediator, the practical matters that arise during this procedure and the most popular fan-translation process in manga: “scanlation”. There seems to be a considerable gap concer-ning the appearance of Greek translated manga, either from official publishing houses or fans. The study transfers five English scanlated manga into Greek and categorizes the most prevalent translation challenges in broad thematic groups, suggesting translation decisions to overcome them. A questionnaire given out to Greek readers checked appreciation/dismissal of these methods, as well as the reasoning behind the choices. Finally, findings were discussed and compared to those of other academics involved in manga translation. An overarching goal of the study was to show whether the creation of decent Greek manga translations was enough to stir up the interest and excitement of a wide variety of readers and at the same time, provide incentive and motivation for them to further explore and discover this expansive, fascinating entertainment source. Keywords: manga, comics, translation, scanlation, Japanese, English, Greek.
Localizing healthcare websites
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need for reliable medical information accessible to everyone. In website translation, this is achieved through localizing medical content by mainly focusing on website end users, people who would otherwise have no access to the information provided in the websites, had it not been for localization. The purpose of the study is to enrich knowledge on the very practical and rather under-researched issue of localization of medical content in Greece. The study argues that several medical-content websites have been adapted to meet the needs of Greek end users. However, even when transcreated, the Greek version of these websites does not fulfill the higher standards of localization, as their more specialized medical content is not at all localized. The study discusses the reasons why this is the case and explores implications on Greek end users and public health. The data set draws on webpages of global pharmaceutical companies addressing Greek-speaking audie¬nces. We analyze front-end level characteristics based on the criteria of Singh and Pereira (2005) and Singh et al. (2012) for assessing the level of localization. Descriptive/interpretative analysis shows that all the websites in the data set have adopted a localization strategy to different degrees as expected, thus confirming the main hypothesis. Answers to the research questions pertaining to the reasons and the implications of this phenomenon, can only be hypothetical as results are insufficient for reaching a definite conclusion. Keywords: localization, health websites, medical content, Greek end users.
Translating pain in theatre plays
For centuries, theatrical plays have been an integral cultural component of Western civili¬za¬tion. By definition, tragedy is about human suffering. Characters show a range of powerful emotions, experiencing physical and/or emotional pain. A question arising is what happens to manifestations of pain, when drama is translated with a view to be performed on stage. The hypothesis is that translators adapting the story to the needs of a theatrical audience domesticate the manifestations of pain. Although emotion and suffering has been researched in linguistics, it has not been integrated into translation studies; it remains a topic that can provide useful insights to a cross-cultural analysis of pain and its varied manifestations. The study takes a qualitative approach using tragedy transla¬tion. Findings show that domestication is the translation strategy rendering expressions of pain. The significance of this work lies in its attempt to shed light on transferring emotions for the theater and the therapeutic aspects of it. It also hopes to contribute to initiating a critical and interesting academic discussion in this area of research. Keywords: theater, translation, pain, emotion, domestication.
Jane Eyre: Translating diachrony into Greek
The aim of this research is to study how domestication and foreignization have been used in various retranslations of Charlotte Brontë’s most representative 19th century work. The study considers how the two translation strategies have been used to represent norms and conven-tions of a target environment. The study examines three Greek target versions of Jane Eyre to test whether Berman’s Retranslation Hypothesis applies, in this data set. The earliest version, TTa (Moschopoulou 1991), seems to make use of a domestication strategy, TTb (Kikizas 1997) combines both strategies with foreignization prevailing, whereas the most recent version, TTc (Deligianni 2019) rather favours foreignization, confirming the retranslation hypothesis. Dome-sti¬ca¬¬tion enhances readability and fluency while foreignization make readers aware of another culture (Venuti 1995). As the use of different translation strategies seems to reflect the period each translation was created in, shifting strategies could suggest a change in how the strategies in literary texts are valued diachronically. Α questionnaire addressing 24 respon¬dents confirmed findings. The study shows that translators oscillate between intention and style of the author and prevailing target cultural and socio–historical characteristics of each time period. Keywords: Translation strategies, cultural elements, retranslation hypothesis.