{"title":"Tanga, Tunic, Cleaver: On Things in Translation","authors":"Tal Goldfajn","doi":"10.1632/s0030812923000524","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay explores things in translation, examining what translation does to things and what happens to things in their trajectory in translation. Although translation scholars have posed useful questions about how to translate realia, I take a different approach here. When objects circulate among different groups of people, they are transformed in defiance of their material stability. The linguistic analysis of translations may allow us to observe from a unique perspective not only what kind of force things have at different times in different societies but also how the materially stable objects can actually be different things in different translation scenes. Translations of material objects offer, then, a charged locus of study, generating special, valuable knowledge about cultural contact and transfer, as well as about cross-cultural and transethnic misunderstandings. The essay focuses on three case studies from English retranslations of the landmark nineteenth-century Brazilian novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas , by J. M. Machado de Assis, as well as retranslations of biblical Hebrew narratives. By contextualizing particular linguistic references to clothing and artifacts, I demonstrate that translation imbues these ostensibly stable material objects with new cultural significances and valuations: language effectively remakes them.","PeriodicalId":47559,"journal":{"name":"PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1632/s0030812923000524","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This essay explores things in translation, examining what translation does to things and what happens to things in their trajectory in translation. Although translation scholars have posed useful questions about how to translate realia, I take a different approach here. When objects circulate among different groups of people, they are transformed in defiance of their material stability. The linguistic analysis of translations may allow us to observe from a unique perspective not only what kind of force things have at different times in different societies but also how the materially stable objects can actually be different things in different translation scenes. Translations of material objects offer, then, a charged locus of study, generating special, valuable knowledge about cultural contact and transfer, as well as about cross-cultural and transethnic misunderstandings. The essay focuses on three case studies from English retranslations of the landmark nineteenth-century Brazilian novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas , by J. M. Machado de Assis, as well as retranslations of biblical Hebrew narratives. By contextualizing particular linguistic references to clothing and artifacts, I demonstrate that translation imbues these ostensibly stable material objects with new cultural significances and valuations: language effectively remakes them.
摘要本文探讨了翻译中的事物，考察了翻译对事物的作用以及在翻译的轨迹中事物发生了什么。虽然翻译学者对如何翻译现实提出了一些有用的问题，但我在这里采取了不同的方法。当物体在不同的人群中流通时，它们会被改变，而不顾其物质的稳定性。通过对翻译的语言分析，我们可以从一个独特的角度观察到，在不同的时代、不同的社会中，事物具有什么样的力量，在不同的翻译场景中，物质上稳定的物体实际上是如何变成不同的东西的。因此，对实物的翻译提供了一个充满激情的研究场所，产生了关于文化接触和转移以及关于跨文化和跨种族误解的特殊而有价值的知识。本文重点研究了三个案例，分别是对19世纪巴西小说《Brás古巴人的死后回忆录》(J. M. Machado de Assis)的英译，以及对圣经希伯来语叙事的重新翻译。通过语境化对服装和人工制品的特定语言引用，我证明了翻译给这些表面上稳定的物质对象注入了新的文化意义和价值:语言有效地重塑了它们。
期刊介绍：
PMLA is the journal of the Modern Language Association of America. Since 1884, PMLA has published members" essays judged to be of interest to scholars and teachers of language and literature. Four issues each year (January, March, May, and October) present essays on language and literature, and the November issue is the program for the association"s annual convention. (Up until 2009, there was also an issue in September, the Directory, containing a listing of the association"s members, a directory of departmental administrators, and other professional information. Beginning in 2010, that issue will be discontinued and its contents moved to the MLA Web site.)
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