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This article reviews Using Computers in the Translation of Literary Style: Challenges and Opportunities

This conversation, which took place in the summer of 2020, traces 25 years of publishing The Translator, from its inception and early days, to its establishment as a leading international publicati...

At first sight, it may seem odd for this Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Language to include a chapter on Shakespeare’s language and translation. After all, a translation renders a text into another language; inasmuch as a translation of Shakespeare is a real translation, it will no longer be in Shakespeare’s language.

Building on the growing interest among Translation Studies scholars in ‘intralingual translation’ and hoping to contribute to it by some data-driven descriptive work, this paper sets out to investigate the specific case of rewritings of Shakespeare in modern English. Examples will be taken from Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595), a play for which more than a dozen such versions have been found. These are born from a perceived need to bridge the comprehension gap between Shakespeare’s play and later audiences. The paper will look into the nature of this comprehension gap and the various (other) ways of dealing with it, before comparing the corpus of modernized versions of Romeo and Juliet. A great variety of translational approaches emerges from the study, and there is no less variety as to how these rewritings appear to be labelled or classified, suggesting that they belong in a generic no-man’s land. The idea of translating Shakespeare into modern English generally invites negative reactions; the main arguments used in these controversies and their underlying political and cultural assumptions are also briefly examined.

The article opens by outlining a multidimensional definition of wordplay, designed to do justice to the “dynamic” nature of this complex field of phenomena. Of these various dimensions, the “communicative significance” of wordplay is the main focus of the present analysis, which investigates the wordplay in two recent English-language novels: My Sister, My Love (2008) by Joyce Carol Oates and A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007) by Xiaolu Guo. The latter may be described as a “global novel”. It turns out to offer different wordplay readings to different readerships, depending on their cultural background and multilingual literacies. Like Guo’s novel, Oates’s My Sister, My Love abounds in wordplay, much of it of the malapropian variety, too, and with an equally elusive quality about it. However, Oates’s novel, which is more firmly rooted in a single culture, also shows a complex multi-voiced postmodern narrative style which endows its wordplay with an elusiveness of a very different kind. Its readerships are likely to be linguistically and culturally more homogeneous but these readers will not always quite know to which character or narrative voice in this novel with its various levels of discursive embedding the wordplays and malapropisms have to be attributed. The corpus analysed is far too small to permit generalisation but the “global” and the “postmodern” qualities of the respective novels invite extrapolations and comparison with wider corpora. The discussion demonstrates the absolute need for dynamic approaches to wordplay in the novel no less than in other genres or speech situations.

Borrowing from two iconic stories, Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, this article acknowledges that adaptation lies at the centre of the play today as much as it did in the mid-1590s. It argues that stage productions approach it in a manner similar to Shakespeare’s, who took a story familiar to his contemporaries and “repeat[ed] it but without replication” (Hutcheon and O’Flynn 2013, 173). Making the case for a broader study on the region, my chapter begins with a flashback to the story’s arrival in the eastern part of Europe and fast-forwards to its current state of affairs, offering a ‘note’ on Romania. In doing so, it argues that the popularity of Romeo and Juliet in the West has been matched by that in the rest of Europe, where it has proliferated in a plurality of, often, co-existing forms.

Keywords: Functions of multilingualism; English Renaissance drama; William Shakespeare; stage dialects; Englishness vs. foreignness; interdisciplinarity

This article adopts a meta-theoretical and meta-academic perspective. It takes a critical look at how academic research in translation studies (as in other fields) is increasingly dominated by market forces as the world of higher education is drawn more and more into the sphere of neoliberal action and ideology. The paper acknowledges the positive effects of competitive pressures on scholarship – including increased research output, greater innovation and more efficient communication – but it also considers their adverse effects. More specifically, it is argued that the relentless pressure to innovate is having a negative impact on the intellectual rigour of our research by leading to needless fragmentation and ultimately undermining quality-control mechanisms. The paper concludes by making a number of recommendations to counterbalance the forces of the market.

Nothing like wordplay can make difference between languages look so uncompromising, can give such a sharp edge to the dilemma between forms and effects, can so blur the line between translation and adaptation, or can cast such harsh light on our illusion of complete semantic stability. In the pun the whole language system may resonate, and so may literary traditions and ideological discourses. It follows that the pun does not only put translators to the test, it also poses a challenge to the views and concepts of those who study translation. This book brings together experts on translation and the pun, as well as researchers representing a variety of other relevant disciplines and schools of thought, ranging from theology to deconstruction and from contrastive linguistics to feminism. It can be read as a companion volume to Wordplay and Translation, a special issue of The Translator (Volume 2, Number 2, 1996), also edited by Dirk Delabastita

This theoretical case study starts from a brief critical discussion of Eurocentrism in translation studies, underscoring the importance of the efforts toward a more inclusive, truly global and culturally balanced approach to translation which are increasingly being made in our field, often under the banner of “the international turn.” However, the rejection of Eurocentrism leaves open a wide range of alternative models and approaches, and this paper aims to show that the search for alternatives is not without its own difficulties. For example, it might be tempting for non-European scholars to derive an alternative way of thinking about translation from translational practices and discourses in their own continent that appear to be at odds with what is perceived as the “European” model of translation. A post-colonial sensibility would seem to make this an extremely attractive proposition. This is the line of thinking which inspired Edwin Gentzler’s Translation and Identity in the Americas. New Directions in Translation Theory (2008). The paper enters into a critical dialogue with Gentzler’s book in order to argue the general thesis that the replacement of one (perceived) continent-based paradigm by another (perceived) continent-based paradigm is not the best way forward, suffering as it does from a range of methodological problems. The best way to overcome Eurocentrism is not to construct and promote an American continentalism (“translation in the American sense”) as an alternative to it, or any other nationally or continentally defined concept of translation, for that matter.

Shakespeare’s ‘King Henry V’ is a play which exploits multilingualism for both comic and non-comic purposes. These various functions are described before the paper moves on to explore the unique challenges that this polyglot play poses to the translator. Special attention is given to the rendering of the French- English bilingual comic scenes into French. Given that much of Shakespeare’s joking in ‘Henry V’ involves national stereotyping and serves a nationalistic agenda, the translators have understandably been swayed in their choices by political sensitivities, but a range of other factors play a role as well (knowledge of foreign languages, historical connotations attached to languages, conventions for language representation, translation norms, textual norms, etc.). The complexity of the field of forces and pressures surrounding the translator is such as to cast doubt on the notionof a ‘general’ theory of humour and (its) translation. We need further empirical study of texts and contexts, invo...

The present bibliography does not intend to cover the whole problem of humour in translation, nor that of ambiguity in automatic language processing and translation; both require at once a broader and a narrower perspective. The selection of entries generally favours more recent material and reflects the compilers’ unfortunate lack of competence in non-European languages. Priority is given to material that combines an attempt at conceptualization with an empirical orientation. Questions of translation and polysemy alike are crucial to philosophically inspired work along deconstructionist lines:for an introduction to thisfield, see Davis (Forthcoming). Coverage of unpublished theses is limited to doctoral dissertations. Articles in Laurian (1986), ‘Meta’ (1989), ‘New Comparison’ (1987), and Delabastita (Forthcoming) are not listed as separate entries.

But to return to Punning. Having pursued the History of a Punn, from its Original to its Downfal, I shall here define it to be a Conceit arising from the use of two Words that agree in the Sound, but differ in the Sense. The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.