Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Introduction
- CRITICISM
- Parodic Translation: Katherine Mansfield and the ‘Boris Petrovsky’ Pseudonym
- ‘Ginger Whiskers’ and ‘Glad-Eyes’: Translations of Katherine Mansfield's Stories into Slovak and Czech
- ‘Into Unknown Country’: Cinematicity and Intermedial Translation in Mansfield's Fictional Journeys
- Unshed Tears: Meaning, Trauma and Translation
- ‘Making a Stay in X’: Suppressing Translation in ‘An Indiscreet Journey’
- ‘Nous ne suivons pas la même route’: Flaubertian Objectivity and Mansfield's Representations of Travel
- Foreign Languages and Mother Tongues: From Exoticism to Cannibalism in Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories
- ‘Among Wolves’ or ‘When in Rome’?: Translating Katherine Mansfield
- CREATIVE WRITING
- Short Stories
- CRITICAL MISCELLANY
- REVIEWS
- Notes on Contributors
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
‘Among Wolves’ or ‘When in Rome’?: Translating Katherine Mansfield
from CRITICISM
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Frontispiece
- Introduction
- CRITICISM
- Parodic Translation: Katherine Mansfield and the ‘Boris Petrovsky’ Pseudonym
- ‘Ginger Whiskers’ and ‘Glad-Eyes’: Translations of Katherine Mansfield's Stories into Slovak and Czech
- ‘Into Unknown Country’: Cinematicity and Intermedial Translation in Mansfield's Fictional Journeys
- Unshed Tears: Meaning, Trauma and Translation
- ‘Making a Stay in X’: Suppressing Translation in ‘An Indiscreet Journey’
- ‘Nous ne suivons pas la même route’: Flaubertian Objectivity and Mansfield's Representations of Travel
- Foreign Languages and Mother Tongues: From Exoticism to Cannibalism in Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories
- ‘Among Wolves’ or ‘When in Rome’?: Translating Katherine Mansfield
- CREATIVE WRITING
- Short Stories
- CRITICAL MISCELLANY
- REVIEWS
- Notes on Contributors
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Introduction
Following Katherine Mansfield's death in 1923, critical reviews of her work started to appear in France, fuelling an interest which concentrated primarily on her life and personal writing, and only secondarily on her fiction. This thirst for biographical detail gave impetus to the translations of the Letters and Journal in 1931 and 1932 (which had first appeared in English in 1928 and 1927, respectively). Within the space of a few years, translations of various volumes of her stories were also published. In this essay, I shall highlight how the translations of her fiction have, for the most part, diluted her narrative technique. Furthermore, I shall examine the fundamental problems of translating writing such as Mansfield's and determine, via the use of in-depth analysis of the translated texts, whether Mansfield's narrative and personal ideologies, together with literary nuances, survive translation from English to French.
Theories abound as to the ‘correct’ way to translate, what rules should be followed, what ideologies adhered to:
Mit Wölfen muss man heulen seems to be a straightforward statement and a translator may write ‘Among wolves one must howl’. The critic then says, ‘That is nonsense, isn't it? You should have written “When in Rome, do as Rome does.”’ The translator replies, ‘But that is not what the author wrote.’ ‘No,’ says the critic, ‘but it is what he meant.’ And so the translator faces the question as to whether his function is to record the words of his original author or to give their meaning’.
The translation of language is an exercise in comparison, the translation of texts, an exercise in interpretation.
For Susan Petrilli, ‘To translate is neither to “decodify” nor to “recodify”. Such operations are doubtlessly part of the translative process, but they do not exhaust it. In the first place to translate is to interpret.’ Jeremy Munday considers that translation studies encompass the ‘central recurring theme of “word-for-word” and “sense-for-sense” translation’. For Munday, the work of a translator may be summed up as follows: ‘Translating is an intellectual process that consists in re-articulating a thought expressed in a context. Just as knowing how to write is not enough to make one a writer, knowing two languages is not enough to make one a translator.’
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- Information
- Katherine Mansfield and Translation , pp. 119 - 138Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015