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Article published In: Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:2 (2022) ► pp.626–649

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Two translation approaches to sound orchestration in Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Hermitage”

ORCiD logo with link | University of Gdańsk
Published online: 21 September 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.20029.god
Abstract
This paper explores two different translation strategies to the issue of sound (operetta) stylisation in the poem “Hermitage” [Pustelnia] by Wisława Szymborska, W. (1981). Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems by Wisława Szymborska. (M. J. Kryński & R. A. Maguire, Trans.). Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The methodology borrows from Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (2012). Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (Even-Zohar, I. (1978). Papers in Historical Poetics. Porter Institute.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (1990). Polysystem studies. Poetics Today, 11(1), 45–51. [URL]). A comparative study of two different translations of the poem conducted by two teams of prominent translators is carried out. This method of exploration intends to reveal the underlying translation mode, the first one towards the text’s accuracy and the second one towards the text’s adequacy.
It is argued that the translators’ domesticating procedures, preeminent in the second translation, succeed in recreating the invariant source sound stylisation and the poem’s discursiveness, though at the expense of the semantics of the original. Relying on polysystem theory, the author concludes with the correspondence between the target texts’ divergent positions in the polysystem and their translation modes, each adopted in a different historical and cultural context.
Resumen
Dos enfoques de traducción de la estilización sonora en el poema “La ermita” de Wisława Szymborska
El artículo analiza dos diferentes estrategias de traducción de la cuestión de estilización sonora del poema “La ermita” [Pustelnia] de Wisława Szymborska, la ganadora polaca del Premio Nobel. La metodología del estudio se basa en el Estudio Descriptivo de la Traducción de Gideon Toury (Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (2012). Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), la teoría de polisistemas de Itamar Even Zohar (Even-Zohar, I. (1978). Papers in Historical Poetics. Porter Institute.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (1990). Polysystem studies. Poetics Today, 11(1), 45–51. [URL]), la definición de estilización sonora formulada por Kubaszczyk, J. (2016). Faktura oryginału i przekładu. O przekładzie tekstów literackich. PWN.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, así como en el simbolismo sonoro según Margaret Magnus (Magnus, M. (1998a). What the Letters Mean? English Consonants. Retrieved from [URL], (2010). Gods in the word. Archetypes in the consonants. Create space Independent Publishing Platform.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). La autora realiza un análisis comparativo de dos traducciones diferentes, hechas por dos equipos de prominentes traductores. El objetivo de la metodología es demostrar la estrategia de traducción aplicada, en el primer caso con enfoque hacia la literalidad y en el segundo hacia la equivalencia textual. La tesis asume que los procedimientos de domesticación de la traducción que dominan en la segunda traducción transmiten con eficacia la invariante estilización sonora del texto fuente y la discursividad, aunque esto ocurre a costa de la semántica original. Basándose en la teoría de polisistemas, la autora concluye que existe correspondencia entre las distintas posiciones que ocupan los textos meta analizados en el polisistema y las estrategias de traducción adoptadas en los diferentes contextos históricos y culturales.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Primary aspects of Szymborska’s poetry
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Descriptive translation studies and polysystem theory
    • 2.2Sound instrumentation
    • 2.3Communicative-cognitive approach to translation
  • 3.Phonosemantic analysis of two translations
    • 3.1Analysis of the translations of the first stanza
    • 3.2Analysis of the translations of the second stanza
    • 3.3Analysis of the translations of the third and fourth stanzas
    • 3.4Analysis of the translations of the fifth stanza
    • 3.5Analysis of the translations of the sixth and seventh stanzas
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
References (41)
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