Translation Seminar Series

It is argued that the various activities involved with the making of ideas and images for the management of human life are crucial for the production of energy in any society, especially in periods of instability. This energy makes it often possible to allow societies not only sustain themselves over time, or survive, but also successfully compete on an inter-societal level, which basically can be considered to be "success".

The field of literary translation in contemporary Israel can serve as a test case for examining aspects of the dynamics of a semi-professional group striving to improve its status as a profession. The Israeli case seem to be especially illuminating since, as an ambitious peripheral culture, translation – and cultural importation in general – plays in it a more significant role than in more central cultures.

現代文學研究表明翻譯詩歌在主體文學多元系統有著舉足輕重地位，漢語學界就此卻甚少有過系統深入研究。本文試圖運用現代西方描寫翻譯學理論，嘗試在白話文學語境下通過個案分析，討論二十世紀初葉中國幾位重要詩人兼翻譯家的譯詩與譯論，以及其譯作表現出的散體化現象。鑒於翻譯就是一種重寫行為，在翻譯的過程譯者必然受制於意識形態和詩學觀，這樣必然不可能忠實地去翻譯原文，這點對於早期的英詩漢譯活動同樣適用。

這是一個基本上研究翻譯的工作坊，以戲劇的形式進行。除此以外，工作坊亦旨在一次過介紹戲劇、翻譯、教育，及箇中的關係。「文化翻譯」可以有兩種意思。第一種是宏觀的，即透過翻譯活動介紹一種文化，例如聖經佛經翻譯、菜牌的翻譯等。第二種是微觀的，即在翻譯的過程中碰到原文的意思跟譯文讀者有文化差異時，譯者所作的處理，例如在一句莎劇台詞中出現一個希臘典故時，譯者究竟可以怎樣處理。一般而言，第一種情況跟第二種情況都互相滲透。

Thomas Kuhn's famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962, with a second and enlarged edition in 1970 and followed by many reprints, has exerted a tremendous influence on literary and cultural studies far beyond its original purpose of understanding specific changes in the history of science.

Essential to this paper is Lefevere's Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (1992), which explains in detail the concepts of "rewriting" and "manipulation", and explores how translation is affected by four important factors, namely "ideology", "poetics", "patronage" and "professionals".

As part of a research project on translation, the paper investigates and studies both Chinese and Western metaphors of translation that have appeared since classical times. Based on the more than 260 Chinese and English language metaphors that have been collected by the investigator in the research, the paper takes a diachronic and descriptive view of issues, and offers some in-depth analyses and discussions of how metaphors can serve as an important window on the ways in which we see translation.

The witty Italian formulation traduttore-traditore (translator-traducer) is an appropriate point of departure for this seminar on cultural adaptation and translation for the stage. As recently as the beginning of the last century a great playwright like Chekhov could express profound scepticism about the ability of the literary translator to translate the cultural specificities of his plays into a language other than Russian.

This paper analyzes several terms used in ancient China to refer to the activity/activities now called 'fanyi' in Chinese, or 'translation' in English. By tracing the pattern behind the semantic and ideological jogging amongst these terms, the paper offers a new interpretation of the earliest Chinese attempts to define translation ('fanyi').

Faced with an increasingly polarized and violent world in which the opportunities for remaining 'neutral' are continually being eroded, translators - like most professional groups - are finding it difficult to position themselves, individually and as a group, in relation to various narratives that circulate around them and among them.