Academic literature on the topic 'Translating from French'

This thesis analyzes Ying Chen's Les Lettres Chinoises through the lenses of literary translation, migrant writing and epistolary genres, as well as through critical theory of Chen's poetics in order to inform a translation of said novel from French into English. This theoretical groundwork is accompanied by analysis of the process of the translation, including specifications, methods used, and justifications for translation decisions. Les Lettres Chinoises is Ying Chen's second novel, written in French rather than her native Chinese language. Spanning a fifty-seven letter exchange between Shanghai and Montreal, Chen's choice to write in language other than her first, as well as the themes presented in the novel such as emigration, exile, identity, and Otherness, render Chen's novel ideal for critical discussion in the domain of migrant writing theory. Translating any exophonic text presents particular challenges for the translator and the analysis of these difficulties enrich both the translation as well as an understanding of the migrant writing genre. Inherent in these challenges is negotiating transparency (foreignization versus domestication) in the translation of cultural traces that speak of other traditions and realities. Chen's Les Lettres Chinoises is unique among migrant texts however, because she privileges voice through the use of the epistolary genre, a form that bespeaks a 19th century Western tradition. Her choice of this genre provides insight into the literary and cultural traditions that shaped her writing and encourage the reader as well as the translator to consider, or rather reconsider, the novel's intent. Les Lettres Chinoises contributes to the migrant and epistolary genres, redefining and enhancing each respectively. Chen's prerogatives as viewed through these lenses are varied: through her three letter-writing characters she reenacts literal and existential exile, creates a space of enunciation through letter writing, all while defining her own poetic style in another language. I negotiated these prerogatives in the translation by creating three subtly distinct and evolving voices for each of the characters. I used existing translations of Chen's works to create consistency in style and accuracy. Included as well are excerpts from my final translation.

This master's thesis comprises an English translation of Jacques Sternberg's "Si loin du monde ..." preceded by an introduction that addresses the translator's general theoretical approach to translation as well as an explanation and justification of specific choices made for this translation in particular. "Si loin du monde ..." is a short work of science fiction by Belgian author Jacques Sternberg that appeared in the collection Entre deux mondes incertains, published in 1957. It takes the form of a first-person narrative told from the perspective of an extra-terrestrial, who has been sent on a mission to study humanity and its environment and furtively make preparation for the arrival of his people on Earth. The section on theory sets out to find whether there exist absolute norms exterior to the subjectivity of the translator that regulate the act of translation. Three potential normative centers are proposed: text, author, and reader. The starting point when appraising text is the sourcier/cibliste dichotomy and the objection préjudicielle presented in Georges Mounin's Les belles infidèles. The objection préjudicielle is the claim that translation is theoretically impossible. The conclusion reached is that the text does not establish absolute norms of correspondence between the target text and the source text because there is no absolute meaning inherent in the text. When examining the author as a potential source of the norms of translation, Roland Barthe"s "La mort de l'auteur" is used to show that, since the meaning of a text is not ultimately determined by the author, neither can he be an absolute regulator of correspondence in translation. Finally, the reader is found to be a relative (not absolute) regulator of the norms of translation. This regulating role and the nature of its demands on the translator is explored through an application of the author/reader dialectic found in Sartre's Qu'est-ce que la littérature? It is concluded that there do not exist any absolute norms of translation exterior to the translator, and that the translator creates an aesthetic unity in the target text through adherence to norms that are ultimately founded in his own subjectivity.

Although a number of African literary works have been translated from French into English since the middle of this century, research and debate on their translation has remained scanty, fragmentary, and scattered in diverse learned journals and other short publications. This thesis seeks to broaden the scope of research by mapping out aspects of transference in translation in terms of analysis and transfer strategies that have been, or could be, used. A selection of major translated works have been compared with their originals, to give textual examples indicative of transfer strategies. Current issues in African literature as well as typical features of the literature in French and English have been explored in order to examine differences between them and English and French literatures. The implications of these differences (at the levels of content, cultural setting, peculiar use of English and French, and the target audience) for translation are considered, and a brief historical survey of the translation of African literature provides insights into how translators have approached, and continue to approach, literary texts as well as cope with their target readership. Furthermore, dominant trends in literary translation studies (mainly in the West) are explored to determine if, and in what ways, they relate to translation studies in Africa. The analysis of transfer strategies focuses on the distinctive features of francophone African literary texts, drawing on relevant Western literary translation theories and models, on African literary theory and criticism, as well as on other disciplines likely contribute to an informed understanding of the texts. Finally, a case study applies the analysis to a text which is translated, and transfer strategies discussed.

Literary translation is a growing industry with thousands of texts being published every year. Yet, the work of literary translators still lacks visibility and the process behind the emergence of literary translations remains largely unexplored. In Translation Studies, literary translation was mostly examined from a product perspective and most process studies involved short nonliterary texts. In view of this, the present study aims to contribute to Translation Studies by investigating indepth how a literary translation comes into being, and how an experienced translator, Toni Aquilina, approached the task. It is particularly concerned with the decisions the translator makes during the process, the factors influencing these and their impact on the final translation. This project places the translator under the spotlight, centring upon his work and the process leading to it while at the same time exploring a scantily researched language pair: French to Maltese. It aims to provide further insights into the different phases of the process, and written alternative translation solutions and self-revisions. A translation process research framework is adopted, and particular attention is given to the post-drafting phases of the process as the translator was closely studied while he self-revised an entire literary text. The research applies a multi-method approach by collecting data through think-aloud, ethnographic observations, interviews, draft versions, the ST and the final translation. The data elicited were triangulated and analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. A rich description of the evolution of a literary translation from first draft to publication is provided. The results show that the translation went through eight phases and nine drafts before it was published, indicating that the translation process may not necessarily be composed of three phases. Amongst other notable findings, results also challenge the deliteralisation hypothesis. The thesis concludes by underscoring the significance of thorough investigations into individual translator behaviour.

The Central African Republic is a small country located in the center of Africa. It is a very young nation in terms of political independence, but as the CAR emerges as a nation, it has begun to produce valuable authors who write for the French speaking world. This thesis is an attempt to bring part of the CAR's literature to the United States.Le Silence de la Foret was written by Etienne Goyemide and not only describes the culture of the mainstream population of the CAR, but also that of Pygmies. Although the book is a novel, the cultural aspects are not fictitious. This thesis is a translation of Goyemide's novel into English so that it can be made accessible to the English speaking world.The process of translating such a literary work required and increased knowledge and understanding of both French and English. In attempting to capture the style and tone of the author, careful attention was given to such aspects as tense, syntactic structures, register and vocabulary. A chapter of the thesis is devoted to describing the problems encountered during translation and the reasoning for the translations chosen.<br>Department of English

From Poesie to Poetry: Remaniement and Mediaeval Techniques of French-to-English Translation of Verse Romance, explores the use of remaniement, the art of rewriting, as the method preferred for vernacular translations of genres such as romance. A thorough history of the practice's principles are given, drawing on comments from Classical rhetoricians, patristic writers, authorities of the artes poeticae, and mediaeval translators employing the procedure. A textual analysis of the Middle English Amis and Amiloun follows, utilising a broadly structuralist approach which compares each individual episode and 'lexie' with its Old French and AngloNorman predecessors. This examination demonstrates remaniement to be the method used to translate the romance, highlighting both the important debt owed to the francophone traditions as well as the use of dynamic interpretation to lend the work salience to an English audience. A subsequent linguistic examination includes a new definition of formulae based on prototype theory which utilises mental templates to identifY occurrences. This permits the recognition of over 3000 instances of formulaic diction, many of which can be traced back to native preConquest traditions, as can certain aspects of verse and structure. What emerges, therefore, is a composite work heavily indebted to continental and insular French sources for content and some aspects of style, but largely readapted to lend it appeal to an early fourteenth-century Anglophone audience. The thesis therefore clarifies the establishment and use of remaniement, provides a detailed examp Ie of its use, and in doing so reveals the true extent of the oft overlooked debt owed to francophone traditions in creating English romances. By way of setting these dimensions into a wider context, the conclusion suggests such translations had a general effect on the development of a new insular style, setting standards for the independent creation of works in English as that language continued to re-establish itself as an accepted medium for literary expression.

Dans l'ère de l'information et de la connaissance, la traduction automatique (TA) devientprogressivement un outil indispensable pour transposer la signification d'un texte d'une langue source versune langue cible. La TA des noms propres (NP), en particulier, joue un rôle crucial dans ce processus,puisqu'elle permet une identification précise des personnes, des lieux, des organisations et des artefacts àtravers les langues. Malgré un grand nombre d'études et des résultats significatifs concernant lareconnaissance d'entités nommées (dont le nom propre fait partie) dans la communauté de TAL dans lemonde, il n'existe presque aucune recherche sur la traduction automatique des noms propres (TANP) pourle vietnamien. En raison des caractéristiques différentes d'écriture de NP, la translittération ou la transcription etla traduction de plusieurs de langues incluant l'anglais, le français, le russe, le chinois, etc. vers levietnamien, le TANP de ces langues vers le vietnamien est stimulant et problématique. Cette étude seconcentre sur les problèmes de TANP d’anglais vers le vietnamien et de français vers le vietnamienrésultant du moteurs courants de la TA et présente les solutions de prétraitement de ces problèmes pouraméliorer la qualité de la TA. A travers l'analyse et la classification d'erreurs de la TANP faites sur deux corpus parallèles detextes avec PN (anglais-vietnamien et français-vietnamien), nous proposons les solutions concernant deuxproblématiques importantes: (1) l'annotation de corpus, afin de préparer des bases de données pour leprétraitement et (2) la création d'un programme pour prétraiter automatiquement les corpus annotés, afinde réduire les erreurs de la TANP et d'améliorer la qualité de traduction des systèmes de TA, tels queGoogle, Vietgle, Bing et EVTran. L'efficacité de différentes méthodes d'annotation des corpus avec des NP ainsi que les tauxd'erreurs de la TANP avant et après l'application du programme de prétraitement sur les deux corpusannotés est comparés et discutés dans cette thèse. Ils prouvent que le prétraitement réduitsignificativement le taux d'erreurs de la TANP et, par la même, contribue à l'amélioration de traductionautomatique vers la langue vietnamienne<br>Machine translation (MT) has increasingly become an indispensable tool for decoding themeaning of a text from a source language into a target language in our current information and knowledgeera. In particular, MT of proper names (PN) plays a crucial role in providing the specific and preciseidentification of persons, places, organizations, and artefacts through the languages. Despite a largenumber of studies and significant achievements of named entity recognition in the NLP communityaround the world, there has been almost no research on PNMT for Vietnamese language. Due to the different features of PN writing, transliteration or transcription and translation from a variety of languages including English, French, Russian, Chinese, etc. into Vietnamese, the PNMT from those languages into Vietnamese is still challenging and problematic issue. This study focuses on theproblems of English-Vietnamese and French-Vietnamese PNMT arising from current MT engines. First,it proposes a corpus-based PN classification, then a detailed PNMT error analysis to conclude with somepre-processing solutions in order to improve the MT quality. Through the analysis and classification of PNMT errors from the two English-Vietnamese and French-Vietnamese parallel corpora of texts with PNs, we propose solutions concerning two major issues:(1)corpus annotation for preparing the pre-processing databases, and (2)design of the pre-processingprogram to be used on annotated corpora to reduce the PNMT errors and enhance the quality of MTsystems, including Google, Vietgle, Bing and EVTran. The efficacy of different annotation methods of English and French corpora of PNs and the results of PNMT errors before and after using the pre-processing program on the two annotated corporaare compared and discussed in this study. They prove that the pre-processing solution reducessignificantly PNMT errors and contributes to the improvement of the MT systems’ for Vietnameselanguage

Dans l'ère de l'information et de la connaissance, la traduction automatique (TA) devientprogressivement un outil indispensable pour transposer la signification d'un texte d'une langue source versune langue cible. La TA des noms propres (NP), en particulier, joue un rôle crucial dans ce processus,puisqu'elle permet une identification précise des personnes, des lieux, des organisations et des artefacts àtravers les langues. Malgré un grand nombre d'études et des résultats significatifs concernant lareconnaissance d'entités nommées (dont le nom propre fait partie) dans la communauté de TAL dans lemonde, il n'existe presque aucune recherche sur la traduction automatique des noms propres (TANP) pourle vietnamien. En raison des caractéristiques différentes d'écriture de NP, la translittération ou la transcription etla traduction de plusieurs de langues incluant l'anglais, le français, le russe, le chinois, etc. vers levietnamien, le TANP de ces langues vers le vietnamien est stimulant et problématique. Cette étude seconcentre sur les problèmes de TANP d’anglais vers le vietnamien et de français vers le vietnamienrésultant du moteurs courants de la TA et présente les solutions de prétraitement de ces problèmes pouraméliorer la qualité de la TA. A travers l'analyse et la classification d'erreurs de la TANP faites sur deux corpus parallèles detextes avec PN (anglais-vietnamien et français-vietnamien), nous proposons les solutions concernant deuxproblématiques importantes: (1) l'annotation de corpus, afin de préparer des bases de données pour leprétraitement et (2) la création d'un programme pour prétraiter automatiquement les corpus annotés, afinde réduire les erreurs de la TANP et d'améliorer la qualité de traduction des systèmes de TA, tels queGoogle, Vietgle, Bing et EVTran. L'efficacité de différentes méthodes d'annotation des corpus avec des NP ainsi que les tauxd'erreurs de la TANP avant et après l'application du programme de prétraitement sur les deux corpusannotés est comparés et discutés dans cette thèse. Ils prouvent que le prétraitement réduitsignificativement le taux d'erreurs de la TANP et, par la même, contribue à l'amélioration de traductionautomatique vers la langue vietnamienne<br>Machine translation (MT) has increasingly become an indispensable tool for decoding themeaning of a text from a source language into a target language in our current information and knowledgeera. In particular, MT of proper names (PN) plays a crucial role in providing the specific and preciseidentification of persons, places, organizations, and artefacts through the languages. Despite a largenumber of studies and significant achievements of named entity recognition in the NLP communityaround the world, there has been almost no research on PNMT for Vietnamese language. Due to the different features of PN writing, transliteration or transcription and translation from a variety of languages including English, French, Russian, Chinese, etc. into Vietnamese, the PNMT from those languages into Vietnamese is still challenging and problematic issue. This study focuses on theproblems of English-Vietnamese and French-Vietnamese PNMT arising from current MT engines. First,it proposes a corpus-based PN classification, then a detailed PNMT error analysis to conclude with somepre-processing solutions in order to improve the MT quality. Through the analysis and classification of PNMT errors from the two English-Vietnamese and French-Vietnamese parallel corpora of texts with PNs, we propose solutions concerning two major issues:(1)corpus annotation for preparing the pre-processing databases, and (2)design of the pre-processingprogram to be used on annotated corpora to reduce the PNMT errors and enhance the quality of MTsystems, including Google, Vietgle, Bing and EVTran. The efficacy of different annotation methods of English and French corpora of PNs and the results of PNMT errors before and after using the pre-processing program on the two annotated corporaare compared and discussed in this study. They prove that the pre-processing solution reducessignificantly PNMT errors and contributes to the improvement of the MT systems’ for Vietnameselanguage

This dissertation focuses on the intercultural relations between the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking world in Holland in the first half of the fifteenth century. After a turbulent war of succession between the claimants Jacqueline of Bavaria and her uncle John the Pitiless, the counties of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault were incorporated into the largely francophone Burgundian empire. It has been suggested that this event marked the end of a flourishing period of cultural production in the Dutch vernacular at the court of Holland. However, as it seems, throughout the fifteenth century translations of French texts were produced for regional and local administrators. Possibly, the Burgundian regional government of Holland, which consisted of foreign as well as indigenous noblemen, may have played an important role in the dissemination of these texts. In this thesis, the subject is addressed by means of the contextualisation of the Middle Dutch version of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques. An analysis of documentary sources suggests that the comital residence at the Hague is best characterised as a multicultural environment inhabited by both bilingual and monolingual individuals. The results of an analysis of the variant readings in the French manuscripts of the Chroniques as compared to its Dutch counterpart show that the French manuscript which served as a model for the translation was probably produced between 1410 and 1418 by the Parisian libraire Pierre de Liffol. A comparison of the translated and original text shows that the translator wants to provide his readership with a text that is optimally intelligible and relevant to their context. Gerijt Potter’s modifications show that his intended audience was familiar with the habits of European courts and had a considerable geographical horizon. Because of the presence of doublets, repetitions and French loans, Potter’s style of writing resembles the official style of the comital chancery. However, a similar style is also found in other late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century translations. In The Hague the translation was probably dispersed (be it on a small scale) among members of the council and their contacts among the high nobility of Holland. Through the intensive contact between the regional councillors and members of local administration, the translation of the Chroniques became available to an audience in the cities.