Article published In:
FORUMVol. 18:2 (2020) ► pp.231–250
The Prologue to Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil in translation into German and Polish
A cognitive-linguistic analysis
The novel Narcopolis and its translations into German and Polish start with a prologue which consists of one long
sentence. The aim of this paper is an analysis of this sentence with the use of a combination of three approaches: (1) the
translation theory proposed by Barańczak (1992), (2) the approach posited by
M. H. Freeman
(2006), and (3) the DIMEAN model by
Warnke and Spitzmüller (2008) with the
view to check their usefulness for translation criticism and as support in a text analysis preceding translation. In the first
step, the conceptual schemata of key importance for the text are sought. Subsequently, language features of key importance which
allow for the schemata to materialize are identified in the original and the translation equivalents of these are compared. The
results of the analysis indicate that the eclectic approach presented in the paper appears to be quite efficient and
user-friendly.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical basis
- 3.The method and material
- 4.The analysis
- 4.1The conceptual schema and the language
- 4.2Man vs. / as woman
- 4.3Man vs. / as pipe
- 4.4Repetition as something stable in the flow of speech
- 4.5Repetition: A special case of the conjunction “and”
- 4.6Double nature – duality at the language level: Xenolectality vs. sophistication
- 5.Discussion and conclusions
- Notes
-
References
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