Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 14:1 (2002) ► pp.1–41

Evaluating translations of surrealist poetry

Adding Note-Down Protocols to Close Reading

| University of York

Evaluating translations of poetry will always be difficult. The paper focuses on the problems posed by French surrealist poetry, where the reader was held to be as important as the writer in creating interpretations, and argues that evaluations involving these poems inevitably require reader-response data. The paper explores empirically, in the context of André Breton’s “L’Union libre”, whether a modification of Think-Aloud procedure, called Note-Down, applied both to the original text and to three English translations, can contribute useful information to a traditional close reading approach. The results suggest that comparative Note-Down protocols permit simple cost-benefit analyses and allow one to track phenomena, like the persistence of an effect through the text, which might be hard to obtain by other methods.

Keywords: translation evaluation, poetry translation, Breton, readerresponse, Think-Aloud, Note-Down, Surrealism, hypothesis testing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translating poems: General considerations
    • 2.1Why surrealist texts constitute a serious problem for translation
    • 2.2Evaluating a translation of a poem
    • 2.3Close reading and reader response
  • 3.Breton’s “L’Union libre”: Conclusions from close reading
    • 3.1The poem and its composition
    • 3.2The translations
    • 3.3A close reading of the poem and published critical analyses
      • 3.3.1Structure and support
        • Translation 1: Antin
        • Translation 2: Cauvin and Caws
        • Translation 3: Howard
      • 3.3.2The metaphoric images
        • Ln1Ma femme à la chevelure de feu de bois
        • Ln2Aux pensées d’éclairs de chaleur
        • Ln3A la taille de sablier
        • Ln4Ma femme à la taille de loutre entre les dents du tigre
        • Ln5Ma femmeà la bouche de cocarde et de bouquet d’étoiles de dernière grandeur
      • 3.3.3The global structure of the poem and its message(s)
      • 3.3.4The translations
        • Translation 1: Antin
        • Translation 2: Cauvin and Caws
        • Translation 3: Howard
  • 4.Eliciting readers’ responses
    • 4.1Creating a Note-Down design for “L’Union libre”
      • 4.1.1Design and method
      • 4.1.2Subjects
      • 4.1.3Validation
        • French group
        • English group
    • 4.2Results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 January 2003
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.14.1.02low
References

References

Adamowicz, Elza
1989 “Narcisse se noie: L’Union libre d’André Breton”. Romanic review 80:4. 571–581.Google Scholar
1998 Surrealist collage in text and image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Cambridge Studies in French, 56.]Google Scholar
Antin, David
tr 1982 “Free union”. Paul Auster, ed. The Random House book of twentieth century poetry. New York: Random House. Republished by Vintage, 1984. 183–185.Google Scholar
Aspley, Keith
1992 “Surrealism: The assault on meaning and the cult of the image”. Keith Aspley and Peter France, eds. Poetry in France: Metamorphoses of a muse. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1992 219–235.Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan
1998 “Translating across cultures”. Hunston 1998 :72–85.Google Scholar
Besa, Josep
1997 “Title, text, meaning”. Textual practice 11:2. 323–330.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bleich, David
1978 Subjective criticism. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bonnet, Marguerite
1975 André Breton: Naissance de l’aventure surréaliste. Paris: Corti.Google Scholar
et al. eds. 1988 1992 André Breton: Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Gallimard. [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.] Vol.I1 (1988), Vol. II1 (1992) Abbreviated as OCI and OCII, respectively.Google Scholar
Cauvin, Jean-Pierre and Mary Ann Caws
1982 Poems of André Breton: A bilingual anthology. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Eliot, T.S.
1940/1971 The wasteland and other poems. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. Anders and Herbert A. Simon
1984 Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
1987 “Verbal reports on thinking”. Claus Færch and Gabriele Kasper, eds. Introspection in second language research. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 1987 22–54.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley E.
1980 “Literature in the reader: Affective stylistics”. Jane P. Thompkins, ed. Reader-response criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1980 164–184.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Ray W. and Jody Bogdonovich
1999 “Mental imagery in interpreting poetic metaphor”. Metaphor and symbol 14:1. 37–44.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hatim, Basil
1999 “Implications of research into translator invisibility”. Target 11:2. 201–222.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane
1981 A model for translation quality assessment (2nd ed.). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
1998 “Politeness and translation”. Leo Hickey, ed. The pragmatics of translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 1998 54–71.Google Scholar
Howard, Richard
tr 1968 “Free union”. Nadeau 1964/1968 :284–285.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan
ed. 1998 Language at work. Clevedon: BAAL/Multilingual Matters. [British Studies in Applied Linguistics, 3.]Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang
1978 The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, John E.
1998 “Why isn’t translation impossible?” Hunston 1998 :86–97.Google Scholar
Kintgen, E.R.
1977 “Reader response and stylistics”. Style 111. 1–18.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George
1993 “The contemporary theory of metaphor”. Andrew Ortony, ed. Metaphor and thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993 202–251.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Low, Graham D.
1995 Answerability in attitude measurement questionnaires: An applied linguistic study of reactions to ‘Statement + Rating’ pairs. University of York. [DPhil thesis.]Google Scholar
1996 “Intensifiers and hedges in questionnaire items and the lexical invisibility hypothesis”. Applied linguistics 17:1. 1–37.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 “What respondents do with questionnaires: Accounting for incongruity and fluidity”. Applied linguistics 20:4. 503–533.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martineau-Genieys, Christine
1969 “Autour des images et de l’érotique surréalistes: L’Union libre ”. Annales de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Nice, 8 2 e tr. 171–186.Google Scholar
Matthews, J.H.
1967 André Breton. New York: Columbia University Press. [Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, 26.]Google Scholar
1977 The imagery of Surrealism. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Nadeau, Maurice
1964/1968 The history of Surrealism, tr. Richard Howard. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Newmark, Peter
1985 “The translation of metaphor”. Wolf Paprotté and René Dirven, eds. The ubiquity of metaphor: Metaphor in language and thought. Amsterdam: John Benjamins 1985 295–326.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polizzotti, Mark
1995 The revolution of the mind: The life of André Breton. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Prendergast, Christopher
ed. 1990 Nineteenth century French poetry: Introductions to close reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richards, Ivor A.
1926 The principles of literary criticism, 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
1929 Practical criticism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Russo, J. Edward, Eric J. Johnson and Debra L. Stephens
1989 “The validity of verbal protocols”. Memory and cognition 17:6. 759–769.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schäffner, Christina
forthcoming. “Metaphor and translation”. To appear in Journal of pragmatics.
Soon, Peng Su.
1994 Lexical ambiguity in poetry. London: Longman. [Studies in Language and Linguistics.]Google Scholar
Spector, Jack J.
1997 Surrealist art and writing 1919/39: The gold of time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stratman, James F. and Liz Hamp-Lyons
1994 “Reactivity in concurrent think aloud protocols: Issues for research”. Peter Smagorinsky, ed. Speaking about writing. Newbury Park, CA: Sage 1994 89–112.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1995 The translator’s invisibility. London: Routledge.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Low, Graham
2005. Explaining evolution: the use of animacy in an example of semi-formal science writing. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 14:2 ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Low, Peter
2003. Singable translations of songs. Perspectives 11:2 ► pp. 87 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.