Typology, techniques and factors in a corpus of English-Catalan source text and target text segments
Josep Marco | Universitat Jaume I (Castelló, Spain)
The present study aims to analyse wordplay translation on the basis of the three aspects mentioned in the title—wordplay typology, translation techniques and relevant factors. The theoretical framework is eclectic but draws particularly on Delabastita (1996, 1997) and Lladó (2002). Empirical analysis is based on three English source texts and six Catalan translations, and focuses on two main issues: the frequency distribution of pairs of ST + TT segments across translation techniques, and the possible correlation(s) between translation techniques and factors influencing decision-making. It is observed that translators tend to use techniques implying a negative punning balance, i.e. resulting in some degree of loss of punning activity. Moreover, some factors identified in the literature are seen to correlate with the use of particular translation techniques. Finally, in the last section an attempt is made to go beyond description and explanation and to assess wordplay translation techniques in terms of their suitability as translation solutions.
A. Primary literature (works making up the corpus)
Swift, Graham
1996Last Orders. London: Picador.
Swift, Graham
1999Les últimes voluntats (translated by Carme Geronès and Carles Urritz). Barcelona: Destino.
Wilde, Oscar
1966 (first published 1891). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. London and Glasgow: Collins. 17–167.
Wilde, Oscar
2000 (translation first published 1930). El retrat de Dorian Gray (translated by Rafael Tasis Marca). Barcelona: Ediciones B/Proa.
Wilde, Oscar
1992El retrat de Dorian Gray (translated and adapted by Carolina Quílez Knowles). Valencia: Tres i Quatre.
Wilde, Oscar
1998El retrat de Dorian Gray (translated by Jordi Larios). Barcelona: Quaderns Crema.
Wilde, Oscar
1966 (first published 1895). “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. London and Glasgow: Collins. 321–384.
Wilde, Oscar
1994La importància d’ésser seriós (translated by Antoni V. Pérez i Sancho). Valencia: Rotgle Edicions.
Wilde, Oscar
1998La importància de ser Frank ((translated by Jaume Melendres). Barcelona: Institut del Teatre.
B. Secondary literature
Alexieva, Bistra
1997 “There Must Be Some System in This Madness. Metaphor, Polysemy and Wordplay in a Cognitive Linguistics Framework”. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur 1997 137–154.
Delabastita, Dirk
1987 “Translating Puns. Possibilities and Restraints”. New Comparison 31. 142–159.
1997 “Introduction”. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur 1997 1–22.
Delabastita, Dirk
ed.1996Wordplay and Translation. Special issue of The Translator 2:2. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix.
Delabastita, Dirk
ed.1997Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur.
Díaz Pérez, Javier Francisco
2008 “Wordplay in film titles. Translating English puns into Spanish”. Babel 54:1. 36–58.
Greimas, A.J.
1966Sémantique structurale. Paris: Le Seuil.
Guiraud, Pierre
1953Index du vocabulaire du symbolisme. Paris: Klincksieck.
Hurtado Albir, Amparo
2001Traducción y Traductología. Introducción a la traductología. Madrid: Cátedra.
1995La traducción del humor: las comedias inglesas en español. Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Oviedo.
McKerras, Ross
1994 “How to Translate Wordplays”. Notes on Translation 8:1. 7–18.
Offord, Malcolm
1997 “Mapping Shakespeare’s Puns in French Translations”. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur 1997 233–260.
Rabadán Álvarez, Rosa
1991Equivalencia y traducción. León: Universidad de León.
1997 “What Is It that Renders a Spoonerism (Un)translatable?”. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur 1997 271–291.
Veisbergs, Andrejs
1997 “The Contextual Use of Idioms, Wordplay, and Translation”. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester and Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur 1997 155–176.
Weissbrod, Rachel
1996 “’Curiouser and Curiouser’: Hebrew Translation of Wordplay in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’”. The Translator 2:2. 219–234.
Zabalbeascoa, Patrick
1996 “Translating Jokes for Dubbed Television Situation Comedies”. The Translator 2:2. 235–257.
2019. Traduire dans des conditions difficiles. Między Oryginałem a Przekładem 25:46 ► pp. 79 ff.
Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier
2014. The Translation of Wordplay from the Perspective of Relevance Theory: Translating Sexual Puns in two Shakespearian Tragedies into Galician and Spanish. Meta 58:2 ► pp. 279 ff.
Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier
2014. Relevance Theory and translation: Translating puns in Spanish film titles into English. Journal of Pragmatics 70 ► pp. 108 ff.
Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier
2015. From the Other Side of the Looking Glass: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Account of Translating Lewis Carroll. In Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2015 [Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, 3], ► pp. 163 ff.
Mossberg, Mari
2024. Boost Your Brain. Om lexikal kreativitet i faktaböcker för barn i ett svensk-engelskt perspektiv . Språk och stil 33 ► pp. 164 ff.
Sadowska-Dobrowolska, Katarzyna
2021. Les jeux de mots, les jeux de traducteur – les dynamiques interculturelles du jeu (sur l’exemple des aphorismes de Stanisław Jerzy Lec). Prace Językoznawcze 23:4 ► pp. 91 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 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.