Annotated Bibliography Assignment

By Elizabeth Lagresa, Visualization Project Team

1. Nord, Christiane.  Text Analysis in Translation: Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis.  2nd Ed.  New York:  Rodopi B.V., 2005.

Nord’s book presents a systematic translation-oriented model for source-text analysis.  The intent behind it is to provide “…criteria for the classification of texts for translation classes, and some guidelines for assessing the quality of translation” with useful applications for the training of translators (Nord 5).  In it she explores several theoretical principles of text analysis, and provides a variety of translation examples taken in their majority from the field of literature.  The book is composed of five sections.  Part one of the study outlines the translation theory and text-linguistic principles on which the model is based.  She defines her theory of translation as functional, and intends to utilize the source-text to “…provide a reliable foundation for each and every decision which the translator has to make…” (Nord 5), requiring the translator to compare the intended function of the source-text with the function of the target text (Nord 21).  Part two describes the role and functions of source-text analysis in the translation process, and presents a defense of why the model is relevant to translation.  Part three gives a detailed study of the extratextual (audience, medium, place, time, function, etc.) and intratextual (subject matter, content, presuppositions, lexis, sentence structure, etc.) factors involved in text analysis.  Part four discusses the didactic applications of the model in translator training, in particular the selection of class material, classification of translation problems, quality assessment of translations, and evaluation of translation tasks.  Part five concludes with the application of the model to the analysis of three texts (Alejo Carpentier “Acerca de la historicidad de Victor Hugues,” Miguel de Unamuno “Niebla,” and Tourist information text “Spezialitaten”) and their translations in several languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch).

2. Borges, Jorge Luis.  “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.”  Ficciones.  Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1944. 88-95.

Within this short story about the fictional writer Pierre Menard, Borges anticipates the post-modern theory that gives centrality to reader response by situating the reader face to face with its function as co-creator of literature.  The story begins with a brief introduction by the narrator enumerating all of Menard's “visible” work, and then moves to a discussion and defense of his invisible or “subterranean” works, namely his unfinished production of chapters VIIII, XXXVIII and fragments of XXII of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Borges 88-90).  In it Menard asserts that his intent was not to copy but to re-construct “…a number of pages which coincided – word for word and line for line – with those of Miguel de Cervantes” (Borges 91).  The methodology chosen to bring about this unattainable task is to re-create Cervantes’ work as though it was Menard who had conceived it, effectively supporting the authorial claim established by the title of the story (Borges 92).  As a result, the hierarchical divide between author and translator, original and translation is not only blurred, but somewhat inverted.  According to Menard, his task as a translator is of greater difficulty than that of Cervantes, and consequently, his creation is more worthy of praise.  While Cervantes “…did not spurn the collaboration of chance…and was often swept along by the inertia of the language and the imagination,” the translator’s job is described as premeditated and deliberate, language is scrutinized and imagination is subjugated to the rigor of reason (Borges 92).  Menard’s reconstruction of what for Cervantes was spontaneous creation occurred by working through various artificial constraints, which required the translator’s ultimate sacrifice and subordination to the original text’s intentions, transforming his sacrifice into a virtue of “…almost divine modesty” (Borges 93).  Additionally, despite the fact that Menard did not commit any infidelities, for “The Cervantes text and the Menard text are verbally identical…,” the narrator quickly points out that a major disparity has emerged between the two: “…the second is almost infinitely richer” (Borges 94).  By placing in the body of the story two mirror images of an excerpt of Cervantes’ “original” and Menard’s Quixote (both in English), Borges makes unequivocally apparent that although the words might be the same, it is the reader, and consequently the meaning the reader endows to those words that has changed.  The three hundred years that have elapsed between the original and Menard's text, and the weight of the events that transpired have filled these words with new meanings and allusions for the readers, ultimately enriching the text.  Through this short story Borges highlights the importance of the reader as well as the translator as creator of meaning, ushering a new theory of literary criticism and translation that trivializes the preoccupation with concepts such as authorship and originality. 

 3. TAPoR Text Analysis Portal for Research.  2003-2006.  McMaster University.  12 Feb. 2008.  <http://www.tapor.ca/>.

TAPoR stands for Text Analysis Portal for Research, and as its acronym clearly implies, it is a textual analysis portal containing multiple server-based tools customized for the research of electronic texts.  The portal is based at McMaster University and “consists of a network of six of the leading Humanities computing centers in Canada,” each with its unique local culture: McMaster University, University of Toronto, University of Victoria, University of Alberta, Université de Montreal and University of New Brunswick.  It was developed by OpenSky Solutions led by James Chartrand and Nick Goupinets (Principal Programmer), while the portal design and development at McMaster University was led by Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell (TAPoR Project Leader) and Dr. Stéfan Sinclair (Research Director).  In the TAPoR mission statement text is “…defined broadly to include linguistic texts, multimedia rich texts, and computer languages.”  Tools for analyzing these texts range from concordance to collocation, frequency lists and transformation, and can be used to find words, patters, generate visualizations, statistics, compare texts and identify themes, to name a few of the many tools and possible uses.  The portal also contains a continuously expanding library of full texts available for experimentation, text analysis archives with “recipes” or techniques, and the opportunity to develop new text analysis tools.  Overall, the intent of the portal is to create “…a gateway to tools for sophisticated analysis and retrieval, along with representative texts for experimentation,” and in this environment promote the research, understanding, and sharing of ideas on digital textuality, including its techniques and applications.  Users of the portal can create individual accounts for free, as well as enter informally without the need of installing tools.  The following site contains further information on TAPoR http://www.tapor.ca/ and to access the portal directly the link is http://portal.tapor.ca/. 

4. Borges, Jorge Luis.  “The Translators of the One Thousand and One Nights.”  Trans.  Esther Allen.  The Translation Studies Reader.  Ed. Lawrence Venuti.  2^nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004. 94-108.

Through this essay on the translators of the Arabian Nights, Borges demonstrates that literary translations can produce diverse representations of the foreign text and culture.  He provides a detailed discussion of different translations of the “One Thousand and One Nights,” while critiquing their investment in various literary traditions, political interests and cultural values, ranging from puritanical to orientalist, English to German, and middle class to academic.  The first translator mentioned is Captain Burton, whose “…secret aims of his work was the annihilation of another gentleman…Edward Lane, the Orientalist…that had supplanted a version by Galland,” illustrating the use of translation as a tool for criticism and competition, and the foreign text as a possible territory for colonization (Borges 94).  Borges proceeds to provide a sort of history of translation, commencing with Jean Antoine Galland, the first European translator, and therefore the most read and influential of all.  Although Galland’s preoccupations centered on preserving the flavor of the orient while correcting “occasional indelicacies” and we owe the addition of famous tales unknown to the original such as Aladdin, the Forty Thieves and the Sleeper and Waker, to name a few, Borges deems his version “…the most poorly written of them all, the least faithful, and the weakest…” (95-96).  Lane’s version is judged as more faithful to the original, even though it does not abstain from abridging it, removing all indelicacies in order to purify and disinfect the text (Borges 96).  Burton on the other hand aimed to entertain, and instead overemphasized the barbaric, erotic and obscene, including “…the glorious hybridization of English” (Borges 100-101).  Lastly, while Doctor Mardrus is “…ascribed the moral virtue of being the most truthful…” (Borges 101) and readable translator, despite or possibly due to his vice for enriching it with anachronistic visual embellishments, Enno Littmann is harshly criticized for his literal, word for word rendition described as “…always lucid, readable, mediocre” (Borges 106).  The concept of “faithfulness” is turned on its head, making the translator’s infidelities into what is most important and valued, for as Borges states, it is the translator’s “…infidelity, his happy and creative infidelity, that must matter to us,” and not literal "faithful" translations which produce nothing (105).  Ultimately, translations have the power to surpass the fame of the original, share the work with a wider culture, and enrich both languages and texts through the act of remaking.

5. Babylon: Translation at a single click.  1997-2007.  Babylon Ltd.  13 Feb. 2008.  <http://www.babylon.com/>.

Babylon Ltd. is a desktop software company, founded in 1997, and it promotes itself as the leading provider of single-click translation and information access solutions.  Babylon's flagship product is Babylon 7, a desktop software available for both private users and corporate organizations that offers translations, definitions, conversions and information.  The software applies a statistical approach to automatic language translation and natural language processing that is commercialized by Language Weaver, Inc.  Its statistical techniques derive from cryptography, and utilize learning algorithms that are trained by repetition to translate automatically from existing man made translations.  Babylon provides text translation in seventeen languages, as well as Wikipedia results in thirteen languages.  Also, Babylon's translation and dictionary software offers results from a database of 1,300 sources in seventy-five languages.  The database includes twenty-five professional dictionaries in fourteen languages developed by Babylon's own linguistic team: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Russian, Korean and Swedish.  Furthermore, Babylon offers add-on content from dictionary publishers, including Oxford University Press, Britannica, Merriam-Webster, Larousse, Vox, Langenscheidt, Pons, Van Dale, Melhoramentos and Taishukan.  In regards to claims of accuracy, Babylon presents a disclaimer stating that “Machine translation is not accurate as the meaning of words depends upon the context in which they are used. Because of this, accurate translation requires an understanding of the context, as well as an understanding of the structure and rules of the language.”  The software has no need for additional browsers or "copy/paste" because it functions automatically by doing a customized click on any word in the text that is to be translated.  Babylon identifies the relevant text passage in which the word is located, and translates it after the selection of the source and target language is made.  The translation service can also be accessed from a side-bar or from a drop down menu in which text can be typed or pasted directly.  A free downloadable fourteen day trial version of the software is available to be sampled before purchase.