יום ראשון, 10 בנובמבר 2013

Biblical Names in the Translation of Fiction from English to Hebrew

Sara Friedman, Independent scholar

Names drawn from the Bible are one category of Proper Names (of persons, places, etc.) functioning in a text of narrative fiction. A particularly interesting phenomenon is the rendering of a name of Hebrew-biblical origin in a Hebrew translation of fiction from an English Source Text (e.g., a novel), where the name appears in its English form. This name of Hebrew-biblical origin is now transposed into Hebrew as part of the translation process of the work in question, in its entirety. This phenomenon is unique to translation into Hebrew, since all other languages (as Source and Target Texts alike) draw upon translations of the Hebrew Bible into the respective languages. In the case of Hebrew, we are dealing with "restoring" the "original" name in the translation. 

This presentation will discuss examples taken from a corpus reflecting a century of translation of fiction from English into Hebrew. The study found that various strategies are implemented in actual translations for transposing names of Hebrew-Biblical origin into the Hebrew Target Text. This would seem to contradict the prevailing view that "names do not change under translation." A definition of "translating names" in the theory of literary translation will be proposed. The findings of the study will be presented: the dominant norms for rendering names of Hebrew origin in a Hebrew Target Text, and explanations offered for the historical-cultural variations of these norms over the extended period reflected in the study corpus.

Bibliography
Friedman, Sara, 2009, “Proper Names in Literary Translation: A Norms-theoretical Approach to One Problem-area in Hebrew Translation”, PhD diss., Tel Aviv University. 
Friedman, Sara, 2004,"Names in Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes and Short Range: Wyoming Stories and their Hebrew Translation", Bucknell Review: A Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts and Sciences, 2004; 47 (1), Translation and Culture, 107-123.
Hermans, Theo, 1988, "On Translating Proper Names, with Reference to De Witte and Max Havelaar", in Modern Dutch Studies, Michael Wintle, ed., London: The Athlone Press, 11-24.
Manini, Luca, 1996, "Meaningful Literary Names: their forms and functions, and their translations", The Translator 2:2, 161-178.
Toury, Gideon, 1977, Norms of Literary Translation into Hebrew, 1930-1945, Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics [Heb.].


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