Paratext Translation

Paratexts are elements that do not belong to the actual literary text, such as dust jackets, hard covers, flapping texts, back cover texts, prefaces and afterwords and colophons. They are important for the impression that a book makes on the potential reader. In this article we look at the development of paratexts in the Soviet Union (USSR), Czechoslovakia (ČSSR) and Yugoslavia.

ABSTRACT | The article deals with Croatian reception of works by Witold Gombrowicz, focusing primarily on the period after the year 2000, during which most of translations of this author into Croatian have been published. The author investigates the impact that literary texts and their paratexts made on the presentation, interpretation, and contextualization of Gombrowicz's work in the receiving culture.

The increased use of sociological concepts and frameworks within Translation Studies, the so-called “sociological turn”, developed from a growing awareness of the impact of translation within a given society and between different societies (Buzelin & Baraldi 2016:118). Heilbron and Sapiro (2007:95) point out several aspects which have to be considered within a sociological approach, namely the structure of the field of international cultural exchanges, the constraints that influence these exchanges (political and economic), the agents involved in the exchange and the processes of importing and reception in the target culture.

Although Afrikaans and Dutch are closely related, there are big differences between the languages and cultures causing Dutch readers trouble understanding Afrikaans texts, and vice versa (Renders 2007:55) – hence the need for translations. These differences are not only evident in the translation processes applied in the two regions, but are also especially visible when analysing the paratexts (and epitexts) of translations.

An aspect which impacts the reception of Afrikaans translations in the Low Countries, is the peripheral nature of the language. Very few of the authors are established in countries other than South Africa, which requires further interventions on paratextual level as well as reliance on the social and symbolic capital of agents involved in the translations.

A wave of translations of Anglo-American science fiction characterized the Italian publishing market during the years of the ‘economic miracle’ (1950s–1960s). Starting from an assessment of quantitative data about science fiction novels published in specialized series, the article discusses the agency of publishers and editors in shaping and marketing ideas of genre, in terms of selection of texts to be translated, adaptation through the paratextual apparatus and translation strategies. Translations in popular series were in fact characterized by a vast range of domestication and manipulation phenomena. A close reading of a number of cases reveals a complex series of motives at work behind these practices: from the adaptation to a readership younger than the original one – and/or believed by the publishers to be less culturally prepared – to economic factors, as the physical characteristics of each book were strictly standardized, and issues of cost and seriality often took precedence over artistic considerations.

Ouvrage intégral en open source : http://www.archivescontemporaines.com/books/9782813003089

The paratextual elements provide critical information related to production and reception of a translated work in its source and target cultures. The concept of “paratranslation”, conceptualized in Spain in 2004, informs us “about the activities presented on the verge of translation, about what they represent and what they can tell us concerning the translator’s subjectivity and the nature of the presentation’s translated product”.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the paratranslations as well as the epitexts of André Breton’s Documentos políticos del surrealismo (1973), and Louis Aragon and André Breton’s Surrealismo frente a realismo socialista (1973). The books of these two writers, known in Spain by some academics that could understand French, were discovered thanks to translations published starting from the 1960s. These translations are a prime source for rediscovering the surrealist movement and these two French authors in Spain.

Gerard Genette describes Paratext as “what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public.” (Genette, 1997, p. 1), This includes elements that surround the text , which are not the simple string of narrative, such as: name of author, title, subtitles, name of the publisher and various distribution and marketing materials, such as interviews with the author and book signing events. My choice to focus on Paratext is due to its helpfulness in assessing authorial assumption of responsibility, while also highlighting the elusive nature it beholds and the continuously changing conditions of its means and manifestations across varying cultures, works, authors, genres and editions. Paratext here is not interpreted as a border or a barrier between the text and the reader, but rather as a space that puts the reader in transit, where s/he is neither inside nor outside the text, but on a ledge. Combining the assumption of responsibility, and the changing nature of Paratext, I will look at the ways in which the translation of the Arabic novel Al-Tantoureyya by Radwa Ashour into English as The Woman From Tantoura By  Kay Heikkinen demonstrate how Paratextual choices can be a reflection of the contextual specificity of these elements. I argue that while the Arabic edition highlights the historical and political nature of the Palestinian experience, the English translation aimed for a humanized, depoliticized effect. Paratext as a form of representation reveals some of the underlying paradigms of  representation directed to respective audiences, and exposes how this selective process of representation takes part in the practice of shaping collective memories, voicing the Palestinian trauma within regional and international contexts, and achieving solidarity.

ABSTRACT In this article it is suggested that the title, the incipit and the excipit of Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu be treated as an integrated structure of “thresholds” and that a distinction be made between “paratextual” (title) and “intratextual” (incipit,excipit) thresholds, which would not be possible if Genette’s theory of literary works thresholds were followed, as, according to this theory, thresholds are by definition paratextual. The translation of these thresholds are studied in some twenty five different translations, representing seven Germanic (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, English, German, Dutch) and five Romance (Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian) languages. It is further suggested on the basis of the translation of these para- and intratextual thresholds that the first (and so far only complete) Swedish translation (by Gunnel Vallquist) and the first English translation (by Scott Moncrieff) seem to confirm the “retranslation hypothesis”, as these translations appear to be relatively more target-oriented than source-oriented. SAMMANFATTNING Att översätta är en komplex verksamhet, särskilt om man söker att till andra språk och kulturer överföra magin i ett av världslitteraturens stora verk som Marcel Prousts roman À la recherche du temps perdu. Några aspekter av denna komplexitet – som käll- och målspråksinriktad översättning i förhållande till språksystemskillnader, till ”nyöversättningshypotesen” och till universella översättningstendenser – undersöks i denna artikel med exempel från olika översättningar till sju germanska och fem romanska språk av titeln på Prousts roman, av romanens incipit (första mening) och av dess excipit (sista mening). Romanens yttre, paratextuella (titel) och inre, intratextuella (incipit, excipit) ”trösklar” har valts för att de bildar en enhetlig struktur hos Proust, nära knuten till verkets övergripande litterära betydelse som en roman om den förlorade och återfunna tiden. Hur de olika översättarna återskapat koherensen i detta integrerade system av ”trösklar” skärskådas också.

La Fontaine’s Fables were published in three volumes, in 1668, 1678–79 and 1694. They belong to the genre of the moral fable and use animals as allegories to deliver a moral of didactic and philosophical value. In a corpus of 25 translations of La Fontaine’s Fables into English, published in Great Britain and the United States, between 1754 and 2014, I examined the micro- and macro-functions of paratextual elements. I focus here on four translations from this corpus. According to Genette (1997), paratexts are elements that frame the content and facilitate the reader’s access to it (e.g.: book covers, prefaces). This definition is adapted to the case of translation to better understand how paratexts influence the reader’s experience of these translations. By analyzing the paratexts from the perspective of translator’s visibility, this paper shows how translator visibility influenced artistic aspects or the informative/academic value of the work, thus influencing the experience of reading the Fables in English.

The paper explores prefaces written by so-called " third persons " to translated literature, termed " allographic prefaces " by Genette. These preface writers are often important figures in the target field with a high degree of symbolic capital. The paper carries out a preliminary study on some examples of allographic prefaces in the Turkish context and discusses the links between the prefaces and the individual trajectories of their writers. Cet article examine les préfaces de traductions, écrites par des tierces personnes, ce que Génette appelle les préfaces allographiques. Les auteur(e)s de telles préfaces sont souvent des personnalités importantes dans la culture cible, dotées d'un grand capital symbolique. Cet article constitue une étude préliminaire de quelques exemples de préfaces allographiques provenant du contexte turc et analyse les liens entre les préfaces et les trajectoires individuels de leurs auteurs. Mots clés : paratextes, préfaces d'auteur(e), préfaces allographiques, capacité d'action, littérature turque The present paper will explore the strategic role allographic preface writers play in mediating translated texts to target readers. Although prefaces constitute only one dimension of Gerard Genette's larger framework on paratexts 1 they have proven to be fruitful sources of information for translation researchers. The topic of this paper is allographic prefaces written by cultural agents who are not directly involved in the translation or publication of a given translation. I will explore the cultural and ideological contexts which shape such prefaces and also trace the contexts the writers of such prefaces (re)create. This study is not exhaustive and does not include a large corpus of prefaces. Therefore it should be considered a preliminary meditation on the potential place of the allographic preface in translation research and the links between the writers of these prefaces and the general cultural and translational context in

Paratexts constitute a book’s frame, giving it not only its identity, but also making it visible to the reader. Furthermore, in the case of translated literature they function as mediators to bridge cultural differences. Paratexts are rarely neutral and cover designs of translated literature, especially translated Chinese literature, often use stereotypical colours and imagery to evoke specific associations and emotions within the potential readers.
In this context, titles and book cover designs are both important paratexts as they are normally the reader’s first point of contact with a book and cause instant reactions and associations. If they fail to grab the reader’s attention, the book is unlikely to sell. Despite their importance and the fact that paratexts interact with one another, they are often analysed and judged separately. The title functions as the book’s identifier and can also indicate the book’s content, whereas the cover design’s main function is to catch the reader’s eye and lure the reader into taking a closer look at the book.
I will use a case study of the English and German translations of Yan Lianke’s novel Serve the People! and a reader-response study, in which the readers judged the appeal of the cover design both with and without the title in order to investigate the potential reasons why book covers lost or gained in appeal after the title was added. Both paratextual elements (the title and the book cover) can influence the way a book is perceived and read by creating expectations and triggering associations, which are ideally identical. But what happens when the expectations triggered by the cover design do not match those created by the title? This paper investigates this question, drawing the attention from the individual paratextual elements to their interplay and further illustrates possible results of clashing expectations.

This article addresses the relationship between text and paratext in the publication history of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. Such paratexts include Nabokov’s own afterword to the 1958 American edition and his postscript (published in 1967) to his own translation of Lolita into Russian, as well as various introductions and afterwords, both in English-language editions and in translations of Lolita into Russian and other languages. A particularly interesting type of paratext is constituted by annotations to the main text, and the analysis focuses on parallel examples published in annotated editions of Lolita in English, Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian, and French. The analysis shows that the most detailed annotations concerning the totality of the English and Russian Lolita text and paratexts can be found in editions published in languages other than English and Russian, whereas most English or Russian editions seem to focus on the respective language version. There is still no complete, annotated edition of the bilingual text containing all the authorial paratexts.

Complete and partial versions of the Classical Japanese text known as the Pillow Book (Makura [no] Sôshi) of Sei Shônagon have appeared in many different languages since Japan was “discovered” by the West in the mid-19th century and today, at the dawn of the 21st century, new translations are being published apace. Because mediation of a given text for its target-language readership cannot help but significantly impact communication, an analysis of the translator’s explicit and implicit attitudes as expressed in prefaces and notes usefully reveals how readers have been led to understand and respond to this author over the past 130 years. More particularly, such paratextual materials provide evidence of the central role gender continues to play in the framing of a woman author by her (predominantly male) translators. Discussion of Sei Shônagon’s physical appearance, “loveability”, sexuality, and competitiveness with both men and women at the imperial court constitutes an important part of these prefatory remarks. Another common theme with gendered implications for how the author and her work are read is the degree to which art is involved in writing the deliberately informal genre of zuihitsu. In this article, I explore how awareness of/engagement with gender in translators’ prefaces has been and remains bound up with the reception of this masterpiece by Western audiences.

This article focuses on theological interests in the tradition of Norwegian Bible translations, concentrating on the baptismal theology developed in the paratexts (headings, footnotes, cross-references, comments and word explanations) in the translations by the Norwegian Bible Society from 1959 to 2011. Based on material from the Bible Society’s archives, it describes the handling of the controversy about the confessional baptismal notes in the Youth Translation from 1959, and further describes the development in the two translations, NO78/85 and Bibel 2011. The article examines if it is possible to identify a particular theology in the paratexts of the selected translations of the period. It shows how the confessional development marks the paratexts of baptismal texts in the translations in this period, from a particular Lutheran character in the Youth Translation towards a greater ecumenical sensitivity regarding the theme of baptism in NO78/85 and Bibel 2011, although these translations still bear the mark of Lutheran baptismal theology in some places.

Keywords: bible translation, confessional interests, baptismal theology, paratext, ecumenism

With the rise of participatory culture and Web 2.0, what constitutes gaming and its attendant forms of skill has dramatically expanded. Participatory media heralds new forms of engagement inside and outside the space of gameplay. This phenomenon also proclaims new tensions around what constitutes professional and amateur skills. This is further enriched by the burgeoning of the online with ancillary texts adding to players experience, knowledge and expectation of the game. In game studies, multi-player games have gained much attention for their social and commercial dimensions, especially around the rise (and fall) of E-Sports and professionalisation of gaming as part of broader shifts in commodifying leisure and lifestyle.

In these shifts focusing upon the increasingly social aspects of gaming, single-player games have been relatively overlooked. No longer an isolated practice, single-player games have become progressively more social and collaborative. As such, there is a need to examine the ways in which single-players also redefine mastery and skill as part of a dynamic practice that involves negotiation between game and ancillary texts and experiences.

This thesis addresses the transformative role of the paratext (Genette, 1987) within the wider cultures of gaming. Through the discussion of changing notions of mastery as part of the sociality and creativity within games, this thesis attempts to understand how the contemporary form of paratexts shapes skill, social, creative and labour dimensions of single-player games today. In sum, how paratexts contribute to a gaming knowledge or “gaming capital”.

The author presents in this paper both the technical and practical outcomes that the new translatological term "paratranslation" has fostered in the field of Translation Studies since its creation by the Vigo University T&P Research Group. The notion of paratranslation does not intend to be either a new "paradigm" or another "new product" adding to the catalog of translatological concepts that have appeared during the last decades in the university "market" of translation; on the contrary, the Vigo School wants to design a paradigmatic area suitable for an authentic renovation of the everlasting quandary between univesity theory and professional practice. This aim implies, inexorably, an epistemological opening that allows to observe the new theoretical, didactic and professional perspectives that the notion of paratranslation can offer when not limited to a predetermined frame such as paratexts. There is of course an affinity between translation and paratextuality, but defining paratranslation exclusively as a term referring to the study of the translation of paratexts is not enough; this definition would just mean an enlargement of the textual corpus analyzed by translatology and therefore would fall short of stirring up a new theorization applicable to the daily professional practice. From the standpoint of the establishment of a new way of "on-the-edge-thinking" about translation, the notion of paratranslation shows us, in this digital age of automatic translation and translation memories, that translation is not all about translatio but also, and above all, about traductio.