Suchergebnisse

This article describes and evaluates a co-authored translation of France Prešeren's "Sonetni venec [A Wreath of Sonnets]" (1834), which has been translated once before into English, namely by Vivian de Sola Pinto in 1954. Having sketched the background to the undertaking, the author describes the structure of "Wreaths of Sonnets" in general and mentions some examples from English literature. He then places "Sonetni venec" in Prešeren's oeuvre. Next, he exemplifies two other translations of "Wreaths" into English (one from Danish, the second from Czech). Most of the article is devoted to the strategy employed in this latest undertaking, a very complex and challenging one. Three particular problems had to be solved, given that the aim was to produce a translation that, formally, would be as close near feasible to the original. The first involved metre: Prešeren's original was in iambic pentameters with feminine rhymes in line-finals; the translators chose to reject feminine rhymes, and their reasons are provided. Second, which particular frequently-recurrent rhymes would be chosen, given that one had to occur 24 times and another 18 times? This choice, also, is described. Third, Prešeren's original has an acrostic in the Master Theme: we decided to attempt one in our version. The whole evaluation, which is some details compares this translation with the one by Pinto, is limited to an extremely formal framework.

I have been actively translating for about twenty years. Looking back, I now realize that it made translation easier when I tried to 'become' the original writer: I was more successful when I asked myself, "what would they have written if they had had my knowledge of English?" and, for poetry, when faced with the clash between the demands of form and content, "which way would they bend?'
Rather than attempt any theorizing, I propose to relate my efforts to get under the skin of a number of poets, for example: one, surviving the siege of Leningrad; another, pioneering multiple poetic genres in early 19th-century Central Europe; a third who (successfully? I am not sure) aimed to capture the horror of a Nazi atrocity in Vienna; a fourth who became the most popular author of Slovene poetry for children by temporarily shedding his own adulthood. Also, I will add my recent attempts to capture, in Slovene, the style of children in war-torn Northern Uganda who are writing to the sponsors who are paying their school fees in a charming but not always clear fractured English (which they are just learning): is it possible, is it expedient to pretend to be such a child in order to transfer their thoughts into Slovene?
It certainly helps to have been a teacher. Teachers are, I believe, better teachers if they can act the roles of others, and translators can perhaps be better translators if they can 'become' other people. Anyway, it makes for a more interesting life.

The globalization of communication in 'major' languages has become incompatible with the claims made by the other languages. Many minor, 'lesser used' languages were formerly marginalized and ignored because of their incompatibility with national policies; more recently, while acknowledged by specialists, they still have had to struggle to be more publicly recognized as vehicles for important literature, and also in some cases as actually existing. Having the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded is not necessarily effective: within years of Frédéric Mistral's Nobel prize few people would have acknowledged the existence of Provençal as a language. One potentially more profitable means of achieving recognition is through being translated into better-known languages. The paper will look at two examples.



First: Slovene, the language of just 2 million people in Europe; a language with an established literature; officially a national language; but not generally known. Promotion through translation has been extraordinarily active: great efforts have been made to translate all the major works of literature into 'major' languages. Among the results: an enormous translation factory, where sometimes quality is sacrificed to quantity; and very high pay for translators.



Second, at the other end of the 'status-as-a-language' spectrum: Lakhian, which very few people recognize as a 'language' rather than a dialect; and yet one that received huge (if temporary) recognition when the one person who wrote what is recognized as 'serious' literature in Lakhian, Ondra Lysohorsky, had his poetry translated by Boris Pasternak and W.H. Auden.

The Slovene-speaking minority in Austria—when compared with many other linguistic minorities in Europe—is in an enviable position. Superficially, its minority rights are both constitutionally guaranteed and, for the most part, legally enforced; in the province of Carinthia/Kärnten/Koroška (the home of nearly all the minority; see Map 1) bilingual education is available in many communities at the primary level, and there is a thriving bilingual secondary school; Slovene is officially used in many offices and churches, and can be heard in many shops and on many street corners; there are two weekly newspapers. The picture below the surface is not quite as pleasant: there is anti-Slovene discrimination in several forms, and the pressure on minority members to Germanize themselves is strong; in particular, it must be emphasized that although the minority enjoys virtually full support from the federal government in Vienna, the provincial government in Carinthia has seldom been as favorably disposed. Still, most of the other minorities in Central and Eastern Europe can only dream of living in conditions like those of the Carinthian Slovenes.

Considers attitudes toward the Slovenes in Austria after the postcommunist transition, drawing on a survey of 54 Carthinians & information from the press. Traditionally, Germanophones have expressed intensive xenophobia toward Slovenes. However, it is found that the current Germanophone population is more disposed toward Slovenes than at any time in the past. This new feeling for Slovenes has developed alongside a trend in which Slovenes themselves are speaking their native dialects much less than in the past. This finding is taken to indicate a great danger to the Slovenian population, as it threatens to cut off this population from the newly created state of Slovenia. It is concluded that perhaps the good feeling of Germanophones toward Slovenes may create a space in which this minority may survive for several generations as more than a museum culture. 19 References. D. Ryfe

A significant factor in the history—and one of the bones of contention in the historiography—of the Slovene minority in the Austrian province of Carinthia is what is known as theWindischentheorie.This pseudoacademic "theory" was developed, on the basis of popular beliefs, during the interwar years and promulgated by those with fascist, later Nazi, sympathies and was an apparently very effective weapon in the Germanization process. The Windischentheorie changed over time; according to what may be called its "canonical" version, the language of the Carinthian Slovenes was quite different from Standard Slovene and the Carinthian Slovenes themselves were therefore ethnically distinct from Slovenes in Slovenia. Other versions of the "theory" are described below. The meaning of the wordWindisch, which had been used by German speakers to mean "Slav" for many centuries, was thereby changed radically and with important political effect.