I am interested in the cultural representation of the original text rather than a strict "verbum pro verbo" translation. Here the "dynamic equivalence" is given priority to the "formal equivalence." “Transparency” is given priority to “fidelity.”
· For the translation, I suggest distancing yourself from the grammatical structure.
· Avoid a word for word translation, and rather use a free translation that reflects your cultural understanding.
This gives you the maximum freedom with your language in your translation. The product should be the production of French text that is fun to read while representing the cultural meaning of the English original.
Remember to maintain the two different fonts:
Times new Roman for the general text and Courier New, Comic Sans MS used for Examples informed by myself, and the narrative characters who act in behalf of my peers are marked by a different typesetting.
For more general guidance on translations
I used five chapters of my book “The New Man” as a source for the English-French translation assignment. You receive four to five pages of English text for translation as an attachment to this message.
TRANSLATION
For the translation, I suggest distancing yourself from the grammatical structure. Avoid a word for word translation, and rather use a free translation that reflects your cultural understanding. I am interested in the cultural representation of the original text rather than a strict "verbum pro verbo" translation. Here the "dynamic equivalence" is given priority to the "formal equivalence." “Transparency” was given priority to “fidelity.” This gives you the maximum freedom in your translation, which is the production of French text that is fun to read while representing the original meaning of the English original.
FORMAT
Text: I suggest using the original MS Word document I send you to include your translation. Then you delete the original English text. This helps us to avoid including MS Word codes from all students once we put the text together into chapters.
Filename: Rename the file using the original file name and appending _f. Example: if the original file name I sent you was book_ch1_1.doc you should submit the French version in a file named book_ch1_1_f.doc.
VOLUNTARY
I suggest that you should have the opportunity generating a second layer of text that reflects your reaction.
I remember an idea of Bruno Latour in his work “Science in Action” to present text as voices of people presenting different lines of thought. If you want to speak up to the text you translate you will be given such a voice.
Let us take your voice as a fictional character – the voice of the translator (VOT) representing a different culture. I can work with this idea very well for two reasons: First cross-cultural research is my area of professional expertise. Second, if you read the complete “The New Man” you realize that in the very beginning all people mentioned in the book are declared fictional.
The special signifier of the VOT (voice of translator) should reflect the fact that he/she speaks in both languages, meaning that your comments have to be presented in French and English.
The comment might have to point right to a specific part in the text. Traditionally, we did this with foot notes or endnotes. We can think about how we are implementing the comment of the VOT in an ePublication later. The problem is that we already have endnotes. Since endnotes appear in roman characters in the text (at least in the files that I sent you), we can use Latin characters to signify a footnote (which in my case is the default).
In short, if you want to insert your voice in the test, do so by using a footnote (we see later if there is a more fascinating way doing this in an ePublication). The footnote should start with “VOT:“ and has to be first in French, followed by an English version.
Thank you for taking this time. I do not want to impose this work on you as an additional individual requirement, so this is strictly voluntary at this point of the translation.
Disclaimer: The documents linked to other sources on the WWW, others than http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/Schneider2/ and its subdirectories, do not necessarily express the views of Texas Tech University, Université Paris X, or Dr. Schneider. @Copyright 2007 Dr. Andreas Schneider