Yearbook of Translational Hermeneutics

On the Eventful Nature of Translations

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Zur Ereignishaftigkeit von Übersetzungen

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The Events and Non-Events of Translation

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The aim of this essay is to gain critical and theoretical purchase on the notion of an “event” as it may or may not relevantly apply to the practices of translation. The essay allows itself to be quizzical as regards the possibility that translation can be called an event at all, but it also inspects the ways in which, nonetheless, it is meaningful – and indeed useful – to consider the eventhood, or eventuality of translation. In that regard, I suggest that Translation Studies can avail itself of philosophical accounts of the “event,” and moreover relate translation to the ways in which reading has been called an event. This essay concludes on a set of observations concerning how one might widen the scope beyond considerations concerning the event of translation restricted to texts and consider other, multi-medial events of translation.

Die Metapher als hermeneutisch-performatives Sprachereignis

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Translation is a performance in between collectivity and individuality. Literary translation as a social action in language combines knowledge and feeling of a person. It involves an informed openness towards the world and, as a result, responsible introspection as a reflection on one’s own actions. Translation as performance does not happen without the mental framework of enculturation, and this in turn includes personal and collective knowledge of the world and language, as well as emotionality in individual creative writing. This problem is illustrated by comparing German translations of the poem “The Hill we Climb” by Amanda Gorman read at the inauguration of the new U.S. President Joe Biden in January 2021. Aspects of translation such as language imagery, spoken style, and emotional prosody in the text show how a personal identity that becomes meaningful is in tension with an author’s collective identity brought in from the outside. In terms of translation hermeneutics, a translator will try to convey the message recognized as authentic.

Performance as Translation.

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An instructive perspective of translatology is that of examining translation as performance. Here, key questions are for what purpose a translation is made and how it was prepared for that purpose. Regarding method, however, it would be an original move if one looked at the performance itself in its translational dimension. Following such a perspective, this essay examines how performative actions can translate the transcendent or invisible ‘sacred’ into an aesthetic experience. The authors explain their approach by looking at a significant event, the dedication of the church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (2010) together with the homily of Pope Benedict XVI. The main reason for that choice is that the liturgy is not only an issue of theological reflection, since it also allows one to examine translational processes in a polysemiotic-performative way. Indeed, in the liturgy the rite, text language, art and architecture work together harmoniously into an integrative action that can shape the aesthetic experience of the “sacred”. As a transdisciplinary study, this essay seeks to provide further perspectives for future research in many areas of the humanities.

Translating Divinity in the Liminal Space. Performative Translations in the Medieval and Early Modern Period in India

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This essay investigates the Bhāvārthadeepikā (1290) of the saint poet Dnyāneshwar and Father Thomas Stephens’ Kristapurān (1616) in the light of the performative turn in the field of translation studies. The aim of this essay is to explore performativity in these medieval and early modern period Indian translations by culling academic discussion from existing scholarship in translation studies and theatre studies. Attempt will also be made to expand the existing notions of performativity by adding inputs from the Indian discourse on translation. The essay concludes with the finding that the dialogic form of the translations with the use of a quatrain folk meter called the ovi, appear to be the common elements which contribute largely to making the Bhāvārthadeepikā and the Kristapurān performative and eventful translations.

Translation as Multi-Layered Performance: The Case of “Le Feu au cœur,” Bertrand Belin’s French Cover of Bob Dylan’s “Ain’t Talkin’”

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Ten years before being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (October 2016), Bob Dylan released the album Modern Times (2006). The album’s closing song, entitled “Ain’t Talkin’,” is an epic, dark and enigmatic eight-minute piece featuring a first-person narrator, more specifically a disillusioned ‘lone pilgrim’ figure that travels through defamiliarised, post-apocalyptic landscapes. On the second edition of his sixth album Persona (October 2019), French singer-songwriter Bertrand Belin published “Le Feu au cœur,” which, to this day, is the only existing French version of “Ain’t Talkin’.” This cover can arguably be considered a performance on at least two counts. Firstly, Dylan’s lyrics were translated by Belin, who is also an acclaimed writer and stylist. As he performed the act of translating Dylan’s words, Belin made them entirely his own, thus moving away from literalism and static structures of equivalence and producing, instead, a unique and highly personal text. Secondly, this translation was self-used by Belin, who also performed it as a studio recording and on stage, so that various electric and acoustic renditions of the French cover are now available. In this article, I propose to analyse how Belin, as a translator-performer, goes beyond transposing “Ain’t Talkin’” as a purely literary text. As we will see, he never loses sight of the need to make “Le Feu au cœur” singable in French. Indeed, the oralised and embodied dimensions involved in the musical performing of the French lyrics determine most of his translational choices, not least those concerning the adaptation of rhyme schemes, which undoubtedly contributes to shaping the performed material and to turning his French translation of Dylan’s song into a thoroughly transformative work – a re-creation in its own right.

When Performance is not a Metaphor for Translation: Translation as “Performative Event”

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The aim of this article is to theorise translation as a performative event (term coined by Stuart Grant 2013). Theories on translation and performativity in Translation Studies have historically been developed from Linguistics or from Performance Studies. Perhaps less known among Translation Studies scholars is the work of performance theorist and philosopher Grant, who recognises the need for a clearer definition of terms related to performance theory and practice. He therefore draws a clear distinction between “the performative event, performance, the moment of performance, and the theatrical as opposed to the performative” (Grant 2013: 127). These concepts provide a starting point for my theoretical analysis of sign language interpreting of popular music and live concerts. In my research I have demonstrated that in the work of sign language interpreter-performers, the performative event as intended by Grant (2013, 2015) is itself the translation, and the moment of performance is itself performative not in a metaphorical sense, but in its tangible embodiment and in its very essence (see Tarantini 2023). In this article I will look at how Grant’s theories are applicable to translation more broadly, and can be functional to theorise translation as an event: a performative event.

Translation and Dance. The Case of Matthew Bourne

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This chapter takes Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man as an example of today’s enlarged definition of translation, following the new approaches to contemporary translation. Taking this expanded way of seeing translation, I will analyze many of his choreographies as performances of previous literary and operatic works. He translates through embodied performances, through bodies, understood here as semiotic systems that transmit meaning. Bourne’s ballets translate the classics through dance. He uses bodies to retranslate in order to update old meanings. The second part of the chapter will concentrate on how Matthew Bourne’s ballets offer an up-to-date version of Bizet’s world, of Cinderella and other. Using the body, he retranslates by performing the classics through movement and music: he deconstructs genres and genders by subverting opera and dance, but also straight and gay binary oppositions, thus creating richer and more ambiguous identities and characters.

Translation as Event. Performing and Staging Translations

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Translation as a form – A new Guide to Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”

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Review Article on: Robinson, Douglas (2023): Translation as a Form. A Centennial Commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”. London / New York: Routledge. 216 pp. ISBN 9781032161389.

Sondierungen und Reflexionen.

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Rezensionartikel zu: Schippel, Larisa / Richter, Julia [Hrsg.] (2021): Translation und „Drittes Reich“ II. Translationsgeschichte als methodologische Herausforderung. Berlin: Frank & Timme. 352 S. ISBN: 978-3-7329-0302-3.

Review of: HRNJEZ, Saša / NARDELLI, Elena [a cura di] (2020): Verifiche XLIX/1–2: Hegel and/in/on Translation. 333 pp.

2025-03-15T20:11:07+01:00

Recension de: MESCHONNIC, Henri (2007/2021): Ethik und Politik des Übersetzens. Aus dem Französischen von Béatrice Costa, mit einem Nachwort von Hans Lösener und Vera Viehöver. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz. 256 pp. ISBN: 978-3-7518-0349-6.

2025-03-15T20:12:24+01:00

Review of: SIMON, Sherry (2019): Translation Sites. A Field Guide, London / New York: Routledge. 282 pp. ISBN 978-1-131-53110-9 (eBook).

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