Revisiting Volkova’s Integrated Translation Model in Relation to Untranslatability: Acknowledgement of Literary Translator as Writer

Document Type : Original Article

Author

A Lecturer of Linguistics & Translation – Dept. of English Language – Faculty of Education - Alexandria University/ Egypt.

Abstract

Since Volkova’s (2012) discourse and communication translation model reformulates a translation strategy as a flexible, variable, and individual algorithm resulting from a translator’s analysis and interpretation of the various features of a given text, it underlines such innovative workarounds as an inevitable parameter during the translation process. This, in turn, backs the notion that untranslatability, despite being resistance to translation, i.e. reflective of the inability to translate specific texts or textual features due to certain cultural, ideological, and linguistic eccentricities, as much ascertained in recent translation studies, is, in fact, productive of creative strategies on the part of translators whether purposefully (on ideological grounds) or spontaneously (on absolute needs of translation problems) to negotiate and overcome such resistance. This creativity nourishes the popular idea in contemporary translation literature that literary translators should be identified as writers of their own translations. That is, they are not only producers of cultures but also writers of literary works proper or at the very least of derivatives of the original works since they are likely to manipulate the content and imaginative world of the original work as well as its moral and political claims, if any. Accordingly, the present study aims at backing the acknowledgement of the literary translator as writer (TW) via both investigating the concept of untranslatability in literary works and the creative strategies it necessitates and revisiting Volkova’s integrated model of translation, which is supportive and representative of the translator’s innovation and individuality. By feeding the features- untranslatabilities- creative workarounds concept/tactic into the revisited model, which has been revealed as an inescapability in literary translation, the study attempts to enhance such model to encompass both untranslatability and TW, hence contributing to the acknowledgement of TW.

Keywords

References

 
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