Boase-Beier Jean. Stylistic Approaches to Translation

Routledge, 2014. — 176 pages. — (Translation Theories Explored) — ISBN: 1900650983The concept of style is central to our understanding and construction of texts. But how do translators take style into account in reading the source text and in creating a target text?This book attempts to bring some coherence to a highly interdisciplinary area of translation studies, situating different views and approaches to style within general trends in linguistics and literary criticism and assessing their place in translation studies itself. Some of the issues addressed are the link between style and meaning, the interpretation of stylistic clues in the text, the difference between literary and non-literary texts, and more practical questions about the recreation of stylistic effects. These various trends, approaches and issues are brought together in a consideration of the most recent cognitive views of style, which see it as essentially a reflection of mind.Underlying the book is the notion that knowledge of theory can affect the way we translate. Far from being prescriptive, theories which describe what we know in a general sense can become part of what an individual translator knows, thus opening the way for greater awareness and also greater creativity in the act of translation. Throughout the discussion, the book considers how insights into the nature and importance of style might affect the actual translation of literary and non-literary texts.The Role of Style in Translation
Reading and writing style in translation
Before stylistics: the spirit of a text
Universals of style and creative transposition
Contextual, pragmatic and cognitive aspects of style and translation
Relativity and thinking for translation
Translating literary and non-literary texts
Theories of Reading and Relevance
Reading, style and the inferred author
Implication, relevance and minimax
Relevance theory and translating for relevance
The Translator’s Choices
Style and choice
Clues, games and decisions
Recreated choices in translation
Cognitive Stylistics and Translation
The cognitive turn in stylistics and translation studies
Translating the mind in the text
Ambiguity and textual gaps
Foregrounding, salience and visibility
Metaphor, mind and translation
Iconicity, mimesis and diagesis
Cognitive stylistics and the pretence of translation
A Stylistic Approach in Practice
Elements of a stylistic approach to translation
Using style to translate mind
Ambiguous translation
Attracting attention: patterns and other deviant structures
Metaphorical thought translated
Keeping the echo: translating for iconicity