Abstract
The present paper offers a cognitive-pragmatic account of the translation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. More specifically, its main objective is to analyse the translation of puns in a corpus consisting of one Galician and six Spanish versions of the mentioned novels from a relevance-theoretic perspective. The analysis is based on 959 textual fragments which correspond to the 137 ST extracts which contained wordplay. The results show that translation technique selection is determined, among other factors, by the principle of relevance. In those cases in which there is a coincidence in the relation between the levels of signifier and signified across source and target language, translators normally opt to translate literally and reproduce a congenial pun. In the rest of the cases, translators still strive to produce a pun which, even if it is not able to reproduce the meanings of the ST pun, at least gives rise to some of the cognitive effects intended by the original author, particularly those associated with the processing of wordplay. Other solutions adopted by translators include the sacrifice of secondary information, a non-selective translation containing the different meanings of the ST pun in a non-punning context, the resort to diffuse paraphrase, punoid, editorial means, or transference. Variables such as the specific version considered or the type of pun have been found to have an effect on the choice of translation technique. Moreover, it has also been proved that choice of translation technique and use of editorial means were interconnected.
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As highlighted by Weissbrod (1996: 222–223), the tendency to use wordplay in children’s literature is both a long-lived literary convention and an answer to children’s linguistic development. Moreover, the use of wordplay in the Carrollian texts which are the concern of this study also accounts for their appeal to an adult audience, since they were conceived as ambivalent texts, functioning simultaneously in the children’s and adults’ literary systems.
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The acronyms used in this paper are: ST – which stands for source text, or original text –, TT – which stands for target text, or translated version –, SL – source language, or original language –, and TL – target language or language into which the ST is translated –.
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The content explicitly communicated by means of an utterance is an explicature, whereas the content which is derivable from the proposition expressed by the utterance together with the context is called an implicature.
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A cultural reference may be defined, following González Davies & Scott-Tennent (2005), as
Any kind of expression (textual, verbal, non-verbal or audiovisual) denoting any material, ecological, social, religious, linguistic, or emotional manifestation that can be attributed to a particular community (geographic, socio-economic, professional, linguistic, religious, bilingual, etc.) and would be admitted as a trait of that community by those who consider themselves to be members of it. Such an expression may, on occasions, create a comprehension or a translation problem. (González Davies & Scott-Tennent 2005: 166)
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The translation techniques proposed in Molina & Hurtado Albir (2002: 509–511) are adaptation, amplification, borrowing, calque, compensation, description, discursive creation, established equivalent, generalization, linguistic amplification, linguistic compression, literal translation, modulation, particularization, reduction, substitution, transposition, and variation.
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Compensation – dealt with in Sect. 3.7 – is not included here, since strictly speaking, it is not a technique used to translate puns, as it is not applied to punning textual fragments.
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A horizontal pun, according to Delabastita (1993: 79, 1996: 128), is that in which the relationship between the components is of a syntagmatic type, that is to say, the components are one after the other lineally in the sequence in which the pun is inscribed. When the two components are co-present in the same portion of text, however, the pun is said to be vertical (Delabastita 1996: 128).
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The fragments involving wordplay in the ST and TT in all the examples appear in bold. Emphasis is mine.
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In the examples the TT excerpts are identified by the name of the translators, except in the case of the versions published by El Cid Editor, which are referred to by the name of the publishing house, since the name(s) of the translator(s) is not provided for. This latter case represents an extreme case of what Venuti (1995) called the translator’s invisibility, or a “weird self-annihilation” (Venutti 1995: 8). In the bibliographical references section, however, all the versions from which the excerpts have been extracted appear under the name of the ST author: Carroll.
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This situation represents, in Gutt’s (2004: 83) opinion, the translator’s ideal, since, given that original communicator, translator, and receptors share a mutual cognitive environment, there is no need to overcome differences in cognitive environments.
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In addition, in this excerpt gala appears in the set phrase tener a gala, “to be very proud of”, and pago is part of the phrase escuela de pago, “private school”.
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The use of footnotes and other editorial means will be dealt with in Sect. 3.6.
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Proper nouns are considered cultural references (See in this respect, for instance, Franco Aixelà 1996: 59).
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The same strategy is used to deal with this name in the Spanish versions by Ojeda and El Cid Editor.
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The same technique is used to deal with this name in the Spanish version by Maristany.
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The footnote reads as follows: “juego de palabras con miss, señorita y to miss, perder o eludir la asistencia a las clases” (Alba 1982: 104) [pun on miss, form of address, and to miss, not to be in time for class; my translation].
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Vinay & Dalbernet (1958) include borrowing, calque and word for word translation as procedures of literal translation.
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This type of pun is very frequent in James Joyce’s works, to the extent that it has been sometimes called Joycean pun, as explained by Gardner in one of his notes to his edition of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, when he says:
Portmanteau word will be found in many modern dictionaries. It has become a common phrase for words that are packed, like a suitcase, with more than one meaning. In English literature, the great master of the portmanteau word is, of course, James Joyce. Finnegans Wake (like the Alice books, a dream) contains them by the tens of thousands (Carroll 2000/1871: 321; Editor’s note).
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Humpty Dumpty says in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There: “You see it’s like a portmanteau— there are two meanings packed up into one word.” (Carroll 2000/1871: 137)
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Pancho is a hypocorism for Francisco.
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Percentages correspond to those versions which regularly include editorial techniques.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their very valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. Needless to say, any remaining shortcomings are my only responsibility.
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Díaz-Pérez, F.J. (2015). From the Other Side of the Looking Glass: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Account of Translating Lewis Carroll. In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2015. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17948-3_8
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