Content area
This thesis will continue to the study of the limits of in translation and the wide range of interpretations that can be given to this term. Every linguistic manifestation in one language can be "expressed" in another, but not necessarily in the same form. The question 'How is nonsense translated?' or 'How does one translate what dehberately does not make sense?' can be broken down into partial questions: How does one translate what is dehberately ambiguous (e.g. puns)? How does one have to read, i.e. ''understand", a hapax word in order to find or create another one? How does one reconcile the demands of prosody with nonsense writing? Can all source language forms of wordplay be matched culturally and linguistically in the target language? The answers to these questions also offer us some insights into the translator's attitude to the challenge of nonsense translation. By examining what translators have done, we hope to understand why they did it. The purpose of this study then is to explore the many different ways in which nonsense has been translated. Once this is done the differences among translations of the same source text are taken into consideration. At this stage it would be appropriate to bring in external considerations of history, culture and publishers' intentions, which can provide motivations for existing differences in approaches and techniques of translation. The thesis is designed in two parts, a first theoretical and descriptive part and a second analytical part leading to a presentation and discussion of findings. Chapter 1 examines the phenomenon of literary nonsense writing in European literature and establishes it as a universal feature with varying intensity of manifestation in a number of European literatures. Chapter 2 reviews the critical literature on nonsense with particular reference to the works of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Chapter 3 defines the various forms of nonsense translators have to deal with. This is done in two stages: first through an identification and critical analysis of the nonsense devices and production techniques descn'bed by some of the contempormy scholars already introduced in Chapter 2. This is followed by my own detailed categorisation of rhetorical devices found in nonsense literature, subdividing them into devices which are frequently present in nonsense writing, devices which contribute to and support nonsense, and finally devices which actually create nonsense and which constitute the real problem areas of translation. The welter of devices is then regrouped according to the linguistic operation involved in their production into devices which require a modification of existing language, those which rely on alternative interpretations (polysemy and ambiguity), and finally those which involve the creation of neologisms. Wrth the analytical categories established in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 justifies and characterises the corpus of the eleven translations of selected works of Carroll and Lear chosen for the study of different techniques of translation of nonsense. The second part of the thesis consists of actual analyses, in four chapters, of four different types of nonsense writing. Since this thesis could not rely on previous models of nonsense translation, the methods of analysis employed may be subjected to a critical examination in order to establish guidelines for similar studies in future. Chapter 5 analyses six translations of Carroll's "Jabberwocky". Chapter 6 is devoted to the different . techniques of translation of Lear's limericks. Chapter 7 examines what may be considered the cumulative effect of nonsense arising in the dialogues between Alice and the many fabulous creatures she encounters. Chapter 8 deals with other incidents of linguistic nonsense in both Lear's prose stories and in Carroll's Alice books not dealt with before. Chapter 9 reverses this process and attempts to identify the full range of translation techniques employed by the 11 translators in pursuit of their overall strategies chosen for dealing with these unusual texts. This change of focus will hopefully lead to a clear identification and differentiation of the various techniques chosen by the translators of Carroll and Lear.