Short Essay-Close Reading Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Short -Close Reading - Essay Example The next chapter indicates that Jim, apart from going out with Lena to theatre, also meets her at her shop, visits her apartment and spends a considerable amount of time, since the time he met her. Chapter three of book three seems to be an account of the play and their experience watching it, but it is significant to the entire book as it brings out the pain in Jim with his separation from Antonia and his sudden realization of the compelling similarity between the play and real life. This realization is the heart of the chapter. When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining with rain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harlings useful Commencement present, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I walked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. The lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and which had reached me only that night, across long years and several languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is put on, it is April (p. 201). After his account of how Jim and Lena were able to navigate through the rain, he slides into his version of his experience of his walk back home after leaving Lena at her house. Unlike Lena, he stays in the country side. Jim describes the things in nature as he finds his way back home through the country side in which he lives. It is spring and the rain has left the blossoming lilacs fresh and fragrant. However, the words â€Å"bitter sweetness†, juxtaposes two opposites forming an oxymoron

Culture and Translation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Culture and Translation - Essay Example The problem of translation, therefore, is not simply limited to finding alterative words but to preserving the source culture. Referring to the translation of specific genres which represent a language's cultural heritage and historical memories, Rosslyn (1997, pp. 19-22) highlights the difficulties of translating the worlds within which these words emerge and which they define and express. Translation is a challenge because it entails far more than the rendering of a text from a source to a target language; translation requires that the translator move the culture from the source text to the target text but in such a way as would allow the target audience to understand that culture and to appreciate it on its own terms (Bassnet, 1990; Baker, 1992, pp. 1-5; Schaffner and Kelly-Holmes, 1995, pp. 19-23; Faiq, 2004, pp. 14-16). Looking at the above stated from the perspective of Arabic to English or English to Arabic translation, the difficulties and challenges which the translator confronts become a bit clearer. Not only is the Arabic to English translator, for example, required to transfer an Arabic language text into the English language but he/she is expected to also preserve the Arabic culture from which the text emerged and transfer it to the source text, the translated one. This, as the essay will argue, is an extremely difficult undertaking and, if it is to be done properly, requires that the translator align the translation theory and type that he will use with the source text's genre and culture. 2 Culture and Translation The problem of translation is compounded by the cultural factor. This is especially so in cases where the proposed source culture and the planned target one are considered antithetical, or when the difference between them function as an obstacle to the one understanding the other. This is generally assumed to be the case with Arabic and English. Indeed, historical memories, linguistic heritages and worldviews specific to the Arabic and English languages are sufficiently different and divergent to pose as a real challenge for the translator. As Edward Said (1978, pp. 49-52) argued in his famous, and highly influential, treatise on orientalism, when translating from Arabic to English, the translator faces a challenging task. He has to disconnect himself, as a subject and person, from the act of translation, to avoid making the mistake of colonizing or orientalising the text. As regards the former, the implication here is that the Western translator approach the Arabic text from the mat rix of his/her own culture and, in his/her determined efforts to communicate the nuances of the oriental culture, emphasize its otherness,' ultimately portraying it as extremely foreign and exotic. As regards the latter, the translator similarly inserts him/herself, as a subjective cultural being, into the process. The outcome can be the colonization of the source text in the sense that the translator interprets it from his/her cultural perspectives and norms, effectively imposing the latter upon