Determining creativity in a translated literary text
Keywords:
creativity, creativity markers, literary translation, literatureAbstract
Literary translation is one of the most researched areas in translation studies and probably one of the most challenging and even controversial branches thereof. When literary translation is mentioned, literature comes to mind together with all its intrinsic and extrinsic complexities in terms of both content, and notably form, which is its characteristic and distinctive trademark. Furthermore, the mere mention of literature evokes the notion of creativity, which in itself has hardly been clearly defined nor properly understood. The complexities of literature become even more compounded when it moves across languages through interlingual or intersemiotic rendering, which involves not only transmitting or conveying the author‘s ideas but equally his or her stylistic niceties and vagaries. Here, one may seek to know the difference between the creativity of an original piece of literature and that of translated literature. It has been observed that, despite the availability of huge literature on creativity as a whole and creativity in literary translation in particular, no identifiable study has yet defined creativity in translation or identified the indicators of translational creativity. Literature on translational creativity has so far dwelled on generalities attempting to justify the platitude that there is creativity in translation. In a sort of veiled defence of the Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis (Yule, 1985) according to which languages perceive reality differently, the bulk of this kind of literature simply points out overall discrepancies between originals and their translations or translated versions. These discrepancies are often syntactical and lexical, with no specifics on creativity in the original and translated text. Using purely documentary evidence, this study deals specifically with creativity in literary translation. The study tries to define creativity in literary translation, bring out creativity markers and suggest a method for determining creativity both in literary texts in general and translated literary texts in particular.
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