Sisley, Joy (2000) Translating from one medium to another : explorations in the referential power of translation. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the identity of translation as its power of reference
through an analysis of transformations of biblical narrative from their written
form to audio-visual versions made for television. The central problematic of
translatability between word and image is examined through the "translation
strategies" used by producers and translators. These strategies reveal the
philosophical binarisms that underpin an assumption of source and target texts as
autonomous entities. The polarities of binary thinking are implicit in a perception
of translation as a representation of a prior text
The language of representation that is central to theories of
representational equivalence raises the question to what does representation refer.
This question forms the focus for a critique of the epistemology and ontology of
representation and its artificial separation of language and vision, or word and
image in our perceptual experience of the world. The criticism is essential to an
exploration of the referential power of translation understood in semiotic and
narrative terms as its ground of interpretation. This exploration describes the
symbolic or semiotic value of translations, or the contexts in which they acquire
contemporary coherence and significance.
The central descriptive part of the thesis employs three conceptions of
context: the context of texts themselves as narratively and semantically coherent
units; their cultural contexts, or the irreducible intertexuality on which they depend
for the recognition and interpretation of their significant features; and the social
and economic conditions which underpin the work of production and provide the
social contexts within such works circulate.
In rejecting the notion that translations are an image, however impure, of
an antecedent text, my thesis excludes a notion of conventional limits to translation
based on structuralist conceptions of semantic or narrative form as the principal
carriers of meaning. It concludes that the limits of translation are defined by its
possibilities.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BS The Bible P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Bible -- Translating, Bible -- Television adaptations, Realization (Linguistics), Translating and interpreting
Official Date:	November 2000
Dates:	Date Event November 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Extent:	271 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/4523

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