Reincarnations of Tradition: The Haikus of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Their Finnish Translations
Peltola, Sofia (2024)
2024
Kielten kandidaattiohjelma - Bachelor's Programme in Languages
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-04-30
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202404244503
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202404244503
Tiivistelmä
This thesis explores the translation of haikus in a multimodal environment. Haiku is a 17-syllable poetry form that originates from Japan. My data includes 11 haikus from the animated Nickelodeon television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, and their Finnish translations. I compare the original English haikus to the traditional Japanese form and study which translation strategies have been used, and what happens to the poetry form in the translations. I also discuss how the characters’ on-screen actions can be seen in some of the haikus and their translations.
The five translation strategy categories I created to use in my analysis are metrical, literal, simplified, adapted, and interpretative translation. They are based on some of André Lefevere’s (1975) poetry translation strategies. These categories could be tested and used on different types of data in the future.
Lefevere (1975) and others (Bassnett 2002, Reynolds 2011) agree that there is a clear dichotomy in poetry translation, where all aspects of a poem cannot be translated. According to them, there will always be shortcomings in the form or the content of a translated poem.
This dichotomy can be seen in some examples in my analysis, as some haiku translations were not able to uphold the syllable structure and simplified translation was a common strategy, which in turn led to missing season words.
According to Lefevere, literal translation causes insufficiencies in other aspects, like the form and understandability, of the translated poem. However, literal translation was used in over half of the translations in my data and many of them were able to uphold the meaning and the form of the original poems.
The five translation strategy categories I created to use in my analysis are metrical, literal, simplified, adapted, and interpretative translation. They are based on some of André Lefevere’s (1975) poetry translation strategies. These categories could be tested and used on different types of data in the future.
Lefevere (1975) and others (Bassnett 2002, Reynolds 2011) agree that there is a clear dichotomy in poetry translation, where all aspects of a poem cannot be translated. According to them, there will always be shortcomings in the form or the content of a translated poem.
This dichotomy can be seen in some examples in my analysis, as some haiku translations were not able to uphold the syllable structure and simplified translation was a common strategy, which in turn led to missing season words.
According to Lefevere, literal translation causes insufficiencies in other aspects, like the form and understandability, of the translated poem. However, literal translation was used in over half of the translations in my data and many of them were able to uphold the meaning and the form of the original poems.