Precious old humbug: Aging as a motive for retranslation in Finnish translations of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Kaski, Krista (2024)
2024
Monikielisen viestinnän ja käännöstieteen maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in Multilingual Communication and Translation Studies
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-10-17
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202410029072
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202410029072
Tiivistelmä
It is not uncommon for translations to age due to their adherence to contemporary linguistic and cultural norms. The purpose of this thesis is to research whether aging is a good motive for retranslation, and whether outdated domesticated words can appear foreignized to modern readers due to changes in language norms. I studied three Finnish translations of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from the years 1927, 1929, and 2018.
I collected words that seemed outdated according to my own sense of language. I divided these examples into categories depending on whether they were included in the dictionaries I utilised, whether they were archaic or not, and when they were used. By using Schleiermacher’s and Venuti’s theories on domestication and foreignization, as well as the retranslation hypothesis, I further divided them into categories on both the domesticated-foreignized axis and the outdated-modern axis. I also formed a category for idioms, units of measurement, and words that only differed from each other in spelling. I analysed the examples to determine whether the translations were outdated enough to warrant a retranslation.
The results show that the 1927 and 1929 translations are not outdated enough for a retranslation to be made, because the flaws in them could be corrected with a revision. Outdated domesticated words could appear foreignized to modern readers due to them being either outdated concepts, or words that have later been replaced with more contemporary equivalents.
I collected words that seemed outdated according to my own sense of language. I divided these examples into categories depending on whether they were included in the dictionaries I utilised, whether they were archaic or not, and when they were used. By using Schleiermacher’s and Venuti’s theories on domestication and foreignization, as well as the retranslation hypothesis, I further divided them into categories on both the domesticated-foreignized axis and the outdated-modern axis. I also formed a category for idioms, units of measurement, and words that only differed from each other in spelling. I analysed the examples to determine whether the translations were outdated enough to warrant a retranslation.
The results show that the 1927 and 1929 translations are not outdated enough for a retranslation to be made, because the flaws in them could be corrected with a revision. Outdated domesticated words could appear foreignized to modern readers due to them being either outdated concepts, or words that have later been replaced with more contemporary equivalents.