FINAL PROJECT

Course : Theory of Translation

Day / Date : Saturday/16 January 2021
Code : 23.3.17.CP4.11
Credit : 2 SKS
Lecturer : Agseora Ediyen, M.Hum
Instructions 1. Answer all questions in a piece of paper (A4 or double folio) in
hand writing style.
2. Write your name, NIM, class and date of the test.
3. You have 10 days to finish your final project. You can submit the
final project on Saturday Jan, 16, 2021 at 8.00 PM. Scan the final
project with the scanner application on your phone.
4. If you do a plagiarism (similar sentences to books, internet, or your
friends’ answer), your score will be automatically zero (0).
5. Late submission will not be tolerated. Good Luck!

1. John Le Carré’s novel The Russia House opens with the following three paragraphs
(1989:17–18):

In a broad Moscow street not two hundred yards from the Leningrad station, on the
upper floor of an ornate and hideous hotel built by Stalin in the style known to
Muscovites as Empire During the Plague, the British Council’s first ever audio fair for
the teaching of the English language and the spread of British culture was grinding to
its excruciating end. The time was half past five, the summer weather erratic. After
fierce rain showers all day long, a false sunlight was blazing in the puddles and raising
vapours from the pavements. Of the passers-by, the younger ones wore jeans and
sneakers, but their elders were still huddled in their warms.

The room the Council had rented was not expensive but neither was it appropriate to
the occasion. I have seen it – Not long ago, in Moscow on quite another mission, I
tiptoed up the great empty staircase and, with a diplomatic passport in my pocket, stood
in the eternal dusk that shrouds old ballrooms when they are asleep – With its plump
brown pillars and gilded mirrors, it was better suited to the last hours of a sinking liner
than the launch of a great initiative. On the ceiling, snarling Russians in proletarian
caps shook their fists at Lenin. Their vigour contrasted unhelpfully with the chipped
green racks of sound cassettes along the walls, featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and Advanced
Computer English in Three Hours. The sack-cloth sound-booths, locally procured and
lacking many of their promised features, had the sadness of deck chairs on a rainy
beach. The exhibitors’ stands, crammed under the shadow of an overhanging gallery,
seemed as blasphemous as betting shops in a tabernacle.

Nevertheless a fair of sorts had taken place. People had come, as Moscow people do,
provided they have the documents and status to satisfy the hard-eyed boys in leather
jackets at the door. Out of politeness. Out of curiosity. To talk to Westerners. Because it
is there. And now on the fifth and final evening the great farewell cocktail party of
exhibitors and invited guests was getting into its stride. A handful of the small
nomenclatura of the Soviet cultural bureaucracy was gathering under the chandelier,
the ladies in their beehive hairstyles and flowered frocks designed for slenderer frames,
the gentlemen slimmed by the shiny Frenchtailored suits that signified access to the
special clothing stores. Only their British hosts, in despondent shades of grey, observed
the monotone of socialist austerity. The hubbub rose, a brigade of pinafored
governesses distributed the curling salami sandwiches and warm white wine. A senior
British diplomat who was not quite the Ambassador shook the better hands and said he
was delighted.

Imagine that you have been asked to translate Le Carré’s novel into your target language
in bahasa. You have not yet read the whole novel – and you would normally read a text all
the way through before you seriously get down to translating it. However, you decide that
it might be helpful to ‘warm up’ to Le Carré by translating a few extracts to get the hang
of his unusual style.
Translate the preceding extract into your target language in bahasa and comment on any
difficulties involved in maintaining the flow of information in terms of thematic and
information structures. You should pay particular attention to marked information
structures in the third paragraph. How does Le Carré’s manipulation of English syntax
foreground certain items of information? Can this be successfully conveyed in Bahasa?

2. Imagine that you have been invited to join a team of translators to produce a version of the
Macmillan Encyclopedia in your target language. Your assignment is to translate all the
entries on people (rather than those on countries or political terms, for instance). You will
therefore need to be particularly careful about handling referential chains in your
 translated version. The following are a couple of typical entries from The Macmillan
Encyclopedia ( 1986 ):
Elizabeth I (1533–1603) Queen of England and Ireland (1558–1603), daughter of Henry
VIII and Anne Boleyn. Her mother’s execution and Elizabeth’s imprisonment by Mary
I made her cautious and suspicious but her devotion to England made her one of its
greatest monarchs. Her religious compromise (1559–63) established Protestantism in
England ( see Reformation). Several plots to place her Roman Catholic cousin, Mary,
Queen of Scots, on the throne led to Mary’s execution (1587). England won a great
naval victory in 1588 by destroying the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth never married and
was called the Virgin Queen, although her relationships with, among others, the Earl of
Leicester and the 2nd Earl of Essex caused considerable speculation.

Van Gogh, Vincent (1853–90) Dutch postimpressionist painter, born at Zundert, the son
of a pastor. He worked as an art dealer, a teacher in England, and a missionary among
coalminers before taking up painting in about 1880. His early works were chiefl y
drawings of peasants. After a limited training in The Hague and in Antwerp, where he
studied the works of Rubens and Japanese prints, he moved to Paris (1886). Here he
briefly adopted the style of impressionism and later of pointillism. In Arles in 1888 he
painted his best-known works – orchards, sunflowers, and the local postman and his
family – but only one painting was sold during his lifetime. The visit of his friend
Gauguin ended in a quarrel during which Van Gogh cut off part of his own left ear. In
1889 he entered a mental asylum at Saint Rémy. The ominous Wheatfi eld with Crows
(Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) was painted shortly before his suicide. His letters to
his brother (Theo) contain the best account of his life and work. See expressionism.

Translate the preceding entries into your target language, paying particular attention to the
ways in which different participants are traced in each entry. Comment on any differences
in patterns of reference in the source and target versions of each entry.