School of Modern Languages

and Cultures
FACULTY OF ARTS

Research Postgraduate Newsletter

December 2009
Dear All,

A new year of research has already started and we hope that both beginners and returners have enjoyed the first semester of 2009
at Leeds University! Here is the first edition of the newsletter 2009/2010, which comes back thanks to your numerous contributions!
We also would like to welcome the new director of the SMLC Research Training Programme for PGR Students, Christopher Dent
and his assistant Hanem El-Farahaty.
We are looking forward receiving more stories for the May newsletter! Until then, we and all the SMLC team wish you a really good
Christmas break!
Editor: Rebecca Ferreboeuf, Co-editor: Anastasia Malama, Proof-Reader: Ruth Chester

Prof Christopher Dent (Director, PGR students are researching in the Language / Literature /
Research Training Programme) Culture disciplinary field and 44% in the Humanities /
Social Science / Culture area. With this in mind, I
This is my first thought it best to move more towards a generic research
year as Director of the training model but with a future view to developing
PGR Research Training parallel sessions running in certain weeks that would
Programme, and I would address more specific disciplinary (e.g. language, social
first like to thank both science, humanities) research training issues.
David Looseley and At the same time, I have approached my
Rachel Haworth (the counterpart directors from 15 other Schools across four
previous Programme Faculties (Arts, ESSL, PVAC and LUBS) to explore the
Director and Assistant potential for inter-School co-operation on PGR research
respectively) for their training matters. I have just started this network-building
fantastic support and process but am working on two initial ideas. The first is
excellent work on to explore what links may exist between the research
developing the studies of our own School’s PGR students and those
programme over the from other Schools, then providing the opportunity for
years. My recent students to meet up if they wish to discuss their research
investigations into connections. The second idea is to put in place certain
School-level PGR research training across the ‘exchange arrangements’ between Schools whereby
University (more on this later) has confirmed what David PGR students may attend any research training seminar
told me previously that the SMLC has one of the best they find particularly relevant to their research. I am still
and most established of such programmes on the working on developing this network and will be in touch
campus. with more details later this semester.
In preparation for my new role as Director, I
looked carefully at our PGR profile and found that the Looking forward to getting to know you all this year!
School had a cohort of well over 100 students working
on a wide multi-disciplinary range of research studies. Best wishes,
By way of broad classification, around 56% of our
Prof Christopher Dent

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Research Postgraduate Newsletter
December 2009
Leeds
Murdering the Source Language (SL)
Text Words
By Othman Othman
Translation is as old as language itself. The term
translation in Arabic is Tarjama. It comes from the root
ra ja ma which means katala, that is, to murder. This
suggests when you translate from English into Arabic,
you then ‘murder’ the source language (SL) text and
recreate it into another language, the target language
(TL).
However, talking about murdering the SL text
can be further explored through ‘Dynamic Equivalence‘.
This approach has been dominated by Nida, the
professional linguist and Bible translator. He argues that:
‘Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor
language the closest natural equivalent of the source
language message (1969:12)’.
By this approach, you can ‘murder’ the SL words
and create other words to maintain the ‘intended
meaning‘. The TL recipient should receive the same
effect that the SL recipient was deemed to receive. In
this approach, you are faithful not in rendering surface
words in a given text, but in rendering the ‘intended
meaning’. As a translator, this approach is very
important to me when I face difficulties in rendering the
meaning of some cultural signs. e.g proverbs. This really
helps me in the translation process and saves time
instead of explaining the source language idiom or
proverb. Therefore, giving a dynamic translation can
serve two purposes: save time for a translator, and
convey the exact meaning to the Target Reader. i.e the
native speakers of the target language (TL).
This approach is particularly useful in translating
proverbs. For example, when translating the Arabic
sentence Fulan katheeru ramadi, I faced real difficulty
when I tried to convey it to the target readers as it
contains cultural value which is different from the target
readers’ culture. I found that it was impossible to render
it satisfactory unless I provided either an explanation or
its dynamic equivalent in the target language, if there is
one. In the above sentence, I would fail to produce the
intended meaning by looking in a bilingual dictionary and
translating each word separately; this would give me the
phrase ‘that person is full of ash’ !!!. In this case, I
resorted to applying dynamic translation; I "murdered"
the SL words, and recreated other words to achieve the
‘intended meaning’ which is ‘That person is very
generous’.
Alternatively, by applying this approach to the
English saying ‘Care killed the cat’ which means ‘anxiety
makes age shorter’, and rendering it in Arabic word for
word it makes no sense to the Arabic reader. So, I
suggest providing the available equivalent that
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of
accomplishes the nearest effect of that English saying
which would be the phrase, Man kathura hammuhu,
kasura ajaluhu. By his approach, Nida broke the
boarders of SL words and resorted to finding the
intended meaning behind the surface of a given text. In
conclusion, translators should be aware of such
sentences, and that they cannot be translated by a
bilingual dictionary alone, but that words of the SL text
should rather be ‘murdered’ and recreated as other
words in the TL to keep the intended meaning alive.
Othman Othman, PhD student in the Translation
Centre, School of Modern Languages, University of Leeds
An Interview with Richard Zenith
By Rhian Atkin
Richard Zenith is a
freelance literary translator
who is probably best known
outside Portugal for his
English editions of the prose
and poetry of Portuguese
author, Fernando Pessoa.
Richard lives and works in
Portugal, and he is involved in
translation and other projects
globally. In this interview,
Rhian Atkin asks Richard
Zenith about his career.
Why did you decide to
become a translator?
I love to write, and world geography was one of
my favourite subjects in school. From a young age I
was fascinated by people who could speak foreign
languages, which for me represented alternate realities.
I never made a conscious decision to become a
translator, but it made sense.
What route did you take to become a translator?
I was 24, living in New York City, and flat broke.
I drafted a résumé that slightly exaggerated my
language skills (Portuguese and Spanish [...]) and
experience (this was the part I exaggerated), and began
doing some commercial translation and interpretation to
make money. I also sat in - completely unofficially - on a
literary translation seminar at Columbia University. I
looked for good but unknown Brazilian writers of fiction,
then of poetry. I sent translations around to magazines,
which paid nothing or almost nothing. That's how I got
started. Then I applied, with some success, for
grants. I've always worked as a freelance.
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Research Postgraduate Newsletter
December 2009
Leeds
What is your favourite type of text to translate?
Poetry, because it's more challenging. But you
have to write poetry yourself - or at least be an avid
reader of poetry - to have any chance of doing a decent
job.
Which piece of work are you most proud of?
Hmmm. Can't name just one piece. In the
fiction department I'm pleased with 3 works from 3
different continents: "Those Lopes", a short story by
João Guimarães Rosa (in the Oxford Anthology of the
Brazilian Short Story); The Loves of João Vêncio, a
novel by José Luandino Vieira [an Angolan author], and
The Inquisitors' Manual, by [the Portuguese novelist]
António Lobo Antunes. In poetry: Education by Stone:
Selected Poems of João Cabral de Melo Neto and
Sonnets and Other Poems, by Luís de Camões. If I don't
mention Pessoa, it's because I'm so steeped in his work
(which I love), and I've translated so much of it, that it's
hard to single out one title.
Can you tell us more about the other aspects of your
career, such as your involvement in films and
exhibitions?
[...] It was never my specific ambition to get
involved in things such as films, exhibitions and
producing editions, but I also was not interested in only
translating. I studied the authors I translated and wrote
magazine articles, conference papers and book prefaces
about them and their work. To use a trendy term, I took
a "holistic" approach. And this led to things I never
imagined or aspired to.
If you were not a translator, what would you be
doing now?
Working as a bartender in New York and writing novels
that no one wants to publish. Or -- who knows? --
maybe they would get published.
Rhian Atkin, PhD Student in the Department of
Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies.
Writing Tools to Consider
By Mohammed Al Barakati
Having managed to get
through the prerequisites to study an
MA or a PhD at the SMLC, does not
necessarily mean your road is going
to be furnished with flowers. Maybe,
one of the first obstacles one could
stumble on is academic writing. It
takes quite some time for a fresher
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of
to get in the mode for writing, and become confident
enough to show his or her writing to others.
As it is one of the troublesome concerns that
worries students in academia, postgraduates - especially
non-English students - do strive to make their writing
appealing to others by trying to make it read as naturally
as possible as if it were written by a native speaker. Yet
lacking the required experience and knowledge could
make their writing seem rather colourless.
Personally speaking, I think that one of the most
important aspects that needs attention is the use of
vocabulary. This may involve correct usage of fixed
expressions and catch phrases, collocations, formality
vs. informality, etc. Such units, if used properly in writing,
would help one say more with fewer words. Moreover,
they would garnish writing (so to speak) and make it flow
to the reader very easily. Therefore, I would suggest a
few tools which I use constantly:
1. The university of Manchester offers some useful
material regarding academic writing.
http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/introd
uctions.htm
The site attempts to list all possible phrases one
could use for introducing his/her project,
referring to the literature, describing methods of
the research, discussing findings, and writing
conclusions.
2. A software dictionary called Easy Lingo. In
addition to word definition or translation, Easy
Lingo provides lots of idioms and useful
expressions that linked to the entry word.
3. Search Engines: One can check usage of a
certain phrase by looking it up on the web.
There are also some specialised search engines
which one can use to search for phrases in
specific formats such as: http://www.pdf-search-
engine.com
4. Thesaurus dictionaries: Those dictionaries
provide lists of synonyms and antonyms of a
given item. I would suggest the following online
dictionaries in this regard:
http://thesaurus.reference.com/
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/
www.wordwebonline.com/
As I mentioned earlier, these are the tools which
I have used, and benefited from greatly. I am sure that
everyone has got his/her own tools for writing which can
be helpful for other fellow postgraduates.
Mohammed Al Barakati, PhD Student in the Arabic
Department, University of Leeds.
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Research Postgraduate Newsletter
December 2009
Leeds
My Parisien experience in a nutshell
By Ashley Beedaysee
The university barricade at Paris 12 during the strikes
over university reform in 2008.
Ashley Beedaysee, MA Student in the French Department.
The next issue of the Newsletter is due in May 2009. If you have an article, story or picture for the next
edition, please email Rebecca Ferreboeuf at mlrf@leeds.ac.uk
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of
Bubble Bursting
By Ruth Chester
The decision to study for a doctorate is a weird
and wonderful process. As an arts student with a
conscience, it is difficult to decide to do something which
seems at once so selfish and yet so pressingly
necessary. I remember the feeling of being torn between
the inescapable need to pursue my topic and an instinct
to be useful; the desire to keep my mind open to the
world and not enclose myself in the beautiful bubble of
academia. So as soon as I succumbed to the inevitable
and entered my own personal bubble, I began looking
for ways to stretch its surface.
The obvious and most enjoyable way (at least
for me) is to teach. It’s all very well to sit communing
alone with books, but to me the test of knowledge has
always been to communicate it. My first year of teaching
at university was a good mix – one of my main thesis
texts in one class and a book I’d never even heard of in
the other. Although it’s a joy to teach one’s ‘own subject’,
it was equally fun to learn along with the students, and
hopefully put me closer again to their experience. It also
reminded me that there are many interesting things
outside my own bubble.
The second way that has come to me this year
to ‘step outside’ of my usual creative output, has been
my involvement in a project to create podcasts. After
initially recoiling from the idea that anyone would choose
to listen to a computer rather than read a book, I put my
prejudices behind me and began to see the excitements
of the project. Briefly, the podcast project is to create
seven groups of podcasts in the form of interviews with
Leeds academics covering various areas of special
research which are going on in the university. Being
close to my topic, I was entrusted with the care of
‘Medieval’ podcasts (what a clash), but also with
Postcolonial Studies and World Cinema. In doing this
I’ve been lucky enough to meet and hear some leaders
in their respective fields talking about what fascinates
them, their up to date research, while at the same time
expanding my own knowledge of everything from
Hollywood to Elves, from postcolonial London to
Taiwanese cinema. At the same time I’ve got involved
with some technology that I never imagined my
technophobe brain would be able to cope with!
I suppose finally what I want to advocate in this
article is a willingness to look around oneself. It will
probably be nothing new to most of you, but personally
speaking, despite being deeply attached to my thesis,
there is always space for trying something new at the
same time.
Ruth Chester, PhD student in the Italian Department.
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