Benjamins Translation Library – serie

As metaphors are fascinating linguistic and cultural phenomena, and as they have a great potential to cause translation problems, it is no wonder that a great deal has been written about them, both in metaphor studies and in translation studies. They are severely under-researched from the perspective of audiovisual translation, however. This is surprising, considering the added layers of complexity caused by the multimodality of audiovisual texts, and the special conditions and constraints of dubbing and subtitling. This monograph seeks to remedy this, as it investigates how metaphors are handled in three different genres of televisual light entertainment. If a metaphor is verbalized in the dialogue while being visualized on screen, and if that metaphor is not normally used in the target language, the task of the audiovisual translator becomes very challenging indeed. The research shows that audiovisual translators go to great lengths of creativity and complexity to do metaphors justice and maintain harmony with sound and image.

A prominent keyword of the 21st century humanities, the concept of transmedia describes, in essence, an age-old phenomenon: texts tend to spread in a fragmented fashion, in various media, and be appropriated and further developed by multiple agents. However, the concept of transmedia and the practices it describes have become especially foregrounded with the rise of the new digital technologies and the spread of globalization. Transmedial practices more often than not span across languages and cultures; nevertheless, the ways in which transmediality intersects with translation is an aspect that has so far received limited attention in the respective academic fields. The aim of this volume is to introduce the concept of transmedia to translation studies and to highlight the centrality of translation processes in transmedial phenomena. Both in its narrower sense as interlingual transfer and in its broader sense as intersemiotic transposition, translation is of paramount importance in the study of transmedia.

Intralingual Translation: Beyond language and text offers an innovative, wide-ranging exploration of translation within the same language, bringing together leading international scholars from diverse linguistic and disciplinary backgrounds. Spanning theoretical reflections, empirical studies, and historical analyses, the volume addresses the rich spectrum of intralingual practices, from plain language and accessibility adaptations to diachronic rewritings of historical texts. The first section investigates various aspects of the “Intralingual Sphere” and its connections to other modes of translation. The second part explores the rapidly developing field of accessibility and simplification, including Easy Language, plain language, and graded readers. The book concludes with in-depth studies of diachronic translation across different historical layers of the French, Italian and Latin languages. Originating in an international workshop, these contributions highlight intralingual translation as a multi-faceted and socially situated activity, offering new insights into its theoretical boundaries, practical challenges, and cultural significance.