Asian Americans, Translators and Metaphors

Two recent papers with Brontë-related content:

Reading in the Aftermath: An Asian American Jane Eyre

by Olivia Loksing Moy

Victorian Studies
Vol. 62, No. 3, Undisciplining Victorian Studies (Spring 2020), pp. 406-420

What business do we have to speak of Brontë novels in relation to ourselves? For scholars of color, how do we engage with canon without reifying our own marginality within the rubric of Victorian empire and exclusion? This essay performs what I call “reading in the aftermath,” akin to Christina Sharpe's reading “in the wake”: a willingness to confront a racist past and its distorting aftereffects on life today. Turning to contemporary afterlives of Victorian texts, this article applies Asian and Asian Americanist critique, such as Anne Cheng's Ornamentalism, to explore a recent Brontë adaptation, Patricia Park's Re Jane. In her novel, Park uses the language of Jane Eyre as a tool to critique the classic's own critical legacy, ridiculing the pedantry of Anglo-American feminism imposed upon younger women of color. Multicultural afterlives and adaptations, I suggest, present opportunities to conjoin past and present, drawing Brontë studies into current discussions on race, racism, and ethnic American literatures.

Translating Literary Styles of Metaphors in Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Translators’ Authority
by Dr. Ibrahem Bani Abdo
International Journal of English and Education, Volume:9, Issue:4, October 2020

This study investigates the different authors‟ styles in translating metaphors of the canon Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre novel and examines whether translators‟ authorial weights (TT1 and TT2) may assist maintaining the ST content and messages. It also examines to what extent the target texts have been successfully able to render the ST metaphors faithfully in Arabic language based on using the equivalent‟s style. This study is a qualitative comparative analysis in nature and it is based on the theoretical part of Newmark (1998); Abdul-Raof (2015); Yassen (2013); Oliynyk (2014); Zahaprova (2016); Dickins, Hervey, & Higgins (2017); Bani Abdo (2017); and Haynes (2015). The studied sample (20 metaphors) is chosen randomly by the researcher. Two translators are selected based on their authorial weight as authors and translators. The translator of the TT1 ought to have more authority and authorial weight as a writer and a translator than in TT2. The study concludes that TT2 sometimes fails to render the exact intended meaning of the source text‟s metaphors. TT1 also represents to some-extent successfulness in translating the selected sample. Additions or omissions may successfully is used sometimes. Finally, the data analysis reveals that translators who possess sufficient authorial weight and experiences as an author and/or a translator are said to have a better translation. As a result, this study reveals that TT1 was more successful to translate the ST than TT2.