From Romanian "soul" to english "heart": dilemmas of cultural and gender representation in translating qualitative data
Titelübersetzung:Von der rumänischen "Seele" zum englischen "Herz": Dilemmata von Kultur- und Gender-Repräsentation bei der Übersetzung qualitativer Daten
Autor/in:
Macht, Alexandra
Quelle: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19 (2018) 2, 18 S
Inhalt: In diesem Artikel stelle ich dar, dass beim Übersetzen in der interkulturellen Forschung eine linguistische Hierarchie hervorgebracht wird, wobei die englische Sprache die rumänische Sprache unterordnet. Ich illustriere meine Argumentation mit Beispielen aus 47 qualitativen Interviews mit schottischen und rumänischen Vätern, in denen es um das Thema "Liebe" geht. Ich beschreibe, wie ich in meiner Rolle als anglo-rumänische zweisprachige Interpretin unbeabsichtigt zur Entstehung dieser Hierarchie beigetragen habe. Beim Übersetzen geschah dies, indem ich das Rumänisch dem Englischen anglich, um die Bedeutungen, Werte und Gefühle rumänischer Väter einem hauptsächlich englischsprachigen Publikum zu vermitteln. Durch emotionale Reflexivität und Fokussierung auf Genderfragen im Rahmen der Verantwortung der Wissensproduktion löste ich eine Reihe linguistischer Spannungen. Die Übertragung emotionaler Bedeutungen in eine andere Sprache hat paradoxer Weise die gravierende positive Konsequenz, den Fokus in der Forschung vom Zentrum auf die Ränder zu verlagern: Dies erhöht die Sichtbarkeit einer normalerweise übersehenen Gruppe von Menschen mit einem bestimmten kulturellen Hintergrund.
Inhalt: In this article I argue that translation in cross-cultural research leads to the construction of a certain linguistic hierarchy, wherein the English language subordinates the Romanian language. I illustrate my arguments with examples from 47 qualitative interviews with Scottish and Romanian fathers on the topic of love. To situate this argument, I describe how in my role as an Anglo-Romanian bilingual interpreter I inadvertently contributed to the creation of this hierarchy. This happened through translation as I was fitting Romanian into English to disseminate the meanings, values and emotions of Romanian fathers to a primarily English-speaking audience. At the same time by employing emotional reflexivity and focusing on gender matters in the context of shared responsibility of constructing knowledge, I resolved some linguistic tensions. Paradoxically, by carrying emotional meanings across into another language, there is the main positive consequence of moving the focus in research from the center to the margins, as it increases the visibility of a usually overlooked sample of people from a specific cultural background.
Cultural identity in Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter
Autor/in:
Ng, Wen Lee; Wan Yahya, Wan Roselezam; Mani, Manimangai
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 62, S 131-139
Inhalt: Eugenia Kim’s The Calligrapher's Daughter (2009) is a well-received East Asian novel about a Korean Christian, Najin's encounter with western culture. As an aristocratic woman, she is expected to uphold Korean tradition. However, as Najin realises that she is culturally marginalised by her father and the Korean traditional society mainly due to her gender, she picks up a foreign culture introduced to her, western culture. This move is extremely significant because after Najin driven by cultural marginalisation to embrace western culture, her cultural practices are no longer the same with traditional Korean women. This important turn of the novel has not been explored by scholars extensively. Thus, this study aims to depart from the cultural marginalisation faced by Najin. Furthermore, due to the fact that cultural identity formation is highly influenced by culture, there is a need to look into the changes of Najin’s cultural identity as she incorporates western culture into her Korean traditional culture. By investigating the changes of Najin’s cultural identity throughout the novel, this study finds that Najin has transformed from a nameless girl without an identity into an independent woman with the help of western education.
Schlagwörter:Christentum; Literatur; Tradition; Ostasien; Roman; Emanzipation; Marginalität; Western world; culture; woman; kulturelle Identität; emancipation; westliche Welt; cultural identity; literature; Kultur; Christianity; tradition; marginality; Far East; novel; Korea
SSOAR Kategorie:Kultursoziologie, Kunstsoziologie, Literatursoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
The role of culture and society in the development of plot in Tanushree Podder's Escape from Harem and Gita Mehta's A River Sutra: a feminist reading
Autor/in:
Khandhar, Diren Ashok; Mani, Manimangai
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 56, S 44-49
Inhalt: Culture and Society are often the main gist of most novels. These two factors often influence and control the characters, thus helping in the development of the plot. A plot, as defined by Egan (1978), is used to indicate an outline of events and serves as a skeleton in a literary piece. In other words, it is a tool in making sure the main incidents or scenarios are presented in a particular order to establish a clear understanding of what is being written. Culture and society plays the essence in a novel as it constructs these main ideas in engaging the interest of a reader and also extends the intended message of the particular writer. This paper looks into how culture and society helps in developing the plots of the selected novels using the feminist approach. Tanushree Podder's, Escape from Harem (2013) and Gita Mehta's A River Sutra (1993) amazingly are both set in India. Podder and Mehta have inserted the perception society had over women and how male supremacy was glorified in many aspects. The essence of feminist approach was very much present in these two novels. According to Tyson (2006), feminism concerns the ways in which literature undermines the economic, political, social and psychological oppression on women. Though the setting of both novels fall in different eras but the theme of female oppression remains the same. The patriarchal society uses culture and religion as a tool to control women and oppress them. Both authors have shown how the women in the 17th century and in the 20th century face the same kind of judgment from the society and men in general.
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 58, S 123-129
Inhalt: This article aims at studying the representation of the Orient in Pasolini's film Arabian Nights(1974). Since this film is a faithful adaptation of Thousand and One Nights it will be examined as carrying the same ideology which the text carries. The text of Thousand and One Nights established and legitimized orientalism in the west. Thus the movie follows suit in institutionalizing Orientalism. This is obtained by a close watching analysis and by looking at the images of the Orient, the plot itself, potential stylistic features which expresses images or attitudes in this regard. Our hypothesis is that the Orient in this movie is portrayed in accordance with notions of representation of the Other being depicted as, amongst other aspects, exotic, sexual, erotic and as a homogenous mass. Pasolini portrays Oriental men and woman as bodies in the duality of mind and body, and portrays them as a homogenous mass this is merely due to their belonging to a particular culture or race. The film represents the Oriental men and women as having a defining interest in sex and eroticism. It displays an exoticising Western view of the Oriental culture.
Schlagwörter:Erotik; eroticism; Orientalistik; Arab countries; Western world; Anpassung; culture; Film; film; westliche Welt; adaptation; Kultur; arabische Länder; orientalism; Darstellung; Pasolini, P.
SSOAR Kategorie:Kultursoziologie, Kunstsoziologie, Literatursoziologie, andere Medien
The frequency of expressions and proverbs in different Iranian generations' speech styles
Autor/in:
Khaghaninejad, Mohammad Saber; Hadigheh, Saharsaadat
Quelle: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, (2015) 50, S 13-19
Inhalt: Change is one of the fundamentals of every language. Every community consists of different generations with various perspectives toward life. The difference among different generations' vernaculars are so drastic that it would not be an exaggeration to claim that every generation of a society or a speech community has its own language or vernacular which distinguishes it from other generations or age-groups of the society in lexico-grammatical terms. This study put the frequency of expressions and proverbs in different generations' speech styles under investigation. Hence, inspired by stratified randomization technique, the researcher randomly selected a group of 24 middle-aged and similarly a group of 24 teenager participants of the two genders. Each of the age-groups consisted of 12 male and 12 female subjects in order to provide the possibility to determine the role of gender on expression or proverb usage. All the subjects were individually interviewed for elicitation of the needed data then their sentences were recorded and accurately transcribed for further investigation. By counting the expressions or proverbs in sentences of male/female teenagers' and middle-aged subjects of the research, their expression and proverb usage frequencies were illuminated. The study's results suggested that middle-aged speakers of Iranian community employed expressions and proverbs more than teenagers. This implies that the older would have a stronger relationship with the literature and are more satisfied with their culture and identity. Middle-aged subjects used those expressions which were deeply rooted in the literature and culture while teenagers were highly in use of those expressions and proverbs which were suddenly entered into the lexicon of the society by the advent of new television series or expanded advertisements of mass media, for example. Furthermore, it was found that males generally were more interested in using expression and proverb in their daily conversations than females.
"Warte Mal!": construction and consumption of female subjectivity after the velvet revolution
Autor/in:
Charlesworth, Amy
Quelle: Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review, 11 (2011) 4, S 621-631
Inhalt: This paper revisits the politics of representation debates' post-1989 in relation to Ann-Sofi Sidén’s Warte Mal! Prostitution after the Velvet Revolution (1999). It seeks to address the manner in which the political is thought through the aesthetic, focusing specifically on the mediums of the video camera and the diary as research tools in producing a reconfigured essayistic narrative. This device, I propose seeks to understand an altered subjectivity, its production and consumption in the transition from one socio-economic and political system to another. The work shows a demand for a new type of critical cultural production in the face of the ubiquity of the image in the 21st century and its power, when harnessed by governmental or institutional restrictions, to render lived complexities as static moments confined to narratives of victimization which divert attention away from large-scale historical processes (the cultural, economic, political and social components) that drive women to work in enslaved positions in the sex industry. Boris Groys’ focus on the role of documentation as art and its biopolitical contingencies in his work for Documenta 11 (2002) and his book Art Power (2008) provides the theoretical underpinnings of the paper.
Das Profil der Täterin: neue Monsterheldinnen im Horrorgenre
Titelübersetzung:The female culprit's profile: new female monster-heroes in the horrorgenre
Autor/in:
Miess, Julia
Quelle: GENDER - Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 3 (2011) 2, S 25-43
Inhalt: "Die Vorstellung der passiv-friedfertigen Frau und des aktiv-aggressiven Mannes findet nicht nur in den traditionellen Bildern des männlichen Schurken und der Opferheldin Ausdruck, sondern wird implizit selbst in den wegweisenden kulturkritischen Werken Klaus Theweleits und Elisabeth Bronfens sichtbar, die ihr Erkenntnisinteresse zuerst auf männliche Subjektpositionen - Männerfantasien -richten. Sie führt in Gattungstheorien zu Ausblendungen und drückt sich in Klischees von Mütterlichkeit und weiblicher Zurückhaltung im Arbeitsleben mit realer Wirkung aus. Ausgehend von Figuren wie der Täterin Nike im Roman Die Hirnkönigin der deutschsprachigen Autorin Thea Dorn zeichne ich die kulturelle Wandlung von der Opferheldin zur Monsterheldin nach - zu einer Figuration, die auf neue Möglichkeiten der Identifikation und auf die Notwendigkeit verweist, die Zusammenhänge von Gender, Genre und Gewaltdarstellung neu zu diskutieren." (Autorenreferat)
Inhalt: "The idea of passive-placid femininity and active-aggressive masculinity does not only become evident in traditional representations of male Gothic villains and female victim-heroes; it is also implicitly evident in works of cultural criticism that have become classics. Klaus Theweleit and Elisabeth Bronfen first of all focus on male subject positions, 'male fantasies'. Until today, the idea of women being less aggressive has led to their exclusion from genre theories and affects everyday life, from cliches of devoted motherhood to inequalities in employment. By analyzing characters such as the female serial killer Nike in Thea Dorn's novel Die Hirnkönigin ['the brain queen'], I would like to Show a cultural shift from female victim-hero to female monsterhero. In representations of the female monster-hero, new possibilities of identification become exemplary, as well as the need to rediscuss the relation between gender, genre and Images of violence." (author's abstract)
Unpacking feminist consciousness and racial politics: representation and the vanguard in contemporary Cuban visual culture
Titelübersetzung:Die Entschleierung des feministischen Bewusstseins und der Rassepolitiken: Repräsentation und Avantgarde in der zeitgenössischen visuellen Kultur Kubas
Autor/in:
Lamazares, Alexander
Quelle: GENDER - Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft, 2 (2010) 3, S 107-122
Inhalt: "Seit den 1990er Jahren umfasst das Spektrum post-sowjetischer Ästhetik auf Kuba aufgrund der nach dem Fall der Berliner Mauer eingetretenen politischen Entspannung vielfältige Ausdrucksformen, die von Blutvergießen bis zu Klage und von komisch bis grandios reichen. Doch wie gehen kubanische Künstlerinnen mit den Widersprüchen, Ironien, Mehrdeutigkeiten und sozialen Aushandlungen des kubanischen Lebens um? Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwiefern kubanische Künstlerinnen am Gender- und Rassediskurs teilgenommen und auf diesen eingewirkt haben. Mehr denn je repräsentiert das künstlerische Schaffen heute einen quasi-unabhängigen, sich im Dialog mit dem Staat befindlichen Raum vor dem Hintergrund der eigenen Perspektiven auf die Revolutionserfahrung. Die Vielfalt zeitgenössischer experimenteller und konzeptueller kubanischer KünstlerInnen nachzeichnend, wird deutlich, dass diese anerkannte künstlerische und politische Diskurse nicht nur in ihrer eigenen Gesellschaft, sondern auch auf globaler Ebene infrage gestellt und verändert haben. Dabei werden auch die Umkehrung konventioneller Vorstellungen von 'Zentrum' und 'Peripherie' sowie die Verkörperung dieses provokativen, ironischen, humorvollen und zugleich alles verschlingenden Ansatzes nachgezeichnet. Die Arbeiten dieser Künstlerinnen geben Aufschluss über den Alltag kubanischer Frauen auf und fernab der Insel, über Geschlechter- und Rassepolitiken, Sexualität und Macht sowie einen globalen Feminismus in der Post-Sowjet-Ära." (Autorenreferat)
Inhalt: "In the 1990s and 2000s, sensing that the critical situation had loosened with the fall of the Berlin Wall, post-Soviet aesthetics in Cuba ranged from bloodletting to bitching and from comical to grandiose. How then do women artists in Cuba deal with the contradictions, ironies, ambiguities and social negotiations in Cuban life? This paper will look at how Cuba's artists have participated and contributed to this discourse on gender and racial politics. Now more than ever, the artistic production represents a quasi-independent space in dialogue with the State in their views of the revolutionary experience. Drawing on a variety of experimental and conceptual contemporary Cuban artists this paper shows how they have challenged accepted artistic and political discourse not only in their own society but in the global arena, reversing conventional notions of 'center' and 'periphery' and embodying a provocative, ironic, humorous, and omnivorously critical approach. Their work sheds light on the everyday life of Cuban women living on the Island and abroad, gender and racial politics, sexuality and power, and the discourse of global feminism in a post-Soviet context." (author's abstract)