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Mažaraštis–mažakalbis–mažareikšmis: graikai vs lietuviai
Staponkutė, Dalia |
Date Issued | Issue | Start Page | End Page |
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2007 | 4 | 31 | 37 |
Comparison presupposes translation and translation presupposes comparison. This essay emphasizes the process of translation that happens within us and around us, i.e., translation ‘inwards’ and ‘outwards’ or, in this particular case, translation as cultural perception. Theoretically, my thinking on the matter is rooted in the concept of ‘intersemiotic translation’ coined by Roman Jakobson; in Lawrence Venuti’s research which reveals challenges of translation to cultural identity; also in Alphonso Lingis’s philosophy and his elaboration on ‘historiographic thinking’;and in Arjun Appadurai’s study of ‘the imaginary’ as a social act. All these ideas form a rich ground for rethinking the process of ‘translation of culture’ that is taking new shapes and obtaining new meanings within the context of contemporary globalization and cross-cultural communication. Referring to Lithuanian translations of literary texts written by Greek authors –Achileas Kyriakides, Eleni Ladia, Thodores Kallifatides, and Gashmed Kaplany – I not only express by means of the Lithuanian language various perceptions of ‘greekness’, but also try to grasp the feeling of similarity between these two cultural spaces. To achieve this effect, I choose to speak here of the phenomenon of ‘greekness’ as perceived by Greeks themselves. The literary texts as cultural facts help me to reveal that self-perception of oneself as ‘letterless-noteless-speechless’ emerges as a result of the translation of culture. It also significantly involves ‘the imaginary’ – an imaginative relationship with history, with contemporaneity, with the foreignness, with the other, and with the larger notion of ‘home’ in general. It seems that memory and self-perception of neither people is a simple memorial. It is an ongoing process of inside/outside translation.