«The Grimm Brothers’ stories were simplified between the first edition and the seventh and final edition. As an example of this simplification, there was an omission of a scene in Rapunzel in which she has brutal sex with the prince»

Meagan Carter, Samanta de Frutos García, Alexandra López Vera, Karina Ornelas Lozano, Aline Ferreira, Giselle Barbosa e Daniela Guerra
«Traduzindo o conteúdo violento dos Contos de Fadas dos Irmãos Grimm: um experimento com rastreador ocular»
Cadernos de Tradução, vol. 40, n.º 1 (2020)

Cadernos de Tradução | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | Centro de Comunicação e Expressão - CCE | Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução | Florianópolis | Santa Catarina | BRASIL

Se incluye a continuación un extracto seleccionado de las páginas 18 a 21 y 30 a 31 de la publicación en PDF. Las referencias pueden consultarse en la ubicación original.

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At Last She Met The Bridegroom Who Was Coming Slowly Back. Illustration By Arthur Rackham From Grimm's Fairy Tale, Fitcher's Bird, Published Late 19Th Century. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images). (The Spectator).

«Abstract

»Eye tracking has been introduced as a tool to analyze cognitive processes of translators in recent years. Current research with eye tracker focuses on examining translation processes. As far as we know, however, this tool has not been used for detecting eye movement behaviors related to the cognitive processing of violent content in the source text (ST). As research in this area is emerging, this study aims to determine if semantic associations with violent actions or activities in the ST produces a response in the gaze behavior of the translator.

»This paper presents an experimental study to investigate the cognitive processes involved in the translation of three condensed versions of Grimm brothers’ fairy tales. The selected texts present the range of violent content for which these tales are renowned, from more modern adaptations which remove the violent content to very explicit and graphicly violent stories. Texts were translated from Spanish (L2) into English (L1). Fixation counts and fixation duration were calculated for each participant in ten Areas of Interest (AOI) which represented challenges in translating various aspects of grammar and violence presented in these tales.

»Introduction

»Understanding the varying levels of cognition in Translation Studies (TS) has been proven difficult. One key crucial element in TS is the use of eye-tracking as it allows researchers to shed some light on the cognitive processes that individuals experience when translating (Kopal; Hvelplund). When a person reads a text, their eyes move back and forth across the lines of the text from one word to another and from one sentence to another. Notable actions such as stopping at certain words or constructions or even ceasing to write a certain number of times can have a direct relation with the level of difficulty of certain words, structures, or the text in general for the translator (Korpal).

»In addition, researchers can take in information about these pauses such as the amount of time that it takes for an individual to process a specific word or construction and examine the cognitive effort involved in the translation process. Attention distribution during translation can be analyzed by recording eye fixations (Dragsted). While more traditional measures for translation difficulty in a specific task (e.g. total time spent in a task), data from eye-tracking showed that the areas of interest might shed more light to understanding cognitive effort in a translation task (Ferreira, Schwieter, Gottardo, and Jones (C)).

»Furthermore, eye-tracking, as a tool for analyzing translation, allows researchers to investigate the cognitive process by not limiting them only to analyzing the quality of the final result, but the individual translator’s step-by-step process (Korpal). This paper discusses how translators handle texts with different levels of violent content when translating from Spanish (L2) into English (L1). The short literary texts selected for this study feature acts of violence, murder, rape, and abuse with the aim to analyze the subjects’ reactions during the translation process.

»The ultimate goal is to see if the explicit content has any effect on the cognitive effort of translators and if it interferes with their translation decisions. The elements taken into consideration for this analysis are the lexical selection, the areas of eye activation on certain words and structures, fixation counts and durations.

»An important focus of this paper will be on what Sandel (2015) describes as “rich points”. A “rich point” is any verbal or non-verbal expression which is particular of a certain group or culture under study defined “a priori” or “a posteriori” that does not make sense to the researcher, and requires any translation for outsiders that could be defined “a priori” or “a posteriori” (Sandel). “Rich points” occur when the translator encounters a puzzling moment in either the context, grammar, or style of the text. Through those points, researchers are able to troubleshoot the developing translation between cultures and languages. According to Sandel (1), “it is during the process of translation, when it becomes apparent that a verbal or non-verbal expression cannot be explained simple as it linked to a number of interconnected concepts, that ‘rich points’ emerge.”

»In previous studies, “rich points” have been used to pinpoint words and specific moments in translation where there was a slight confusion. Moments where “rich points” can be apparent are incomprehension, departures from expectations, or repackaging old forms into something new, often linked with language usage (Sandel). This paper includes an analysis of “rich points” with the intention of understanding the translator’s point of view when they find a way to bridge a word from one language to another.

»The texts selected to be translated in this study are three tales written by the Grimm Brothers which are known to be blunt, absurd, comical, and tragic. The selected stories are about children and families and the way in which they reacted to the difficult conditions under which they lived. The Grimm contribution to folklore was inspired by the desire to gather tales from oral traditions of Europe and Great Britain so as to preserve their cultural heritage (Zipes).

»They published their first edition in the early nineteenth century and by the early twentieth century their tales were the most famous collection of folk and fairy tales in the western world. The Grimm brothers wanted to pass on the oral tales to the German people and never assumed that those tales would assume relevance in all cultures. To delve deeper into the first version of their stories, consider how the following titles have nothing to do with happy endings or fairy tales: The Hand with the Knife, How Some Children Played at Slaughtering and The Children of Famine (Zipes).

»These were narratives about brutal living conditions in the 19th century; they contained a rawness that was later buffered. The Grimm Brothers’ stories were simplified between the first edition and the seventh and final edition. As an example of this simplification, there was an omission of a scene in Rapunzel in which she has brutal sex with the prince. Furthermore, in the first version of Snow White, Snow White’s mother, not her stepmother, wants to kill her out of envy (Zipes). While various aspects of the original content have been censured, much of the violent content remains and is still available in modern reprintings of the texts.

»The intention of this paper is to see how the bluntness and brusque qualities of these explicit texts affect translators in their work. In essence, the aim of this study is to see if explicit violent content found in Grimm’s fairy tales has an effect on the cognitive effort of the translator. A central question is related to measuring the cognitive effort involved in the translation production which is the reason why pauses during typing activity, word selection, length and duration of translation will be contemplated as indicators of cognitive effort in translation.

»Conclusion and Future Studies

»Results discussed here are part of a project that has been conducted to investigate the relationship amongst bilingual translation experience, L2 to L1 translation, and source text content. This project could be expanded in many ways. First of all, the sample size could be enlarged in order to include a broader and more diverse population; this could include an increased number of participants in addition to people from different backgrounds, genders, and experience levels. This change would enrich the results. vAnother revision that could enhance the population’s credibility involves surveys. Surveys that clearly emphasize participant’s professional translation experience could be supplemented by a baseline exam that all participants must take to determine expertise. Included with this could be a questionnaire asking for previous professional translation experience; this could include coursework, previous jobs, internships or previous translation opportunities. Conducting other related studies could also aid in legitimizing data.

»For example, studies on fatigue and how this affects participant translation could be a useful tool; this could include trial runs with a smaller word count in each window and less texts to translate. English correlated source texts will be added to this experiment to investigate whether the same participants will present longer fixations in specific “rich points” when translating into Spanish.

»In order to further analyze the data derived from this experiment, future studies could involve saccades and how they affect fixation time. Additionally, studies analyzing the relationship between the target text, the participant’s language and translation experience, and PCL-5 provisional diagnosis could further examine the relationship between violent content, PTSD, and translation. As researchers continue to analyze PTSD in literature, more studies should be conducted to help us to better develop empirical studies that challenge the traditional concept of trauma as unspeakable.

»There are a variety of approaches to studying trauma in literature, and this research will be further developed to contribute to a better comprehension of translation process and trauma. While this study may not be used as a generalized illustration of the target population, it does serve as a prototype for further research opportunities, which can involve relationships between amount and duration of fixations in relation to grammar and violent content».