Masters Degrees (English)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (English) by Subject "Afrikaans literature -- Translations into English"

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    Welgevonden revisited : a new translation of Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins, and its literary-critical rationale
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-12) Penfold, Gregory; De Kock, Leon; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis re-evaluates the writing of seminal Afrikaans modernist Etienne Leroux from a South African English perspective. The present author's new translation of Leroux's prizewinning novel Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins (1962) is the focal point of an enquiry into how “rewriting”, in translation theorist André Lefevere's coinage, has shaped the reception of Leroux's work outside the Afrikaans literary system. It is shown from a literary-historiographical viewpoint that translation played a crucial role in Leroux's rise to international prominence and subsequent eclipse. It is demonstrated that Leroux's standing within the English literary system rests predominantly on extant translations of his novels, without taking into account the cyclical quality of his fiction, especially the overarching nine-novel cycle – the basis of Leroux's renown in Afrikaans. The distortions produced by this fact are critiqued. In particular, the received idea of Leroux as an apolitical obscurantist is challenged, the work of J.C. Kannemeyer especially showing that Leroux's politics and art were much more integral and radical than previously (mis)understood. A case is made for Leroux's re-evaluation as a seminal contributor to modern South African fiction comparable to J.M. Coetzee, and for the production of fresh translations of his work to facilitate this re-evaluation. A detailed account of the translation process behind the present author's new translation of Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins follows. A series of close readings compares this new translation to the first translation by Charles Eglington (1964), shows how Eglington's translation obscured certain textual strategies vital to a full comprehension of Leroux's text, examines the difficulties inherent in restoring them, and argues for the new translation's success therein. A mise au point in which insights yielded by this process feed back into an assessment of Leroux's relevance today concludes the thesis. Leroux's technique is shown to have immunised his texts against the desuetude into which time-bound “committed” literature often falls. In particular, Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins, or its new translation, emerges as a satirical anatomisation of subjectivity under late modern capitalism entirely in tune with contemporary cultural representations of apartheid as metaphor for global capitalism.