Snježana Veselica Majhut comes from Croatia and teaches in the Department of English at the University of Zagreb. She holds a M.A. in Translation and Intercultural Studies by URV.
Cultural Specificity in the Translation of Popular Fiction from English into Croatian during the Socialist and Transition Periods (1960-2010)
Supervisors: Natasa Pavlovic, Anthony Pym
Research Summary
When solving the problems of how to render culture-specific items, translators rely on a number of different solution types, each of them having a specific effect on the target text. Previous research on this problem has yielded a number of taxonomies of solution types, assigned to either assimilating or exoticizing text-level orientations. The research proposes a more complex model of four text-level orientations: assimilating, exoticizing, neutralizing and informative. The focus of this study is on the ways of dealing with culture-specific items in translations of Agatha Christie's novels into Croatian. Our research sets out to investigate the correlations between the preferences for assimilating, exoticizing, neutralizing or informative solution types in rendering culture-specific items on the one hand and the socio-cultural framework of the target culture, in particular its publishing industry on the other. For the purposes of the research a corpus of selected translations of Agatha Christie's novels into Croatian, produced in three periods: the early 1960s, the late 1970s and the 2000s is compiled. The selected periods differ in terms of their socio-economic framework and of the effects this framework had on the publishing industry, and also on the presence of Anglo-American cultural products in the target culture.
Conference Presentations
2009. "The Effect of Socio-cultural Context on the Procedures for Translating Culture-Specific Items", Graduate Conference in Tarragona, Spain
2009. "Strategies of Translating Culture Specific Items: Between Norms and Pragmatics" at "Challenges of Translation Studies in a Globalized World", University of Maribor
2012. "Changes in Textual-Linguistic Norms Governing the Rendition of Culture-Specific Items from English to Croatian", Conference of the Croatian Association for Applied Linguistics, Zagreb.
Publications
Syntax Workbook for Students of English. Zagreb:FFPress.2007.
"Shoppingholičarka ili zaposlena žena". Jezik i identiteti. urednica:Jagoda Granić. Hrvatsko društvo za primijenjenu lingvistiku. 2007. 681-688
"Textual Analysis of Večernji List Front Page Headlines". Studia Anglica et Romanica Zagrabiensia. No. 50. (2006):3-23 http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=toc&id_broj=1575
"Intertekstualnost u novinskim naslovima". Jezik i mediji: Jedan jezik: više svjetova. urednica: Jagoda Granić. Hrvatsko društvo za primijenjenu lingvistiku. 2006. 753-760
"A Textual Analysis of the Embargo Column". Studia Anglica et Romanica Zagrabiensia. VOL. XLVII-XLVIII (2002):537-551
VIVA September 25, 2009
Examining committee :
Dr. Zuzana Jettmarová (Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis)
Dr. Patrick Zabalbeascoa (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Dr. Javier Franco Aixelá (Universitat d'Alacant)
