Author: Hubert Judge
Judge, Hubert, 2019 An analysis of the options taken by translators of key terms and a key acronym of Spanish- English translations of works on liberation theology, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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One purpose of this thesis is to analyse the translations from Spanish to English of units of meaning that discuss the topics of liberation or salvation from texts by four theologians: Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, Ignacio Ellacuría and Oscar Romero. The thesis also analyzes the significant influences upon the translations and the noteworthy options available to the translators.
This thesis also focuses on units of meaning that are in source text (“ST’) quotations with the abbreviation CL (which is being used in one of the source texts as an abbreviation for Cristología De La Liberación.) or the words salvación, liberación, liberador, libertador, liberar, liberarse, liberarnos, libertad, salva, salvaciones, salvífico, salvífica, salvar or salvarnos or words that are synonymous with the words salvación or liberación and their translations. In addition, the thesis explores the influences on translators that may have caused the meaning of a source text to have been altered in translation. The units of meaning analyzed in this thesis are from texts on liberation theology in Spanish (the STs) and their English translations (the target texts) that were, with the exception of the target text (“TT”) versions of the sermons by Romero originally produced in the 1970s and 1980s.
The aims of the thesis have been achieved via means of a mixed-methods approach (“MMA”) that is mostly qualitative. The qualitative data has been merged and connected with the quantitative data and used to work out what options the translators have utilized and what significant influences have led to the uses of the options. The qualitative data has also inductively answered the research question and associated questions.
In addition, the quantitative data has been used to hypothesise about what relationships exist between what the authors meant to say in the source text quotations, and how the translators have interpreted the authors’ messages. The quantitative data has involved counting the number of times the translators have used their options. The corpus linguistics approach
(“CLA”) has been used to collect this data (which has been collected deductively).
This thesis has contributed to the fields of translation studies and theology. The thesis finds that the influences upon translators and the translation options they take can result in significant changes to the messages of source text quotations. The thesis has also found that there are six main influences. These are, in descending order of significance:
(i) Marxism (especially since liberation theology relies very heavily on Marxist analysis),
(ii) semantic domains;
(iii) some effects of contextualisation;
(iv) the assumed worldviews of the authors and translators,
(v) the assumed theological viewpoints of the authors and translators and
(vi) the effects of the length of time between the authorship of the source text quotations and the publication of the TT quotations.
In addition, theological and linguistic concerns can be common problems for translators of theological STs and can possibly have implications regarding how the translators interpret the messages from these texts.
Also some definite influences that are not as significant as the six main influences exist. The definite ones include the affects of translation loss and gain, the functions of various tenses, decisions regarding when to make information that is implicit or has been left out in the source text quotation explicit, the renderings of some units of meaning and the need to interpret the authors’ messages. They also include the translators’ connotations of some of the units of meaning under consideration. The adding and substitution of pronouns is another definite influence as is the profiling that pronouns do. Also the influences are intertwined with the usages of significant options – of which there is a substantial number.
Finally, the influence of Marxist philosophy has been so dominant that it has worked together with all of the other significant influences listed above to affect some of the target text quotations. The influences of the semantic domains, some effects of contextualisation and the assumed worldviews of the authors and translators are as significant as each other. By the same token, the influences of the assumed theological viewpoints of the authors and translators and the effects of the length of time between the authorship of the source text quotations and the publications of the TT equivalents are as important as each other. However, they are not as significant as the other main influences.
Keywords: Liberation Theology, Spanish, English, Translation, Salvation, Liberation, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar A. Romero, Jon Sobrino, Ignacio Ellacuría.
Subject: Languages thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2019
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Andrew Dutney