Diachronic translation: Beowulf. Translated by Frances B. Grummere

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon• hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scéfing sceaþena þréatum monegum maégþum meodosetla oftéah• egsode Eorle syððan aérest wearð féasceaft funden hé þæs frófre gebád• wéox under wolcnum• weorðmyndum þáh oð þæt him aéghwylc þára ymbsittendra ofer hronráde hýran scolde, gomban gyldan• þæt wæs gód cyning.

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he!

 

The Story of the Passing Years (12-th cent.)

Several translations have been made from the Old Ruthenian language into Ukrainian: by L. Machnovetz, V. Yaremenko, T. Kostruba.

 

Transposition

“In transposition there is an attempt to produce the original as the author might have done if he or she appeared in the given socio-historical time and place of the transposition and retained the consciousness that created each sentence of the original” (Henry Whittlesely).

• Transposing the content

• Transposing the form

• Transposing the form and content

• Rendering narration as image or illustration or film or another form of media

 

Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshause (1621-1676)

“Recently, for example, Reinhard Kaiser transposed the idiom of Grimmelshausen (Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus) from seventeenth-century to twenty first-century German. Such an act, somewhat recalling the abridged versions of the classics we now read in our exceptional American educational system, does not however leave out content, but rather makes an old text accessible by modernizing solely the language ”.

 

Interlingual translation: binary

FRENCH → ENGLISH

GREEK → UKRAINIAN

SPANISH → GERMAN

 

Intersemiotic translation

The Intersemiotic Translation deals with two or more completely different codes e.g., linguistic one vs. musical and/or dancing, and/or image ones. Thus, when Tchaikovsky composed the Romeo and Juliet he actually performed an intersemiotic translation: he 'translated' Shakespeare's play from the linguistic code into the musical one. The expression code was changed entirely from words to musical sounds. Then, as it was meant for ballet, there was a ballet dancer who 'translated' further, from the two previous codes into a 'dancing' one, which expresses itself through body movement.

The Intersemiotic Translation is largely used in image design, advertising & publicity. Some ideas expressed verbally are to be translated into images and/or movement. Thus, the product image can be described in words and then 'translated' into an image that will release the same message as the original words.

Transmutation

The word “transmutation” implies a sudden and/or radical change in form.

In the recent spate of remixes of Nick Montfort’s computer-generated poem Taroko Gorge (Montfort, 2009), the contents of the remixed texts as they are displayed on screen may appear to diverge radically from Taroko Gorge, yet these remixes are based on the now familiar sub-text of Montfort’s source code.

• Conversely, the translation of a computer-generated text from one programming language to another may radically alter the source code yet result in little or no change to the content or behaviour of the text displayed on screen, as in the case of Montfort’s own initial translation of Taroko Gorge from Python into JavaScript.