Sound translation: Poetic and cinematic practices

A text is not merely a pattern of semantic designations. If composed in a phonetic alphabetic, it is also a pattern of graphemes eliciting a pattern of vocal sounds or phonemes, which in turn elicits a pattern of phonating movements. In the typical translating scenario, where a negotiation between natural languages takes place, these vocal sound patterns are virtually always regarded as the variable element in the process. They are deemed expendable, and are summarily transformed for the purpose of constructing semantic affinities between source and target texts. There is a margin of translation activity, however, that has devised strategies and techniques for creating vocal sound affinities between texts, and at varying degrees of expense to both the source text's semantics, as well as to target language convention. This dissertation reflects upon the ways in which translators deal with the sonorous dimension of texts. Four principle questions will guide this reflection: (1) How does inter-linguistic translation typically discard vocal sounds in its conception and rendering of source text form? (2) Does the written word itself, as visual/spatial medium and technique, somehow orient the translator's consciousness away from the oral/aural dimension of the text? (3) How might one conceive modes of reading a text in language sound as opposed to language sense? (4) What are some of the marginal practices that do indeed strive to re-construct a source text's sound pattern? To answer these questions, I will draw on both classical and contemporary language philosophies that illuminate the translator's bias both toward and against the sonorous dimension of language. Under examination as well will be certain revolutionary movements in twentieth century poetics, movements that help conceptualize not only the motivation but also the operative techniques behind many of these marginal sound translation practices. The goal, ultimately, is to make tentative steps toward a theoretical framework in which these marginal practices may be addressed positively and in their own right, rather than simply as lunatic-fringe specimens defined against the norm