The concatenation effect hypothesis in complex indirect translations: translating the Arabian Nights into Gaelic and Japanese

ABSTRACT

The concatenation effect hypothesis predicts that indirect translations (translations of translations) tend towards a so-called imperialist stand, where they omit elements of the text that are identifiable with the source culture, and also describe themselves as something other than translations. The aim of this article is to ask whether the hypothesis stands in situations where indirect translators who, as well as having access to the translation that they are using as their main source, also have access to additional translations of the same text in the same language. It focuses on the chains of translations of the Thousand and One Nights that led from Arabic to French, from French to English, and from English to both Scottish Gaelic and Japanese. The article demonstrates that if successive translators all adopt a defensive stand, where they omit or elide identifiably foreign elements, but still overtly describe themselves as translations, the final effect will not necessarily be imperialist. However, the translations’ stands are likely to become increasingly defensive. This finding demonstrates that the four stands currently used to categorise the concatenation effect give no mechanism to describe these highly variable phenomena, and should be reworked as fuzzy sets.

KEYWORDS:

• Indirect translation
• concatenation effect hypothesis
• thousand and one nights
• Japanese
• Gaelic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The sequin, based on the Venetian zecchino, was the standard gold coin across the Levant in the time that corresponds to the writing of the Syrian manuscript used by Galland (Hasluck 1921, p. 42, 48).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Irish Research Council [grant number COALESCE 2019/117].

Notes on contributors

James Hadley

James Hadley is Trinity College Dublin’s Ussher Assistant Professor in Literary Translation, Director of the College’s MPhil in Literary Translation, and PI of the Irish Research Council-funded QuantiQual Project. His research is representative of his wide-ranging interests, many of which centre on translation in under-researched cultural contexts, particularly in East Asia. James is one of the most active researchers in the world in developing a theoretical mechanism for the analysis of indirect translations. He is also active in Machine Translation and Computer Assisted Translation research, and in integrating Digital Humanities methodologies and empirical research into Translation Studies.