Interferensie in die Afrikaanse Harry Potter

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:The Harry Potter series is currently one of the most popular book series forchildren in the world. The original British books have been translated into morethan three hundred languages - one of them being Afrikaans, for which theAfrikaans translator received two translation prizes. Yet closer investigationreveals that these translations are not written in idiomatic Afrikaans, mostlydue to the phenomenon of 'interference'. This phenomenon entails anexcessive influence of the linguistic structures of the source text on that of thetarget text.The influence of the English source text on the Afrikaans translator by meansof interference was of such an extent that the texts have been written inunnatural language, called 'translationese'. In this study the influence ofinterference on the quality of the Afrikaans translations of Harry Potter isexamined. The focus is on books 4 and 5 in the series, namely Harry Potter endie Beker vol Vuur and Harry Potter en die Orde van die Feniks. The basicpremises of the functionalistic approach to translation are used to emphasisethe importance of the translation skopos, the function that the translation hasto fulfil in the target culture, a detailed translation brief as well as thetranslator's loyalty towards the various role players in the translation process.Descriptive translation studies is used to prove the apparent absence ofknowledge of translation norms as well as translation decisions and strategiesthat had to be considered carefully during the production of the Afrikaanstranslations.The researcher hereby attempts to emphasise the importance of carefulconsideration and planning of translation strategies. Cognisance of thefunctionalistic and descriptive premises would have lead to a more naturaltranslation that communicates optimally with the target readers in the targetculture.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University