A skopos-based analysis of Breytenbach's Titus Andronicus

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Breyten Breytenbach's Afrikaans translation of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus isa little known member of the corpus of Afrikaans Shakespeare plays. Published withoutannotations in South Africa in 1970 and performed in Cape Town in the same year, it hasnever been performed again and the text has attracted no academic review or led to anysubsequent editions. However, situated in 1970 in the heyday of the Apartheid regime, theplay's production broke attendance records in Cape Town and was accompanied bysubstantial public controversy.In this thesis, the author analyses Breytenbach's translation in order to determine whetherthe translator had an ideological agenda in performing the translation. The analysis isbased on a preliminary discussion of culture and ideology in translation, and then uses theSkopostheorie methodology of Hans J. Vermeer (as developed by Christiane Nord) toassess the translation situation and the target text. The target text has been analysed onboth a socio-political and microstructural level.The summary outcome of the analysis is that the translator may possibly have tried topromote an anti-Apartheid ideology by translating the play. The outcome is based onseveral contextual factors such as the socio-political situation in South Africa in which thetranslated play was published and performed, the translator's stated opposition to theApartheid system, the choice of Titus Andronicus for translation and production, and to alesser extent the level of public controversy that accompanied the target text's productionin the theatre.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University