Emily hobhouse's speech at the inauguration of the women's memorial in Bloemfontein in 1913 and its translation: a documents-of-life account

[摘要] This dissertation will investigate, through the methodology of documents of life, the factorsthat influenced Emily Hobhouse to write in English the speech for the inauguration of theWomen's Memorial in Bloemfontein in 1913 and to commission its Afrikaans translation. Itwill also examine the different translation choices that Hobhouse made in the translationprocess and what motivated these decisions. The study will construct a narrative by using thebackground provided by autobiographies, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, etc. to evaluateHobhouse's speech and to see if they might shed light on the writing of the speech and theconsequent translation choices. Hobhouse was a controversial figure in the Anglo-Boer Warbecause she sympathised with Afrikaner women and children. The British people accused herof being pro-Boer, but Hobhouse remained a patriotic Englishwoman whose only aim was tohelp people in need. The study shows that an agent's personal history influences translationchoices. It also shows that relationships with other people, specifically patronage relationships,play a vital role in the translation process and result. It introduces and examines the twoconcepts of reciprocal patronage and double patronage, and highlights how these two forms ofpatronage relationships can act as motivation for translation choices and how it influences theinvisibility of the translator. This study is an interdisciplinary study between translation studiesand history, using narratives of lives as the bridge. It will therefore point out that historicalnarratives influence translation choices of translators and are important to take into accountwhen studying future translations and historical documents. To my knowledge, this study is apioneer study, since the narratives of lives have been used in other studies, but not to determinewhether documents of life and the events they refer to play a role in a translator's agency. Thestudy also introduces new concepts with regard to patronage in translation.

[发布机构] University of the Free State