Abstract
When translated, texts need to be ‘adapted’ for the target audience in order to suit specific cultural constraints. This also applies to paratexts, which are a powerful tool of shaping readers’ expectations. This chapter aims at discussing the crucial relation between texts and paratexts as well as the extent to which the latter are shaped by culture. Through a case study analysis, the chapter compares paratextual elements of the Italian and English translations of Hella Haasse’s historical novel Heren van de thee (The Tea Lords), which describes the former Dutch colonial society as portrayed by a repatriated Dutch writer born in the East Indies. The investigation aims to determine how images of a foreign culture and hybridity are transposed in two dissimilar target contexts. Attention is also paid to the impact of the target-cultures’ diverging colonial backgrounds on representing Dutch culture-specific colonial and postcolonial issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Apartheid en uitbuiting”. All translations from Dutch, Italian and French are mine, unless otherwise stated.
- 2.
“Il romanzo di un’avventura coloniale.”
- 3.
“Rudolf non intendeva lasciarsi sfuggire nulla di quel viaggio nel cuore dell’isola. Lo colpirono la vegetazione rigogliosa, le innumerevoli sfumature di verde nel paesaggio, e capì perché, nelle sue lettere, il padre parlasse tanto spesso dell’impossibilità di descrivere la vegetazione tropicale.” As translated into English by Ina Rilke (Haasse 1992 [2010]).
- 4.
“Siamo nel 1871 e, dopo un lungo viaggio per mare, il giovane Rudolf Kerkhoven giunge a Giava, dove la sua famiglia si è trasferita per avviare una coltivazione di tè. Da anni, l’Olanda ha interessi nelle Indie.”
- 5.
“[…] meravigliosa, così diversa da quella a cui è avvezzo—la lussureggiante vegetazione, il cielo trasparente come cristallo, la luce scintillante, i mille profumi—pensa di aver trovato l’Eldorado.”
- 6.
“[…] intreccia in quest’opera verità e invenzione toccando temi a lei cari: […] il fascino esotico delle terre della sua infanzia, il dramma dell’esilio, l’inconciliabilità di culture tra loro lontane.”
- 7.
As translated by Ina Rilke (Haasse 1992 [2010]).
- 8.
“Un ouvrage de fiction mélange à sa guise le vrai et le faux, le vécu, le retranscrit, l’imaginaire, la biographie.”
References
Aixelá, Javier Franco. 1996. Culture-specific items in translation. In Translation, power, subversion, ed. Román Alvarez, and Maria Carmen Africa Vidal, 52–77. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Alvstad, Cecilia. 2012. The strategic moves of paratexs: World literature through swedish eyes. Translation Studies 5 (1): 78–94.
Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi. 2002. Postcolonial translation. Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
Bijl, Paul. 2012. Colonial memory and forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia. Journal of Genocide Research 14 (3–4): 441–461.
Boudewijn, Petra. 2016a. Een Enorme Strook Mestizo in het Midden? De (On)mogelijkheid van Indische Identiteit in Postkoloniale Romans. Werkwinkel 11 (1): 41–71.
Boudewijn, Petra. 2016b. You must have inherited this trait from your eurasian mother’: The representation of mixed-race characters in Dutch colonial literature. Dutch Crossing 40 (3): 1–22.
D’Haen, Theo. 2002. Europa buitengaats. Bert Bakker: Koloniale en Postkoloniale Literaturen in Europese Talen. Amsterdam.
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts. Thresholds of Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haasse, S. Hella. 1992. Heren van de thee. Amsterdam: Querido.
Haasse, S. Hella. 1994. I Signori del tè. Trans. C. Hess. Milano: Rizzoli.
Haasse, S. Hella. 2010. The Tea Lords. Trans. I. Rilke. London: Portobello Books.
Huggan, Graham. 2001. The postcolonial exotic. Marketing the margins. London: Routledge.
Nord, Christiane. 1991. Text analysis in translation. Theory, methodology and didactic application of a model for translation-oriented analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Pattynama, Pamela. 2012. (Un)happy endings. Nostalgia in postimperial and postmemory Dutch films. In The postcolonial low countries. Literature, colonialism, multiculturalism, eds. Elleke Boehmer and Sarah De Mul, 97–122. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981–1991. London: Granta Books.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
Sapiro, Gisèle. 2008. Translation in the field of publishing. Translation Studies 1 (2): 154–166.
Van Boven, E. 2005. De Postkoloniale Autobiograaf en zijn Koloniale Verleden. Indische Letteren 20: 115–131.
Van Zonneveld, Peter. 1995. Album van Insulinde. Beknopte Geschiedenis van Indisch-Nederlands Literatuur. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Van Zonneveld, Peter. 1998. Het Onbereikbare Geboorteland. Indië in het Werk van Hella S. Haasse. Indische Letteren 13: 3–13.
Van Zonneveld, Peter. 2002. Indische Literatuur van de Twintigste Eeuw. In Europa Buitengaats. Koloniale en Postkoloniale Literaturen in Europese Talen, ed. Theo D’Haen, 133–159. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Peligra, C. (2017). The East Indies and the Literature of Repatriation: A Comparative Analysis of Paratexts in the Italian and English Translations of Hella Haasse’s The Tea Lords . In: Borodo, M., House, J., Wachowski, W. (eds) Moving Texts, Migrating People and Minority Languages. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3800-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3800-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-3799-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-3800-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)