Translating Transgression: discrepancies in representations of social taboo in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu

我的研究集中在文学翻译和改编研究领域，以及译者是否可以充当默契审查员的问题。在我的DPhil项目中，我正在研究马塞尔·普鲁斯特(Marcel Proust)的英文版(1913-1927)中社会禁忌话题的翻译。这篇课文描述了从这个开创性的现代主义文本出版之日到现在，一直是重大社会禁忌主题的主题，包括同性恋、施虐受虐狂和性工作。然而，目前还没有一项完整的研究来考察如何用英语表达课文的这些方面。尽管在二十世纪和二十一世纪，在对审查制度和被认为是社会禁忌的性做法持广泛态度的时代，文本的翻译和改编是在明显不同的社会背景下创作的，但仍是如此。因此，研究文本的英文本和法文本对有争议的主题的描述有何不同，有可能阐明这些差异如何反映审查条件和更广泛的社会风气。我的目的是通过将这一批评方法应用于The Recherche来填补我在批评中发现的空白，以检验在英语翻译和改编中对社会禁忌主题的表达上的哪些偏离可以告诉我们文化语境对文本传播的影响。我的项目将比较文学翻译研究与文学审查研究结合在一起，重点是审查并不总是一个强制立法的问题，而是一个复杂的过程，在这个过程中，社会习俗影响着作者、出版社以及随后的译者所能产生的东西。通过将这种批判性的观点应用到《收藏家》中，我的目的是提供例子来说明审查并不总是一个显性的过程，而是一个经常由于文化背景而默契或含蓄地进行的过程。为了证明这一点，我将分析在一些不同的英语翻译和改编的《收容所》中对同性恋、双性恋、通奸、卖淫、施虐受虐狂和女性欲望的描述的翻译。在我的项目过程中，我的目的是强调翻译比较研究的重要性，以考察关于性和禁忌的观念是如何通过文化和语言形成的，因为社会语境的影响不可避免地通过原文和翻译之间的差异而变得明显。此外，我打算通过提出更广泛的问题来使我的项目具有当代文化相关性，这些问题包括文本是如何出版的以及为什么出版，以及语言和文化如何塑造我们的交流方式。

My research is focused on the area of literary translation and adaptation studies, and the question of whether translators can act as tacit censors. In my DPhil project, I am examining the translation of socially taboo topics in English versions of Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927). This text depicts topics that have been the subject of significant social taboo from the date of this seminal modernist text's publication to the present day, including homosexuality, sadomasochism, and sex work. However, there exists no full-length study examining the process of representing these aspects of the text in English. This is despite the fact that translations and adaptations of the text have been created in markedly different social contexts across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in eras of wide-ranging attitudes towards censorship and sexual practices considered socially taboo. Examining how depictions of controversial topics differ in the English and French versions of the text therefore has the potential to shed light on how these discrepancies reflect conditions of censorship and wider social moeurs. I aim to broach the gap in criticism I have identified by applying this critical approach to the Recherche, in order to examine what deviations in representations of socially taboo topics in English translations and adaptations can tell us about the influence of cultural context on the dissemination of the text. My project, which unites comparative literary translation studies and with the study of literary censorship, will focus on the idea that censorship is not always an issue of imposing legislation, but is instead a complex process in which social convention affects what can be produced by the author, the publishing house, and, subsequently, the translator. By applying this critical perspective to the Recherche, I aim to provide examples to illustrate the idea that censorship is not always an explicit process, but one often conducted tacitly or implicitly as a result of cultural context. In order to demonstrate this, I will analyse translations of depictions of homosexuality, bisexuality, adultery, prostitution, sadomasochism, and female desire in a number of different English-language translations and adaptations of the Recherche. Over the course of my projects, I aim to assert the importance of the comparative study of translation in examining how ideas about sexuality and taboo are formed through culture and language, as the impact of social context inevitably becomes clear through the differences between original text and translation. Additionally, I intend for my project to have contemporary cultural relevance by asking broader questions about how and why texts are published, and how language and culture shapes the way we communicate.