bear witness
week 6: witness (dr. pilinovsky)
dr. pilinovsky is uber knowledgable. i’m disappointed with myself that i wasn’t on time to class and missed her introduction, because i felt like i was missing a piece of the puzzle and therefore didn’t get the most clear interpretation of the whole picture. despite that, i enjoyed the experience today. her input was a great compliment to the venuti reading, in that she reiterated the idea of the translator doing work with a text that was most appropriate to the receptor culture. i confused myself there. what i’m saying is that, for example, dr. pilinovsky pointed out that russian translators of fairy tales translated those texts with the intent to keep them as accurate as possible to the original work, whereas british fairy tales were translated to make them accessible to…children? i’ll run with that. russian fairy tales were not for kids, so accessibility was not an issue. venuti mentioned that dynamic translations of texts were translations that took an original work and reinvented it so that it was appropriate and relevant to the culture in which it would be viewed. more or less…
“what’s that got to do with ‘witness’, buddy?” well, i’m glad you asked. you see, if somebody were to challenge my claim that dr. pilinovsky was not in fact an expert in the field of russian fairy tales i would say to them, “sir, you are quite wrong. i was there to witness it. she’s legit.” it’s as easy as that.
