Translating a Short Story by Hans-Jürgen Greif: Cats, Opera and Proverbs

• Author / Creator

  Marks, Cynthia A.

• This thesis discusses the challenges encountered when translating Hans-Jürgen Greif’s short story “N’appelle pas le chat pour mettre d’accord deux oiseaux” into English. In the first part, the thesis briefly examines a biography of Greif and his previous works, before identifying some of the difficulties observed during the process of translation. Particular attention is paid to the translation of proverbs and the challenges of translating the short story structure. The thesis then investigates the differences between sentence structures in the source and the target language, and how they affected the translation process. Following an overview of the opera world at the time of the story’s setting and how it may have influenced Greif’s work, the thesis provides an explanation of why this particular story was selected to be translated. The thesis concludes with an original translation of “N’appelle pas le chat pour mettre d’accord deux oiseaux” into English.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Greif
  • Hans-Jürgen Greif
  • Translations
  • Opera
  • Short story
  • Proverb
  • German
  • French

• Graduation date

  Spring 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3CS4Q

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.