week6 translating media
- 1. Digital Research and Publishing Week 6 Translating Media Hayles, N. Katherine (2005) My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts Chicago: University of Chicago Press 90-116. Lecturer: Amit Kelkar Presenter: Jing Huang
- 2. Contents Making: Language and Code Storing: Print and Etext 4. Translating Media III. Transmitting: Analog and Digital
- 3. Translating Media From Print to Electronic Texts What Is a Text? Physicality, Materiality, and Embodied Textuality Work as Assemblage Intermediating between Language Translation and Media Translation: Implications for Textuality
- 4. From Print to Electronic Texts
- 5. From Print to Electronic Texts The transformation of a print document into an electronic text as a form of translation— “media translation” —which is inevitably also an act of interpretation. (Hayles, 2005, p.89).
- 7. From Print to Electronic Texts Specify Rigorously Precisely Dene Grigar
- 8. Notions of Textuality “ Our notions of textuality are shot through with assumptions specific to print, although they have not been generally recognized as such. The advent of electronic textuality presents us with an unparalleled opportunity to reformulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes” (Hayles, 2005, 90). Textuality is a concept in linguistics and literary theory that refers to the attributes that distinguish the text (a technical term indicating any communicative content under analysis) as an object of study in those fields.
- 9. William Blake Archive The Gold Standard for Literary Web Sites
- 10. Bibliographic Codes page size font gutters leading……
- 12. What affect meaning of works? The simulation of visual accuracy Slight color variations
- 13. From Print to Electronic Texts Simulating, not reproducing, or print texts Creating the site’s sophisticated design and functionalities
- 14. Rethinking : What Is a Text?
- 15. What Is a Text? Anna Gunder “ All man-made products are systems of signs. All these sign systems can be considered as texts, presenting works. The work as such can never be accessed but through some kind of text, that is, through the specific sign system designated to manifest a particular work. The sign system may consist of alphanumeric characters, spoken language, music, still pictures or moving pictures, to mention only a few examples.” “ Text (and sign system) is not to be understood as the physical manifestation as such, but as the abstract representation of a work, that in turn is presented in for example ink on paper” (Anna, 2001, p.83).
- 16. The Relations between Electronic and Print Media “ Forming the Text, Performing the Work.”
- 17. What Is a Text? Peter L. Shillingsburg(1986) “The actual order of words and punctuation as contained in any one physical form, such as a manuscript, proof or book”(92).
- 18. What Is a Text? “ A text (the order of words and punctuation) has no substantial or material existence, since it is not restricted by time and space….The text is contained and stabilized by the physical form but is not the physical form itself (p.92).” It is possible for the same text to be stored in a set of alphabetic signs, a set of Braille signs, a set of electronic signals on a computer tape, and a set of magnetic impulses on a tape recorder.
- 19. The Relations between The text & The signs It is not accurate to say the text == the signs
- 20. Differences between print and electronic media Sensory input (Braille books or audio books Print-centric notion (central service) Process (data files)
- 21. Convergence Print Media & Electronic Media Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Principles for coding print documents into electronic form that would preserve their essential features and , moreover, allow them to appear more or less the same in complex networked environments, regardless of platform, browser, and so on. Principle of OHCO A text can be encoded as an ordered hierarchy of content objects.
- 22. Three Distinct Positions within the Text Encoding Community Allen Renear Hierarchy--- “Platonic reality” The real essence of anything that is dimly reflected in physical existence. For example, circular objects are crude approximations to an ideal perfect circle (The Platonic Reality of circles). Originating from Plato, he thought what we see in the physical world is a dim reflection of the true ideal thing. 2. Pluralism 3. Antirealism
- 23. Linguistic codes->sensory phenomena Sources: www.dargate.com/.../240_images/2542.jpg images.stanzapub.com/.../oldbooks-dimitric_1.jpg
- 24. No Platonic Reality of Texts Physical objects (books and computers, foci of attention and codes) that entrain attention and organize material operations. No print books can be completely encodes into digital media. Correspondences ≥ontologies Entraining processes ≥ isolated objects Codes moving in coordinated fashion across representational media ≥ mapping one object onto another
- 25. Physicality, Materiality, and Embodied Textuality McGann argues against convergence as a critical and theoretical principle, attempting to show through cogent readings of poetic works and other strategies that a text is never identical with itself (p.98).
- 26. McGann “ A text is not physically self-identical (which he applies mostly to print) is mere common sense with electronic texts. (p.102)” The time lag---the individual computer's processing speed, traffic on the Web, efficiency of data distribution on the hard drive, and other imponderables Vehicles---special hardware and software configurations
- 27. Differences in Materiality between Print and Electronic Textuality Print texuality Stable immovable Prior existence Electronic textuality Unstable Reprogrammed processual
- 28. Work as Assemblage A cluster of related texts that quote, comment upon, amplify, and otherwise intermediate one another.
- 29. Myst Computer game Companion game Riven Web sites Print novels
- 31. World of Warcraft Computer game Print novels Toys
- 32. Work as Assemblage The unitary work and the unified subject mutually reinforced and determined each other (p.106).
- 33. Work as Assemblage Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Body without Organs (BwO) “ A construction that in its constant deterritorialization and reterritorialization has no unified essence or identifiable center, only planes of consistency and lines of flight along which elements move according to the charged vectors of desire. (p.106) ”
- 34. Media translation “ Recreating a text in another medium is so significant a change that it is analogous to translating from one language to another.(109)”
- 35. Intermediating between Language Translation and Media Translation: Implications for Textuality Weaver Machine translation -> Tower of Anti-Bable Men to communicate freely despite differences in language. Not a universal grammar, but a universal machine
- 36. To Minimize Costs Content Management Systems Workflow Systems control and regulate the authoring and production of documentation Translation Memory Systems Machine Translation Systems Identify and extract all the required changes, recycling everything that has not changed directly into the version form the old
- 37. What the translators do? Phrases Parts of phrases Single words Van Lieshout Ensuring that only the new information is translated Documentation and translation tools help manufacturers meet their cost-efficiency and time-to-market requirements “ Translate once, never look back”(2).
- 38. Intermediating between Language Translation and Media Translation: Implications for Textuality Walter Benjamin Only bad translations “perform a transmitting function” of relaying information (p.113). All languages necessarily embody perspectives that are historically and culturally specific. If they were somehow all to contribute their perspectives to make up a totality, this impossible and elusive entity would be language itself, “pure language” (p.113).
- 39. What the translators do? Banjamin’s view “ It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work ” .
- 40. Compare the Metaphors Weaver Go down to find the common elements Universal grammar Code elements In contemporary usage BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) TIBS (Trans-Island Bus Services ) Fragmentation and the benefits it can bestow Benjamin Go up “ The original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air (p.113). Fragments into larger wholes
- 41. Originals - Pure language Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899--14 June 1986) All writings as drafts in progress, imperfect instantiations never fully one with the significations toward which the gesture(p.114). It is entirely possible for an original text to be unfaithful to its translation, for the translation may realize more fully possibilities that were only nascent in the original. This view draws into question the very idea of an “original”.
- 42. Borges’s idea of “originals” as provocations to go in search of meaning fits well with the idea of Work as Assemblage, for like the restless workings of desire and lines of flight that trace territorializations and deterritorializations of the Body without Organs, texts in an assemblage intermediate one another without necessarily bestowing on any one text the privileged status of the “original” (p.114).
- 43. William Blake in media translations
- 44. William Blake in Media Translations Rather than being judged solely on the basis of providing a faithful reenactment of Blake’s print works, might be regarded as also providing an opportunity to go freshly in search of meanings highlighted in new ways by electronic media.
- 45. Recycling Code Like Borges’s idea of translations as drafts circulating along with the original in a stream of provisional attempts, so here programs circulate as patch work productions building on earlier ones and recycling code.
- 46. Summary Why We Should Rethink Textuality? Complex dynamics by which intermediation connects print and electronic text, language and code, original and translation, the specificities of particular instantiations and the endless novelty of recombinations. Work as Assemblage are changed constructions of subjectivity.
- 47. The idea of a disembodied text that can easily move between media without change in meaning. The idea of a disembodied consciousness that could smoothly move between organic and computer storage media. ° °
- 48. What’s your idea about textuality? What do you think about the similarities and differences of print and electronic textuality?
- 49. References Anna Gunder, “Forming the Text, Performing the Work - Aspects of Media, Navigation, and Linking”, Human IT 5:2-3, 2001, 81-206. Blake, William. The Book of Thel , copy F, pl. 2. The William Blake Archive . Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 13 November 1997 <http://www.blakearchive.org/>. Hayles. N. Katherine. (2005) “Translating media” in My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 90-116. Shillingburg (Peter), Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice , Athens/London, University of Georgia Press, 1986.