Tom Cheesman

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Tom Cheesman

Tom Cheesman (* 1961 in Liverpool ) is an English senior lecturer , literary scholar and literary translator.

Life

Cheesman grew up in Durham . Today, after having lived in Germany and France for a time, he lives in Swansea and is a professor of German at the university there.

The PhD in Philology has published numerous articles (books and specialist journals), particularly in the field of intercultural literary studies, and has also edited books himself. Some articles are also published in German. In 2009 his English translation of Zafer Şenocak's novel Dangerous Relationships was published . He is also the initiator of the Visualizing Version Variation: Case Study On Translations Of Shakespeare's Othello project , which uses cutting-edge technology to investigate how and why different translations of the same original text often differ significantly from one another. In the early stages, the project team focuses its investigations on works by William Shakespeare.

Why Shakespeare

Many literary works are translated into many different languages ​​again and again. The translations often show significant differences, even if the original text is largely identical. In order to investigate how and what causes these differences, the research team focuses on the works of William Shakespeare . These are particularly suitable for research of this kind, as some of them have been translated into up to 100 languages ​​and there are more than 80 different Shakespeare translations in German alone.

Team and way of working

In the early stages of the project, the investigations concentrate on a small excerpt from Shakespeare's play Othello . On a website specially set up for this purpose, the employees of the project are calling on experts, students, translators and everyone else who would like to make their contribution to send them translations of the following two lines of verse, which translators have always faced with particular linguistic and interpretative challenges : 

     If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
     Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

Cheesman explains: “If you have an Othello translation on your bookshelf or you discover it in the public library, please send us these two lines along with a verbatim translation into English. We already have 150 versions in 22 languages ​​that we work with. We hope to collect more than 300 versions in 100 languages. With the help of this ' crowd-sourcing ' we can create a global snapshot of when, where and how Othello was re-translated. Then it is possible for us to create animated visualizations so that people can browse through the different versions online. "


Examples of the versions currently available in stores: 


     Wenn man die Tugend muß als schön erkennen, / 
     Dürft Ihr nicht häßlich Euren Eidam nennen.

     Wenn Tugend die glänzendeste Schönheit ist, 
     so ist euer Tochtermann mehr weiß als schwarz.

     Wenn Ihr der Tugend nicht Schönheit absprechen wollt, /        
     Ist Euer Schwiegersohn nicht dunkel, sondern Gold!

     Gäbs helle Haut für Edelmut als Preis, / 
     Dann wär Ihr Schwiegersohn statt schwarz reinweiß.

     Solange männliche Tugend mehr zählt als Schönheitsfehler, kann man sagen, 
     Ihr Schwiegersohn ist eher edel als schwarz.


Crowd-sourcing is also intended to help create an online community of students and specialists who are interested in the subject of translation variants. With the further development of the project there should be more and more opportunities for collaboration.

In order to technically implement the project and to be able to analyze the differences between different Shakespeare translations, the research team at the University of Swansea is developing tools for the visualization of data. Digital visualizations reveal hidden patterns in texts, enable new approaches to a text and can in turn be real works of art. Examples such as Ben Fry's work on Darwin's Origin of the Species can be found on the Internet. Since these technologies have not yet been used to analyze translation variants, Visualizing Version Variation: Case Study On Translations Of Shakespeare's Othello represents a completely new and innovative kind of research in this field.

The versatility of this case study demands a team from a wide variety of specialist areas. Experts from the fields of modern languages, translation studies, media, political and cultural studies and computer science from the University of Swansea (Wales) are working on the project.

Team: Team leader Tom Cheesman and his deputy David M. Berry, Andy Rothwell and Robert S. Laramee, research assistants Alison Ehrmann and Zhao Geng; in collaboration with Stephan Thiel (Berlin).

Translations of the two verses can be found in the following languages ​​on the project website

  • Albanian
  • Catalan
  • Danish
  • Different English languages
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Frisian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Kiswahili
  • Macedonian
  • Norwegian
  • Persian
  • Plautdietsch
  • Polish
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian

bibliography

  • Novels of Turkish German Settlement: Cosmopolite Fictions (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007), ISBN 978-1-57113-374-8 , x + 232 pp.
  • The Shocking Ballad Picture Show: German Popular Literature and Cultural History, Oxford / Providence: Berg, 1994, ISBN 0-85496-893-8 , xxxv + 240 pp.
  • (Ed. with Grahame Davies and Sylvie Hoffmann), Gwyl y Blaidd. Ysgriffennu Ffoaduriaid yng * Nghymru / The Festival of the Wolf. Writing Refugees in Wales 4 (Swansea: Hafan Books / Cardigan: Parthian Books, 2006), ISBN 1-905762-20-8 , vi + 210 pp.
  • (Ed. with Eric Ngalle Charles and Sylvie Hoffmann), Soft Touch: Refugees Writing in Wales 3 (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2005), ISBN 0-9545147-3-4 , 128 pp.
  • (Ed. with Eric Ngalle Charles and Sylvie Hoffmann), Nobody's Perfect: Refugees Writing in Wales 2 (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2004), ISBN 0-9545147-1-8 , 96 pp.
  • (Ed. with Eric Ngalle Charles and Sylvie Hoffmann), Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees * Writing in Wales (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2003), ISBN 0-9545147-0-X , 96 pp.
  • (Ed. with Karin E. Yesilada), Zafer Senocak, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003, ISBN 0-7083-1811-8 / ISBN 0-7083-1810-X , xi + 187 pp.
  • (Ed. with Sigrid Rieuwerts), Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, Berne: Peter Lang, 1997, ISBN 3-906757-34-X , 283 pp .; 2nd rev. edn 1999, ISBN 3-906761-67-3 .
  • (ed.) Recent Ballad Research: The Language of Ballads and Other Topics. Proceedings of the 19th SIEF Ballad Commission Conference (Freiburg i.Br. 1989), 2 vols, London: Folklore Society (Library Pamphlets 4/5) 1990, ISBN 1-871903-10-6 / ISBN 1-871903-15-7 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=11966
  2. ^ Act 1, Scene 3, Open Source Shakespeare, lines 646-7.
  3. ↑ BAUDISSIN (Schlegel-Tieck edition, 1832): Othello, the Moor of Venice. www.william-shakespeare.de/othello1/othello.htm and http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2267 .
  4. ↑ WIELAND: William Shakespeare Theatrical works in 21 individual volumes. Translated by Christoph Martin Wieland. [Zurich, 1762-66]. Reprinted by Hans and Johanna Radlayers. Vol. 18: Othello, the Moor of Venice. Zurich: Haffmans; and http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7185 .
  5. ↑ FRIED: William Shakespeare / Erich Fried, Hamlet / Othello, Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1999 (first edition 1970).
  6. ↑ GUENTHER: William Shakespeare. Othello. Bilingual edition. German by Frank Günther. With an essay by Dieter Mehl. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, [Urauff 1992, first printing 1995] 2006.
  7. ↑ ZAIMOGLU / SENKEL: William Shakespeare Othello. Edited by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel. Münster: Publishing house Monsenstein and Vannerdat , 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Cheesman, Tom
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English senior lecturer, literary scholar and literary translator
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool