English Studies at NBU

It Takes Three to Tango: How a Cuban Ballerina Interpreted for Castro and Khrushchev

2023-12-20T20:36:52+00:00

This text launches a series of articles under the image-based project 'With the Aid of an Unidentified Interpreter: Putting Names to Faces on Historical Photos' dedicated to the history of high-level interpreting. Here, the quest is to identify the interpreter at the two encounters between Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro at Harlem's Hotel Theresa and at the Soviet Mission in New York on 20 and 23 September 1960 based on a photo from the personal archive of Khrushchev's assistant Vladimir Lebedev. This interpreter turned out to be Menia Martínez, a historic figure in Cuban ballet. Educated at the Vaganova School in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), she was proficient in Russian. The text looks at other professional and unprofessional interpreters who worked with the two leaders before, on, and after this trip to New York and whose work contributed to the development of Cuban-Soviet and East-West relations. The discussion draws on available visuals, memoirs, newspaper sources, and unclassified documents placing the discussion in the wider context of international relations at the time. The author is grateful to Menia Martínez, who, in a telephone conversation, has helped in clarifying some of the aspects of the matter under investigation.

On the Verge between Retranslation and Revision: Revisiting Translations of Modernist Novels in Türkiye

2023-12-20T20:36:40+00:00

This research aims to elucidate the underlying forces that propelled the first translators to reprocess their texts within the framework of modernist literature, and to reveal the nature of these reprocessed texts as retranslations or revisions. The corpus of this study is composed of modernist novels To The Lighthouse (1927), Lolita (1955), Heart of Darkness (1899), and Nightwood (1936). The first translators of these novels into Turkish felt the need to reprocess texts over long periods. The second versions could be classified as retranslations according to the characteristics outlined by the retranslation hypothesis. However, considering the limitations of this hypothesis, particularly regarding retranslations from the 2000s onward, it seems insufficient to explain current dynamics. To establish a clear differentiation between revision and retranslation, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis of the first and subsequent versions. Based on the analysis, it has been determined that there are limited but significant changes in the revised texts. While the number of alterations may not reach statistical significance to label them as "retranslations", they can be categorized as "revisions." It has been concluded that the triggering factors behind the revisions are related to the changing sociocultural factors, patronage and the habitus of the translators.

The Dutiful Daughters of the British Empire: Psychosocial Topology of The British Hospital in Smyrna

2023-12-20T20:36:28+00:00

Scholarship on the accounts of the Western travellers about the Ottoman Empire focuses on some commonly known writers only, and Ismeer, or Smyrna, and its British hospital in 1855, by a lady [M. Nicol] remains neglected. It is a diary written by a lady-nurse, Martha Nicol, who worked in the British hospital in Smyrna, during the Crimean War. She is tightly bound in with the imperial ideology and by reconceptualising the space in the hospital, the lady-nurses help the British soldiers achieve a sense of continuity between their home back in England and the host culture about which they know very little. By playing a formative role to transpose this hospital to a homely space in a foreign territory, the lady-nurses function as psychic and cultural stabilisers. This essay aims to decipher how the hospital space functions as an ideological heterotopia of deviance, and how the lady-nurses contribute to its power to inspire the idea of “at-homeness” in the soldiers and retain the ideological structuring mechanisms in this distant location by exploring the textual evidence in the book. This essay will also explore how power and ideology are contextualised in the psychosocial topology of the hospital.

Incredulity toward Heroism: Ackroyd as a Gallant Storyteller against the Heroic Tradition

2023-12-20T20:35:18+00:00

Heroism as an unremitting subject conquers and even haunts literature as well as history. Historical and fictitious heroes are guiding spirits of human beings regardless of time and geography. Historians and writers have so sternly adhered to the ideals of heroism that this fascination has been transformed into hero worship dating back to antiquity, bringing heroism to the forefront as a metanarrative in history and literature. Particularly contributing to the undying predicament of literature caught between the ideal and the real, causes of heroism have been largely left unquestioned putting heroes in the shoes of a messiah. Peter Ackroyd (1949-), renowned for his historiographic metafictions fashioned within postmodernism, dares to challenge this unimpeached -ism in The Fall of Troy (2006). In the novel, Ackroyd rewrites the history of Troy and introduces an eccentric half-real hero, Heinrich Obermann, against celebrated heroes of history and literature. Accordingly, this paper reads heroism as a metanarrative and delineates how Ackroyd sketches an atypical hero by acting contrary to traditional heroism and heroic literary tradition in his vibrant postmodern parody, The Fall of Troy.

Hedges and Boosters in 19th century British Fiction

2023-12-20T20:35:06+00:00

Hedges and boosters are two important sources of linguistic devices to express tentative evaluations and to mitigate solidarity with readers. Men and women have different tendencies of using these linguistic devices. Women are usually considered to follow a personal and polite style whereas men are more competitive and assertive. Hence, gender-preferential features of women and men are one of the prerequisites of understanding the functions of hedges and boosters. One relatively neglected aspect of gender-based studies of these linguistic devices is fiction. In this paper, we explored male and female English writers’ use of hedges and boosters in HUM19UK Corpus, a corpus of 19^th century British fiction. We calculated a statistically significant overuse in the deployment of hedges and boosters by female writers in the 19^th century, which is an indication of a new writing style adapted by the female writers in that era. However, the most common items of hedges and boosters were identical in both corpora.

The Recurring Issue of Aviation English Test Validity: Echoes from Test-takers and Assessors of the English for Aviation Language Testing System in Algeria

2023-12-20T20:34:53+00:00

The English for Aviation Language Testing System (EALTS) is one of the international tests for pilots wishing to operate in international airspace. This test presents a wide range of difficulties for Algerian pilots, but little research has been conducted to estimate its validity. This paper seeks to answer two questions: (1) What are test-takers perspectives on the EALTS test construct? and (2) What is the assessors' perception of the testing procedure and test validity? A descriptive study was conducted using qualitative data from a semi-structured questionnaire for ten pilots and a semi-structured interview for three certified assessors and four university researchers. The authors used 'first-hand' data from the targeted sample to cross-check results' validity through triangulation. The results show specific difficulties from an affective dimension, such as stress and anxiety caused by inefficient preparation and unfamiliarity with test tasks. A different interpretation of ICAO descriptions using the rating scale is another issue noted by assessors. Additionally, technical issues with the computer-based listening test and non-compliant features of the test contents with features of the target situation language use are among the main issues noted by both test-takers and assessors.

2023-12-20T18:47:07+00:00

Table of Contents, Volume 9, Issue 2, 2023

Editors' Message

2023-12-20T18:53:33+00:00

Editor's Message
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2023

Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching: The Case of the Southern Caribbean - Book Review

2023-12-20T20:34:16+00:00

Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching: The Case of the Southern Caribbean - Book Review

A Model for Teaching Critical Reading in an ESL Curriculum

2023-12-20T20:34:40+00:00

This case study explores one Bhutanese ESL teacher’s implementation of Freebody and Luke’s (1990) four resources model (FRM) to teach critical reading (CR) in his grade-9 English classroom. A semi-structured interview was conducted with the teacher and thematically analysed to understand his initial perspectives on CR and teaching strategies. Based on his initial interview data, the researcher recommended him implementing the FRM to teach a poem of his choice from the grade-9 English curriculum in three lessons. The FRM is organised around four reader roles that engage and empower readers as text decoders, text participants, text analysts and text users. A thematic approach was used to analyse the audio recordings of the teacher’s FRM implementation and written lesson reports. The study also analysed his post-implementation interview data to examine the implications and challenges of using the FRM in ESL classrooms. The study showed that the teacher found the FRM effective and practical, allowing him to scaffold and enhance his students’ knowledge and skills to engage in various forms of meaning construction, learn and analyse language usage, critically engage with the text and promote literacy practices.

The Significance of Victorian England for the Cottagecore Aesthetic

2023-12-20T20:34:28+00:00

This article contemplates the idyllic imagery of Elizabeth Gaskell's rural texts in relation to the key visual motifs of the Internet aesthetic "cottagecore." Meanwhile, the paper also strives to highlight the importance of both the Victorian era, particularly its literature and art, with regard to this popular Internet aesthetic. With some brief references to influential figures of the age, the cultural timeframe surrounding Gaskell's rural fiction is shown to offer significant historical relevance to the romanticisation of the English country-cottage life. The literary and pictorial texts serve as examples of this cultural process. Considering the author's mostly ornamental use of cottages in Wives and Daughters as well as her employment of floral characterisation, the paper also highlights the visual aesthetics of the cottage art of Helen Allingham and Myles Birket Foster as well as rural depictions made by illustrators of Gaskell's provincial works that display the visual after-life of Gaskell's rural texts.