Philippine E-Journals

Cebuano Visayan Poetry: A Study on Translingual Process

Kathleen B. Solon-villaneza

 

Abstract:

Translation Studies, one of the youngest academic interdisciplines and the most important fields in this globalized village at present, is an essential fled in the study of language and literature. To promote Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) and the love for Philippine literature, there is a need for a bilingual literary text. This is where the translation of Cebuano Visayan literature, i.e. poetry, necessary to be read worldwide, but are still in need of English translation for universal consumption, becomes inescapable. This translation study processes translingually the Cebuano Visayan textuality of Cora Almerino’s poem “Binangkal, Penelope” to English textuality. Specifically, it focuses on the morphosemantic, syntactic-semantic, and poetic language concordances. This study is a pure research. It is driven by scholarly curiosity and interest on how the translation of literary texts like poetry is processed. Based on the findings, this conclusion is arrived at: the process of translingual textualities is involved in the translation of the Cebuano Visayan poem to English. Te following recommendations are given: (1) the word-for-word translation method along with descriptive equivalence and componential analysis procedures instantly affirms equivalency and easily detects problematic areas in the
morpheme level of the translation process and produces pre-translation versions which are manageable for the translator; (2) the combination of at least two of three translation methods including literal, faithful, and semantic along with transposition, modulation, couplets synonym-antonym, and couplet addition deletion illuminate the literary contexts on the syntactic level and produces pre-translation versions that are practicable for the translator; (3) the combination of at least two of three translation methods including faithful, semantic, and idiomatic along with couplet synonym-antonym and couplet addition-deletion justify the expressive contexts on the figurative level and produces faithful versions that are attainable for the translator. Additionally, topics for future researches on translingual process are recommended.