title: Translating Translations: A study of Ngā Rūpaiaha o Oma Kaiama, a Māori translation of the English version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

authors: Roa, Hariru Te Aroha

subjects: Translation

abstract: Omar Khayyám, a Persian poet who died in 1131, wrote a number of quatrains in Farsi which are regarded by some as representing the very summit of Sufism (that is, of the mystical dimension of Islamic thought) and by others as being essentially agnostic and hedonistic in nature. Those who are of the latter view are often strongly influenced by the ‘translation’ into English of some of these quatrains by Edward Fitzgerald, a British poet and writer whose first edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám appeared in 1859, at the height of the Victorian era. Although there have been several other translations of Khayyám’s quatrains, none has been as popular or, perhaps, as highly regarded as an artistic work as that of Fitzgerald. It has rarely, however, been regarded as a work that is faithful to the intent of the original. In deciding to translate into Māori Fitzgerald’s rendering into English of some of Khayyám’s Farsi quatrains (5th version), Pei Jones was faced with a peculiarly complex set of problems (linguistic, literary, cultural and religious). Pei Jones’ translation, a translation of a translation, is generally regarded as being faithful to Fitzgerald’s version of the Rubáiyát. It would appear, therefore, that he decided to treat Fitzgeralds’s text, in spite of the reference in its title to the original text, as his source text. This gives rise to a number of questions, including questions about what it means for a translator to be faithful or unfaithful to a source text. With particular reference to Pei Jones’ translation of Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, this thesis explores the concept of ‘fidelity’, a concept that, it is argued here (see Chapter 3), is often treated in the literature on translation in a way that belies its extremely complex nature. The thesis proposes a new approach to the concept of fidelity, one that is based on nine fidelity types: grammatical, lexical, informational, metrical, imagistic, rhetorical, historical, didactic and functional fidelity. In terms of this nonagonal analytical model, twenty-five of Pei Jones’ quatrains are analysed in relation to the equivalent quatrains in Fitzgerald’s version (Chapter 4). The analysis indicates that Pei Jones’ translation has neither metrical fidelity (a consequence of the very different nature of the source and target languages) nor functional fidelity (a consequence of the very different expectations and sensibilities that a Māori audience has in relation to the verbal arts). Metre and function are both, however, fundamental to the enduring appeal of Fitzgerald’s quatrains. The overall conclusion is that since it is often impossible to achieve all nine types of fidelity, translators need to carefully consider what their primary aim is in undertaking the translation of artistic works and be prepared to sacrifice certain types of fidelity (e.g. historical and informational fidelity) in order to create a work that fulfils the aesthetic expectations of the target audience. Pei Jones was undeniably successful in achieving those types of fidelity that were possible. However, the work may have had more widespread appeal if he had sacrificed some of them in order to create a work that was more closely aligned with the aesthetic expectations of Māori readers.

text: Translating Translations: A study of Ngā Rūpaiaha o Oma Kaiama, a Māori translation of the English version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Omar Khayyám, a Persian poet who died in 1131, wrote a number of quatrains in Farsi which are regarded by some as representing the very summit of Sufism (that is, of the mystical dimension of Islamic thought) and by others as being essentially agnostic and hedonistic in nature. Those who are of the latter view are often strongly influenced by the ‘translation’ into English of some of these quatrains by Edward Fitzgerald, a British poet and writer whose first edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám appeared in 1859, at the height of the Victorian era. Although there have been several other translations of Khayyám’s quatrains, none has been as popular or, perhaps, as highly regarded as an artistic work as that of Fitzgerald. It has rarely, however, been regarded as a work that is faithful to the intent of the original. In deciding to translate into Māori Fitzgerald’s rendering into English of some of Khayyám’s Farsi quatrains (5th version), Pei Jones was faced with a peculiarly complex set of problems (linguistic, literary, cultural and religious). Pei Jones’ translation, a translation of a translation, is generally regarded as being faithful to Fitzgerald’s version of the Rubáiyát. It would appear, therefore, that he decided to treat Fitzgeralds’s text, in spite of the reference in its title to the original text, as his source text. This gives rise to a number of questions, including questions about what it means for a translator to be faithful or unfaithful to a source text. With particular reference to Pei Jones’ translation of Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, this thesis explores the concept of ‘fidelity’, a concept that, it is argued here (see Chapter 3), is often treated in the literature on translation in a way that belies its extremely complex nature. The thesis proposes a new approach to the concept of fidelity, one that is based on nine fidelity types: grammatical, lexical, informational, metrical, imagistic, rhetorical, historical, didactic and functional fidelity. In terms of this nonagonal analytical model, twenty-five of Pei Jones’ quatrains are analysed in relation to the equivalent quatrains in Fitzgerald’s version (Chapter 4). The analysis indicates that Pei Jones’ translation has neither metrical fidelity (a consequence of the very different nature of the source and target languages) nor functional fidelity (a consequence of the very different expectations and sensibilities that a Māori audience has in relation to the verbal arts). Metre and function are both, however, fundamental to the enduring appeal of Fitzgerald’s quatrains. The overall conclusion is that since it is often impossible to achieve all nine types of fidelity, translators need to carefully consider what their primary aim is in undertaking the translation of artistic works and be prepared to sacrifice certain types of fidelity (e.g. historical and informational fidelity) in order to create a work that fulfils the aesthetic expectations of the target audience. Pei Jones was undeniably successful in achieving those types of fidelity that were possible. However, the work may have had more widespread appeal if he had sacrificed some of them in order to create a work that was more closely aligned with the aesthetic expectations of Māori readers.

year: 2013

title: When your maunga is a mountain but your moana is not a sea; Insights from the perception of synonymy of te reo Māori loanwords and New Zealand English lexical equivalents

authors: Pohl, Alexander

abstract: Languages and their speakers are in ongoing contact with one another, which inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). One perspective that has comparatively seen less attention in language contact research concerns how loanword relate to existing lexical alternatives. In recent years, language contact research has thus seen a paradigm shift towards an onomasiological perspective (see Anderson et al. 2017; Crombez et al. 2022; Zenner et al. 2023). Within this shift, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their near synonyms equivalents employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & WinterFroemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). 

This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study involving Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). Regarding onomasiology, Māori loanwords have been glossed and explained in different ways, and to date, there has been to our knowledge almost no research focused specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their near synonyms. 

Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords (spanning established semantic categories: flora and fauna, material culture, and social culture) and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgments were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family), using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous; see Figure 1). Because synonymy judgements are subjective, we also included ten fillers, to help us calibrate and interpret participant judgements. The 60 words were divided into two-word lists in order avoid fatigue, resulting in a within participant design. The target demographic for our population of interest consisted of young adults (18-24 years). 

Following cleaning and exclusions (e.g. participants who ignored filler items), the final dataset contained 260 participants. Inspecting the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on this core sample, while keeping an eye on the full dataset containing all participants. Preliminary findings suggest that young adults think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. These findings will be further scrutinised with regression techniques and qualitative analyses of the comments provided in an open answer section of the questionnaire.

text: When your maunga is a mountain but your moana is not a sea; Insights from the perception of synonymy of te reo Māori loanwords and New Zealand English lexical equivalents Languages and their speakers are in ongoing contact with one another, which inevitably leads to a flow of words being borrowed from one language into another (Haspelmath 2009; Winford 2010). One perspective that has comparatively seen less attention in language contact research concerns how loanword relate to existing lexical alternatives. In recent years, language contact research has thus seen a paradigm shift towards an onomasiological perspective (see Anderson et al. 2017; Crombez et al. 2022; Zenner et al. 2023). Within this shift, most studies looking at lexical variation between loanwords and their near synonyms equivalents employ corpus linguistics methods (e.g. Onysko & WinterFroemel 2011; Soares da Silva 2013). 

This project presents a large-scale experimental approach from a case-study involving Māori loanwords borrowed into New Zealand English (NZE). Māori loanwords are ubiquitous, salient and probably still increasing within the NZE lexicon (Macalister 2007; Trye et al. 2019). Regarding onomasiology, Māori loanwords have been glossed and explained in different ways, and to date, there has been to our knowledge almost no research focused specifically on the relationship between loanwords and their near synonyms. 

Here, we report on a Qualtrics experiment devised to probe the perceived relationship between 60 Māori loanwords (spanning established semantic categories: flora and fauna, material culture, and social culture) and their NZE equivalents, as ascertained from published sources. The synonymy judgments were elicited for pairs (e.g. whānau – family), using an analogue slider (ranging from 0 = non-synonymous to 100 = fully synonymous; see Figure 1). Because synonymy judgements are subjective, we also included ten fillers, to help us calibrate and interpret participant judgements. The 60 words were divided into two-word lists in order avoid fatigue, resulting in a within participant design. The target demographic for our population of interest consisted of young adults (18-24 years). 

Following cleaning and exclusions (e.g. participants who ignored filler items), the final dataset contained 260 participants. Inspecting the dataset showed a skew towards female participants, and for this reason, we focus our statistical analysis on this core sample, while keeping an eye on the full dataset containing all participants. Preliminary findings suggest that young adults think Māori loanwords are (highly) synonymous with NZE lexical alternatives. These findings will be further scrutinised with regression techniques and qualitative analyses of the comments provided in an open answer section of the questionnaire.

year: 2024

title: Improving the Quality of Real Time Media Applications through Sending the Best Packet Next

authors: McDonald, Ian

abstract: Real time media applications such as video conferencing are increasing in usage. These bandwidth intensive applications put high demands on a network and often the quality experienced by the user is sub-optimal.

In a traditional network stack, data from an application is transmitted in the order that it is received. This thesis proposes a scheme called "Send the Best Packet Next (SBPN)" where the most important data is transmitted first and data that will not reach the receiver before an expiry time is not transmitted. In SBPN the packet priority and expiry time are added to a packet and used in conjunction with the Round Trip Time (RTT) to determine whether packets are sent, and in which order that they are sent. For example, it has been shown that audio is more important to users than video in video conferencing. SBPN could be considered to be Quality of Service (QoS) that is within an application data stream. This is in comparison to network routers that provide QoS to whole streams such as Voice over IP (VoIP), but do not differentiate between data items within the stream or which data gets transmitted by the end nodes. Implementation of SBPN can be done on the server only, so that much of the benefit for one way transmission (e.g. live television) can be gained without requiring existing clients to be changed.

SBPN was implemented in a Linux kernel on top of Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) and compared to existing solutions. This showed real improvement in the measured quality of audio with a maximum improvement of 15% in selected test scenarios.

text: Improving the Quality of Real Time Media Applications through Sending the Best Packet Next Real time media applications such as video conferencing are increasing in usage. These bandwidth intensive applications put high demands on a network and often the quality experienced by the user is sub-optimal.

In a traditional network stack, data from an application is transmitted in the order that it is received. This thesis proposes a scheme called "Send the Best Packet Next (SBPN)" where the most important data is transmitted first and data that will not reach the receiver before an expiry time is not transmitted. In SBPN the packet priority and expiry time are added to a packet and used in conjunction with the Round Trip Time (RTT) to determine whether packets are sent, and in which order that they are sent. For example, it has been shown that audio is more important to users than video in video conferencing. SBPN could be considered to be Quality of Service (QoS) that is within an application data stream. This is in comparison to network routers that provide QoS to whole streams such as Voice over IP (VoIP), but do not differentiate between data items within the stream or which data gets transmitted by the end nodes. Implementation of SBPN can be done on the server only, so that much of the benefit for one way transmission (e.g. live television) can be gained without requiring existing clients to be changed.

SBPN was implemented in a Linux kernel on top of Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) and compared to existing solutions. This showed real improvement in the measured quality of audio with a maximum improvement of 15% in selected test scenarios.

year: 2013