Estonia through cultural and interlingual translation: auto- and hetero-Images in Lennart Merís Hõbevalge and Silverwhite

Abstract

As translation studies and imagology help show how cultures become visible across languages, this thesis examines how national and cultural images in Lennart Meri’s Hõbevalge (1976) are translated into English in Silverwhite. The study asks how auto-images and hetero-images are transferred and what kinds of translational patterns emerge in this process. First, the introduction of the thesis presents the topic, aim, key terms, and structure. Then, the theoretical chapter outlines the background of the novel and its author and introduces the connections between translation studies and imagology. The methodology chapter explains the selection principles for the image-events that make up the corpus and the adapted model based on a translation framework by Holmes (1988). The corpus and paratexts are examined in the analysis chapter through the adapted Holmesian model to trace imagological transfer in translation. Keywords: translation studies, imagology, auto-images, hetero-images, paratexts.