Text transformation is an operation which is conducted upon an original text to give it a new character, flavour and impression. Various techniques are used, such us mimed, rewritten, articulated …. etc. for text transformation without changing the original meaning of the initial text. Some text transformation methods end up with a text of completely different content, such as the method called S+7/N+7. This dictionary method requires the writer to look through the dictionary for a word from the original text, then count and choose the seventh word beyond the initial word and use it in the new transformed text. This technique has been uesd in the example in the hand-out for transforming Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. It seems that the approches available to transform the text could generate and endles numbers of forms of the first text.
The text transformation concept is found in music. I want to mention a song that I listened to when I recently attended a concert for the Band “The Fray.” This band presented the song “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira using different musical instruments that maintained the interest of the original song, but added a new flavour. Experiencing new atmospheres is one of the objectives of text transformation.
From my readings of the text book I found Queneau’s methods and trials of text transformation very obvious. I was able to understand what he wanted to accomplish by his different methods clearly. The precision method is interesting and comical; in it, he describes the scence of the action in terms of length, width and height. Also, he decsribes his story figures by height,weight and exact age. I found this very amusing, but it could not be adopted for a serious novel. Queneau’s double entry method is charachterized by describing incidents, objects and people twice. This way of transforming text provides assertion in description which might help in understanding, but some times it is redundant and monotonous.
Text transformation is entertaining, amusing, and it is creative process from which new text could be built from many elemental texts.
