The gains of reduction in translational processes: illness blogs and clinical-ethics cases

Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic

Introduction: The Gender and Queer Politics of Translation: New Approaches

Tasting Other Tongues: The Translation of Guillermo Fadanelli's ¿Te veré en el desayuno?

There is little doubt that Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology will appeal more to scholars in literary studies than it will to translation scholars in general. This is presumably not something to which Clive Scott would object. He narrows the scope to literary translation in the subtitle, and the examples of translation discussed in the book are all literary-poetic. Throughout the book he draws on examples of translation of French poetry, which is his area of expertise (Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Mallarmé). The core theoretical literature for this volume will also primarily be familiar to colleagues in literary studies. The most obvious example is Merleau-Ponty, whose thought forms the backdrop and frame of the entire work, but one might also cite Barthes, Gadamer, Glissant, and Richard.In Translating the Perception of Text, Scott presents a theory and practice of translation that falls very much into what French (literary) translation theorists would call a “prospective” theory of translation. His theory emerges from the experience of translation practice; it is concerned with a literary-poetic practice; and it is essentially an interrogative act that does not start from the assumption that translation is communication. The main aim of Translating the Perception of Text is to answer a question that Scott asks on the very first page: “how should I handle language in such a way that the experience of (reading) the source text (ST) can emerge?” (1). The real achievement of this volume, I think, is that it pushes for an overhaul of current understanding of the task of the (literary) translator. Even readers and translators who reject some of his individual claims and particular ideas will find that the thrust of the work as a whole leaves a lasting impression. If all this does is serve to remind the translator not to translate as would a machine (word for word, from one language to another, searching for sameness), this is still a valuable contribution.The volume starts with an introduction and is then divided into two parts: “Part I: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Language” and “Part II: Literary Translation as Phenomenology.” In the introduction, Scott touches on some tropes of contemporary translation theory, including the move away from the context of national standard languages, a recognition of multilingualism in both source and target texts, and the conception of translation as potentiality. At the same time, he has some very interesting ideas about what translation should be. For example, he insists here and elsewhere in the book that translations are not written for those with no access to the source language or source text (15–17), and he also argues that it is “translation's business to translate langue into langage” (10). We see an example of how this would work later in the book, in a discussion of the Zukofskys' translations of Catullus: “We begin to understand how the translator can begin to work towards the signifier of the source text, rather than towards its signified, and in so doing multiply the Englishes present in the text, in terms both of history and register” (100). Part I contains just one chapter (“Merleau-Ponty: Language, Painting and Translation”), in which Scott engages with the most relevant parts of Merleau-Ponty's writing for his own work on translation. This chapter is a necessary set-up for the rest of the book, but as such it is probably the least engaging for those interested in translation.Part II, on “Literary Translation as Phenomenology,” contains five chapters, which examine in turn “Overwriting and the Overwritten Text,” “Listening and Speaking: Sounds,” “Listening and Speaking: Rhythm,” “Writing and Speaking,” and “Translating the Time and Space of Languages.” These are the chapters that will be of most interest to the scholar and that I think will prove most inspiring to translators. Their titles alone reflect several key themes in Scott's translatory thought. The most obvious of these is the idea that translation responds to the reader's own synesthetic experience of the source text by translating toward other, or multiple, levels. Scott's text comes alive in these chapters because he is able to work simultaneously with the large theoretical toolbox he has set up, but also on translation itself. It is worth noting that it is not just phenomenology that informs his work. His interest in the materiality of language means that technical texts from linguistics provide him at times with analytical tools and terminology to discuss particular translation choices. This is done generally successfully, such as when he compares the formal properties of elle rougit and she blushed (63-4), but a linguist might question his selection of theoretical texts because it feels at times somewhat haphazard. Unsurprisingly, Scott is most insightful when reading his own translations, which often go through multiple versions in each discussion. This is not just because more abstract ideas become clearer through exemplification, but also because his conception of translation as “translationwork”—“the textual equivalent of the Pompidou Centre” (108)—rests on this process of opening up and transforming.To say that Translating the Perception of Text will appeal more to literary scholars than it will to translation scholars is not to say that translation scholars should not read this work. In fact, they will get a lot out of Scott's book if they can get past the particularity of this style of literary-theoretic writing. His own formal choices might feel particularly “foreignizing” unless they are understood to be reinforcing his argument; this includes his use of diagrams, tables, doodles, phonetic symbols, and the uneven use of abbreviations which might at first look like bad copyediting. Similarly, they will need to accept the significance he accords to certain translation choices, such as his fondness for the use of ▲ (104–5, 119–20). Finally, there are a number of unanswered questions that translation scholars are left to answer for themselves. This includes, crucially, how Scott's conception of translation really relates to imitation, and also what would happen if we tried to apply his theory and practice in a domain other than the literary-poetic.

This study aims to suggest ways of improving the effectiveness of translated tourism promotional materials (TPMs). It investigates the root causes behind the failure of translated texts to reach the target audience and the challenges involved in producing effective TPM translations. Research on the translation of TPMs has concentrated mainly on individual case studies and has generally not taken account of the overall context, that is, the entire process of promoting tourism across cultures. This study attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the relationship between the cultural context of tourism promotion in the commercial world and the language of tourism promotion as employed in TPMs. This is accomplished by investigating published Malay translations of Australian TPMs to assess whether the function of the Malay translations is appropriate for its cultural context. The application of the functionalist approach to translation and the investigation into the cultural context of the translated TPMs highlight key cultural inconsistencies. I address this cross-cultural challenge by proposing a translation model - the cultural-conceptual translation model (CCT) - which identifies effective strategies for the translation of TPMs. It is a given that the creation of an effective translated TPM is also contingent on a successful negotiation between the translator and the commissioner who assigns the task to the individual translator. Therefore, the translator-commissioner relationship forms an integral part of this study. In other words, this study combines both theoretical and practical aspects. The theoretical aspect is represented by the CCT model, while the practical aspect is represented by the application of the CCT model in a translation project conducted in a simulated commercial-world setting, with the commissioner-translator interaction being a key feature. The combination of both theory and practice works towards the mapping of possible best practices in TPM translation.

Background. During the study, it was noted the requirements for the professional competence of future translators and it was mentioned about the importance of the ability to model the translation process for a future specialist. The term "modeling of translation activity" is studied, several translation models existing in translation studies are discussed, their characteristics are given and the features of their practical application are described. The article discusses the methodology of conducting a practical lesson on the practice of translation, which will contribute to the formation of professional competence of future translators, form the connection between theoretical knowledge and practical skills among students, and form a conscious approach to performing translation tasks. Examples of tasks for the practical use of semantic, situational, transformational, communicative, informative, transformational, psycholinguistic models of translation in practical classes on the practice of translation are given. The application of this technology has been tested in practice and it has been indicated the effectiveness of focusing on the use of a particular translation model for translating texts of different genre and style. Purpose. The purpose of our research is to study the concept of "modeling translation activities", as well as to consider the use of various translation models in practical translation as one of the possible methods of professional training of future translators. Materials and methods. The following methods were used in the course of the study: the method of analysis, methods of representation and interpretation of information, the comparative method of various translation models, the method of observation. Results. The results of the research contribute to the improvement of the teaching methodology of the discipline "The practice course of translation", the using of theoretical knowledge in practice and the formation of a conscious approach of students to the translation process. The practical value: this methodic contributes to the formation of the skill of modeling the translation process, which is a necessary component of the professional competence of future translators. As a result of the use of this technology in the classroom, students gained the skill of working with texts of different genre and stylistic affiliation. EDN: IBMBDO

The frequent use of metaphors in health care communication in general and clinical ethics cases in particular calls for a more mindful and competent use of figurative speech. Metaphors are powerful tools that enable different ways of thinking about complex issues in health care. However, depending on how and in which context they are used, they can also be harmful and undermine medical decision-making. Given this contingent nature of metaphors, this article discusses two approaches that suggest how medical health care professionals may systematically and imaginatively work with metaphors. The first approach is informed by a model developed by cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Turner. The second approach is a close reading and thus a text-immanent, hermeneutical strategy. Using the double perspective of an ethics consultant and a researcher in literature studies, we take a case from Richard M Zaner in which a metaphor is central to the clinical-ethical problem. The article shows that the approaches, which focus on creativity and the intersections of form and content, may be helpful tools in clinical ethics, enabling a competent and mindful working with metaphors in complex cases as well as supporting the consultant’s thoughts processes.

This chapter seeks to contribute to a model for quantitative exploration of translated texts by adopting clustering techniques to search for patterns of comparability in a corpus of retranslations. Drawing on systemic-functional theory (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) as a framework for text analysis, it reports on an exploratory study aimed at investigating source – target text relations as computed through statistical methods for a manually annotated representative text sample. Annotation built on the analytical framework used for comparing source and target texts, which is based on categories of grammatical functions common to both source and target language systems. The corpus was compiled from ten translations of a source text -- a short story written in English by Katherine Mansfield -- into Spanish and Portuguese by different translators over a period of six decades. The texts were explored in terms of the ‘retranslation hypothesis’ (Berman 1990), whereby retranslations tend to be more source-oriented than first translations, orientation being established in our study on the basis of the distance between source and target text as computed through cluster analysis. The results obtained point to similarities between texts computed on the basis of categories ascribed to the lexicogrammatical choices made by each author within the grammatical systems analyzed. They also corroborate the findings of other researchers who have used other approaches and methodologies to probe the ‘retranslation hypothesis’, in that they confirmed the relative distance of a first translation from the source text, while they also showed varied degrees of proximity of retranslations to the source text, the former being in some cases further away from the latter than first translations.

This thesis is a re-evaluation of Lin Shu (1852-1924) and his literary translations. Lin Shu is one of China’s most influential translators. He initiated modern literary translation in China, and his translations imported new ideas, literary concepts, styles and techniques from the West. These, in turn, influenced the emergence and development of modern Chinese literature. Nevertheless, Lin Shu and his translations have been belittled and even dismissed for various reasons over the years. The emergence and development of target/culture-oriented translation theories offer the possibility of re-assessing Lin Shu and his translations. The re-assessment of Lin Shu and his translations in this study is based on target/culture-oriented translation theories, which emerged in the 1970s. Target/culture-oriented translation theories focus on the mutual influence between a translation and its target culture, especially on the influence of a translation on the target culture and readers as a criterion for successful translation rather than examining whether the target text is faithful to the source text, as in the traditional linguistic approach. These target/culture-oriented theories can effectively explain the translational phenomenon of Lin Shu, as Lin Shu translated with the needs of the target culture and readers in mind. He attached great importance to the cultural function and influence of his translations during a period of historical transition in China. The criticisms of Lin Shu and his translations in China and elsewhere have largely been negative, often highlighting political issues - his endorsement of the constitutional Qing monarchy and his conservative attitude to the New Culture Movement - as well as his free translation method. Target/culture-oriented translation theories offer a framework for the re-assessment of Lin Shu and his translations that bypasses these narrow approaches. Adopting target/culture-oriented translation theories, this thesis examines Lin Shu’s translations in a trans-cultural context. Lin Shu based his translations on the needs for the Chinese culture and readers of that time, which was clearly embodied in his choice of, and response to, the originals works. The prefaces and postscripts that he wrote for his translations illustrate the new cultural and literary factors that Lin Shu introduced into China. In this respect, Lin Shu’s translation of La Dame aux Camelia is perhaps the most famous case study of his translation method. Through a comparative analysis of the Target Text (TT) and Source Text (ST), the thesis discusses the ‘truthfulness’ of Lin Shu’s translation, and stresses that ‘truthfulness’ lies in seeking poetic equivalence rather than formal equivalence between the target and source texts. We argue that poetic equivalence is similar to Nida’s principle of correspondence, but is beyond his dynamic equivalence. It lays special stress on literary or aesthetic equivalence. Poetic equivalence in Lin Shu’s translations relates to the stylistic expression in China’s literary language and is therefore intrinsic to sinicization. Lin Shu’s skill in classical Chinese is central to our notion of poetic equivalence. However, I argue that Lin Shu’s translation strategy is actually also beyond equivalence. It is primarily embodied in his constant adaptation of the original to the perceived needs of Chinese culture and the acceptability of his translations to Chinese readers. Adaptation includes omission, addition, alteration and abridgment. In terms of target/culture/reader-oriented translation theories, Lin Shu’s adaptations were acceptable in the cultural context of his time. In brief, this study clarifies Lin Shu’s contribution in introducing Western culture and literature into China. The study also stresses the cultural influence of Lin’s translations on modern Chinese culture and on later generation of Chinese writers and translators. This thesis concludes that Lin Shu played a role of utmost importance in the establishment and evolution of early-modern and modern Chinese translation, particularly of modern literary translation in China. Therefore, Lin Shu is the father of modern Chinese literary translation.

Translation skill is undoubtedly needed by university students to uncover the problems in understanding textbooks written in English. Despite the need, there are still few students using appropriate strategies to help them comprehend the textbooks. This is due to their lack of understanding in the theories of translation which more or less help them translate the textbooks well. This paper is intended to find out appropriate strategies adopted by English department students in coping with problems with non equivalence. Sixty five English department students have participated in this small survey. The data were collected by asking the students to translate three different genres of texts, from informational text, literary text and news. From the translation process, the students will face problems with non equivalence from each different genre of a text. This small survey revealed the common translation strategies adopted by the English department students in translating informational text, literary text and news. The underlying finding will reveal the typical strategies used to deal with the problems of non equivalence in informational text, literary text and news. At the end of the paper, it is suggested that the students undergo more practice in translation using the seven strategies of translation.

The original version of the Zambia national anthem was written in English and then translated into most of the 73 Zambian languages. This article looks at how the Zambia national anthem was translated from English into the local languages. However, due to many factors, we chose to limit our study to one language, namely Bemba, which is considered as the most widely spoken Lingua franca in Zambia. In this study, great emphasis has been placed on the various translation processes and strategies used to translate the Zambia national anthem from English into Bemba, in the light of the equivalence theory. The concept of equivalence has often been used to indicate that the source text and the target text share what a number of scholars refer to as “sameness” or similarity. Vinay and Darbelnet as cited by Munday [6] explain that equivalence applies to cases where languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means. Translation is therefore perceived as a way of establishing a straight forward correspondence between individual words [14]. This article shows that various translation strategies were used to manage equivalence within the accepted proxies of optimum translation and weaker version translation. In other words, the equivalence levels between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) were analysed. This work shows evidence of semantic and socio-cultural variance between the original English version of the Zambia national anthem and the translated Bemba version. It also highlights the fact that the translation of a number of lines are close to approximations of the original lyrics, while others have substantially been modified to communicate the message in the original version. The ingenuity and innovativeness shown by the translator(s) of the Zambian national anthem into Bemba encompass what Lederer [5] refers to as linguistic competence and world knowledge to grasp the sense of the source text and convey it to the target text. This article shows that equivalence between the source text and the target text can be established at different linguistic levels and using different techniques. Without equivalence, it would be difficult to consider any given translated text as a successful translation of the source text. In this study the translation from English into Bemba can be seen as the product of the translator’s choices.

– This article seeks to explore the contribution stylistic analysis may offer to the practice of translation. In this context, it argues that the application of a stylistic methodology to translation may represent an asset both for the preliminary analysis preparing the translation process and for the assessment of the translation resulting from it. Particular attention is paid to the special interest area in stylistics of foregrounding in its connection to the linguistics of point of view, since it seems to provide insights useful for preventing or solving frequent translation problems. These considerations are applied to the analysis of passages from William Trevor’s collection of short stories Cheating at Canasta and of their Italian published translation. In particular, the foregrounding strategies of the source text do not seem to be adequately conveyed in the Italian version of the stories; therefore, the article proposes alternative translations.

This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the most important linguistic element of science fiction as they produce the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement and hence cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is thus used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text genre to the target text and to hypothesise whether the target text meets the expectations of the viewers. When the neologies are retained as genre-specific features of science fiction, the target text genre is seen to be generically fluent and the target text meets the viewer’s expectations. Even though the translation solutions which render the genre unfluent (misplace the science fiction cognitive estrangement produced by the source text) are in minority in the study material, the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer. Lay summary Science fiction is one of the most popular contemporary film and tv-series genres. The audience has expectations on the content of a science fiction film or tv-series based on their previous experiences with the genre, in other words, the genre-specific features. This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of these genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the voice of science fiction as they cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text (the original tv-series) genre to the target text (the subtitled tv-series) and to hypothesise whether the translation meets the expectations of the viewers. When the dialogue’s neologies are retained in the subtitles, the target text is seen to meet the viewer’s expectations. The study revealed that the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer.

For novelists, dialects can help them to convey a particular message. For translators, however, dialects in the novel they translate can cause problems. It is due to the fact that dialects are linguistically and culturally bounded. This paper tries to highlight the Indonesian translation of African American English (AAE) dialect used by black characters in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The sources of data of the paper are the English version of the novel and the Indonesian translation published by Bentang Pustaka. The analysis of the features of AAE dialect in the source text (ST) shows that among all of the sentences uttered by the black characters, almost all of them (about 95%) contain the features of AAE, in forms of sintax, phonology and vocabulary. The large number of data which show the real characteristics of AAE indicates that the ST writer intended to bring the AAE for a real communication as naturally as possible. Interestingly, the most frequently seen AAE dialect features in the English novel are phonological ones. Considering that it is a written novel, the large number of phonological dialect features in the ST makes the distinct way of speaking of the black characters very clear for ST readers. The Indonesian version, however, doesn’t show particular dialect features. It contains various features of standard Indonesian language. It means that the translator employs naturalization technique for translating AAE dialect. Consequently the distinct speech style of the black characters in the ST cannot be clearly seen in the translation. The information about the social background of the black characters that are from black and the low society cannot be traced from the language used in the TT. Moreover, a note about the dialect used by the ST author is not provided in the translation. Consequently, the readers of the TT will potentially get different reading experience from those of the readers of the ST and cannot appreciate the effort to the ST writer to provide a dialect as a tool of characterization. Keywords: dialect, African American English, black characters, dialect features, translation technique

Baker (1992, p. 259) defined the term ”presupposition” as a pragmatic inference relating to the linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge that a sender assumes the receivers to have or which is necessary to retrieve the sender's message. For example, the sentence ”Bill's wife is beautiful” presupposes the fact that he is married, and the sentence ”Helen regrets being angry with her boyfriend” presupposes that she was angry with him in the past. Regarding the concept of presupposition in translation, what matters is the concept of cultural presupposition because culture-or socio-culture-specific information may exist anywhere in source texts (ST), a detail that a responsible translator should not ignore when translating STs. By following Holz-Manttari's (1984) translation action theory, translation is viewed as a human activity having purposes and involving intercultural transfer. When a professional translator, being an intercultural mediator, translates the Chinese word 豆腐 into English as ”tofu” instead of ”bean curd, ” it may be supposed that the target readers have seen the word ”tofu” and know that it is a kind of Chinese food made from soybeans; alternatively, it may be assumed that the target readers are vegetarians or persons who like oriental meals. However, a problem may occur when a translator discovers that the target readers do not possess the aforementioned knowledge about 豆腐. The translator then has to make a decision to choose either ”tofu, ” ”bean curd, ” or ”bean curd” plus an explanation as the translated version. In Nord's (1997) model, she asserts that a translator should first compare the ST and TT profiles defined in the commission, such as the intended text function and the addressees, to determine where the two texts may diverge before starting translation; then, the translator analyzes the ST to decide on the functional priorities for the translation strategies. Nord then provides a list of intratextual factors for an ST analysis, a presuppositional analysis being one of them. When analyzing the presupposition, a translator may discover that many difficult problems result from the divergence in cultural backgrounds between the TT and the ST readers. When examining the study of translation from a prospective angle, cultural presupposition is considered to play a large role in the impression that a translator makes on the TT readers. A translator providing sufficient or poor cultural backgrounds for these readers, whether consciously or unconsciously, will cause a different effect and impact on them. A translator well acquainted with the concept of cultural presupposition has an advantage to apply it freely to successfully achieve goals based on the translation purposes.