Concepts Of Translation Studies Research Articles

The translation of women within the context of the Ottoman-Turkish women’s movement (1868–1935)

ABSTRACT The Ottoman Muslim and Turkish women’s movement provides a unique study field for researchers to follow the traces of women’s change and the reconstruction of gender roles during the modernisation process initiated in the Ottoman Empire and continued in the transition period from a centuries-old empire to a nation-state, the Turkish Republic. It also sets a perfect example in terms of demonstrating how feminism can acquire different meanings when translated into different contexts. The article aims to approach the movement from the perspective of translation studies and views the change of women and their gender roles as a translation process. Investigating the translation of women within the relevant socio-cultural and political context based on two concepts of translation studies, rewriting and self-translation, the study suggests that women followed purposeful translation strategies in this process to expand their agency and authority in a patriarchal society over time. Presenting a short historical background of the movement with a discussion on women’s agency through two strategies, the act of translation and gradualism, the article assesses the dynamics of the movement through the example of Seniha Sami Moralı, an underrepresented woman and translator in history, who experienced the process firsthand.

Untranslatability and the ethics of pause

ABSTRACT Untranslatability has been seen as a problematic concept in Translation Studies, rooted in outdated views of translation as doomed to failure. In this paper, I argue against such a view of untranslatability to make two claims. The first is that at least a temporary untranslatability is the condition of translation, without it translation would be redundant. The second is that untranslatability offers us both an ethical and descriptive model for intersubjective relations such that it does not merely refer to a textual practice but also to ways in which we relate to each other as human beings. In the first part of the paper, I engage with two critics of untranslatability – Ricoeur and Venuti – to claim that in their rejection of the untranslatable, they lose something productive. Against a view of the untranslatable as something ‘sacred’, as described by Heidegger; I argue that we might think of the untranslatable as that which exceeds our understanding yet generates the desire to understand at all. Drawing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Cassin, I claim that the untranslatable offers us a way of thinking of translation and understanding in general as ethical when they are paused, suspended, or interrupted.

Diplomatic Interpreting and Risk Analysis: A Literary Survey

In a diplomatic setting, overcoming the language barrier is fundamental to the establishment of mutual understanding and effective communication. As a complex activity that entails mediating immediate and direct personal contact between individuals from different cultures, interpreting can sometimes be problematic. As there may be more than one way of rendering the same speech, the process of interpreting may also be seen as a process of constant decision-making. When relations of power and conflicting political standpoints are involved, the cost and benefit of each alternative must be carefully considered in order to avoid undesirable consequences. As the worldwide political landscape is becoming increasingly volatile, diplomatic interpreters and their state of art are often put under the spotlight, attracting more public attention than ever with the help of contemporary social media. In order to tackle the challenges that arise during the event, an analysis of the associated risk may help the interpreter find an optimal strategy. During the past two decades, an increasing number of researches within the field of Interpreting Studies are focused on the social and cultural aspects of interpreting. However, the area of diplomatic interpreting has not attracted much academic attention. Similarly, while risk management is not a new concept in Translation studies, it remains a territory that is largely unexplored. This essay presents a literary review that aims to serve as a basis upon which further research can be conducted on the risks involved in diplomatic interpreting. The paper begins by illustrating the history of diplomatic interpreting to explain the various roles often assumed by the diplomatic interpreter. After that, an overview of the basic concepts and theories in risk studies is given to establish a better understanding of the framework. Finally, previous research into risk in translation and interpreting is evaluated in detail, providing a sound foundation for future projects to continue analyzing risk and decision-making in diplomatic interpreting.

Reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the explicitation of cohesive chains

Abstract Explicitation is a key concept in translation studies referring to turning what is implicitly narrated in a source text into explicit narration in a target text; it has been widely studied from different aspects across language pairs and genres. However, while most previous studies investigate explicitation through a few indicators of explicitness, most of which are specific logical links and connectives, textual explicitness encompasses far beyond these. To date, little attention has been paid, especially in literary translation, to semantic explicitation, which is realized through cohesive chains in textual development. Since cohesive chains represent the development of events and characters throughout the text, it is assumed the more there are of them, the more tangible a text is in realizing its meaning within its context. This research, therefore, sets out to investigate the cohesive chains in a Chinese classic novel, Hong Lou Meng, and in its two English translations, The Dream of the Red Mansions and A Story of the Stone, with an emphasis on how the texts are manifested as narratives in the respective contexts with different readers. It has found a trend of explicitation in translation from Chinese source text to English target texts in terms of the numbers of cohesive chains and the lexical items forming the chains. It has also found differences in the distribution of different types of cohesive chains (identity chains and similarity chains), which represent distinctive patterns of realizing the context in each text. The interpretation of these different stylistic features in narrative reflects both typological differences and translators’ choices.

Modern Thesis Research of Linguoculturological Factors in the Theory and Practice of Translation: Approaches, Gaps, Prospects

The thesis research carried out over the past 11 years in line with the culturally oriented concept of translation is considered. The main views on the problems of translation presented in more than 200 thesis in the specialty 10.02.20 for 2009—2020 are summarized. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that for the first time an attempt is made to review thesis research on translation topics, considering the “cultural component” as an anticommunicative factor that requires neutralization during translation. The relevance of studying this issue is due to the need to systematize diverse and sometimes contradictory studies in the field of translation, as well as to identify scientific gaps in the translation paradigm that need to be filled. In the process of work, the methods of generalization and interpretation of the results revealed the main approaches to the study of key concepts of translation studies: comparative-transformational and communicative-functional. The key concepts relevant for the study of the factor “culture” in translation were “linguo-ethnic barrier”, “without / equivalence”, “non / translatability”, “strategies for linguocultural adaptation of the text”. Particular attention is paid to identifying problem areas of the science of translation that require further development, which will expand the understanding of the state of modern translation, culturally oriented research, as well as contribute to the general theory of translation.

Beware the source text: five (re)translations of the same work, but from different source texts

Source text(ST), although a central concept in translation studies, has remained vaguely defined. This complicates the identification of a translation’s ST, which in turn creates problems for research. Associating translations with the incorrect ST(s) leads to questionable conclusions and categorizations, especially when dealing with the types of translation that are defined and theorized with reference to their relationship with their ST(s), such as retranslation, indirect translation, pseudotranslation and self-translation. Our case study of five Finnish translations of Jules Verne’sVingt mille lieues sous les merdemonstrates that these assumed retranslations have different STs. We adopt the notions ofworkandtextto establish the relationships among the translations and STs involved:textsare representations of awork, and awork, in turn, is a literary creation implied by its varioustexts. Although the five Finnish translations have different sourcetexts, they are all – as are their STs –textsof the samework. In other words, ifsource textis understood to be atext, the five translations are not, strictly speaking, retranslations; however, ifsource textis understood to be awork, then they are all retranslations of the samework. Therefore, the categorization of these translations – and thus also the points of view from which they can be studied – depends on whethersource textis defined as atextor as awork.

Translation constraints of eastern loans in russian film subtitles in French

The active development of intercultural communication in the cinematic arts sets new challenges for translation theorists and practitioners. The article presents concepts that are widely used in film translation, provides a classification of audiovisual translation types, and for the first time establishes a distinction between such concepts of translation studies as: “langue relais” (translator language), ”langue pont” (transition language),”langue véhiculaire” (Transporter language) and “langue interface” (interface language). Using the example of subtitles for the film “Turkish gambit”, the authors identified ways to translate them from Russian to French and conducted a detailed statistical analysis of the frequency of using methods of translating subtitles. According to the results of experimental data, borrowing was the leading technique in translating subtitles of Boris Akunin’s script “Turkish gambit”, which necessitated a comparative study of borrowings of Eastern languages, their assimilation in Russian and French, and translation features. The use of etymological, component and morphological analysis methods allowed us to identify the specifics of translation of orientalisms in Russian and French.

The Sociocultural Function of Translation: A Study of Simin Daneshvar’s Stories Sociocultural Aspects

The term “gender” is a load concept in translation studies. The present study focuses on stories written by Simin Daneshvar (1921-2012), a contemporary Iranian female translator and novelist, in order to explore how the visibility of women in the Iranian culture and community after a long patriarchal era has changed the community’s thoughts about women. The method used for this study was qualitative with the interpretive approach. The corpus consisted of five Persian stories, Wandering Island, Wandering Cameleer, The Quenched Fire, Ask from Birds of Passenger and Suvashun by Daneshvar, who has contributed to the promotion of Iranian women’s sociocultural status during the contemporary era. The results proved that women translators and novelists had endured the hardships of sociocultural changes and made it possible for the modern Iranian women to make themselves visible in their social context.

A noção de equivalência de Koller: universalismo relativizado?

Neste artigo será discutido o conceito de equivalência tradutória proposto por Werner Koller na 7ª edição de seu livro, Einführung in die Übersetzungswissenschaft (2004). As considerações serão feitas à luz da comparação entre a concepção de linguagem e a concepção de traduçãodefendidas pelo autor na obra citada. Partindo do princípio de que a concepção de linguagem adotada por um estudioso da tradução influencia a sua visão de tradução, como defendido por Kopetzki (1996), nosso objetivo é demonstrar que Koller adota uma concepção relativista de linguagem e que sua concepção de tradução e sua noção de equivalência, em alguns aspectos, vão de encontro ao caráter universalista geralmente atribuído a este conceito no âmbito dos Estudos de Tradução.

Theoretical Foundations of Translation Studies

<p>Epistemologies of translation are a complicated subject that is beyond the scope of this article. As such, only the critical points have been addressed in this paper. One key epistemological issue is the analysis of discourse in any science. In this article, four scenarios of translation studies have been discussed. An underlying concept in translation studies is the issue of fidelity in translation. In this paper, the trajectory of this concept is analyzed in brief. It is followed by a reflection on two fundamental concepts of source oriented (Sources) and target oriented translation approaches, as they occupy a particular position in the translation. The last section of the article investigates dichotomies in the field of translation studies, including the theory of the action, the untranslatability versus translatability, art versus science, and etc. In this paper, we try to study theoretical principles of translatology. So we consider four important speeches of Jean Rene Ladmiral: Prescriptive translatology, Descriptive translatology, Productive translatology, scientific translatology and then we consider faithfulness in translation. Ladmiral suggests two concepts for fidelity in translation: The source oriented (sources) and target oriented. These two concepts are the fundamental concepts in translatology. In the next step the translation science is investigated in various languages such as English, German and at last in French. Finally, we take a look at binary concepts: Theory vs. action, Translatability vs. untranslatability, Art vs. Science. This paper is in epistemology scope of translation and does not have pedagogical aspect, in other words, it is a function-oriented translation.</p>

An obsession: .com Between the rocky shores of myth and the new balance of powers

Using translation to illustrate and justify some of the changes we are facing today, I will follow a three-step move: - What are the biases towards purely technological interpretations of the “medium”? Technology is changing our perception of time and space; in particular, the power of instant seems to override any other feelings of long-term perspective and continuity. - Crowd is also changing, from the lonely crowd to the crowdsourcing: it takes nowadays the public sphere in different ways. This metamorphosis can be traced in translation: for a long time, translation has been denied as a need, an effort, a profession, a discipline. Today, because of the new work environment, translation becomes a desire, more easily accessible and practised by non-professionals. The evolution is technical, economic and social. It is also textual. - An historical overview sheds light on the impact of media technology in translation. In fact, certain concepts are under the influence of the materiality of the work. Among those concepts, “text” draws our attention: it has often been characterised by only linguistic features; today, it intertwines quite a number of different types of signs. The multimodal text challenges certain current concepts of Translation Studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.27.13739

Tradução, assimilação, resistência e discurso

Considerando a tradução como uma prática ideológico-discursiva, este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre o modo como o sujeito-tradutor responde a seu assujeitamento ideológico, aqui tomado como um ritual que admite o equívoco. A partir da Análise do Discurso francesa de Michel Pêcheux, propomos uma reelaboração de dois conceitos dos Estudos da Tradução: assimilação, neste artigo tomado como a repetição de discursos já sedimentados (identificação); e resistência, tomado como os processos de instauração e fortalecimento de discursos dissidentes (contraidentificação e desidentificação).

O conceito de região discursiva e a sua relevância para os Estudos da Tradução

O presente artigo visa apresentar o conceito de <em>speech region</em> e a sua tradução para o português brasileiro: região discursiva. Inicialmente, são apresentados o caminho percorrido para a tradução do termo e as opções tradutórias consideradas. Em um segundo momento são tecidas colocações sobre qual a relevância do termo em questão enquanto conceito para os Estudos da Tradução, em especial para a tradução de dialetos.

Una aportación al tratamiento de los elementos culturales: el signo lingüístico cultural

Cet article propose un parcours à travers quelques notions traductologiques par rapport au fonctionnement des éléments culturels dans la langue. La grande variété terminologique existante, aussi bien en Traductologie que dans des autres disciplines, comme la Linguistique Appliquée, produisent une certaine difficulté au moment de classer ces éléments culturels. À partir de ce parcours terminologique, nous proposerons un nouveau concept : le signe linguistique culturel. Une étude contrastive français-espagnol montrera le fonctionnement du signe linguistique culturel dans la langue. Cette étude servira également à montrer les différences entre ce que nous appelons le signe linguistique culturel et les autres éléments culturels traditionnellement identifiés dans les différentes langues.

How to research EU translation?

When applied to the practice of translating for the European institutions, several central concepts of translation studies are seen in a different light. Work at these institutions reveal unexpected complexities which have implications for translation theory. Researching EU translation can thus be used as a test case against which to measure and refine the theoretical apparatus of translation theory. At the same time, research can support practice by providing a theoretically informed global view of the everyday work of EU translators. In this article, my aim is to instigate critical interaction between translation theory and the practice of EU translation. Taking a closer look at some central concepts, such as source and target texts and cultures, the notion of equivalence, and translators ‘ visibility, I wish to indicate some avenues for future research.