Descriptive Translation Studies Research Articles

A corpus-based study of subtitling religious swear words from English into Arabic

Abstract Subtitling Hollywood films with religious taboo words for conservative and closed societies, such as an Arab society, is a difficult task. This study investigates the dominant religious terms and functions used in Hollywood films and to identify the dominant translation strategies used for them in Arabic subtitles and determines whether these strategies are source language-oriented or target language-oriented (domesticating or foreignising). A corpus of 90 Hollywood films released between 2000 and 2018 is used to answer these questions; insights from descriptive translation studies are also taken (Toury, 2012). The corpus is analysed quantitatively and qualitatively using a self-designed, parallel and aligned corpus of 90 films and their Arabic subtitles. Findings reveal that the functions of religious taboo words have significant impacts on the choices of subtitling strategies. Foreignization strategies are used in roughly two-thirds of all occurrences of religious taboo words despite the cultural distance between English and Arabic. Using Modern Standard Arabic in Arabic subtitles limits subtitlers’ linguistic options. Furthermore, the nature of audio-visual translation influences subtitler choices because the meaning of a word can appear on the screen as a gesture, image or sound.

Systemic Analysis of the Translation of Cultural Elements in English and French Versions of Mofolo’s Moeti oa Bochabela

This study analyses the translation of cultural elements in the two translations of Thomas Mofolo’s Moeti oa Bochabela. The research objectives sought to identify the cultural elements in the two translations, the techniques and strategies used in rendering them, bring out the discrepancies in translating cultural elements in the two translations and suggest improvements for inadequate translations. Data was collected from the three novels and other documents after which a comparative analysis was done. The current study was guided by Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), Philological theories of translation, Skopos Theory, Manipulation Theory and Socio-Linguistic Theory. Its findings reveal that the techniques that were used to render cultural elements in the corpus under study include literal translation, borrowing and calque, which are source text-oriented, and cultural equivalence, explicitation, reformulation, expansion, description, transposition, adaptation and omission, which are target text-oriented. The two categories of techniques fall under foreignization and domestication strategies respectively. The study also shows that in both translations, the cultural elements were more domesticated than foreignized. The English translation has more foreignization than the French one while the French translation has more domestication than the English version. Although not in all cases, there are discrepancies in the rendering of cultural elements in the two translations.

Comparative World Literature: Making a Case for Re/Translation

Translation has been a major bone of contention in comparative literature studies. For the longest time it was looked down upon by bona fide comparatists, who insisted on studying literary works in the original. World literature scholars, on the contrary, have from the beginning acknowledged that, given the multiplicity of the world’s languages and their literatures, it was inevitable that one resort to translation to access all but a handful of literatures. The final decades of the 20th century saw the rise of translation studies. Adopting insights and methods from descriptive translation studies might help bridge any putative gap between comparative and world literature studies, also when it comes to transcultural studies.

A Comparative Study of Two English Translations of Tao Hua Yuan Ji Based on Gideon Toury̓s Theory of Translation Norms

Tao Hua Yuan Ji, as one of the excellent classical Chinese works written by Tao Yuanming, a well-known idyllist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), is of great importance in the Chinese literary circle for describing a quiet and peaceful pastoral life and embodying the Taoist of seclusion. Nowadays, people can also get new thoughts and insights through rereading this classic work. Based on Toury’s theory of translation norms, this paper conducts a descriptive and interpretive study of comparing Yang Xianyi’s translation of Tao Hua Yuan Ji with Lin Yutang’s one. By analyzing the two translators’ different translation purposes, translation tendencies and translation strategies in the three aspects of preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms, this paper states that the concrete translation behaviors of Yang Xianyi and Lin Yutang are influenced and restricted by the translation norms, thus their respective versions show different stylistic characteristics in terms of vocabulary, syntax and text. Through unveiling the reasons of the different styles of these two translations, this paper aims to provide some enlightenment for the descriptive translation studies in the process of spreading Chinese culture to the world.

Translation as Politics: Translating Nikolai Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler in Nineteenth-Century France

This article examines the three translations of Nikolai Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler published in nineteenth-century France. Relying on Descriptive Translation Studies so as to challenge the traditional narrative about the political innocuousness of Karamzin’s travelogue, it reconstructs the historical contexts of the three publications in order to highlight the political agendas of their translators and/or translating patrons. Far from being the innocent product of the translators’ sheer curiosity, the three translations prove to be political objects, used at three key moments in the history of Franco-Russian relations in the nineteenth century, in order to call for political change, to try and restore Russia’s damaged reputation, or to attempt to forge new diplomatic alliances.

Subtitling the f-word into Arabic in Hollywood films: a corpus-based study

This study investigates the prevailing strategies used by Arab translators when translating the f-word in subtitles. The study also determines whether these strategies are source-language-oriented or target-language-oriented. To address these research questions, a corpus of 90 Hollywood films released between 2000 and 2018 is analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, with a particular focus on their subtitles. Insights from descriptive translation studies (henceforth DTS), particularly Toury (2012), are also incorporated. The findings indicate that the functions of the f-word significantly influence the choice of subtitling strategies. Also, the use of Modern Standard Arabic in Arabic subtitles restricts the subtitlers’ linguistic options. Additionally, the nature of audiovisual translation plays a role in subtitler choices since the meaning of a word can be conveyed through gestures, images, or sounds on screen. In addition, the f-word is often translated into religious expressions, and omission is commonly used for certain functions as, for instance, an emphatic intensifier or idiomatic ‘set phrase’.

Language, violence, and media: Translating Russia-Ukraine 2022–2023 war from Arabic to English

Reporting a situation of war is an intricate activity that requires balance. An attempt not to uphold this balance can have an implication not only on the parties involved in the war but also on the report. This paper examines Arabic-English reports of the Russia-Ukraine 2022-2023 war, considering how the target text orients towards peace. The study has a tripartite footing in translation, media, and peace linguistics, drawing insights from Holmes/Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies. The English translation has been carried out by two purposively selected media organizations, Asharq Al-Awsat and Qatar News Agency, which primarily report in Arabic. We have chosen two media houses in order to evaluate the peace linguistic implications of target texts in private and public media houses, the result of which can draw more attention to this research area. Ten reports on the Russia-Ukraine 2022–2023 war were randomly downloaded for the study from two websites, Asharq Al-Awsat and Qatar News Agency), all in Arabic (source text) and English (target text) versions. The Source Text (ST) versions were duly screened for expressions that describe violence or peace. Such expressions constitute the focus of examination in the Target Text (TT) so that we can identify how they have been translated, which leads to their peace linguistic effect. The study finds an under-reporting (or under-translation) of a violent situation of the war in the target text via lexical omission with the intent of either promoting peace or taking sides with one of the warring parties. At other times, there is neutralization of violence in the text so that the key lexical items suggesting violence are replaced with innocuous ones. The study concludes that the TT is more interested in amplifying the statement of violence attributed to Ukraine's ally and, at the same time, backgrounding their statement of peace. On the contrary, violence attributed to Russia is often neutralized via the use of inadequate lexemes to report events.

Reference in English-Chinese Legal Translation: Human Translators Versus ChatGPT

Reference is a device of grammatical cohesion; it refers to another element with the same semantic meaning; it can be categorized into personal reference, demonstrative reference, and comparative reference (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). This paper aims to delve into the grammatical cohesion in legal translation, focusing particularly on the translatability of reference in English-Chinese translation through a detailed case study. To this end, the International Code for the Protection of Tourists is chosen as the source text and is compared with two target Chinese translations: one by human translators and the other by ChatGPT (the fourth version). The data related to differences of reference items between English and Chinese are identified and marked. Based on Toury’s (2012) framework of descriptive translation studies, the study is qualitative and is conducted on the English-Chinese translation of reference in the legal text, the human translation, and the ChatGPT’s translation. The research reveals that three translation methods (literal translation, omission, and amplification) are used in translating reference items. It indicates that there are more advantages of human translators than ChatGPT in legal translation.

Mapping translation process research: A bibliographic study on special issues since year 2005

This paper investigates recent developments in translation process research (TPR) as an emerging sub-discipline of descriptive translation studies by surveying articles published from 2005–2019 in special issues of eight major translation/linguistic journals. The overall trend in the field is first presented, followed by a systematic analysis of the articles in terms of authorship, regional distribution, themes, and methodology. To perform the thematic analysis, a three-layer classification system was developed, which includes the type of translation tasks, the type of study (theoretical/review or data-based research articles), and specific topics addressed in each article. This article presents distribution within each category and sub-category, followed by a discussion of trends and future research directions. The major findings are: 1) 61.36% of the articles in the database were single authored while UK and Spain had the highest number of authored publications; 2) 77.27% of the articles focused on written translation tasks, and 34.09% of the research articles were dedicated to new topics in TPR; 3) 59.38% of the publications employed more than one research method. The outcomes of this study allow future researchers investigating translation processes, such as the specific and in-depth analysis of theoretical models and the combined use of experimental and naturalistic methods, to expand the research landscape and pursue new methodological innovations.

Building a Parallel Corpus for Chinese Folk Songs Translation Studies: A Case Study of Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er Folk Songs

Folk songs, collaboratively created by the public and transmitted orally, have gained widespread popularity. The translation of folk songs primarily centers on lyrics translation, a subset of literary translation. Recent advancements in corpus technology have highlighted the significance of corpus-based research approaches for the analysis of literary translation. The corpus method, now employed as a hybrid research approach, enables the generation of quantitative data for descriptive translation studies. Scholars are increasingly using parallel corpora containing both the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) to explore translation universals across diverse texts. Despite the growing body of literature on the translation of Chinese folk songs, most studies have involved straightforward analyses of a limited number of translated texts without the utilization of quantitative approaches. This article aims to bridge this gap by presenting a prospective study on the creation of the Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er Folk Songs (CEPCNSHFS). The study covers essential aspects such as sampling, corpus structure, corpora selection, and corpora processing. Moreover, to assess the practical utility of the CEPCNSHFS, a pilot study was conducted. The primary contributions of this article reside in the potential of the CEPCNSHFS to support diverse research topics, including the exploration of translation language characteristics, styles, and methods employed in translating Northern Shaanxi and Hua’er folk songs, both of which hold significant positions within Chinese folk song traditions.

The Translation of the Septuagint by Rev. Prof. Remigiusz Popowski. History, Editions, Significance and an Analysis of Translation Strategy and Techniques

Newer and newer Bible translations from original languages tend to appear regularly. Their authors pursue a plethora of strategies, from interlinear to philological to dynamic ones, taking as the source text not only the Hebrew, but also the Greek canon. Since the 1980s, the books of the Greek Bible have been translated into German, English, Italian, Spanish and French; ten years ago, this group was comple­mented by the Polish rendering made by Rev. Prof. Remigiusz Popowski. Though enthusiastically received, the text was not much researched. This article is intended to make up for this paucity and present the Polish text of the Septuagint from the perspective of its bibliological process and that of descriptive translation studies: a brief account of its historical background, the author of the translation, a record of editions and the significance for the Polish biblical milieu is followed by a closer analysis and exemplification of strate­gies and techniques adopted by the author.

Tendency of Translating Educationally Valued Texts from Japanese Culture into Bangla Used in Reading Literacy

No previous study has explored why the translators selected children’s literature while translating Japanese literature into Bangla. This study aims to identify the tendency of selecting Japanese texts for translation into Bangla1, which have educationally valued contents. It employed descriptive translation studies approach to prepare a periodized catalog of translated Japanese children’s literature in the quantitative section to develop a history. The qualitative part is conducted based on two recent concepts of the sociology of translations: sociology of translation process in functioning and interpreting and sociology of translation as a cultural product. This study reveals that the translators primarily select tales with moral values a child or an adult learns from the societal sectors other than the educational institutions. They intend to circulate those moral values in the target society because the contents are socially apposite and deemed socio-culturally necessary in the target region. Totto-chan is analyzed as a cultural product to explore why and to what extent it is circulated. The interpreted texts are used to enhance reading literacy in reading programs. This study establishes a fundamental basis for translation, society and education altogether in the target society focusing on Japanese literature translations. In future, this study could be used as a foundational work in the field of translation studies in Bangladesh.

Quelques repères d’une traductologie productive

A Few Guidelines for Productive Translation Studies 
 The paper is based on the concept of “productive Translation Studies”, understood as a science of translation anchored in the present and designed to help both translators and translation scholars. To provide some directions for productive Translation Studies, the paper starts with a diachronic analysis of the discipline. The field acquired its autonomy in the 80s when it was no longer considered a branch of linguistics. Nevertheless, translation scholars have manifested some hesitations in the past and there are aspects to be rectified. To establish the aim and methodology of the discipline, a clear definition of translation (both as a process and as a product) is needed. In addition, the nature of Translation Studies should be discussed: whether they are a scientific field or a branch of humanities and to what extent they are interdisciplinary. This historical overview is also used to discuss the “ages” of Translation Studies, as defined by Jean-René Ladmiral. Thus, prescriptive Translation Studies fix some general principles of a “good” translation and have a theoretical nature; descriptive Translation Studies rely on comparative and contrastive methods, analysing translation as a product; inductive Translation Studies aim at discovering what happens in the translator’s mind and are not developed yet; productive Translation Studies are connected to the reality of the market and provide methodological principles to translators and translation scholars to facilitate their work. In the final part of the paper, the author describes several strategies to be followed by contemporary Translation Studies. One step is to put an end to the scientific hesitations of the past and to have a coherent approach. Then, the debate concerning translation dichotomies (such as the possibility or impossibility of translation, faithfulness, and unfaithfulness in translation, translating form or translating meaning) should be left behind because it is unproductive. Connecting theory and practice and putting in contact with translators and translation scholars is another objective. Translation critics should give up the sacralization of the source text: in fact, any approach should put the translator on center stage to empower him/her. A double approach – psychological and sociological – may be needed to understand the translator’s choices: the psychological approach is based on the Theory of Sense, while the sociological analysis takes into consideration the constraints of the market. New technologies should become a topic of research. Also, translation studies should be rendered into various languages to disseminate new ideas and trends.

How a translation impacts its translator

Abstract The present article is a function-oriented case study within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies, as developed by Gideon Toury, which posits translations as facts in the target culture where they interact with other works and influence them. The present article argues that a translation can have an impact on its translator whose relationship with the target culture is ambivalent. The British missionary Timothy Richard and his Chinese translation of Looking Backward is the case under investigation. Richard played multiple roles in late Qing China. He was a reformer as well as a missionary. His translation of Looking Backward influenced his own reform ideas, which in turn influenced the reformists in late Qing China.

Contested naming practices in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: a translation perspective

ABSTRACT This article examines contested naming practices in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict from a translation perspective. Examples are drawn from two political plans, namely, the “Tenet Plan” and the “Disengagement Plan” and their different translations. The two plans were translated by different agents – including governmental and non-governmental institutions as well as media outlets – into Arabic and English and into Arabic and Hebrew, respectively. The analysis, informed by concepts and methods of Product-Oriented Descriptive Translation Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, focuses on the translation of names given to places, events and actions, and protagonists of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. These translations constitute a revealing site for analyzing contested naming practices that reflect the asymmetric power struggle between the two sides of the conflict, as well as their opposing political positions and competing narratives. Overall, this article highlights the importance of studying contested naming practices in their ideological, socio-political, historical, and institutional contexts.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Analysis of dubbed and subtitled insults into European Spanish

The treatment of insults –understood as words within offensive language whose function is hurting the addressee's feelings (Ávila-Cabrera, 2016)– in audiovisual translation (AVT) always poses a challenge to audiovisual translators: because of the semantic/pragmatic load these terms have in the source text (ST), the effect caused in the target text (TT) and culture, and because of the difficulty in transferring them in an idiomatic way. Certain formulas do not always maintain the effect that some words have in the ST. In addition, the translation techniques used may not even be faithful to the original dialogue exchanges. This paper aims to analyse all the insults uttered in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019), and in its dubbed and subtitled versions into European Spanish. In order to do so, I will pay particular attention to the speaker's intention (Grice, 1969), whether the insults found in the ST can be viewed as examples of friendly banter or whether, by contrast, the speaker's intention was offending. Ávila-Cabrera's (2023) taxonomy of translation techniques will be used to delve into the manner in which insults were translated to the TT to determine whether or not the semantic/pragmatic load of these terms is transferred (being toned up, maintained or toned down) or not (being neutralised or omitted).The point of departure of this case study resorts to the initial hypothesis that dubbing transfers more insults into European Spanish than subtitling due to the technical features of the former. The aims of the study are: to determine (1) how faithful the dubbed and subtitled version insults were towards the ST, that is, whether or not the load of the insults is transferred to the TT and to what degree; (2) which AVT mode transfers the greatest number of insults to the TT; (3) if the insults transferred had the intention of offending or not; and (4) if the insults tend to foreignisation or domestication. In order to do so, a multidisciplinary methodology will be used based on a descriptive translation studies (DTS) and pragmatics approach.

Lexical Creativity in Community Translation Corpus from Ghana

Although corpus-based research is becoming more common in many languages and in translation studies in general, it tends to be scarce or even nonexistent in Akan and many other African languages that are often considered as minority languages. In fact, failure to use Akan in various fields has hindered its development to some extent, particularly in online electronic resources, human language technology and for optimising online presence. Thelimited availability of resources, such as reference corpora and specialised dictionaries, suggests that translators who work from and into Akan often have to rely solely on their ingenuity in the process of translation. The study, therefore, explored a bidirectional English–Akan parallel corpus, built earlier by the researcher in another study. Using the descriptive translation studies approach, Skopos theory and Baker’s (1992) translation strategies, the paperanalyses lexical creativity as a strategy used to resolve translation problems specific to the language pair: borrowing, compounding and reduplication. Akan may not be a typical minority language, but it is in a disadvantaged position compared to English, which serves as the official language. Consequently, many documents are primarily written in the official language, thereby creating a form of imbalance in terms of language development and translationchallenges for community translators and interpreters who work from and into Akan. The research sheds light on how the abovementioned corpus can empower community translation in Ghana. It also identifies lexical creativity as an effective strategy to stimulate the need for the development of such a community language and to curb the imbalance in relation to English regarding terminology, text-type development, reference resources and translation tools. As translation tools such as Linguee rely on parallel corpora, the bidirectional English–Akan parallel corpus may be uploaded online or enlarged to develop general and professional language tools, and can serve as a basis for other enquiries.

Enhancing the vocabulary inventory of Xitsonga in the academic domain by importing from initiation schools and traditional health practice

The article aims to discover how university students and their lecturers can contribute to the valuing of Xitsonga as one of the South African indigenous languages in the academic domain. It focuses on ways of enhancing Xitsonga vocabulary’s inventory in the academic domain from a translation perspective. The study employs a functional analysis in a paradigm for descriptive translation studies to examine the ways in which meaning is expressed in the English-Xitsonga pair. It explores the ‘free voices’ of some Xitsonga postgraduate students evoked in their research reports’ front matters, with a focus on the ‘acknowledgements’. It argues that the tone of verisimilitude found in these front matters seems detached from the other parts constituting the content’s style. It also argues that the style applied by students in their ‘free space’ should serve as a benchmark, and precede the standardisation of the Xitsonga orthographic system for a formal academic register. It concludes that omission of this creative parlance and stilted diction in the development of the report’s content turns out to be a stumbling block to meaningful enhancement of the vocabulary inventory of Xitsonga in the academic domain. The study posits that this approach should be exploited to expand the language repertoire in the academic domain.

Прескриптивный и дескриптивный перевод идиоматических выражений с русского языка на английский

The aim of the paper is to study the patterns and distinctive features of prescriptive and descriptive translation forms of idiomatic transfer from Russian into English. The scientific novelty lies in the identification of fundamental differences regarding the prescriptive and descriptive approaches to the translation of idiomatic expressions from Russian into English. This makes it possible to present translation as a constant process of renewal, affecting the gap between said compared languages and cultures. As a result, some issues in the understanding of the theory of natural and artificial (arbitrary, directed) equivalence are identified. Thus, equivalence in prescriptive translation studies is considered as natural, while in descriptive – as directed/oriented. At the same time, in descriptive translation studies, the theory of equivalence is controversial in many aspects, since the norms of adaptive translation in the linguistic and cultural space of intercultural communication are not fully defined. If two components are the most important for prescriptive translation: similarity and difference, then in descriptive translation, a key role is assigned to mediation in intercultural interaction.

Semantic Challenges of Business Translation with Reference to English and Arabic: A Product-Oriented Approach

This study aims to investigate the various types of challenges and limitations at semantic levels that translators face in the business and economic translation products of tenders and bids from English into Arabic. To achieve the objectives of the study, a sample of four tenders of business documents was collected from a variety of national and international non-governmental organizations such as the bilingual specialized texts that were published between 2019 and 2020 in Iraq, specifically in Erbil, Kurdistan Region. The study relies on Holmes’ map (1988) of descriptive translation studies, developed by Toury (1995). To answer the research questions: how does a translator deal with specialised terminologies and expressions in translating business tenders and bids and what effect and role do semantic changes play in business and economic translation products? The study employs the analytical-descriptive translation methodology in analysing business texts. The analysis of business and economic texts has revealed that inaccurate synonyms at the semantic level, such as using different synonyms and translating semantic collocations, appear more frequently than other issues in translating business texts in the target language. The findings of the study have indicated that business and economic terms may have more than one accurate and faithful translation. Nevertheless, one translation can be appropriate and accurate. The study has concluded that cultural phenomena rarely appear in business and economic tenders and bids in comparison with other areas of economic and business texts, e.g., metaphors and idioms in general business texts.