Foreign Translation Research Articles

The Historically Changing Notion of (Female Bodily) Proportion and Its Relevance to Literature

Abstract Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) was an early modern Japanese novelist, translator, and critic. He wrote what is now generally conceived of as the first Japanese ‘modern’ novel, Drifting Clouds (1887-89). He translated works by Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Garshin, Gorky, and others. He also published a number of critical essays, treatises on literary theory, political papers, and so forth. His early translation of Turgenev’s short stories: Aibiki (Rendevous, 1888) and Meguriai (Three Trysts, 1889) were extremely influential on the contemporary literati, who were amazed at the fresh, poetic prose used in stark contrast to the traditional Japanese fiction in the pre-Reformation period. These translations, seen in the light of the present-day readers, were unique in what we might term today ‘foreignizing translation’. Lawrence Venuti in Invisibility of the Translator argues that the ideal of (English) translation has been to conceal itself as a translation, i.e. to present itself as an original text (chap I and passim). In that sense, Futabatei’s translations, scandalously presenting itself as a translation, that is to say, as an alien text, is extremely ‘foreignizing’.

ОЙБЕКНИНГ “НАВОИЙ” РОМАНИ ТАРЖИМАСИДА ЭКВИВАЛЕНТЛИК ВА АДЕКВАТЛИК МАСАЛАСИ

Some inappropriatenesses and defects on the issue of equivalence and adequacy in the translated version of the novel “Navoi” by Aybek are revealed in this article. These inappropriatenesses and defects are described in great detail with the help of examples and alternative translation variants are suggested, the problems of equivalence and adequacy in translation studies are researched from the scientific point of view, as well as, views and comments of the Uzbek and foreign translators and scientists are provided on theissue of the two concepts

Translational Universality: The Struggle over the Universal

The aim of this paper is to investigate the idea of universality through the lens of translation, in an attempt to sketch out what can be called a translational universality. As the starting point, I will take into consideration the recent Étienne Balibar's works on the universals, and especially his strategy of translation, i.e. the strategy of enunciating the universal by means of translational process. In the next step, I will analyze political consequences of the universalizing practices of translation, which due to their capacity to enunciate the universals, according to Balibar's thesis, have generated political communities. In order to examine this aspect, I will discuss the constitutive role of translation in the formation (Bildung) of German cultural identity in the 19th Century, by exposing Humboldt-Schleirmacherian model of translation. In doing so I will lean on Berman's study on translation in Romantic Germany and on Venuti's political reading of nationalist narratives of typically German foreignizing translation. The conception of Bildung, envisaged as an experience of the otherness through translation, will be approached as a historical model to understand the notion of translational universality that is at issue in this paper. After these historical and philosophical analyses, which in translation view one possible way to articulate a certain struggle over the universal from the particular position of cultural difference, the article will address some questions regarding our contemporary situation: what would be a historically different and potentially emancipatory form of universality? What are the translational capacities of such a universality to generate a new framework for political communities?

IAS 21 - The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates: A Review of Concepts and Related Issues

As interaction of companies across borders increases, accounting for foreign exchange transactions as well as translation of financial statements has become an important topic. An entity is exposed to foreign exchange gains or losses through investments or balances in a foreign currency or ownership in a foreign operation. In order to assess these risks and the related impact, foreign currency transactions and balances should be accounted accurately. IAS 21 aims to set the framework for inclusion of foreign currency transactions and foreign operations in the financial statements of an entity and translation of financial statements into a presentation currency. Foreign exchange transactions and translations inevitably affect an entity’s net income and/or other comprehensive income. Despite IAS 21 setting the framework for accounting for these effects, management still may use some judgement in practice. When analyzing financial statements, users of information should be aware of the underlying methods used for accounting for exchange rate differences since results of analysis of financial statements is largely dependent on these methods.

Representing Anglophone culture in China

AbstractUsing three Chinese translations ofPeter Pancompleted at different times in history, this paper discusses how the spread of the Anglophone culture in China influenced the representation of Anglophone culture in translations. The paper provides an overview of different types of culture-bound elements identified inPeter Pan, illustrating the different translation strategies adopted to treat these elements. The analysis focuses on the influence of the changing sociocultural context in China, exploring how the spread of Anglophone culture in China over time is reflected in the translation of culture-bound elements. As the penetration of the Anglophone culture into China became more profound from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, the source culture became better preserved, providing readers with a culturally rich target text with foreignizing translation strategies.

Motives and perceived benefits of learning translation: A preliminary investigation of non-native EFL student teachers

The relationship between the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) and translation have been loosely entwined for a very long time. However, in the past decade, a number of academics have developed a renewed interest in the interplay between the two, and some teacher education universities offer translation courses to their student teachers. This paper presents findings from a preliminary study in which a questionnaire survey was used to identify the motives and perceived benefits of learning translation of 40 non-native EFL student teachers whose first language is Chinese, in a teacher education university in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that the pre-service teachers decided on taking translation courses or taking the subject as a minor because of their interest in both Chinese and English and their eagerness to improve their proficiency in these languages. The belief that learning translation might help non-native EFL student teachers secure a job in a language-related field is another prime motive for them to learn translation. It was discerned that they perceive learning translation to be beneficial to both their Chinese and English proficiency, especially in the knowledge of English grammar, and they have benefited in bilingual competence and career options. The paper concludes that although EFL student teachers tend not to work as professional translators after graduation, learning translation is deemed to have provided them with multifaceted benefits and increased their competitiveness in language-related fields.

Review on Domestic Lin Shu’s Translation Studies in the First Decade of New Century

As one of the most representative translators on foreign literature in late Qing China, Lin Shu and his foreign novel translations have attracted much attention in the academic field even in nowadays. With the special social background in the late Qing, Lin Shu gradually shifted his focus from western political and historical works to novels in order to express his opinions better. In this study, it will be generalized the domestic research on Lin’s translation activity in the first decade of 21thcentury, which research can be divided into at least four categories, such as the study of Lin’s translation ontology problem, discussion of cultural factors of his translations, influential phenomenon of his novel translations and the comparative study on Lin’s foreign literature translations. Therefore, the typical case study which points out the various research paradigms as while as further possible avenues of researchon domestic Lin Shu’s translation studies in the future.

On the English Translation of Tang Poetry in the Perspective of “Harmony-Guided Three-level Poetry Translation Criteria”—A Case Study of “Song of the Roosting Crows”

The translation of ancient Chinese poetry has always been an insurmountable mountain in literary translation, and Li Bai's poetic merits as a unique symbol of ancient Chinese poetry are more favored by Chinese and foreign translators. Some of the translations are to an extent mixed with drawbacks. Based on Dr. Wang Feng’s “Harmony-guided Three-Level poetry translation criteria”, this paper compares and analyzes four English versions of Li Bai’s “Song of the Roosting Crows”. It demonstrates the practical value of this theory in Chinese poetry translation, hoping to promote the dissemination of Chinese literature and culture.

Обучение переводу с китайского языка на русский язык посредством блог-технологии на примере экономического дискурса

Today, the relevance of use of modern information and communication technologies (wiki-technology, blogs, podcasts, linguistic corpus), which have didactic features and methodic functions, in teaching a foreign language and translation is not in doubt. The translation of economic discourse from Chinese into Russian is in demand in the context of the expanding interaction of the two countries in the trade and economic sphere. In this connection, the need for training highly qualified specialists in translating economic discourse is growing. We present suggestions on teaching students how to translate economic discourse from Chinese into Russian language on example of using blog technology. When translating and teaching, it is necessary to take into account the difference in the organization of the structures of the Russian and Chinese languages. The listed types of modern information and communication technologies can meet the requirements for teaching translation from Chinese, which is structured as an isolating type. The focus is on the translation competencies development (linguistic, text-forming, communicative, technological competence, as well as special competencies, including economic component), based on the developed system of exercises. An algorithm is presented for organizing teaching translation of economic discourse from Chinese into Russian through blog technology, highlighting three main stages (preparatory, practical, and final) and a detailed description of the actions involved.

Strategies and methods of English-Ukrainian translation of verbal instantiation of fiction simile etalons

This article analyses strategies and methods of English-Ukrainian translation of the names of fiction simile etalons. The topicality of the research results from the fact that English-Ukrainian translations of fiction simile etalons have not been investigated with the account of the simile cognitive models that determine the form and content of their verbal instantiation. The aim of the article is to find correlation between methods / strategies and techniques / transformations in rendering English instantiations of fiction simile etalons into Ukrainian, applying cognitive and structural-semantic translation analyses. The research has discovered three methods used to translate English names of the simile etalons into Ukrainian: faithful, adaptive and communicative. The faithful method correlates with the foreignization translation strategy and presupposes reconstructing the original cognitive models, even if they are not rooted in the culture of translation. The faithful method is applied in its formal (use of structural transformations of transliteration or transcription, which demands introduction of translation commentaries, or explication) and semantic (use of vocabulary equivalents) varieties. The adaptive method correlates with the domestication translation strategy and involves replacing or reconstructing the original simile cognitive model, eliminating the simile or introducing a new simile into the text of translation. The adaptive method manifests itself as formal adaptation (use of structural-functional elements that have no analogues in the original), semantic adaptation (use of semantic transformations of contextual substitution or holistic transformation) and stylistic adaptation (substitution of linguistic units of neutral register with stylistically marked ones). The communicative method does not presuppose making choice between domestication and foreignization, since it is used to translate similes resting on cognitive models that are common for the cultures of the original and translation.

A Study of Cultural-Loaded Words Translation in External Publicity Translation from Translator’s Visibility

Report on the Work of the Government (hereinafter “the work report” for short) is an important annual government document in China, which mainly includes the work summary of the previous year and the work prospect of the next year. This paper, with the help of Venuti’s foreignization translation strategy, analyzes how cultural-loaded words are translated in the work report 2019 and tries to explore how translated Chinese culture can be accurately understood and accepted by Western audiences, and how Chinese culture can be better introduced to the world. The author believes that when translating external publicity texts, the translator should try to take foreignization as the main method and domestication as a complement, and convey the accurate meaning at the same time. Thus, the excellent Chinese culture can be introduced to the world, and the expression of the target language can be enriched. The translator should also bear the responsibility to promote the world culture to seek common ground while reserving differences, and enrich the cultural diversity.

Foreignization Strategy in Translating To Live

Literary translation is a kind of special translation because it involves both the form and the style. Since literary works are always born in context certain cultural context, it also contain unique cultural elements. To effectively deal with all these factors in translation, foreignization strategy could be employed, for it not only keeps the original form and style, but also helps to convey complex cultural images into the target language, thus ensuring the effective communication between two cultures. To illustrate this point, this essay analyzes the novel To Live , the English version of Yu Hua’s Huozhe , to observe how foreignization translation helps to bring the readers close to the author and how it guarantees effective comprehension among the readers. Besides, the paper also suggests three methods for foreignization.

Scheinäquivalente/Potenzielle falsche Freunde im phraseologischen Bereich (am Beispiel des Sprachenpaares Deutsch–Spanisch)

Abstract In comparison to the contributions that address interlingual phraseological equivalence, the number of papers about the topic of phraseological false friends is relatively low. This is probably explained by the fact that this is a marginal phenomenon from a quantitative point of view. Nonetheless, there are relevant contributions in the field of foreign German Studies. The aim of this article is, on the one hand, to discuss theoretical questions about tertium comparationis and terminology and, on the other hand, to develop a classification of the types of potential phraseological false friends. This paper must therefore be understood as a preliminary stage for applied work in the areas of foreign language teaching, (not only) bilingual lexicography and translation theory and practice. Based on a comprehensive empirical basis, the present article studies nominal, adjectival and especially verbal idioms. For the collection of both corpora and the codification of the lemmas various methods were used: the consultation of specialized dictionaries, the use of the author’s own foreign and native language competence, the search of context examples from the databases Corpus de referencia del español actual (CREA) and Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo), and the consultation of informants. Through this methodological approach, the article tackles the levels of the language system and also of the language usage. In this respect, and due to the problem of the so-called broad or complex meaning of idioms, difficulties associated with the analysis of lexicographic definitions are of particular relevance. Depending on the lexicographic sources, differences in questions such as the complexity of the definitions or the number of sememes are noticeable. On the level of meaning, componential analysis represents the theoretical framework. Thus, the semantic structures of the idioms to be compared are analyzed in order to discover to what extent the whole meaning (sememe) or some of the minimal semantic features (semes) of the units are qualitatively different or in unequal numbers. Differences can be found both at the level of monosemic units – where either (i.1) the sememes of the units to be compared is basically different, or (i.2) one or several semes of the units to be compared differ – and also at the level of polysemic units, if the form of the idiom of one language with several sememes finds an identical or similar form in the other language but the latter does not have the same sememes. The semantic analysis performed is thus the basis for the determination of the different types of semantic interferences, which can lead to communicative misinterpretations to various degrees. On the level of expression, the analysis is based on a structural-cognitive hypothesis that postulates both a figurative and a logical-abstract formal identity. The formal similarity between idioms (and other types of phraseologisms) in different languages is not rooted in the phonetic and graphical (quasi-)identity of the units to be compared, but in the identity or in the somewhat similar height of the phrase image. Beyond such a concept of lexical-figurative identity, we find a broader conception of formal equality, which is understood not only as a structural lexical-figurative identity, but also as a likeness or identity of the logical-hidden scheme beyond the image; this scheme can initiate the same idiomatic inference procedures, even if the idioms diverge figurative-lexically. A meticulous interlinguistic analysis of the phraseological false friends is only possible by means of a clear distinction between both levels of meaning and expression, which must be reflected terminologically. In this sense, we refer to the proposal of B. Wotjak, which uses the term Kongruenz to denote cases of equality of linguistic forms, as a counterpart to the term Äquivalenz on the content level, i.e. the equality on the level of meaning. The term interlingual homonymy, on the other hand, is avoided because of the special nature of formal equality between idioms.

한영 소설 제목의 시대별․번역사별 번역 전략 양상 연구

This study analyzes 499 book titles that were translated from Korean into English and compares the translation strategies from the 1960s to the 2010s. For this purpose, the study defines and uses five translation strategies as follows: transliteration; literal translation; adaptation; rewriting; and combination. With these five strategies, the study found that despite the many policies to boost sales of Korean literary work overseas and favorable phenomenons such as the Korean wave, there has not been much change in translation strategies in Korean-to-English title translation for nearly 60 years. Of the 499 book titles, literal translation accounted for 59.5 percent. It was also found that throughout the years, there have been statistically significant changes in the types of people translating books from Korean to English. Up until the 1990s, Korean translators accounted for most of the Korean-to-English translations. However, from the 2000s, foreign translators have become the majority translators in Korean-to-English book translations in Korea. Lastly, it was found that regardless of translator type, same strategies are favored in Korean-to-English book title translation.

The role of N. Ilminsky and S. Rachinsky in the formation of the personality of S. Smolensky

The role of N. Ilminsky and S. Rachinsky in the formation of the personality of S. Smolensky

A tradução como mediação cultural: as traduções da obra de Junot Diaz

This article has as its object the translations of the Dominican American writer Junot Díaz to Spanish, with special emphasis on the work of the Cuban-born translator Achy Obejas. Author of a short but remarkable work, Díaz elaborates his narratives in a variety of English that often incorporates elements of Spanish. His writing poetics includes the lexicon of Caribbean Spanish and syntactic structures and proper rhythm of his native language, which results in a strongly hybrid text. The translation of this text into a language that is so intensely present in the original is a challenge. To understand how the construction of this translation is processed, this article tries to analize the strategies used to try to keep up with the translinguistic character of these narratives. In order to reach this objective, some theoretical references are used, concepts such as the foreignizing translation, by Lawrence Venuti; translingualism; and D'Amore's considerations on translations of texts originally written in Spanglish. The analysis makes it clear that the work of Achy Obejas was largely able to give the texts in Spanish the same hybrid character present in the original ones.

Epizod szczeciński w prozie Bohumila Hrabala. Rzecz o granicach tłumaczenia / The Szczecin Episode in Bohumil Hrabal’s Prose On the Limits of Translation

The object of the analysis is the so-called Szczecin episode in its many variants. The episode plays a significant role in interpreting the novel Too Loud a Solitude, the Czech version of which is a source text for a number of foreign translations. As such, the episode creates space for specific translation operations that are possible in some languages (e.g. Polish and German), while impossible in other.

A multimedia network independent learning aided translation system

With the continuous development of China’s economy and foreign exchanges, the self-learning and translation-assisted Chinese cultural translation market has expanded rapidly. The use of video and other tools has become more and more popular among users. All kinds of videos and other independent learning translations assist Chinese cultural translation technology. And methods are endless. However, the current corpus relied on a large number of translation software based on video autonomous learning translation to assist Chinese cultural translation is artificially constructed. The corpus is limited and slow to update. With the development of the Internet, if you can combine translation technology with video information search technology, you can provide users with comprehensive, real-time and dynamic translation services. This paper studies the translation of online search engine, automatic accumulation of bilingual corpus, machine translation, using sentence matching warehousing algorithm, data mining, meta search and result fusion and sorting algorithm, etc. The intelligent bilingual search method and search engine can provide automatic bilingual web resources for professionals, and provide high-quality auxiliary translation for userswhich have good market value and social benefits.

Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690–1730Novel Machines: Technology and Narrative Form in Enlightenment Britain

Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690–1730Novel Machines: Technology and Narrative Form in Enlightenment Britain

Sensorimotor cortices casually contribute to auditory foreign language vocabulary translation following multisensory learning

Sensorimotor cortices casually contribute to auditory foreign language vocabulary translation following multisensory learning