Translation Of Agents Research Articles

Translation of personal official documents: Examining Australian norms and practice

Despite their potential real-life impact, translations of personal official documents have been largely unexplored in translation scholarship. Little research has been undertaken into professional practice within this translation domain and, correspondingly, little is known about how different stakeholders approach the necessary quality assurance. In this paper we examine the professional context of the translation of personal official documents in Australia by considering the perspectives of NAATI-certified translators, translation agencies and receiving institutions. We report the findings of three surveys on quality, integrity and authenticity in official personal document translation, comparing the views of these three key stakeholders. There is general agreement that ensuring quality and integrity in this area requires that accuracy be accorded close attention and the official features of original documents be documented. Yet, these guidelines are simpler in theory than in practice with its various issues and uncertainties, including occasional translation errors, the risks of extract translations, varying levels of quality assurance and lack of clear and consistent guidelines from language service providers and government organisations.

Invisibility of Game Localizers and the Status of Localization in Slovakia

The standard industry practice in publishing or audiovisual translation should be mentioning the translators for their work in the credits. When it comes to technical texts, for example manuals or localized texts such as websites, translators or localizers are hardly ever mentioned, especially when translation agencies provide the entire process of translation or localization. Digital games usually do contain credits listing all people working on a digital game, but such lists tend to leave out translators or localizers. The paper aims to investigate the issue of crediting digital game translators or localizers in Slovak digital games and show different crediting practices. We inspect credits in digital games made by Slovak developers and show different crediting practices in the industry. We examine the use of credits in Slovak digital games and rationalize the situation by looking at the localization of digital games, localization training at Slovak universities, and language support for Slovak digital games. The paper contains reviews of 69 selected computer and mobile device games published by 34 studios or developers.

Теоретичні та практичні аспекти формування іміджу підприємства

The domestic economy today is experiencing difficult times. Such phenomena as the pandemic, martial law, had a very negative impact on the efficiency of Ukrainian enterprises. Domestic companies are forced to adapt to modern realities and find ways to «survive». Doing business is impossible without constant adaptation to changes in market conditions. And the success of any enterprise depends on many factors, primarily on the existing or formed image of the enterprise. The article is aimed at substantiating the need to create a positive image of enterprise to increase its competitiveness. The article considers the concept of «image of enterprise». The scientific works of domestic and foreign scholars-economists are analyzed. The current state of the problem of forming the image of enterprise in crisis conditions is disclosed. It is shown how the image of enterprise affects the competitiveness of enterprise on the example of a translation agency. It is determined that a positive image greatly affects the competitiveness of enterprise, so insufficient attention to its formation and management significantly reduces the possibilities of enterprise functioning. A positive image will increase attention to the individuality and uniqueness of a product or service, minimize possible negative changes in pricing processes, and contribute to the realization of the competitiveness of the enterprise. The article examines the essence of image as a factor of effective functioning of enterprise. The essence of the concept of «image» is also studied, the contemporary definitions found in the scientific sources are analyzed. A definition of the concept of «image of enterprise» is proposed. The importance of forming an image for conducting successful activity of enterprise is substantiated. The expediency of analyzing the external conditions of enterprise activity in the process of formation and improvement of its image is determined and substantiated. It was found that when choosing an enterprise, the consumer is guided by its image, because in order to make a purchase decision, understanding that an enterprise has a positive image allows to get a clear understanding of the high quality of goods or services and other competitive advantages. It is reasoned that improving the image of an enterprise allows increasing the efficiency of advertising and various measures to promote a product or service, facilitating the process of introducing new goods or services to the market, and increasing the competitiveness of an enterprise.

LVIV SCHOOL OF TRANSLATION STUDIES

The article provides an overview of research activity of the Lviv school of Translation Studies based at the Hryhoriy Kochur Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics, which in 2023 will celebrate its 25th anniversary. The authors dwell upon the history of the department and its key trends of research, which back in the 1990s were delineated by its founder, Prof. Roksolana Zorivchak. The article goes on to elucidate three lines of developments, namely scholarly activity, projects and research initiatives and students’ research and activism. A special focus is on the scholarly and academic initiatives of the Department at the war period. Key words: institutionalization of Translation Studies, agency in translation, translation historiography, history of translation, strategies of resistance, translational period, specialized translation.

The field of legal translation: Organizational structures and forms of capital

The author conducts the analysis of the field of legal translation in contemporary Russia and focuses on translation agencies specializing in the languages of the peoples of the postSoviet states. The theoretical framework of the research is the sociological approach to the study of legal interpreters and Bourdieu’s theory including his analysis of the juridical field. Today some concepts of Bourdieu’s sociology can be found in the studies of the activities of legal interpreters, but his theory is still insufficiently applied. The main empirical method of the research is semistructured interviews with legal interpreters, heads of translation agencies, investigators and lawyers. The relational and dynamic perspective of Bourdieu’s theory allowed the author to analyze the formation and transformation of the boundaries of the professional group of legal interpreters as a result of competition between actors with different forms of capital. The article reveals the role of ethnic capital in the functioning of translation agencies. The author makes a conclusion that the recruitment of legal interpreters largely depends on the requirements of institutional actors of the juridical field; identifies factors affecting the working conditions of court interpreters - the rarity of their language, ability to establish reciprocal relationships with the head of a translation agency, and permanent working relationships with the law enforcement bodies personnel. The article proves the advantages of Bourdieu’s approach in the study of the translation agencies structure, and shows how the changes in interpreters’ habitus and formal position influence the development dynamics of translation agencies and the field of legal translation as a whole. The research results allow to make a conclusion that actors of the juridical field exert a decisive influence on positional struggle within the field of legal translation.

Effectiveness of modular approach in ensuring data quality in large-scale surveys: Evidence from National Family Health Survey – 4 (2015–2016)

This study aims to examine the effect of administration of shorter and longer versions of questionnaires on key indicators such as age displacement, birth displacement, age heaping, and skipping questions on antenatal care (ANC) visits and use of contraceptive methods in India using National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-4 data. At the individual level, the effect of the adoption of the shorter and longer versions of the questionnaires on the age displacement of women and children and skipping of the key questions is insignificant. However, the results from the two-level logistic regression model reveal that at the primary sampling unit (PSU) level, work pressure, depending on the number of eligible women in a household, emerges as a confounder in skipping certain questions, namely ANC [1.18 (p < 0.09)] and contraceptive use [AOR = 1.17 (p < 0.05)]. To expand the coverage of NFHS in providing state- and district-level estimates since 2015, the overall sample size was increased from 88,562 households and 89,777 eligible women in 1992–93 to 6,01,509 households and 6,99,686 eligible women in 2015–16. As a strategy to reduce workload and non-sampling errors during the survey, a nested design and modular approach were adopted to provide estimates of maternal and child health indicators at the district/state level and sexual behaviour, HIV/AIDS, and women's empowerment at the state level. It was hypothesised that a longer version of the questionnaire canvassed in the state module may be detrimental to data quality issues. The findings of this study establish the effectiveness of adopting a modular approach in large-scale surveys, depending on the scale of investigation. However, the differential workload calls for expanding the duration of surveys in PSUs, where the number of eligible women is higher. State level variation in the key data quality indicators may be partially explained by differentials in the training of investigators by the agency and use of translators.

Training Needs Analysis of Professional Translators Working in Translation Agencies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The imminent thrust of globalization is equally challenging but promising. The role of translators in various walks of life – law, medicine, and education, among others – has become indispensable and crucial both socially and economically. The Saudi translation industry is self-supporting because it is not much governed by prevailing regulations. Hence, translation agencies thrive based on the fundamental principles and practices of the market. Competence defines the game, and training improves the performance of each player. It is the main objective of this study to identify the training needs of professional Saudi translators. Improving translation competency can be catered through effective training where needs analysis comes as its preliminary and integral requirement. This study has involved 166 professional translators and 20 owner-managers from the biggest translation agencies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Leaning on quantitative and qualitative data gathered from them, the essential factors for translator training were derived, to wit: translation fundamentals, extra-linguistic abilities, and bilingualism. Having arrived at these findings, this study hopes to meaningfully contribute to the design and development of effective translator trainings.

Αστραδενή (Astradení) / Stregata dalle stelle

Abstract The article deals with the notions of translation agency and habitus, while applying Mixed Methods and using interviewing as the primary source of information. The target text examined is the Italian translation of the book by Ευγενία Φακίνου (Evghenía Fakínou), Αστραδενή (Astradení), translated as Stregata dalle stelle by Claretta Candotti (publishers Κέδρος [Kédros] in Greece and Crocetti Editore in Italy). In applying Mixed Methods, my analysis follows Lieven D’hulst’s Translation History model, based on some of his eight Latin loci (quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxillis, cur, quomodo, quando, cui bono), with the aim of examining translation agency. In particular, I try to highlight the interaction between the author, the translator, the publishers, and the institutions promoting translation. Moreover, exploring sociological approaches to translation, I attempt to evince how Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and capital may have played a role in the translational choices of these agents. Most of the data collected derives from a tailor-made questionnaire (Annex I). The answers to the questionnaire, as well as the interview material, are exemplified through targeted, yet necessarily limited, textual analysis. The conclusion highlights the surprising lack of synergies between the translation agents in this particular Greek-Italian context: the deficient communication between author and translator, lack of institutionalized cooperation between Greek and Italian Publishers, and underdeveloped institutional framework for bilateral, state-sponsorship of Greek-Italian literary translations, although the Italian publisher obtained European funding.

On the [translated] record: Journalistic translation and creative agency in India’s multilingual reporting

This paper considers what influences the translation process for writers in Indian journalism: tools that guide, and structures that constrict. From in-depth interviews with Indian journalists conducted in New Delhi from 2018 to 2019, I examine creative agency in the context of multilingual reporting in India, to examine news stories not just as factual bytes of daily events but as creatively written short essays of journalistic translation. Indian journalists offer perspective on their writing processes from the initial assignment of a story idea to the fruition of the piece in publication. This research delves into how Indian journalists think about the multilingual reporting they do and the attention they pay to journalistic translation when moving from a spoken Hindi interview to an English-language article. I broadly interrogate the skopos, or aim, of journalistic translation in the context of Indian news, noting the vernacular push-and-pull of multilingual reporting disseminated in Hindi and English, or other Indian languages. I investigate how Indian journalists cope with moments of the “untranslatable” in their everyday work, if and when they recognize situations of journalistic translation, and what they consider to be underlying impacts of translated news in multilingual reporting from India. Journalists have creative agency in the way they share information that influences the skopos of multilingual reporting. Thus, the language transferred from sources to readers takes on new meanings that can have major impacts on audiences’ reading of news stories.

Terminology Work in the Translation Project Process. The Hungarian Perspective

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The goal of this paper is to examine the place and role of terminology and terminology work in the translation project process and, based on literature and everyday practice, to examine the changes relevant to terminology work that have taken place in Hungary in recent years. The method of analysis is a comparative content analysis and descriptive method.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Terminology management, document management, and translation (project) management are all interrelated as are all forms of content management, and terminology has a key role in all of them. The quality of the source text is fundamental for the quality of the translation, therefore high-quality translation begins at content creation. Starting with drafting the documentation, the translation project process is a fourteen-step project process. Terminology work is present in most steps of the translation project process in some way, and even plays an important role in step zero, the creation of the source text. Terminology work, both in the translation project process and in the writing of documentation, has a number of regulated processes and steps, some of which are laid down in standards and are also discussed in the international literature on terminology, translation, and technical communication. In daily practice, translation agencies are increasingly commissioned to carry out documentation work in addition to translation, editing, and proofreading tasks. Nevertheless, it was found that in Hungary, in the operation of translation agencies and during the process of technical documentation, terminology workflows are not always coordinated, terminology databases are not always used, and terminology specialists are rarely employed.

Training Needs Analysis of Professional Translators Working in Translation Agencies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Training Needs Analysis of Professional Translators Working in Translation Agencies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Translating intertextuality in animated films – an analysis of DreamWorks, Disney and Pixar animations

Intertextuality focuses on the relationship between different texts, either spoken or written. These connections have been the subject of research for many scholars around the world and initially were discussed mainly from the point of view of literary theory (Tomaszkiewicz, 2006, p. 175). The aim of this paper is to examine intertextual references in the context of translation theory, taking into account the various techniques and strategies employed when translating direct or indirect references in a dubbing format. The author analy-ses dialogues from the DreamWorks production “Shrek”(2001), the Disney films “Zootopia” (2016) and “Wreck-It-Ralph”(2012), as well as the Pixar Animation Studios film “Toy Story 3”(2010) with the aim of identifying intertextual references in the source text and comparing them with their Polish and German translations. The author also considers the sources of intertextuality in animation films and the translator’s role in decontextualizing this genre in the target language, drawing attention to the issue of discourse and the agency of audiovisual translators.

Reframing the Islamic glossary in the English translations of the Arabic editorials

Abstract This paper investigated contemporary journalistic English translations of Arabic Islamic terms and concepts in light of the current civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa, and the war on terror as well as Islamophobia and the refugee crisis. It studied the critical role of translation agencies in reframing and renegotiating the Islamic glossary through their own lens, which may be ideologically positioned. The paper further examined the English translations of the Arabic Islamic terms and concepts in the target texts which were published by the Washington-based advocacy group the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The data were collected manually from MEMRI’s online archive from the years 2013 to 2016. The data selection was based on a designed search that linked Daesh (ISIS) and any of its aliases with any of the Islamic terms and concepts which are repeatedly used in media narratives within the context of the ‘war on terror’ and ‘Islamic extremism’. The study employed Baker’s (2006) narrative-informed theory and Newmark’s (1988) translation procedures taxonomy to assist in the data analysis. The findings suggested that transference (transliteration) is a significant procedure used by MEMRI in justifying, legitimizing and normalizing particular narratives to the public and that translators are decisive participants in constituting and informing the social and political reality. The findings also demonstrated that narrativity features, relationality in particular, are significant tools in reconstructing reality in translation. Through translation, MEMRI draws upon the metanarrative of the ‘war on terror’ in promoting its ideologically laden agenda of terrorist Arabs and Muslims.

The Attitude of the Lithuanian Translation Market Participants towards Machine Translation and Post-editing

The article presents the results of the research project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania, the aim of which was to find out the attitude of Lithuanian translation market participants – companies and freelance translators – towards machine translation and post-editing. Currently, there is no objective information on the application of machine translation in companies providing translation services in Lithuania or the attitude of translators to machine translated texts and the challenges posed by post-editing as a service. There is also no information on the competences that need to be developed by translators and translation students so that they can adapt to this new reality and work successfully on the market. To reach this aim, two questionnaires were prepared: one for translation companies providing translation services (n1=42) and the other for translators (n2=61), and two surveys were carried out. A qualitative analysis of survey data confirmed that among market participants there is a strong belief that as machine translation programs progress, the importance of competences ensuring quality post-editing will grow rapidly. Among the most important competences for post-editing, both groups of respondents singled out knowledge of text linguistics, native and foreign language proficiency, and knowledge of the field of translation. However, the surveys have also revealed that at least one third of market participants have a negative view toward machine translation and see it as a threat to the quality of translation (agencies) and/or their jobs (translators). It is expected that the conducted research will contribute to the promotion of a more favourable attitude of translators to machine translation technologies and will encourage further research in post-editing in Lithuania.

Optimal Constraints on Arabic-English Translation: a Case Study of Translating Surat AlFatiHa ‘The Opening’

To add a useful brick to the huge mansion of translation theory in its modern scientific sense, this paper intrinsically endeavors to reduce the wide hiatus between the premises of conventional translation studies and modern linguistic theories in general and Optimality Theory (OT) in particular, in a very earnest hope that translation methods and techniques can find a solid and robust systematic ground that may enable professional translators and institutionalized translation agencies to conduct their translation quality assessment more accurately. Drawing on the assumptions and the mechanism of linguistically-channeled theory of Optimality in phonology, syntax and semantics, this researcher, therefore, banks on setting and implementing major OT constraints that specify the range of choices translators may opt for while oscillating between the clashing Faithfulness and Markedness principles in their vehement quest to achieve optimally the least detrimental effects to the source text and to the target text, instead of looking for the myth of closest equivalence, while translating Arabic texts into English and vice versa. Four different translations have been examined and optimally evaluated. The study shows how any choice that translators make must, therefore, be deliberately rationalized and precisely prioritized over other possible choices and candidates in light of universal violable constraints. Therefore, translation studies should be descriptively constraint-oriented and motivated instead of being prescriptively rule-controlled.

Governance-oriented State Translation Program in the Yuan Dynasty

ABSTRACT Translation among different ethnic languages has always played a political and cultural role throughout the history of China. Its importance can be comparable to the translation of the Buddhist Scriptures in the Tang and Song dynasties and, to a certain extent, it is deemed to surpass the scientific and technological translation wave in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty in terms of duration, number of participants, and number of translated works. However, it has not drawn much scholarly attention. The present paper aims to investigate translation among different ethnic languages in the Yuan dynasty from the standpoint of the ‘state translation program’. The analysis will be conducted, from four aspects, namely the nomination of translation officials, the selection of texts to be translated, the establishment of translation institutions at the national level, and the cultivation of translators. The results of our study show that the governors of the Yuan dynasty enhanced translation as a method of state governance by embedding translation officials in the administrative machinery, setting up cooperative state translation agencies, selecting materials to be translated and training national translators in a systematic manner.

Parallel Corpora and ST Analysis: EU Regulations on Immigration in the Specialised Translation Classroom

Starting from the assumption that &amp;ldquo;if corpora are to play a role in the translation professions of tomorrow, it is important that they impact on the education of the students of today&amp;rdquo; (Bernardini &amp;amp; Castagnoli, 2008, p. 40), this study endeavours to show how translation corpora of parallel texts (in English and in Italian) can be used in a Specialised Translation Master&amp;rsquo;s degree classroom. The point of departure is to examine parallel or aligned texts (originals and their translations) taken from the various European Union websites available for citizens to read and consult. The corpora currently being gathered include a variety of text typologies ranging from legal documents (such as regulations or directives), to administrative documents (such as White and Green papers) or informative texts (such as leaflets, brochures or web texts) (Felici, 2010, p. 101), all of them dealing with migration and asylum issues. The various types of documents are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively in class according to the following three main methodologies: Corpus Linguistics (Stubbs, 1996), Genre Analysis (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985; Halliday &amp;amp; Matthiessen, 2004). Classroom experiences in the past few years have shown that building ad hoc corpora (or do-it-yourself corpora as coined by Kr&amp;uuml;ger, 2012, p. 514) for classroom consumption is a valuable and precious learning tool which enables students to hone their practical skills in the resource gathering process and consequently in the translation process itself.&#x0D; &#x0D; This study focuses on an EU regulation and shows how a lesson in class can be conducted with students at Cagliari University, Italy. The aim is to get students to work on the quantitative aspects along with the more qualitative linguistic elements of the ST (Source Text) in order to obtain greater awareness and understanding of professional translator strategies used by the professionals in the translation agencies of European Union institutions. From an educational and academic point of view, the linguistic and contrastive analysis of certain features of the ST along with the investigation of specialised terminology associated with contexts of migration and asylum and their equivalents in the TT (Target Text), have so far provided the Master&amp;rsquo;s students at Cagliari University with useful insights and sound knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of legal and institutional discourse in both English and Italian.

Etkileşim alanları olarak bağımsız oyun yerelleştirme toplulukları

An Indie game may be described as a game developed by a single person or by a rather smaller community often with a minimal budget. An indie games requires localization to be more visible on the market and to access a wider audience, however, they generally allocate minimal budgets (if available) for the localization practices, thus, the developers tend to depend on fan - volunteer localization practices or low-budget localization by freelancers. Online communities of indie game localization bring developers who tend to make use of “free” or “cheaper” labour and translators of fan or volunteer localization communities who wish to attend a career in localization industry, freelancers, smaller localization or translation agencies together and serve as a medium of interaction. The analysis of interaction and exchange, the nature of the communities would provide insight into the aboıvementioned field of exchange. This paper aims to trace the footprints of “agents” through their profiles, posts, discussions and and produced content on the web with a specific focus on Indie Game Localization Facebook Page and based on the data gathered, to define the limits of online community, to describe nature of the agents and to draw the borders of the “online” mutual relationship among translators, translator candidates, localization agencies and gama developers.

Translation Technology in English Studies Within the System of Higher Education in Poland

The study is focused on translation technology within the system of higher education in Poland, specifically English Studies offering translation specialization at BA and MA level, as well as postgraduate studies aimed at translators of English. The conducted analysis of translation curricula of Polish universities investigates the presence of courses devoted to the use of translation technology and seeks to determine whether such courses are offered at a given level of higher education, where in the system most of the courses are placed, and when they are mostly organized. First, however, a brief overview of different aspects determining the inclusion of translation technology in curricula are discussed. Here, the main stress is placed on its importance for the translation markets, the skills and knowledge obtained by students entering the market which are desired by translation agencies, elements affecting the selection of given translation software, the necessary infrastructure to run such courses, the costs of the programmes, &amp;lsquo;human resources&amp;rsquo;, the policies of universities, etc. The short discussion is followed by an analysis of the available courses, with each section devoted to one of the levels of the Polish higher education system, namely BA, MA and postgraduate studies. The courses within each level are briefly compared to provide some general tendencies for each type of studies. The final, concluding part of the study summarizes the results and stresses the need for further introduction of translation technology into translation curricula.

Translation assessment in the professional and pedagogical settings: proposal of a teaching unit for peer review and assessment

Assessment in translation can be considered from at least three perspectives: assessment of published translations (translation criticism), assessment in translation teaching (pedagogical) and assessment of professionals at work (MARTINEZ MELIS; HURTADO ALBIR, 2001). In the pedagogical context, literature on translator education indicates the need to bridge the gap between translation training and professional practices (KELLY, 2005; KIRALY, 1995). With the aim of taking another step towards this connection, this paper brings elements from professional assessment of translation into the context of translation teaching by proposing a Teaching Unit (TU) in which methodologies and tools from DQF-MQM model are used as a basis for learning tasks, involving peer review and assessment (“co-assessment” according to Hurtado Albir, 2015a). The design of this teaching unit is in line with the theories of constructivist learning and Competence Based Teaching (CBT) (PACTE, 2017), with task-based teaching approach as its methodological cornerstone (HURTADO ALBIR, 2015a). The theoretical framework includes the conceptual base from CBT as well as assessment in CBT, and data related to the DQF-MQM assessment model, used for professional assessment in translation agencies. Procedures adopted to build the TU follow the parameters proposed by Hurtado Albir (1999, 2005), according to which the TU is built around translation tasks that constitute the organizational axis of learning. Research results indicate that CBT is an appropriate choice to promote the integration between the market sector chosen and the pedagogical environment, by bringing together the competencies required from professionals and those to be acquired in the pedagogical context. Results also indicate that the DQF-MQM model is a relevant choice to stablish a dialog between the professional setting and translation teaching due to the fact that this model offers (i) the possibility of adjusting error categories and quality levels to suit the pedagogical context; (ii) a category for positive points in the translation assessment; and (iii) information publicly available about the criteria, metrics and methods that constitute the model.