Translations Of Scientific Works Research Articles

Indirect translation in Dutch-Russian cultural transfer

This is the first review of the existing research on the topic of indirect translation in Dutch-Russian language pair. Both theoretical justifications for the study of this problem (H. Pięta, M. Ringmar, C. Dollerup, etc.) and the results of empirical research (I. E. Kuznetsova, H. van der Tak, I. M. Michajlova, etc.) are presented. The paper includes observations on the influence of the mediating language on the creation of the first dictionaries, translation of scientific works, legal documents and fiction, and separately highlights the issue of using English as a “pivot language” in popular online translators. The main problem in this case becomes the translation of personal pronouns and homonyms. In recent years, on the one hand, researchers have been fighting the stigmatisation of mediated translation as a priori inferior and proving that mediated languages link distant cultures and play an important role in the dissemination of literature. On the other hand, textual analyses of different types of indirect translations reveal errors and inaccuracies that could have been easily avoided in direct translation. An intermediary translation can be seen as a translation made with the help of a language other than the source language, but not necessarily from a “third language”: when translation plurality occurs, we can often speak of intralanguage indirect translation. This paper uses Multatuli’s novel Max Havelaar as an illustration, in particular the 1959 Russian edition, where German and Russian translations mediate. Resorting to the help of their predecessors, the Russian translators omit the same fragments, use similar paraphrases, and repeat lexical and phonetic distortions. The use of mediating texts is certainly related to extra-linguistic factors: lack of translators, demand for texts, publishers’ desire to reduce costs or speed up the translation process. The study of specific cases of indirect translation and further systematisation of the identified distortions allows us to track negative trends, and the novel Max Havelaar and its translations into different languages can serve as material for identifying these patterns.

Application of Computer-aided Translation in English Teaching

The continuous development of computer information technology has brought about many changes in people’s life. At present, the computer-aided translation technology (abbreviated as CAT hereafter), being a kind of important auxiliary method, has been widely used in software localization and the translation of scientific works. This realistic need has aroused more and more attention to the development and use of CAT tools. Using the computer to assist teaching was first initiated in the USA in the 1950’s and then widely spread all over the world. Until recently, an increasing number of teachers get to know its great use, and try to apply it to the process of teaching. In China the application of CAT in translation teaching is still at the initial stage. In this paper, the author focuses on the present situation of the adoption of CAT technology in translation teaching in China. This paper conducted a survey to investigate people’s understanding over it from teachers’ perspective and existing problems in its adoption in translation teaching.

Una nueva filosofía de la astrología en los siglos XII y XIII: el impacto de las traducciones del árabe y la postura de Santo Tomás de Aquino

This article studies the Christian Church change of attitude during the XII and XIII centuries towards the problem of the stars and the effort of Saint Thomas Aquinas to build a new philosophy in order to assimilate the knowledge coming from the new translations of scientific works during that time. The Arabic and Jewish contributions were essential for such a change.

Una nueva filosofía de la astrología en los siglos XII y XIII: el impacto de las traducciones del árabe y la postura de Santo Tomas de Aquino

This article studies the Christian Church change of attitude during the XII and XIII centuries towards the problem of the stars and the effort of Saint Thomas Aquinas to build a new philosophy in order to assimilate the knowledge coming from the new translations of scientific works during that time. The Arabic and Jewish contributions were essential for such a change.

RIFA⊂A RAFI⊂ AL-TAHTAWI AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN LITERARY ARABIC

In the 19th century, Europe had a tangible impact on the Arab East. During this period, Arabic-speaking regions were brought into intimate contact with the West, both through military intrusion (e.g., the French in 1798–1801 and the British in Egypt in 1882), and institutional penetration (e.g., the founding of Western-style schools and higher-education institutions in the Levant in the 1800s by Christian missionaries such as the Syrian Protestant College in 1866, now the American University of Beirut, and [the Jesuit] St. Joseph University, also in Beirut, in 1874). This overpowering European encroachment on the Arab East in the 19th century resulted in cultural and linguistic identity crises. Muhammad ⊂Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 until 1848, dispatched groups of students to Western countries such as Italy, Austria, and France to study at their universities and technical institutions. At home, he established schools with Western-language instruction, and sponsored translations of scientific works initially into Turkish, and later into Arabic, from Italian and French, thus making available new disciplines such as various branches of engineering, military science, and agriculture. In 1822, he established a printing press in the Bulaq section of Cairo.1 From then on, Arabicized versions of European terms such as “theater” (tiy―atru), “journal” (jurn―al), “the post” (al-busta), and “politics” (al-bulit―iq―a) signaled the arrival of Western institutions and technology in Arabic-speaking regions, and such terms were adopted by writers in their writings. The cultural, political, military, and technological challenges that resulted from the European contact with the Arab East, and the institutional changes that accompanied them, proved to be a crucial turning point in the development of the Arabic language, particularly its lexicon. However, interest in language matters was central to the Arab renaissance (Nahda) of the 19th century. Arab writers; intellectuals; and translators such Rifa⊂a Rafi⊂ al-Tahtawi (1801/2–73), (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq (1801/04?–87), Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–71), and Butrus al-Bustani (1819–83), among others, debated Arabic linguistic issues in terms of their own literary and linguistic heritage. These and other authors discussed the “internal” needs of Arabic, not only issues of translating the culture of the Western societies. They wrote grammars and compiled other literary textbooks to facilitate the teaching of Arabic and to overcome difficulties of learning the language associated with older, traditional ways of language teaching and to raise awareness of the literary tradition of Arabs. These intellectuals also engaged in the preparation of glossaries and dictionaries appropriate to the needs of their societies.2

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The role played by the 'Arabs', i.e. the peoples of Arabic-Islamic civilization, in the transmission and development of the sciences--from Antiquity and into medieval Europe--is well known. In the present contribution it is discussed in which way the 'Arabs' formed their own scientific terminology and in which way they contributed to the formation and development of the Western, European scientific terminology. In the translations of scientific works from Arabic into Latin in the middle ages, mainly four ways of rendering the Arabic terminology are observed: simple transliteration; modified Latinized transliteration; literal translation; and free rendering by newly formed or inherited Latin or Greek terms. In the course of time, transliterated Arabic terms were more and more suppressed--though many of them live on among us until today--and supplied by corresponding Western terminology.