Translation Students Research Articles

Scrutinizing the most prominent competencies for a well-rounded translator from Iranian publishers’ perspective

The present study aims to examine the competencies that Iranian managers of publishing companies consider when hiring translators. To achieve this, a Likert scale questionnaire with 16 items was designed to gather opinions from managers in publishing companies in Iran about the competencies necessary for a well-rounded translator A chi-square test was conducted to determine if there is a significant relationship between each competency and the publishers. As the results showed, there is a significant relationship between the publishers and translation service provision and language competencies. However, there is no significant relationship between the publishers and intercultural, information mining, thematic, and technological competencies. The results indicated that the most important competencies for enhancing a translator's productivity are technological, language, and translation service provision competencies. Additionally, the present study provides some pedagogical implications that can be beneficial to translation students and those involved in the translation sector, such as translation offices. Keywords: Competence; translator; publishing company; well-rounded translator

Strategies of Subtitling Egyptian Idiomatic Expressions and Proverbs into English

Several platforms, such as Netflix, offer subtitles of different works and movies in several languages, including Arabic and English. In this study, the researchers discuss the strategies used to overcome the challenges subtitlers face when translating Egyptian idiomatic expressions and proverbs into English. A parallel corpus of four movies, namely تيتا رهيبة My horrible grandma, عسل أسود Bittersweet, الباشا تلميذ The Student cop, and عمارة يعقوبيان Yacoubian Building, was compiled from scratch. The idiomatic expressions and proverbs were identified and analyzed according to Baker's taxonomies (Baker, 1992). The translation strategy of "paraphrasing" was the most frequently used in translating proverbs. In rendering idiomatic expressions, the subtitlers mostly resorted to the strategy of "translating by paraphrasing using unrelated words to deal with the non-equivalent expression". "Mistranslation" was detected in some cases, most likely due to the lack of the target culture knowledge and not finding appropriate equivalents. The subtitlers sometimes used literal translation, which distorted the meaning and resulted in unnatural translations. The results also revealed that some expressions that were repeatedly used in the movies were translated differently according to the context. This study can be beneficial to translators and translation students, especially those interested in subtitling movies and translating proverbs and idiomatic expressions.

Exploring the Role of Machine Translation in Translating English Collocations into Arabic: Insights from Student Translators

Machine Translation (MT) has increasingly become an essential technology in the modern age. MT technology is currently used by many EFL learners as a learning facilitator. They are using MT as an essential tool to assist them in their foreign language learning activities. Several studies have focused on investigating the EFL students’ use of and attitudes towards MT in various EFL learning activities including reading, writing and vocabulary acquisition. However, few studies have been conducted on exploring the EFL learners’ use of MT technology in the translation of collocations, especially in the Arabic context. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of MT on the translation of English lexical collocations into Arabic. It presents a corpus of twenty English collocations given to thirty third-year translation students at an Omani university, who utilized an online MT system for their translations. Employing a descriptive, qualitative approach, the study assesses students' strategies and the accuracy of MT-generated equivalents, drawing from translation models by Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) and Newmark (1988). The results indicated that the students were able to generate correct translations for certain collocations when using MT, but there were inaccuracies in the translation of other collocations. The study emphasized the importance of not solely depending on MT because doing so might reduce students' willingness to actively search for the most appropriate translations on their own. This suggests that a balanced approach to using MT and encouraging students to develop their translation skills independently is advisable. Future research can explore the use of Machine Translation in translating collocations in languages beyond Arabic and within different cultural and linguistic contexts.

EUROPEAN UNION LAW IN TRANSLATION: CORE PRINCIPLES AND USEFUL TOOLS FOR UNDERGRADUATE TRANSLATION COURSES

The translation of European Union (EU) law can be seen as a specific case of international law translation and thus relevant only to legal translators. The author argues that concepts related to EU law and tools developed by the EU to support translators should be taught as early as possible to all undergraduate students of translation. This is due to two specificities of European law: it covers a great range of different areas, many of them of a technical nature, thus being useful to many (if not all) translators outside the legal field; and it is mentioned in many non-legal texts, from catalogues to journalistic texts. Therefore, professional translators are bound to find references to EU law throughout their careers and should know how to deal with them and how to avoid common pitfalls. Furthermore, tools created by the European Union — terminology tools, publicly available translation memories, and provision of legislation in multilingual format — are very useful to any translator and knowing how to use them is a skill essential to translation professionals. This study will make suggestions for teaching principles, tools and common sources of translation errors related to EU law to students who do not have any form of legal training. Keywords: EU law, legal translation, European translation, translation teaching

INTRODUCING WELL-BEING TO THE TRANSLATION CLASSROOM: INSIGHTS FROM THE TRENCHES OF COVID-19

The abrupt and profound changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a variety of social and personal situations that negatively affected the well-being of teachers and students in higher education thus producing serious emotional strain. Previous research shows that satisfactory student performance can be obtained in an online class when it is accompanied by psychosocial support tools, such as enrichment and remediation tutorials, academic advising, guidance and counselling programs, fitness and wellness resources, spiritual formation activities and faculty-student consultation. This paper aims to test the effectiveness and the perception of well-being and participative activities in the translation classroom. It presents the findings of a pilot intervention implemented with 42 translation students. The intervention is based on the PERMA theory of well-being and tests 9 well-being and participative techniques. The methodology combines pre- and post-intervention questionnaires and the analysis combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings suggest that although there are no significant quantitative differences, students’ perceptions are positive. Suggestions are discussed together with possible implications for the future. Keywords: psychosocial support, well-being, teaching methods, higher education, translation education

University of Lille and CNRS Research unit ‘Savoirs, Textes, Langage’

In this article, we analyze a learner corpus of English-to-French translation tasks produced by advanced students enrolled in their final year of a professional translation master’s program. Specifically, we investigate their use of so-called non-standard, non-SVO word order structures: clefting, pseudo-clefting, dislocation, extraposition, and inversion. We aim to confirm students’ tendency to overuse SVO word order in their translations in comparison with original French and to provide a finer-grained analysis of their (non-)use of non-standard structures. Complementary analyses on a corpus of machine-translated texts and a corpus of professional translations provide further comparisons. Thanks to an approach where corpus material is used to assist students in the development of their translation skills, all these results are meant to have pedagogical value, by highlighting the specificities of student translations to help them write more authentic texts that take into account language use related to word order. The comparison with machine-translated texts is intended to help students develop post-editing skills. Keywords: translation training, translation quality, word order variation, specialized translation, post-editing

Lexical Shortening and Blending: An Innovative Word Formation Process in Arabic

A corpus of 170 partial Arabic blends in which the first and/or second constituents are shortened was collected from several Arabic resources and subjected to further analysis to explore the structure of Arabic partial blends; blend types (attributive/headed); which constituents and which part is shortened; the kind of relation that exists between the constituents of Arabic blends; and the contexts or registers which favour the formation of lexical blends. Blends consist of two or more words merged into one new word. Blending involves shortening of one constituent or both. It involves creating new words by omitting part of the original word but retaining its original meaning. Partial blends consist of a splinter, i.e. shortened constituent (تركو Turko; انجلو Ango, افرو Afro, قطر Qatar, ايبرو Iberian, أورو Euro,يهو Jewish, أحيو biology, القرو-وسطي , أمنو security, سع Saudi, جمهو republic) and a head (full constituent) that combines with it. Data analysis showed the following: (i) compounds with multiple blends with different splinters from the same lexical items (فَحْم السكر carbon+sugar > فَحْمَس ،فَسْكَر ،فَحْسك ، فَحْكَر); (ii) blends with a final reduction in the first constituent كهرمغنيطيسي) electromagnetic(; (iii) blends with a splinter as a first constituent+the combining vowel /o/ (تركوخليجي Turkish+Gulf; هندو إيراني Indo-Iranian); (iv) three-and four-constituent blends (الأنجلو-صهيو-فارسي-أمريكي Anglo+Zio+ Persian+American); (v) Blends with prefixes that are shortened particles/adverbs (قبتاريخ pre-historic; بيسطري interlinear; فوبنفسجي ultraviolet; غِبُّلوغ post puberty; تحبحري undersea); (vi) blends with initial reduction in the second constituent resulting in the suffix {el} (امريكائيل) America+el last syllable in Israel); (vii) splinters with initial reduction in the second constituent (بيروتشيما Beirut +Hiroshima; عبقريشتاين (genius+Einstein); (viii) imperfect blends with final reduction of first constituent + initial reduction of second constituent (متشائل pessimist+optimist; جزائسطينية Algeria+Palestinian); (ix) technical blends (برمجاني freeware; حَمْضَلون acid+vinegar); and (ix) blends with overlapping consonants (أنفمي nose+mouth; عربيزي Arabic+English; قببلوغ (قبل+بلوغ) pre-puberty; سوداناس Sudan people). Syntactically and semantically, the relation between constituents of a blend containing a prefix/suffix is exocentric and syntagmatic but it is endocentric and paradigmatic in blends in most of the categories. Recommendations for testing the Arabic blend recognition, comprehension and interpretation by translation students are given.

The quest for the ideal business translator profile in the Romanian context

Abstract An ideal translator profile is a crucial issue for both translation providers, who want to deliver impeccable performance, and translation beneficiaries, whose purpose is to obtain flawless services. In the context of Romanian higher education, two distinct educational profiles of providers are distinguished in the business translation market: graduates of Philology, who have been trained in translation (3-year BA and 2-year MA programmes in Translation Studies), and graduates of Faculties of Economics or Business who have undertaken 3-year and/or 2-year MA study programmes in a foreign language. Showing the results of a study conducted with groups of third year Bachelor students of the University of Craiova, Romania (students in Translation Studies and students in the Finance and Banking English-taught programme), across a 3-year period (2015–2017), our research aims at providing answers to the following questions: To what extent does each of these two profiles match the ideal one of a business translator? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the two training profiles? What specific actions can and should be taken for each of the two target groups in terms of university training?

Chen Lifu and Characteristics of Wartime Higher Education in China (1937-1944)

The development and change of wartime higher education significantly impacted China's modern history, and its evolution was closely related to the advocacies and ideas of Chen Lifu, who served as the Minister of Education from 1938 to 1944. This paper first analyzes the merger and relocation of universities with examples such as the Southwest United Nations University and the National Central University, arguing that relocations ensured the continuity and development of higher education in China and nurtured many professional talents. The paper also focuses on the loan and publicly-funded student system, which Chen Lifu adopted mainly to compete for the youth with the Communist Party and the Japanese forces. The system helped a large number of economically disadvantaged students to complete their studies, enhanced young students' sense of responsibility towards the country, stabilized society, and increased the public's trust in the government. Besides, the paper analyzes the military recruitment of young people, briefly describes the recruitment of medical, engineering, and translation students, the peak of military recruitment, and the participation of young expeditionary force in the war, as well as the critical role of these recruitments in the victory of the war.

The Impact of a Vision Intervention on Translation and Interpretation Students’ L2 Motivation

Visionary teaching interventions have had a positive impact on developing and strengthening students’ ideal L2 self and motivated behavior. However, research on the effects of this kind of intervention on the motivation of translation and interpretation students is scarce. Using a mixed methods approach, the study aimed to evaluate the impact of a semester-long intervention, focused on translation and interpretation students’ future professional careers, on their motivation, intended effort, and willingness to communicate. The participants were translation and interpretation students with a B1 level of English, who were divided in two groups for the study. The treatment group received a vision intervention (N=14) whereas the control group (N=14) did not. To measure the differences in motivation before and after the intervention, a questionnaire was used. Additionally, a semi-structured interview was used to explore in greater depth the students’ perceptions of the experience. The results of this study reveal that visionary teaching increased both ideal L2 self and intended effort of students. Furthermore, it showed that the intervention was memorable for students and that it benefited them in establishing a future L2 professional vision as well as outlining the steps to achieve it. Our findings suggest the importance of including visionary teaching in translation and interpretation programs so that students can become motivated and involved in their future professional paths.

Teaching Visually Impaired Translators and Interpreters in Romania: Available Tools and Inclusive Teaching Methods

Abstract This article explores the teaching methods used in university classes of Translation and Interpreting with visually impaired students. It is the first essay on this topic applied to the context of Romania. Therefore, it offers basic suggestions of implementing international teaching methods for visually impaired students in Translation and Interpreting in Romanian universities, while also raising awareness about the challenges they face. The literature review is divided into two categories: digital skills and professional skills. In presenting the most essential digital skills a visually impaired translator and interpreter must acquire, the article makes reference to Kornacki’s model which groups technologies according to the necessary skills. The professional skills are discussed in three articles from two different universities, namely the University of Trieste in Italy and the University of Mainz/Germersheim in Germany. The German study described in two articles – one in German and its shorter version in English – gives a detailed perspective on the topic, being the core of the theoretical ideas mentioned in this article. The knowledge acquired by reading this article will most certainly lead Romanian professors to using the optimal approach when teaching emerging visually impaired translators and interpreters. The teaching methods can be put into practice if the right equipment is available and accessibility is implemented in all aspects regarding translation and interpreting.

Error Analysis in Short Fiction Translation from Indonesian into English

This study aims to determine the types of errors in translating short fiction. The researcher used a qualitative descriptive study with 25 students of English Literature at Makassar State University. Data collection was carried out from a test to find out what types of errors were in the results of each student's translation. Based on the results of the study it was found that there were 4 types of errors in the students' translation results, namely Omission, Addition, Misinformation and Misordering. In Week 1 there were 72 omission errors, 60 addition errors, 82 misinformation and 16 misordering errors. In week 2 there were 53 omission errors, 54 addition errors, 56 misinformation errors and 13 Misordering. The last test in week 3 was Omission with 30 errors, Addition with 39 errors, misinformation with 31 errors and misordering with 3 errors. Finally, the researcher concluded that most students were still confused about using grammar and understanding words because of the influence of the First Language and the lack of competence in the rules or structure of the Second Language.

The role of deconstructing as a part of translation process in literary text

This study investigates the role of deconstruction in the translation of literary texts, delving into the ways in which deconstructive approaches can challenge established translation norms and illuminate new possibilities for interpretation. By drawing upon the insights of Jacques Derrida and other influential deconstruction theorists, this research explores the transformative potential of deconstruction in capturing the complexities of language, symbolism, and cultural references in literary works. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and sample texts, this study aims to shed light on the ways in which deconstructive translation techniques can unveil the inherent ambiguities, subversions, and multiplicity of meanings present in literary texts, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the intersections between deconstruction and literary translation. A descriptive qualitative approach was used to conduct the research. Also, the comparative approach is used to compare the translation of literary texts by Translation Program students. Two groups of translation students translated (4) literary texts. The research findings showed that deconstruction can play a significant role in challenging and reevaluating the assumptions and fixed meanings associated with the original language. The research concluded that translators should understand the original text's structural aspects. Translators may better determine whether structural decisions are necessary to keep the deconstructive spirit of the original work by knowing why.

Challenges and Opportunities of College Students Translation Education in the Artificial Intelligence Era

All crafts and professions have been impacted by artificial intelligences explosive growth in the twenty-first century. The translation industry is no exception, by contrast, its even more affected than others. Artificial intelligence has brought a variety of opportunities to the development of the translation industry but also faced unprecedented challenges. Students who are majoring in translation have to face the structural changes brought by machine translation to the language service industry. Under this change, educators must realize the importance of cultivating excellent college students translation technology abilities. Therefore, this paper studies the opportunities and challenges of the cultivation of college students translation technology ability in the context of artificial intelligence, as well as how to make appropriate responses to these opportunities and challenges. According to research, it found in the face of the impact of artificial intelligence, the challenges of cultivating college students translation ability are mainly in the aspects of ethics and resource competition. However, the complexity and flexibility required by cross-cultural communication cant be replaced by machines at present, which is exactly the opportunity to cultivate the translation ability of college students. Translation is an important way of international communication. In the era of artificial intelligence, exploring how to make good use of the advantages of man-machine combination can not only improve their own ability but also build a more convenient and stable bridge for communication between countries.

An Empirical Study on the Improvement of Students’ Strategic Competence Through Translation Project Teaching

Strategic competence, as a meta-cognitive ability, determines the other translation sub-competences. To tease out how students’ strategic competence is developed in translation project is significant in enlightening the translation teaching practice. This study explores how five Chinese college students’ translation competence, particularly their strategic competence, develop within a translation project introduced into the translation teaching of the authors’ institute. Strategic competence includes four parts: problem identification, solution proposal, action taking, and decision making. By examining both the translation process and the translation product, including translation tasks, translation logs, group discussions, and interviews from five student translators, we found that the overall translation competence of the student translators has significantly improved. The development of various elements of strategic ability is uneven, with the abilities to identify problems, evaluate issues, and take measures showing the most significant improvement. However, there is a lag in decision-making capabilities in translation output. Based on these findings, the study provides concrete suggestions for improving the teaching of translation.

Exploring the motivations of student volunteer translators in Chinese queer activism

Abstract Amateur translators have, on a collaborative and voluntary basis, played a notable role in queer activism, but queer translation studies has paid insufficient attention to them, especially in regions other than the Global North. Through the lens of volunteer motivation studies, this study adopts systemic quality of life theory of volunteer motivation and Q methodology to investigate the motivations of Chinese university students to voluntarily engage in a queer translation project. By probing into the translators’ lived experience and subjectivity, it uncovers various contextually mediated motivations, such as the adaptive pursuit for mental compatibility with the environment, exclusive social integration into a valued community, weakened activism for social change, and conservation of cultural belief stability. It also reveals some obstacles and dilemmas faced by the translators in Chinese queer activism.

Nepali ESL/EFL Student Translators' Manipulation of Sentences at the Textual Level

This paper analyzes English translations of Nepali short stories carried out by Nepali ESL/EFL student translators and examines the translators' manipulation of sentences across boundaries. The study adopted a product-oriented framework with a production task to elicit translation from 30 university translation students. The data were analyzed descriptively and discussed under three themes: sentence splitting, sentence joining and sentence-structure preserving. Findings show translators' tendency to preserve source-text sentence boundaries in target texts, with the minimum use of sentence-splitting and sentence-merging strategies to bring about shifts across sentence boundaries.

Choosing effective teaching methods for translation technology classrooms

Abstract Although it is generally agreed that translation students need to learn how to use translation technologies, there would appear to be less agreement on what teaching methods are most appropriate to achieve that end. In our survey of eleven translation-technology teachers in Australia and New Zealand, we found a significant association between the contents and methods (p = 0.031). Lecture-based methods are reported as being used to teach background knowledge such as history and current trends, while hands-on skills can be learned in a variety of student-centred activities that run from task-based groupwork to large-scale simulated projects. Focus-group discussion indicates not only the distribution of appropriate methods, but the ways teaching can adjust to different class sizes, becoming more collective or more individual. A case study further indicates some of the institutional variables that inform the use of one teaching method or another, with particular attention to heterogeneous student groups.

The OECD’s ‘Well-being 2030’ agenda: how PISA's affective turn gets lost in translation

ABSTRACT Well-being 2030 has become the latest rationale for the OECD’s education work. This vision has given rise to new assessments of student well-being beginning with PISA 2015. The OECD, recognising the problems of PISA 2015, conceptualised a wider student well-being construct in PISA 2018, and attempted to measure ‘students’ feelings’. However, analyses of the OECD’s affective turn reveal major problems remain. Our critique is empirically underpinned by an innovative analytical strategy: comparing PISA 2018 student questionnaire translations across different ‘economies’ that use the same written language (China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan). Our analyses confirm that the OECD imagines a cultural and context-free world, one in which translation and measurements are simply technical problems to be engineered, rather than deeper ‘problems’ of worldviews that require attunement. To encourage the OECD to recognise these differences in its future assessments, we offer starting points from recent research in cultural psychology.

Bi-Directionality in English-Arabic-English translation of relativization

Bi directionality, a common practice in translation industry, refers to the transfer from L2 to L1 (direct translation) or L1 to L2 (inverse translation). Several studies have investigated relativization in direct or inverse translations, but few studies have considered relativization in the two translation directions. Following a hypothesis–based observational design, this study investigated the Arab undergraduates' performance on the direct and inverse translation of relativization. The study sample comprised undergraduates in the College of Languages and Translation (n = 36) and was divided into two groups (students of English and students of translation). The results showed statistically significant differences between students' performance on direct and on inverse translation (t (35) = 14.906, ≤0.05), indicating that inverse translation was more difficult than direct translation. The independent-sample t-test revealed that the students of translation outperformed the English students in direct and inverse translations. Despite the two groups' low performance on inverse translation, both considered that direct and inverse translations were equally 'somewhat difficult’. The paper concluded with suggestions that could guide the design of the translation courses and selecting teaching methods that could improve students’ translation of relativization.