Translation Studies Scholars Research Articles

Translatability Of Stylistic Devices in Poetry Across Language - Cultures: An Intercultural Rhetoric Perspective

Contrastive rhetoricians working on L2 writing are often unfamiliar with the theories and research of scholars in translation studies. Publications on translation studies give little or no attention to describing the translation strategies of translators, with a focus on the influence of their L1 on the language they produce. This descriptive qualitative study anchored on Nida’s Translation Theory employed stylistic, lexico-semantic, and grammatical analyses of the stylistic devices employed by poets across nine language cultures to reveal the translation strategies employed by translators and to establish the type of equivalence manifested in the translated texts. The corpus consists of 27 poems written in Bahasa Indonesia, Hiligaynon, Tagalog (Malayo-Polynesian languages), French, Italian, Spanish (Romance languages), German, Icelandic, and Norwegian (Germanic Languages), translated into English. Stylistic analysis reveals that original texts and English translations share the same devices, suggesting that stylistic devices do not get lost in translation. Lexico-semantic and grammatical analyses showed that translators of Malayo-Polynesian languages employed idiomatic translation as a compensatory strategy, producing English translations that manifest Dynamic Equivalence or transparency; translators of Romance languages resorted to synonymous substitution or literal translation, suggesting Formal Equivalence or fidelity; and translators of Germanic languages used a combination of idiomatic and literal translation strategies, with noticeable preference for Dynamic Equivalence, evidenced by the prevalence of metaphorical translations as compensatory strategy. Implications on the intricate relationship between culture and language in the translation process were drawn based on the findings. Keywords: translation strategy, dynamic equivalence, formal equivalence, translation theory, transparency, fidelity

Poster presentations in Translation Studies

Poster presentations have established themselves in hard and social sciences, but remain an undervalued asset in Translation Studies (TS). In this paper, we report on a survey (n=104) that we carried out to map TS scholars’ behavior and preferences regarding poster and oral presentations in conferences. Based on the results, we argue that the full potential of posters as a tool for disseminating research results, getting feedback and networking with colleagues has not been realized in TS. Although the role of posters in facilitating these interactions is acknowledged in the survey responses, the results also reveal that poster presenters are often underprepared: they have not studied making posters nor do they rehearse presenting the poster beforehand. Having identified this lack of preparation, we provide tips for making and presenting engaging posters. In addition, we discuss issues that conference organizers could pay attention to when organizing poster sessions. We hope to encourage more TS scholars to present posters in future conferences by suggesting that the visuality of posters can be harnessed to attract new audiences and to initiate meaningful interactions.

Escrevendo em terra de homem nenhum: questões de gênero e tradução

Este artigo centra-se em questões de gênero e tradução levantas por teóricas/osfeministas e dos Estudos da Tradução, na década de 1970. Susan Bassnett discute osargumentos apresentados pela crítica feminista – no que tange o modo como asociedade marginaliza as mulheres e seus processos criativos – e por teóricas/os detradução – em relação ao processo manipulativo envolvido na suposta “inocente”transferência de textos de uma cultura para outra – e como essas áreas têm sidoconectadas. Seguindo a perspectiva de Bassnett, esta tradução almeja ser uma atividadepolítica na qual são eleitas estratégias feministas de tradução a fim de tornar o próprioconteúdo do texto visível na tradução.

SIMILES AS MEANS OF REPRESENTING THE AUTHOR’S WORLDVIEW AND THEIR RENDERING IN LITERARY TRANSLATION (in Ukrainian translations of contemporary English poetry)

Introduction. Today, simile as a stylistic device attracts the attention of scholars in translation studies, since similes convey the figurative information of the source text and, consequently, their adequate rendering contributes to the creation of an adequate translation of the whole poetic work taking into account its imagery as a key to understanding the author’s worldview. The translator should strive to preserve the image of the source text in translation by using the means of expressiveness which is one of the most complex problems in the theory of translation from English into Ukrainian.Purpose. The purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of similes as a means of representing the author’s worldview and to determine the specificity of their rendering in Ukrainian translations of modern English poetry.Methods. The methodology of the research includes the use of methods of analysis and synthesis for determining the theoretical background of the study; contextual analysis for the selection of illustrative material; lexical, stylistic, and pragmatic analysis as a means of determining the imagery of simile and its transferred meaning in the poem; as well as the methodsof translation analysis in determining the specifics of rendering similes in translation.Results. Simile is a linguistic and stylistic means at the same time; it is a complex system of multifaceted means of expression: morphological, syntactic, lexical, and word-forming, representing the author’s vision of reality through the correlation of objects and phenomena. Figurative comparison (simile), unlike logic one, captures one of the most distinctive features of an object or phenomenon, sometimes unexpected, and makes it the main one ignoring all others. In the works of modern English poets, similes are unexpected, “fresh”, i.e. the authors striveto create new ways to embody their worldview. Rendering such similes is extremely important for understanding the author’s worldview, so the most significant transformations occur in the sphere of lexical units’ meanings and are represented by differentiation and modulation, as well as addition,omission, and total rearrangement.Conclusions. The research reveals that, most often, similes in contemporary English poetry are rendered in Ukrainian translations by using transformations that modify their semantic content. This conclusion confirms that the semantics is the basis for rendering similes in translation.

Translation history and scientific development: enlightened knowledge in Portuguese

Abstract This article aims to bring to the attention of Translation Studies scholars and Translation historians outside Brazil a specific phenomenon in the historiography of translation into Portuguese. The focus rests on the scientific translation boom which took place in Portugal between 1799 and 1808, in a movement of books and knowledge which molded Enlightenment in the Portuguese Empire. In that context, a group of translators born in Brazil played a decisive role while working for the Tipographia Casa do Arco do Cego, run by Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, a publishing house known for its publications on enlightened science.

EU lay communication in translation: mediation, affectivity and EU citizenship

ABSTRACTTranslation within European Union (EU) institutions has attracted the attention of scholars in Translation Studies who have mainly investigated legal documents and focussed on their hybridity, ideological significance, quality or their normative function. This study deals with an under-researched genre, that of EU lay communication. In particular, it examines some versions of a recent EU promotional material: 60 Gründe für die EU’. Warum wir die EU nach wie vor brauchen, initially drafted in German and then rendered in the linguacultures of the EU. Capitalizing on Systemic Functional Linguistics and appraisal theory, it focusses on two versions for Greece and for Cyprus, alongside other translations of the same document (for Ireland, Malta, France, and Germany). It investigates the translators’ intervention, and how ideological shifts are likely to distort the meaning potential from the viewpoint of the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of the texts studied, which seem to affect the EU’s agency and affective citizenship. It concludes that the version for Greece is often maximally mediated, introducing shifts that do not serve the purpose of the initial text, while the version for Cyprus, like the other versions under attention, contributes to a more positive evaluation of the institutions.

THE 2006–2016 TRANSLATION THEORY DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIAN UNIVERSITIES: USING CORPUS TOOLS

<p class="TeksAbstrak">This paper reviews the theories used by new scholars in Translation Studies (TS) in Indonesia, to determine whether TS or translation theory there has followed the development of TS throughout the world. The study investigated the terms and authors/scholars of TS found in the final papers of students at Universitas Indonesia and Universitas Negeri Jakarta between 2006 and 2016. Using a corpus tool, WordSmith Tools 6.0, keyword and cluster analyses were applied to search for terms and authors. Results show no significant progress in attainment of knowledge on TS. Indonesian students’ knowledge of translation theory seems to come primarily from the 1960s–1990s era.</p>

Translator Professionalism

In recent decades, Translation Studies scholars have highlighted the concept of translator professionalism as a multidimensional term related not only to practitioners' competency in the language domain, but also to their attitudes, behavior, and actions. This article empirically examines how translation clients in Asia perceive translator professionalism. The analysis is based on 72 clients in Asia. The findings suggest that clients perceive the translation occupation as vital to society but have divergent views on whether translation is a profession. They attach importance to translators' proactive behavior at work, such as their reliability. The clients have statistically different opinions on whether or not translators can share their work-related pictures and information in online communities. They also point out that the lack of a certification system affects the professional image of translators. This research allows translators, clients and scholars to have a more informed perception of translator professionalism perceived by Asian clients.

Coming to terms with social translation: A terminological approach

ABSTRACTTranslation has recently become a flourishing activity on the Web 2.0. Translations generated by “users” in various online scenarios have attracted growing interest from translation studies scholars. Along with the number of publications that mention “user-generated”, “crowdsourced”, or “community-based” translation grew the number of terms in play. While for some distinct forms of translation the terms seem to be firmly established (e.g. “fansubbing”), the discussion about how to label the top-level concepts of this field is not over yet. To further this discussion, this article undertakes a terminological analysis of the conceptual characteristics emerging from the relevant literature. The analysis shows that the top-level concepts are of a prototypical kind. The article then discusses the terms used for the top-level concepts with regard to motivation and presents a concept diagram that positions these concepts among other translation concepts.

Literary Translation and the Making of Originals by Karen Emmerich

Reviewed by: Literary Translation and the Making of Originals by Karen Emmerich Emily Wilson (bio) Karen Emmerich, Literary Translation and the Making of Originals. New York: Bloomsbury. 2017. Pp. 224. 6 illustrations. Paper $26.95. Thanks to the labors of scholars in translation studies, a discipline that has existed in the academy since the 1970s and has done a great deal to advance scholarly understanding of the theory, history, and practice of translation, scholars in the field are now entirely familiar with the fact that translation is always an interpretative act, and that there are a number of very different ways that a translation can legitimately respond to an original text. Karen Emmerich’s brilliant new book argues that we need to consider the instability of the “original text” (3), as well as that of translations. We tend to imagine originals as “categorically richer texts than translations” (2) and discuss translation as if it always began with an entirely stable source text to hand. Emmerich persuasively deconstructs this set of assumptions, showing how originals themselves can be—or, she suggests, are always—also creations, formed qua originals only once derivative texts such as translations make them so. Her starting point is her own experience of being asked to translate a Greek novel by Vassilis Vassilikos, Γλαύκος Θρασάκης (Glafkos Thrassakis, 1979), titled in her translation as The Few Things I Know about Glafkos Thrassakis (2002). According to the terms of her contract, Emmerich was required to provide a “ ‘faithful rendition into idiomatic English’ ” of this novel that would “ ‘neither omit anything from the original text nor add anything to it, other than such modest changes as are necessary in the translation into English’ ” (3). But the contract also specified that Emmerich’s manuscript would be “ ‘approximately 500 pages in length’ ” (3). This combination of requirements posed a rather obvious difficulty, since the two most recent Greek editions of the novel were both more than 750 pages long. Moreover, the novel had gone through several radical revisions by the author, who was still in the process of revising it and himself described it as “ ‘a work in progress’ ” (6, quoting Vassilikos). The author and translator met in a hotel bar to solve the problem of how to create a 500-page text for the English translation; in the end, the author tore out a [End Page 179] “chunk of roughly 150 pages” (6). Since this new “original” was still a good hundred pages too long, Emmerich pared it down as she worked on the translation, checking each cut with the author, who showed surprisingly little interest in her work, but subsequently produced yet another revised version, prompted by Emmerich’s reductions. The “original” from which Emmerich translated was thus “an utterly unique object” (6)—and, in fact, it did not entirely exist—since there was and is no text of the novel that is exactly equivalent to her translation. This hilarious and thought-provoking case is clearly in certain respects an outlier; most translators are not required to abridge the work from which they translate. But Emmerich argues that there are far more cases than we tend to acknowledge in which the “original” or the “source” is itself unstable. She claims that this example is “extreme but not exceptional,” since with all “originals,” relative to translations, “textual instability is there, whether or not we are aware of it” (8). She makes this important argument through a rich, varied series of case studies. Her ultimate goal is to invite readers, critics, and scholars to be “able to let go of the rhetoric and ideology of faithfulness,” and instead to understand translation as a “further textual extension of an already unstable literary work” (14), inviting a more capacious understanding of what translation is and can be. Emmerich’s chapters range across an impressively diverse array of studies. She is to be commended for her willingness to step far outside her central professional area in Modern Greek literature. The first chapter is an overview of the earliest textual reconstructions and translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a set of stories dating from the third millennium BCE that survives in fragmentary inscriptions in cuneiform, first deciphered in the...

Challenges and strategies in contrasting industrial relations. The English translation of welfare aziendale in company annual reports

The aim of this paper is to investigate the way translators deal with rendering industrial relations concepts in another language. For this purpose, an examination of the strategies adopted to translate the concept of welfare aziendale into English will be carried out in a number of annual reports issued by Italian companies listed on the Stock Exchange. The article aims to cast light on the challenges arising from comparing industrial relations concepts and the effectiveness of the techniques adopted by translators to ensure clarity in the target language. In addition, the article aims to encourage translation studies (TS) scholars to engage in the analysis of comparative industrial relations, a fascinating, though under-researched, field of analysis from a TS perspective.

Grounding translation and interpreting in the brain: what has been, can be, and must be done

ABSTRACTThis paper offers an overview of neurocognitive research on translation and interpreting, an area whose history spans almost 100 years. First, we identify the main milestones in the development of this field, considering empirical breakthroughs (based on neuropsychological and neuroscientific evidence) as well as theoretical and institutional advances. Second, we review three areas of inquiry for which abundant evidence is already available, namely: (i) the circuits involved in backward and forward translation, (ii) the mechanisms engaged depending on variables of the translation unit, and (iii) the neurocognitive impact of expertise in simultaneous interpreting. Third, we discuss the field’s prospects for development, identifying key possibilities and methodological limitations. Finally, we enumerate the principal requirements for the consolidation of the neurocognitive approach (e.g. interdisciplinary training, greater collaboration between translation studies scholars and neuroscientists, increased funding, and presence in high-impact journals). In sum, we intend to show that knowledge about the cerebral basis of translation and interpreting has been growing over the decades and that conditions are appropriate for this promising space to assert itself as a full-fledged research arena.

Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano and Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale: the afterlife of two ‘glocal’ series

ABSTRACT This article brings together perspectives from world literature and translation studies to compare the international reception of two ‘glocal’ literary cases: Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano books, and Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy L’amica geniale. The national and international success of these series raises important questions for scholars of translation studies, multilingualism, world literature and literary markets, and sheds light on the significance of different kinds of multilingualism in fiction and of their treatment in translation. The article addresses the following questions: how do monolingual book markets contain and discipline multilingual fiction? What happens when multilingual fiction travels through translation? How do we explain the present openness of the Anglo-American market to translated fiction with an emphasis on the vernacular? The author argues that while both Camilleri and Ferrante foreground cultural difference and linguistic incommensurability, the way in which they portray the experience of diglossia had an important impact in determining their national and international success as well as the route through which they achieved international visibility.

What is the publication language in humanities? The case of Translation Studies scholars

English is becoming the default language of knowledge construction and dissemination (Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014; Zheng & Gao, 2016; Fuentes & Gómez Soler, 2018). However, English as a monolingual and mono-rhetorical means of disseminating knowledge may maximize its ‘Tyrannosaurus rex’ side (Tardy, 2004; Espinet et al., 2015; Zheng & Gao, 2016). The use of English as an Academic Lingua Franca (EALF) is depicted as hegemonic, totalitarian, colonial and imperialistic, silencing other academic traditions, imposing Anglophone ideologies of norms and rhetorical conventions, and controlling other academic territories (Phillipson, 1992; Bennett, 2013). It is claimed that an orientation towards the norms and rhetorical conventions of the Anglo-Saxon discourse demotes non-English languages, cultures and rhetorical conventions (Tardy, 2004; Espinet, Izquierdo & Garcia–Pujol, 2015), disadvantages non-native English-speaking scholars and their scholarship (Flowerdew, 2013; Zheng & Gao, 2016), erodes alternative forms of knowledge construction (Martín–Martín, 2005; Bennett, 2011), and reduces intellectual, cultural and epistemological diversity (Tardy, 2004; Bennett, 2011).

Item-based assessment of translation competence: Chimera of objectivity versus prospect of reliable measurement

In the course of the past decade, scholars in Translation Studies have repeatedly expressed the need for more empirical research on translation assessment. Notwithstanding the many pleas for “objectivity” that have been voiced in the literature, the issue of reliability remains unaddressed. Although there is no consensus on the best method for measuring the quality of human or machine translations, it is clear that in both cases measurement error will need to be accounted for. This is especially the case in high-stake situations such as assessments that lead to translation competence being certified. In this article we focus on the summative assessment of translation competence in an educational context. We explore the psychometric quality of two assessment methods: the CDI method (Eyckmans, Anckaert, & Segers, 2009) and the PIE method (Kockaert & Segers, 2014; 2017; Segers & Kockaert, 2016). In our study, the reliability of both methods is compared empirically by scoring the same set of translations (n > 100) according to each method.

On randomness

AbstractAndrewChesterman’s 2008article “On Explanation” examines what it means to explain translational phenomena. In doing so, it explores the nature of explanation itself and raises one crucial question: How much is beyond explanation? In other words, to what extent could translational phenomena be due to mere chance? This article addresses this question by drawing on six landmark experiments within the field of psychology. These experiments suggest (1) that we, as translators, might unknowingly be injecting random elements into our translations, and (2) that we, as Translation Studies scholars, might be ‘seeing’ causes in that randomness where there are none. This article also draws on psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s ideas about the ‘illusion of causation’ and on Nassim Taleb’s definition of randomness within the humanities and social sciences. It concludes by arguing that retrospective explanations of translations should pay far more than lip service to the notion of chance.

Интерпретативная теория перевода в оценках отечественных и зарубежных переводчиков и переводоведов

Интерпретативная теория перевода в оценках отечественных и зарубежных переводчиков и переводоведов

IQ and Reading Comprehension in Translation Quality

Having a deeper understanding of determining factors in the quality of translation is in the interest of almost all scholars of translation studies. Students’ intelligence is being measured constantly in order to determine their aptitude for entering into different programs. However, in translation studies, the variable of intelligence quotient (IQ) has been curiously ignored among researchers. This study aimed to explore the strength of both IQ and reading comprehension in predicting translation quality among Iranian translation students. A sample of forty-six translation students from Alborz University of Qazvin participated in this study. Data were collected using three tests including Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices, Colina’s (2008) componential translation quality rating scheme and the reading comprehension test of IELTS. The results show IQ test scores and reading comprehension significantly predict translation quality assessment. Surprisingly, the most significant finding is that IQ score is by far a better predictor of translation quality than reading comprehension. Overall, it is concluded that translation quality assessment is more of a deeper cognitive function than solely language process, which could lead to more research on cognitive aspects of translation.

Multilingual translation of industrial relations practices in official EU documents: the case of Italy’s Cassa Integrazione Guadagni

ABSTRACTIt is a given that contrasting institutional realities entails translation problems, since practices that are specific to a certain legal system might not have an equivalent in another one. This aspect is even more pronounced in the discipline of industrial relations (IR), where the terminology used is often the result of negotiations and collective bargaining between different actors. Yet, and barring some exceptions, the hurdle faced by translators when rendering foreign practices in this field has been somehow neglected by scholars of translation studies, particularly as the IR discourse has been frequently treated as a subgenre of the legal one. In order to fill this gap, this paper sets out to investigate the challenges stemming from rendering national IR concepts in a number of languages. To do so, the notion of cassa integrazione guadagni, a practice that is peculiar to Italy’s IR system, will be investigated to see how this institution was translated into English, French and Spanish in texts drafted by the European Commission.

Reframing the victims of WWII through translation

This study examines the ways and extent to which narrative voices encoded in a source text are reframed and mediated through translation. So Far from the Bamboo Grove (Watkins 1986), the personal narrative of an eleven-year-old Japanese girl during the final days of WWII, was used as an educational text for primary and middle school pupils in the US until it became the target of heavy criticism from Korean-American parents who boycotted the book, arguing that it misguided young American students by constructing a ‘good Japanese–bad Korean’ binary. The Korean translation was distributed by a reputable publishing house in South Korea until 2007, when its distribution became controversial. Although the book – and its translation – has been the target of much criticism, it has been neglected by scholars of translation studies. Adopting the model of analysis elaborated by Baker (2006) and drawing on the concept of framing by Goffman (1974) and the work of Genette (1997), this study analyses So Far from the Bamboo Grove and its Korean translation, Yoko Iyagi (Watkins 2005, trans. Yoon), and investigates the framing strategies used by mediators to reframe the narrative in a new setting.