Translation Tendencies Research Articles

TRACING THE FOOTPRINT OF WORLD ENGLISHES ON MACHINE TRANSLATION TOOLS

With the rise in the population who uses English as a Foreign or Second language, World Englishes has become more focus of English language teaching field specialists. As a consequence, English varieties which are present in supplementary tools used in the process of language teaching and learning took on a new meaning. As one of the commonly used supplementary tools is machine translation tools, the current study aims to explore the machine translation outputs tendency considering grammar-based, spelling-based, and lexical variations between varieties of Englishes regarding Google Translate outputs. Source texts were extracted from Turkish National Corpus. A total of seventy-three Turkish to English machine translation outputs were examined regarding two dominant varieties, American English and British English, with the aim of figuring out the machine translation tendency of translation outputs. The analysis of the research showed that Google Translate provides users with mostly American English compared to British English.

A Comparative Study of Two English Translations of Tao Hua Yuan Ji Based on Gideon Toury̓s Theory of Translation Norms

Tao Hua Yuan Ji, as one of the excellent classical Chinese works written by Tao Yuanming, a well-known idyllist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), is of great importance in the Chinese literary circle for describing a quiet and peaceful pastoral life and embodying the Taoist of seclusion. Nowadays, people can also get new thoughts and insights through rereading this classic work. Based on Toury’s theory of translation norms, this paper conducts a descriptive and interpretive study of comparing Yang Xianyi’s translation of Tao Hua Yuan Ji with Lin Yutang’s one. By analyzing the two translators’ different translation purposes, translation tendencies and translation strategies in the three aspects of preliminary norms, initial norms and operational norms, this paper states that the concrete translation behaviors of Yang Xianyi and Lin Yutang are influenced and restricted by the translation norms, thus their respective versions show different stylistic characteristics in terms of vocabulary, syntax and text. Through unveiling the reasons of the different styles of these two translations, this paper aims to provide some enlightenment for the descriptive translation studies in the process of spreading Chinese culture to the world.

Negative Analytic of the Persian Translation of Atwood’s The Blind Assassin Using Berman’s Model of Trancism

The present study aimed to objectively evaluate the Persian translation of Atwood's (2000) novel, The Blind Assassin, based on Berman's (2000) concept of deforming tendencies/forces. Additionally, the study aimed to identify the translation tendencies employed by Asayesh (2003) and determine whether she produced a source-oriented or target-oriented translation. This analysis involved a careful examination of both the original text and the translation. The results of the analysis revealed that Asayesh incorporated all of Berman's tendencies in her translation, resulting in a work that was structured according to the target text. This indicates her commitment to the target text and her intention to produce a translation that aligns with it, rather than the source text. In conclusion, Asayesh's translation deviated from Berman's suggestions, as he prioritizes loyalty to the original text over the accurate conveyance of meaning. Undertaking this study holds considerable value, as it has the potential to yield valuable insights for individuals tasked with enhancing translation studies, particularly within the realm of trancism. Additionally, the findings of this study can serve as a valuable resource for course designers and curriculum developers.

Testing the unique item hypothesis with phrasal verbs in Chinese–English translations of Lu Xun’s short stories: the perspective of translation directionality

The present study revisits the unique item hypothesis (UIH) from the perspective of translation directionality in the Chinese–English(C–E) language pair. Phrasal verb (PV) is used as the linguistic feature to investigate whether UIH holds true in C–E translations and whether translation directionality plays a role in the representation of unique items, based on a self-built parallel corpus of Lu Xun’s short stories and their English translations done by two L1 and two L2 translators, and a reference corpus of BNC short stories as the non-translated reference. It is found PVs are significantly over-represented in C–E translated texts when compared with English non-translated texts, and this overrepresentation is mainly attributed to the remarkable use of PVs by L1 translators; and there is a significant difference in the use of PVs by translators of different directionality, while no significant difference is found within the same direction. Additionally, L2 translators tend to use a limited range of PVs and prefer transparent PVs to semi-transparent and opaque ones. The results falsify the UIH in general and suggest that UIH is a conditional translation tendency constrained by translation directionality, or UIH is directionality-dependent. Gravitational pull model is used to analyze and explain the divergence between different translation directions.

Traducció dels sobrenoms de la màfia napolitana a l'anglès i al castellà de la sèrie de televisió 'Gomorra'

This study deals with the translation for subtitling and dubbing of a type of Italian expression called contronomi traditionally used by members of the Neapolitan mafia. We have focused on this special kind of nickname used in the Italian series Gomorra to identify and describe the techniques employed in the translation of these meaningful linguistic cultural elements found in the series into English and Spanish. A contrastive analysis of the source text in the Neapolitan dialect and the subtitled version in English and the dubbed version in Spanish of the first season has been carried out. Through this analysis, conclusions could be drawn about the translation tendency regarding the handling of a cultural aspect of the Neapolitan series: the contronomi of the main and secondary characters of this audiovisual product in the two target languages and cultures.

Translator Habitus of Legge under Social Praxeology

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social practice as the analytical framework, this study focuses on the translator habitus exhibited by Legge, a renowned British sinologist and missionary. Taking his English translation of Confucian Analects as a case study, it investigates the habitual characteristics formed through Legge’s education, work, and social experiences. This paper aims to delve into how these translation tendencies influence his work and to uncover the fundamental drivers behind his successful translation of Chinese classics. It seeks to offer novel research perspectives and references for the English translation of Chinese scholarly works.

Subtitling in the Streaming Era: A Comparative Analysis of Strategies Used to Translate Cultural References into Arabic

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent frequent lockdowns, streaming platforms have become an essential part of people’s media consumption. Translation has played a key role in the rapid growth of these streaming services by allowing global access to different translated versions of their content. While the impact of these streaming services on the reconstruction of media production has been a reoccurring topic in media studies, their impact on translation is still relatively underresearched. With that in mind, this article aims to identify current translation tendencies by examining the translation strategies commonly used in subtitling cultural references (CRs) into Arabic on three of the primary streaming platforms (Netflix, OSN+ and Prime Video) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This is particularly significant not only because most studies on cultural references focus on European languages and contexts, but also because the few studies examining Arabic subtitles are mainly focused on subtitles available on DVDs (Alfaify, 2020), fansubbing websites (Abdelaal, 2019) and satellite television (Thawabteh, 2014). Additionally—and contrary to the common practice, which tends to ignore the complex multimodal nature of the cultural references—this article examines both verbal and crossmodal cultural references and the patterns of rendering them in professional subtitles across the investigated streaming platforms.

Lithuanian Discourse Markers And Their Relations In A Multilingual Corpus

Summary The development and research of discourse-annotated corpora is a relatively new field, therefore Lithuanian researchers seek to supplement the existing corpora resources and look for ways to study discourse relations by linking and comparing them with their counterparts in other languages because in different languages discourse relations are realized by different linguistic means. The aim of the article is to present the developing available corpora resources drawing on the experience of foreign scholars and to discuss guidelines for translation research at the discourse level. Therefore, the article first deals with the possibilities of expressing discourse relations by using discourse markers as their linguistic realization in different languages, discussing possible choices of translators, taking into account discourse realtions in translation and the use of different linguistic means. The article presents the parallel multilingual corpus TED-MBD (Multilingual discourse-annotated corpus), which is annotated at the discourse level, in accordance with the objectives and principles of PDTB (Penn Discourse Treebank) discourse annotation. The article discusses in detail the annotation system of PDTB discourse markers, the reader is introduced to the hierarchy of senses of discourse relations, the principles of annotation and insights into the application of the PDTB scheme. It also describes the annotation principles of the Lithuanian part of the corpus in accordance with the PDTB discourse annotation rules; the first results related to the expression of discourse relations and the use of discourse markers are discussed. The article also presents the first research guidelines on how to compare Lithuanian and English discourse-annotated texts in order to understand translation tendencies at the discourse level.

Contrastive Analysis of Expository Dialogue of ‘Hamlet’

This article deals with the issue of dialogue as a speech genre and  a component of dramatic text. Because of being limited, only the contrastive analysis of the first stage of expository dialogue  of the original and translated texts of “Hamlet” is conducted in this article. The exposition of ‘Hamlet’ consists of two different but interrelated stages – at the first stage is presented  a conversation between Hamlet and his friends and within the second stage Hamlet talks to his mother and the king.  In the first stage of exposition (Hamlet and his friends) has been revealed  all the types of translation transformation – relocation, alteration, addition, omission (it is advisable to mention that while making contrastive analysis it is necessary to show not only the existence of translation transformations but also Machabeli’s translation tendency). As it is shown, the translator tries to create the personality of the characters more deeply than they are revealed in the same episode of the original text. On the base of analysing translational transformations the dialogue with the author must be meant as the main aspect of translator icon, that implies not to be separated from the statement of the author of the original text, but supplying and deepening it in the whole play. Highlighting the moral aspect of the character is considered as the main vector of the dialogue with the author.&nbsp

Possibilising food translation in children’s literature

Abstract Food is omnipresent in children’s literature, from Popeye’s Spinach to Detective Cluj’s Carpenter Gums, thus signifying its immense cultural value since cultures and societies are built upon food (Keeling and Pollard 2009, 6). Food narratives are capable of performing a number of functions ranging from evoking a sense of coziness and comfort to being a cause of temptation and power struggle, and these functions ought to come under the spotlight when translating children’s books. This article focuses on the English-Greek examination of translation patterns in the Captain Underpants series and on the critical discussion of the translation strategies that have been employed for the transferring of food items to Greek children. To this end, thirty-five examples of food references are analyzed using a purpose-built schema of translation procedures. The results indicate that translators make a conscious attempt to bring foreign dishes closer to the target language culture by adopting a variety of modification and substitution procedures. This study highlights the intrinsic role that the translation tendencies of preservation, modification, substitution, expansion, transcreation, omission, and creation play in enabling food translation, thus bringing to the fore the important yet neglected area of food translation in children’s literature which can have a profound impact not only on literary but also on translational landscapes.

외래어 번역양상에 관한 통시적 일고찰

This paper is an attempt to discover translation tendencies and study the background or principles of word choices looking into the examples where particular words in original texts are translated into ‘loanwords’. The focus of this study was not only on Japanese-Korean translation but also on the cases in which both Korean and Japanese translations exist on the same original text. In Japanese-Korean translation, a stronger tendency was shown to elaborate the meaning of the word when a Japanese word is perceived as a ‘loanword’. When the Japanese text wrote the ‘LOANWORDS’ in katakana, a stronger tendency was to elaborate the words using Korean and Sino-Korean words over to write ‘loanwords’ as they appear in the dictionaries available in the time. In the comparison of English-Korean and English-Japanese translations, when the adoption of ‘loanwords’ and ‘LOANWORDS’ for the same word was compared, less cases were there in EnglishKorean translations. This finding can be used as a defining principle of translated texts, even when it was not based on a total investigation, for a meaningful difference is shown when a comparison is made to ‘retranslated’ texts.

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION AS A BASIS FOR THE STUDY OF COMPUTER TERMINOLOGY

In this article we considered theory of translation as a main theory of our comparative translation English-Kyrgyz research and tendency in development of theory and practice of translation related to both English and Kyrgyz languages in linguistic space of Kyrgyzstan. In our article, we consider a set of basic issues of theory and practice of translation and clarified them. The study of following five fundamental issues of the theory and practice of translation prompted us to find out two principles of translation equivalence, as “formal-grammatical principle” and “dynamic-culturological principle” into five types of equivalence, corresponding to five levels hierarchically located equivalence of translation, and highlighted by Russian Soviet translation scholars and their Kyrgyz researchers.

Functionally-defined recurrent multi-word units in English-to-Polish translation

AbstractThis study uses both parallel and comparable reference corpora in the English-Polish language pair to explore how translators deal with recurrent multi-word items performing specific discoursal functions. We also consider whether the observed tendencies overlap with those found in native texts, and the extent to which the discoursal functions realised by the multi-word items under scrutiny are “preserved” in translation. Capitalizing on findings from earlier research (Granger, 2014;Grabar & Lefer, 2015), we analyzed a pre-selected set of phrases signaling stance-taking and those functioning as textual, discourse-structuring devices originally found in the European Parliament proceedings corpus (Koehn, 2005) and included in the English-Polish parallel corpusParalela(Pęzik, 2016). Since our goal was to explore whether and to what extent English functionally-defined phrases reflect the same level of formulaicity and regularity in both Polish translations and native Polish texts, the findings provided insights into the translation tendencies of such items, and revealed – using inter-rater agreement metrics – that the discoursal functions of recurrent n-grams may change in translation.

Introduction to the Septuagint

Introduction to the Septuagint

Philo’s Influence on Understanding Divine Anthropomorphism

Divine anthropomorphisms are prevalent in the Old Testament. Authors of Old Testament works seemingly had no reservations with using human qualities to describe God. During the Second Temple period Greek philosophy began to influence the interpretation of texts that describe God using anthropomorphisms. This shift in understanding God is evidenced in translation tendencies in the Septuagint and in Philo’s reading of Hebrew Scripture. The elements of proto-Gnosticism found in Philo’s writings are at times closely related to his interpretation of anthropomorphism. Since Philo’s understanding of such figures of speech has been the historic majority view, it is important to evaluate his method of interpretation to determine whether this understanding of divine anthropomorphism is rooted in Scripture or his philosophical tradition.

A comparison between translating into mother tongue and translation into the second language from the perspective of “domestication” and “foreignization” concepts of Venuti

Translation in the 21st century is not just seen as translating grammatical rules, syntaxes, and vocabulary. It is seen as a powerful tool in shaping cultures. In today’s world, countries and cultures do not have equal power, they have unequal cultural power that affects others. All the countries, especially after the 1990’s, realized the importance of the power of their culture. This power is called “soft power”. In order to reinforce their power and hegemony in the world, countries try to improve their soft powers and try to be culturally effective on the others. This cultural inequality and power relations are studied in Translation Studies because translation is one of the most powerful tools for cultural interactions and relations. In this context, Lawrence Venuti’s “Domestication” and “Foreignization” concepts are scrutinized to reveal the unequal cultural power interactions via translation. In this regard, by using Javier Franco Aixela’s methodology for translation of Culture-Specific Items, Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s stories and their translations are studied. Story of Sleeping In The Forest’s translation was carried out by a Turkish translator Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy, the other story Such a Story is translated by American translators Joseph and Viola Jakobson. By comparing two of the case studies, it is aimed to find out while translating from Turkish into English whether translation into mother tongue and translation into the second language creates a difference. Besides, whether national origin affects translation tendency towards “Domestication” or “Foreignization” in Venuti’s terms will be /investigated.

Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis on En-Masse Retraction of the Maxillary Anterior Teeth With Quantitative Combined Loading Control.

This study aims to elucidate the biomechanical effects of combined loading of maxillary anterior and posterior implants using the sliding method on en-masse retraction of the anterior teeth and to quantify the loading ratio (LR) of anterior and posterior implants to achieve controlled retraction of the maxillary anterior teeth. A three-dimensional finite element model of the maxilla-upper dentition appliance was constructed. Implants were placed on the distal (A) and mesial (B) sides of the lateral incisors as well as on the mesial (C) side of the first molar and different amounts of force were loaded between the implants using 2- or 5-mm traction hooks. The labiolingual movement of the anterior teeth was recorded and the relationship between the LR of the implants and the movement of the central incisors was evaluated. With 2-mm traction hooks, the central incisors exhibited a translation tendency during retraction at lower A/C and B/C LR and labial or lingual crown inclination at higher values. With 5-mm traction hooks, the central incisors, lateral incisors, and canine teeth exhibited a labial crown inclination. The results of this study suggest that 2-mm traction hooks can cause labial crown inclination, translation tendency during retraction, or lingual crown inclination of the central incisors due to alterations in the LR of the anterior and posterior implants. The central incisors only exhibited labial crown inclination during combined loading of the anterior and posterior implants when 5-mm traction hooks were used.

基于语料库研究表示证据性日语情态词的翻译倾向——以(シ)ソウダ／ダッタ为代表

基于语料库研究表示证据性日语情态词的翻译倾向——以(シ)ソウダ／ダッタ为代表

Reduced abstractness in Spanish-English translation: the case of property-denoting nouns

This study proposes an empirical methodology to test the hypothesis that translation from Spanish into English results in reduced abstractness. The semantic area focused upon is the attribution of properties to specific entities by means of abstract nouns. Two levels of abstractness, conceptual and grammatical, are considered. Conceptual abstractness is linked to the referential content of the nouns, while grammatical abstractness involves the reified expression of properties as nouns, as opposed to other word classes. The study classifies the translation correspondences for nouns ending in the suffix -idad in the Spanish novels by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939-2003) Los mares del Sur and Tatuaje. Such property-denoting nouns contribute to the construal of point of view. The methodology combines a quantitative approach with a qualitative, text-analytic selection of relevant items. Results indicate that abstractness is mainly reduced on the grammatical level although instances of diminished conceptual abstractness can also be observed. Compliance with language preferences may be aligning with readability norms affecting the target product, crime fiction, to undo reification of properties (namely explicitation and simplification). The results underscore the need to include semantic parameters in studies of translation tendencies.

Dialectically-marked proper nouns in audiovisual translation: An analysis of the English subtitles to "The Peasants"

The aim of this article is to analyze translation techniques used in the film translation of dialectically-marked proper names. Undoubtedly, the issue of rendering dialectical varieties constitutes one of the greatest challenges in interlingual translation. The applicable translation techniques, however, are frequently in conflict with the rules of reducing audiovisual target text to an indispensable minimum. The research material consists of the English subtitles to The Peasants (Chłopi, dir. Jan Rybkowski, Telewizja Polska S.A. 1973; English translation by Agata Deka, PolArt Video 2006). This article outlines the main theoretical approaches and translation techniques which can be used in the cases of dialects, proper names, and audiovisual translation. The research part aims at verifying the hypothesis’s claim that these translation methods which require implementation of more complex procedures than, for instance, omission (e.g. replacing the source language dialect with a target text variation) are not applicable in the case of audiovisual translation. The conclusion consists of the outline of the main translation tendencies as well as the verification of the aforementioned hypothesis.