How do translators select among competing (near-)synonyms in translation?A corpus-based approach using random forest modellingPauline de Baets | Ghent UniversityGert de Sutter | Ghent UniversityThis article investigates how translators choose between multiple competing onomasiological variants to express (verbal) inchoativity in English-to-Dutch translations. Using a corpus-based multifactorial research design, we measure the impact of three well-known socio-cognitive mechanisms on the actual choice, namely the complexity principle, risk aversion, and cognate exposure. We apply the behavioural profile method, which allows us to operationalise these three explanatory mechanisms via ID-tags, and we then use conditional random forest modelling to determine the impact of each mechanism on the choice between four competing verbs of inchoativity. The results of our analyses show that the complexity principle plays a clear role in translated texts, as there is a significant preference for the active construction and for prototypical verbs in passive constructions. Genre-specific risk-averse behaviour as well as cognate avoidance were not observed.
Source language difficulties in learner translationEvidence from an error-annotated corpusMaria Kunilovskaya | University of WolverhamptonTatyana Ilyushchenya | University of TyumenNatalia Morgoun | Lomonosov Moscow State UniversityRuslan Mitkov | University of WolverhamptonThis study uses an error-annotated, mass-media subset of a sentence-aligned, multi-parallel learner translator corpus to reveal source-language items that are challenging in English–Russian translation. Our data includes multiple translations of the most challenging source sentences, drawn from a large collection of student translations on the basis of error statistics. This sample was subjected to manual contrastive-comparative analysis, which resulted in a list of English items that were difficult for students. The outcome of the analysis was compared to the topics discussed in translation textbooks that are recommended for BA and specialist-degree students in Russia. We discuss items that deserve more prominence in training as well as items that call for improvements to traditional learning activities. This study presents evidence that a more empirically motivated design of the practical translation syllabus as part of translator education is required.
An item-based, Rasch-calibrated approach to assessing translation qualityChao Han (韩潮) | Xiamen UniversityXiaoqi Shang （尚小奇） | Shenzhen UniversityItem-based scoring has been advocated as a psychometrically robust approach to translation quality assessment, outperforming traditional neo-hermeneutic and error analysis methods. The past decade has witnessed a succession of item-based scoring methods being developed and trialed, ranging from calibration of dichotomous items to preselected item evaluation. Despite this progress, these methods seem to be undermined by several limitations, such as the inability to accommodate the multifaceted reality of translation quality assessment and inconsistent item calibration procedures. Against this background, we conducted a methodological exploration, utilizing what we call an item-based, Rasch-calibrated method, to measure translation quality. This new method, built on the sophisticated psychometric model of many-facet Rasch measurement, inherits the item concept from its predecessors, but addresses previous limitations. In this article, we demonstrate its operationalization and provide an initial body of empirical evidence supporting its reliability, validity, and utility, as well as discuss its potential applications.
Literature text as world reversingReversed worlding in a translation of verbal artFang Li | Hankuk University of Foreign StudiesDavid Kellogg | Sangmyung UniversityBecause translators begin where authors end – with a completed text – their task may be conceptualized as a reverse worlding, or ascent from actual text to imaginary context. This article argues that the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for all verbal art, and that within verbal art, it is truer of the texts that Hasan (1985, 101) refers to as ‘literature text’ and less so of those she calls ‘literary text’ that have some extra-artistic purpose. We demonstrate this empirically using an extreme example, the lipogrammatic French novel La disparition (Perec 1969) and its English translation A Void (Perec 2008). We also argue for a certain chastity in theory – a theory of translation for verbal art which excludes both the nonverbal and texts that are not purposefully artistic. Moreover, we say that there needs to be a corresponding chastity in practice – a theory of world inversion that rests not on a political program, but rather on a scientific understanding of the world and the proper place of words within it.
Preliminary norms of Arabic to Spanish translations produced by twentieth-century academicsManuel Feria | University of GranadaLuis M. Pérez Cañada | Castilla-La Mancha UniversityThis article analyzes the preliminary norms (Toury 1995) governing the translation of Arabic works into Spanish produced by members of Spain’s academic community in the twentieth century. In particular, we study the ideological motives and objectives behind the choice of works to be translated. Translation was the ideological tool par excellence of Spanish Arabism. The Catholic Church; Spanish state, regional, and local government bodies; and the European Cultural Foundation were the principal patrons. The works translated served to endorse the pre-eminence of Christendom over Islam and to advance Spanish nation-building. They also contributed to the encouragement of emancipatory and feminist discourses, the commercial success of the Arab winner of the Nobel Prize, Najīb Maḥfūẓ, and the promulgation among the European public of a discourse opposed to the ‘clash of civilizations’. Thus, our analysis illustrates the capacity of translation to generate ideology in a specific socio-political context.
BOOK REVIEWS
Christopher Rundle, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Translation History
Reviewed by Li Chen |
Mira Kim, Jeremy Munday, Zhenhua Wang & Pin Wang, eds. Systemic Functional Linguistics and Translation Studies