American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series

The 1997 ATA volume brings together articles on translation practice into the 21st century. Contributions deal with the Information Age, multilingualism in Europe, English as a Lingua Franca, Terminology standardization, translating for the media, and new directions in translator training. A comprehensive bibliography of dissertations makes this a useful reference tool.

From the Classroom to the Courtroom: A guide to interpreting in the U.S. justice system offers a wealth of information that will assist aspiring court interpreters in providing linguistic minorities with access to fair and expeditious judicial proceedings. The guide will familiarize prospective court interpreters and students interested in court interpreting with the nature, purpose and language of pretrial, trial and post-trial proceedings. Documents, dialogues and monologues illustrate judicial procedures; the description of court hearings with transcripts creates a realistic model of the stages involved in live court proceedings.

The innovative organization of this guide mirrors the progression of criminal cases through the courts and provides readers with an accessible, easy-to-follow format. It explains and illustrates court procedure as well as provides interpreting exercises based on authentic materials from each successive stage. This novel organization of materials around the stages of the judicial process also facilitates quick reference without the need to review the entire volume — an additional advantage that makes this guide the ideal interpreters’ reference manual.

Supplementary instructional aids include recordings in English and Spanish and a glossary of selected legal terms in context.

This volume is concerned with the profession and discipline of interpretation. The range of perspectives presented in this collection of essays exemplifies the rich diversity of the profession as we know it today. Interpreting has been known to exist through the ages, though it was not necessarily considered a profession as such. We can attribute the current standing of the practice, in large part, to the historical circumstances which determined it and the efforts of those who responded to the need for communication within these circumstances. In the same way, our anticipation of future needs and the measures we are taking to prepare our next generation of interpreters to meet them will undoubtedly shape the direction our profession takes in the 21st century. The contributors to this volume are practicing interpreters, teachers of interpretation, and administrators.

This volume brings both beginning and experienced translators and interpreters up to date on a broad range of issues. The seven sections take up success and survival strategies for a language professional, including the challenges posed by the changing global economy, the impact of new technologies, adjustments required by a different legal environment and traditional ethical practices. Such challenges and changes point to a need for continuing education and networking and for newcomers specialized postsecondary training. The issues are as broad as the translator and interpreter's role in the modern world, as detailed as advice on setting up a workstation or choosing a degree program. The contributors, all practicing translators and interpreters, discuss also the value of the Association and its Committees to the profession and its individual members.

The papers in this volume tell the story of a profession that is responding in a number of different ways to the advances in computer technology – of professionals who are streamlining their work, reducing repetitive tasks, eliminating manual operations, and in general increasing their productivity while at the same time achieving a more interesting and relaxed environment.

The boom in international trade has brought with it an increased demand for addressing local consumers in their native language and cultural idiom. Given the complex nature and new media involved in communicating with their constituent markets, companies are developing ever more complex tools and techniques for managing foreign-language communication. This book presents select case studies that illustrate the state-of-the-art of language management. It covers a cross-section of sectors, each of which has particular subtleties in language management:

• software localization

• finance

• medical devices

• automotive



The book also covers a cross-section of topical and strategic issues:

• time-to-market (scheduling challenges; simultaneous release in multiple languages)

• global terminology management

• leveraging Internet, intranet, and email

• centralized versus decentralized management models

• financial and budgeting techniques

• human factors; management issues unique to language projects

• technological innovation in language management (terminology tools, automatic translation)



The target audience is language professionals involved with the management aspect of language projects. This includes translators and linguists, managers at language-service providers, language managers at manufacturing/service companies, educators and language/translation students.

The heart of the book is the concept of the case study, particularly the Harvard Business School case-study model. Industry leaders and analysts provide some 15 case studies covering the spectrum of language applications. Readable and nonacademic — it can serve both as a text for those studying language and translation, as well as those in the field who need to know the “state-of-the-art” in language management.

Translation and Cognition assesses the state of the art in cognitive translation and interpreting studies by examining three important trends: methodological innovation, the evolution of research design, and the continuing integration of translation process research results with the core findings of the cognitive sciences. Several of the volume’s essays focus on fruitful new process research methods, such as eye tracking and keystroke logging that have arisen to supplement the use of think-aloud protocols. Another set of contributions investigates how some central theories, concepts, and methods from our sister disciplines of psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience can inform our understanding of translation processes and their development in novices and experts. Yet another set of essays argues that methodological innovation and integration with the cognitive sciences can lead to more robust research designs and theoretical frameworks to explain the intricacies of cognitive processing during translation and interpreting. Thus, this timely volume actively demonstrates that a new theoretical and methodological consensus in cognitive translation studies is emerging, promising to greatly improve the quality, verifiability, and generalizability of translation process research.

The contributors to Translation and Medicine address several broad aspects of medical translation, from the cultural/historic framework of the language of medicine to pragmatic considerations of register and terminology. Their articles highlight some of the contributions translation has made to medical science and addresses some of the questions raised by those who escort the advances of medicine across language and cultural barriers and those who train the next generation of medical translators.

Section 1 covers some “Historical and Cultural Aspects” that have characterized the language of medicine in Japan and Western Europe, with special emphasis on French and Spanish; Section 2 opens some vistas on “The Medical Translator in Training” with two specific university-level programs in Switzerland and in Spain, as well as an in-depth analysis of who makes the better medical translator: the medically knowledgeable linguist or the linguistically knowledgeable medical professional; and Section 3 looks at several facets of “The Translator at Work,” with discussions of the translator-client relationship and the art of audience-specific translating, an insider’s view of the Translation Unit of the National Institutes of Health, and a detailed study of online medical terminology resources.

This inaugural volume transcends its archival value. Indeed, taken as a whole, the essays pose a provocation for both translation practice and theory. The criteria proposed and the issues examined remain the same. Absolute excellence, however, continues to move beyond the horizon, and changes in technology and taste inevitably change both the implementation of the criteria and the evaluation of the issues. The attendant ambiguities may stem from a parenthesis in the volume: does excellence lie in the "X-factor that elusive quality which renders one translation clearly superior to others"?

Topics included in this volume are centered around the politics of translator and interpreter education in higher education in the US as well as in Europe and the perceived image of elitism of these disciplines; other essays discuss the tension and disciplinary boundaries between foreign language training and translator and interpreter education. Topics dealing with specific quality control issues in the teaching of interpreting and translation, discussions of innovative approaches to research, e.g., isotopy and translation, and a review of teaching conference interpreting complete this volume.