Babel - Volume 63, Issue 3, 2017

The translation, dissemination and reception of knowledge has served as an excellent indicator of changing ideologies and the major catalyst for institutional changes, language reforms and social transformation in China. However, English representations of the Chinese tradition of translation (e.g. Hung 2005 ; Hung and Pollard 2009 ) have not incorporated research findings from Chinese studies (e.g. Cohen 1995 ; Amelung, Kurtz and Lackner 2001 ; Elman 2005 ) and tend to provide unsubstantiated generalizations and hasty conclusions. This article uses a combination of “cultural tool” ( Even-Zohar 2005 ) and “culture planning” ( Even-Zohar 2008 ) as a frame of reference to provide a macroscopic perspective on knowledge translation in different Chinese historical periods as “a means of planning” ( Toury 2002 : 166) to promote religious agendas, modernize traditional Chinese natural studies, Westernize educational and academic systems, facilitate modernization of the state or participate in global knowledge production.

This article examines how racist discourse about African-Americans has been translated from English into Slovenian throughout history. Strategies for translating explicitly racist discourse, racial terminology and African American Vernacular English in translations published between 1853 and 2007 are analyzed. The results of the textual comparison are considered in the light of contemporary Slovenian attitudes towards black people and the socio-political situation in the target culture. The results show that the strategies for translating racist discourse in pre-World War II translations differed significantly from those used after a socialist regime was established in Slovenia. Translation strategies were also influenced by the important role that the Slovenian language played in the development of the national identity, by the target readership of the translations, as well as by contemporary relations between the source and target culture. Ideological interventions sometimes considerably affected the interpretive possibilities of a particular literary work.

The relationship between texts and images in comics is essential from the graphic point of view and for the understanding of the story. Hence, the translation of comics has certain peculiarities that other literature genres do not have, partly due to its combination of iconic language and literary language.

Among the wide array of interesting topics within this field, we are going to focus on a great challenge for translators: the graphic and phonetic values of the sounds in comics. Technical advances have improved comic books translation: nowadays modifying an element of the vignette no longer involves redrawing the whole animation. Thus, the translation of this literature genre can now focus on other problematic issues, such as the translation of sounds. Taking into account the lack of categorization of these sounds, this article deals with the translation of inarticulate sounds, interjections and onomatopoeias from English comic books into Spanish in order to observe the existing trends in these issues and to confirm if the new technologies have changed the translators’ task in the last 25 years.

Translation can be seen as a process through which the translator begins with the source text, with an attempt at analyzing this particular text into semantic construction. The translator then reconstructs the semantic construction concerned into proper forms of the target language, seeking to produce an equivalent receptor language text ( Larson, 1998 : 519). In practice, the translator places himself/herself between the source and target texts, moving from the former to the latter and vice versa. The present paper crucially addresses the stages through which the translator is required to pass in order to achieve an acceptable and appropriate translation. It considers each stage in sufficient detail, showing the significance of these stages for the purpose of achieving a successful translation project. Finally, the present paper argues that the translator has to pass specific steps for the sake of accomplishing an acceptable and appropriate translation and that cognizance of translation theories is crucial in carrying out translation procedures, specifically when adopting the translation strategy on which the whole translation project will generally be based.

Le livre de poésie C’est quand l’homme parle (2007) , de Jean de Breyne, poète français contemporain, condense d´une manière singulière la sonorité, l´oralité et les sensations. La sonorité, étroitement liée à l´oralité, se manifeste tant au niveau superficiel ‒ dans le choix de certains vocables et de leur agencement au niveau syntaxique, qu´au niveau profond, sous-jacent, dans ce qui reste non-dit, tu. L´oralité de la poésie de Jean de Breyne transparaît dans le je et le présent, dans l´hésitation, voire l’auto-correction de son propos, dans l´ellipse, dans la parole suspendue, dans la polyphonie, dans la fréquente bifurcation de ses propos, mais surtout dans le souffle, qui détermine le rythme de son discours poétique. Les sensations que l´énonciateur “présentifie” dans ses vers sont multiples : la vue a une nette prépondérance ‒ ce qui est compréhensible si l´on tient présent le fait que Jean de Breyne fait cohabiter dans sa personne la vocation lyrique avec celle de photographe et celle de critique d´art ‒ mais les autres sens n´en sont nullement exclus. Tenant compte de tous ces éléments, je me propose d´analyser la traduction croate dudit livre de poésie, effectuée par Martina Kramer et moi-même en 2013, en m´appuyant notamment sur des réflexions d´Henri Meschonnic ( 1970 , 1999 ), d´Antoine Berman (1984 , 1999 ) ainsi que de Jean-Luc Nancy (2001) .

In 2007, the Commission of Academic Degrees of the State Council of China approved an education program-Master of Translation and Interpreting (henceforth MTI), and in 2014 there are already 206 higher learning institutions started running such a program, aiming at training postgraduate students to be professional translators with advanced translation competence. Part of this translation competence is the ability to use electronic tools and resources, which has not received adequate scholarly attention in the field of translation studies in China.

The objective of this research is to construct an ideal learning environment for MTI students from the social constructivist perspective by exploring the possibility and benefit of bringing the students out of the traditional classroom teaching into the authentic environment wherein professional translators use electronic tools on a daily basis. This article addresses the following research questions: (1) What constitutes an ideal environment wherein its various components interact to facilitate the student’s learning? (2) In what way does such an environment assist the MTI students to learn to use electronic tools? (3) How can the gap between the student translator and the professional translator be bridged in terms of the skills to use electronic tools in a 2-year training program?

In response to these questions, this article explores the interaction among the various components of the external environment of translator workstation. It proposes an ideal learning environment metaphorically referred to as “the ecosystem of translator workstation”, which aims to enable MTI students to learn to use electronic tools in an environment similar to their future workplace. Such a research has great implications for translator education in present-day China by revealing what is best taught or trained in the workplace rather than the traditional classroom setting.

The dubbing versus subtitling debate has been a recurrent topic in the audiovisual translation literature, but empirical research into the reception of both modes is still lacking. This article presents the results of an experiment that aimed to investigate to what extent comprehension, memory, and enjoyment of a film differ in a dubbed and a subtitled version in a country that traditionally uses dubbing, like Spain. Fifty-one young Spanish adults participated in the study, which measured general comprehension, dialogue recognition, face-name association and visual scene recognition, as well as evaluative measures including film appreciation, self-reported effort related to film viewing, and metacognitive judgments of memory.