Babel - Volume 64, Issue 5-6, 2018

Abstract

Persuasion is the dominant function of tourist promotional texts and is fostered through the use of certain lexical devices such as verbs of perception, which engage readers and arouse in them pleasant feelings. This paper aims to compare verbs of perception in English and Spanish through the exploitation of a bilingual comparable corpus of five British and five Spanish institutional websites. In particular, the analysis conducted seeks to (1) determine which language expresses more perceptions through verbal forms, (2) analyse to what extent each language uses verbs of sensory and intellectual perception, and (3) identify equivalent verbs in both corpora. In general terms, the results show that the English corpus includes a higher frequency of verbs of perception, cognitive verbs prevail over sensory ones in both corpora, and there exist equivalent verbs which are more used in one language than in the other.

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationship between paratexts and the translation product with a case study of Lolita translations in China. Since Lolita has been one of the most frequently retranslated literary works in China over the past three decades, it can serve as a bellwether of the changes that have taken place in the translation field as well as those in the social, cultural and historical context. Therefore, a comparative study of the paratextual elements of Lolita translations acts as a reflection of the negotiations between the translation activity and the changing socio-political context. The analysis of paratexts locates translation as a social activity in which many agents are involved other than simply the translator and the source text. Through their organic integration with the translation products, the paratextual elements, functioning as genre indicators, work to promote the translation while potentially predicting its target readership. In the translation and retranslation of the same source text, a discussion of the paratexts may provide new insights into understanding the relationship between translations and retranslations as well as the evolution of the translation field in relation to Chinese society.

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to find out which competences translators need in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the translation market. First, European initiatives on translators’ competence profiles will be analysed. The results will be examined in light of the latest translation industry surveys in order to identify whether the skills profiles (and thus translators’ abilities) match the needs of the labour market. The analysed data reflects on the most essential requirements set by industry: professional competence followed by technological and domain competence. The findings of the present article aim to support translator training institutions in tailoring study programmes to market needs.

Abstract

The present study aims to examine the claim that the preverbal particle qad in the perfective is an aspectual marker of near past in Arabic, hence it corresponds to the present perfect in English. The authentic translational corpus drawn from two works (journalistic/scientific and literary discourse) clearly indicates that the preverbal qad is employed as a cohesive marker whose main function is to smooth and naturalize Arabic discourse. The study demonstrates that the translator’s choice between an Arabic simple past with or without qad is governed by the requirements of the flow of discourse rather than by aspectual marking. Failure to account for this discursive function of qad when translating from English into Arabic would in Arabic translations produce cohesion gaps which in English are usually taken care of by punctuation.

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the use of translation memory software by translators of different backgrounds. We designed a questionnaire that was completed by a pool of 723 respondents including professional translators, translation students, and lecturers in translation studies and translation practice. We analyse the results of the survey providing important information concerning user requirements, the most important features of TM software, users’ perceived productivity, and market shares.

Abstract

With the development of the Internet, neologisms make their appearance in many digital social networks such as Weibo, Renren, Tieba, etc. Gradually, they have entered into our daily life and play an important role. How can Chinese neologisms be translated into a faithful and expressive French? So far, it seems that there are no established principles about this kind of translation. With the neologisms found on digital social networks, which serve as our corpus, we shall distinguish seven categories of neologism according to their formation. The present study aims to propose five approaches of translations in the light of the observation of the current practice, as we see in our study on written interactions on digital social networks.

Abstract

Derrida revealed the fallacy that it is possible to distinguish between reality, thinking and language; a fallacy constructed by Plato and transmitted through Western philosophy. Furthermore, this belief has been the foundation stone of translation studies, creating a concept of translation as a mechanism by means of which the essence of a message is transmitted from one language to another, and whose ultimate guarantor is always the author of the original text. Derrida makes use of writing to dismantle this fallacy and to show language as a complex system of signs that do not have one fixed, unchangeable meaning, insofar as they cannot actualize the referent, but rather imply a multiplicity of interpretations. In a multimodal context in which the original and the translation are simultaneous and complementary, subtitling brings us closer to the Derridian notion of writing as the place wherein language shows us precisely what it is.

Abstract

Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) as a profession has been gaining momentum in China, but little has been researched on Chinese professional conference interpreting on a basis of large quantity of empirical data. This study adopts an information-based SI fidelity assessment approach to probe into the propositional information loss in an SI corpus of seventeen English(B)-Chinese(A) simultaneous interpreters’ interpretations, and through stimulated retrospective interviews of three conference interpreters. Results show that operational constraints (concurrent listening and speaking, time constraint and incremental processing), source language factors (speed, information density, accent, linguistic complexity, technicality, etc) and interpreting direction (B to A), etc, account for typical propositional omission, incompletion or error.

Abstract

The article is an attempt to enter into the area of metacognitive translation studies – or metacognitive translator studies – that has so far received scant coverage, and devote closer attention to the translator’s self-regulatory activity. Self-regulation seems crucial in the development of translation expertise, “especially outside of optimally structured work environments, training academies, and other places with defined translation workflows and opportunities for feedback” (Shreve 2006: 32). The article focuses on the role and nature of self-regulation in translator training. Having identified the issues that emerge from educational theories for translator training, the author analyses the approaches to metacognition in the area of translation education. In an attempt to contribute to the discussion of the multifaceted nature of translator competence, the author investigates the correlation between translation trainees’ self-regulatory activity and the quality of their translation as reflected in their translation grades.

Abstract

This study is an attempt to address the issue of examining the relationship between burnout and personality among translation students. Recent trends in student/academic burnout have led to a proliferation of studies which have heightened the need for the exploration of this construct that is well-grounded in personality influences. Despite increasing concern over these two concepts, no report has been found so far surveying their association within the translation discipline. To this end, 73 Iranian translation students completed a 33-item student translator burnout scale and the 44-item Big Five Inventory of Personality. This was also accomplished by building a causal structural model through which the associations among these constructs were estimated. The results demonstrated that the proposed model has a good overall fit with the empirical data. Findings further provide evidence that there are significant correlations between agreeableness, neuroticism, and burnout.

Abstract

Informed by the sociological theory of “Conventionalization” developed by Frederick Bartlett, the article examines transformations the expression “love” brought to the indigenous Chinese socio-moral-emotive paradigm during the early twentieth century. It focuses on examining usages and semantic connotations of “愛”, a loose Chinese equivalence of love, in Yínbiān yànyǔ 吟邊燕語 (Chanting the Swallows’ Talks), a translation by Lín Shū 林紓 (1852–1924) of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare published in 1904, a time that witnessed a vast number of translation projects as well as the transformative impacts they brought to China. By illustrating how “ai” in Lin’s translation has departed radically from its traditional usages as depicted in the mid-Qing novel The Story of the Stone (紅樓夢 Hónglóu mèng) and become a close equivalence of the western notion of love, the article shows that the Chinese’s emotional experiences during the early modern period may in all likelihood be different from those of the West, but the two seem to have become increasing comparable. When we seek to understand modern Chinese emotional experience, apart from asking how it is ethnically, socially, culturally, historically different, it might be equally important to ask in what ways the West has made it different from before, and how it has managed to retain its unique identity during a time of radical transformation.

This article reviews Non-Professional Subtitling

This article reviews Chinese Translation Studies in the 21st Century: Current Trends and Emerging Perspectives

This article reviews The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics