Babel - Volume 66, Issue 4-5, 2020

In 1979, a graduate school with a hitherto unusual name opened its doors at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, the ‘Graduate School of Simultaneous Interpretation’, as the school GSIT, HUFS was called at that time. Up to then, translation and interpreting had not been considered as proper occupations in Korea. It was actually not known which people with what kind of qualifications performed translation or interpreting. It was therefore a completely novel idea that translators and interpreters should be trained at a higher education institution. Yet, GSIT proved to be a huge success. GSIT attracted a great deal of public attention and many talented young people. The hitherto accumulated T&I needs in society and the trend of globalization played their part in GSIT’s popularity.

As the only educational institution for T&I for the first 18 years and beyond, GSIT has written key chapters in the history of T&I in modern Korea. This paper summarizes GSIT’s footsteps in order to discuss the developments of the past four decades in Korea in T&I education and studies, in the T&I profession and the economic and socio-cultural aspects of those developments. Based on the results of the discussion, the current situation of T&I in Korea is observed with a focus on ‘professionality’ so as to identify tasks for the future.

This study aims to identify the similarities and differences in cognitive-psychological semantic (Translation Equivalent) mapping employed by early, and late balanced bilinguals at the adult level. The subjects of lexical-semantic recognition tasks were limited to fourth-semester learners at graduate school of interpreting and translation to analyze the effect that the L2 acquisition period (or Age of Acquisition, AOA) and immersive education may have on cross-language processing among highly-proficient bilinguals. The experimental words were composed of non-cognate abstract words with two levels, and in four language directions (L1 > L1, L1 > L2, L2 > L1, L2 > L2) to compare monolingual, and bilingual priming effects. Early, and Late Balanced Bilingual groups (i.e., EBB and LBB) were comparable in many ways. However, mid balanced bilinguals who had exposure of more than six years after the critical period showed distinctive features. With a low lexical difficulty in the L1 to L2 direction, Mid Balanced Bilingual group (MBB) showed a similar tendency with EBB, while it was analogous to LBB when the lexical difficulty was high, and the language direction was from L2 to L1. Such results can be interpreted as evidence against the critical period hypothesis, indicating that language dominance may change due to the L2 acquisition period and immersive education. In contrast to their subjective perception, the mother tongue of all subject groups turned out to be Korean since all subjects, without exception, were faster in deciding words from English to Korean. The parental factor was limited to be all Koreans in order to control biological differences, from which the parental factor is reversely inferred most influential for early balanced bilinguals’ language dominance.

The issue addressed in this study is the impact of source text presence on simultaneous interpreting performance in fast speeches. Fast speech rate is assumed to frustrate even professional interpreters in simultaneous interpreting (SI) without source text (ST) scenario, yet little is known about what happens when the ST is available to interpreters, an interpreting practice of increasing popularity. Previous studies present mixed results concerning the effect of fast speech rate and ST presence on SI quality, which further adds to the complexity of this issue. This study adopted the experimental approach with a qualitative assessment of SI quality, quantisation of output parameters and retrospective interview, to unravel some myths surrounding this issue. The 54 trainees were randomly divided into two groups to interpret two fast Chinese speeches into English under with and without ST conditions. The results found a significant effect of ST presence on the qualitative assessment of interpreting performance, on the interpreting delivery fluency, and on the information completeness. The facilitative effect of ST presence in fast speeches was confirmed while new issues also arise concerning trainee interpreters’ ability in eye-ear coordination.

This article focuses on the issues of unclear self-positioning, vague objectives and unbalanced factors among the interpreting practice (IP), interpreting teaching (IT) and interpreting research (IR) of interpreting teachers in Chinese colleges. Based on the research thread of diachronic and synchronic development in the accomplishments of college interpreting teachers’ in China, and the approach to analysing the three dimensions of practice, teaching and research, this study investigates interpreting teachers at five universities in Shanghai. Based on the investigation in Shanghai, this study puts forward a Practice-Teaching-Research (PTR) model as a three-in-one approach to cultivating comprehensive interpreting teachers’ positioning and strategies in the transition period. It constructs Overall Interpreting (OI) = Interpreting Practice (IP) + Interpreting Teaching (IT) + Interpreting Research (IR), OI=IP+IT+IR as the formula, which is the realization of constructing a PTR model as a three-in-one approach for college interpreting teachers in China. This study has a certain guiding significance in the new era for setting up college interpreting teacher teams and improving their accomplishments in China.

This study describes the temporal aspects of relay interpreting by a mixed team of spoken and sign language interpreters in order to identify the characteristics of spoken and sign language relay interpreting and to help spoken language interpreters better understand the difference between the two types. The study quantitatively analyzes five time variables (speaking time, word count, ear-voice-span (EVS), tail-to-tail span (TTS), and pause), and their correlations. The temporal aspects of spoken and relay interpretation in sign language are as follows: (1) sign language interpretation requires more words to transfer the same amount of information as spoken language interpretation; (2) sign language interpreters have a shorter EVS than spoken language interpreters; (3) the simultaneity of spoken and relay sign language interpretation is more affected by TTS than by EVS, because spoken language TTS has a high correlation with speech time and word count in sign language interpretation; 4) sign language interpreters actively use the pauses between sentences of spoken language interpreters for target language (TL) production; 5) sign language interpreters produce more words for a shorter period of time than spoken language interpreters.

This paper aims to investigate if suggestopedia, a teaching method that advocates “learning with both brains and learning while relaxing”, could help reduce interpreting anxiety and improve interpreting results when applied to interpreting classes. By using this teaching method in an experimental class and comparing the interpreting quality with that of the control class, the paper draws conclusions on the influence of suggestopedia in reducing interpreting anxiety. Two interpreting results and two questionnaires on interpreting anxiety, one before using the method and the other after, are collected to analyze the link between suggestopedia and interpreting anxiety. The experiment took place over eight weeks and involved 51 students. The experiment focused on English-Chinese consecutive interpretation.

Digital innovations are revolutionizing education, bringing opportunities that are seized across disciplines including conference interpreting training. This research draws a transdisciplinary framework of Legitimation Code Theory and multimodality research to explore how to build and transfer the disciplinary knowledge of interpreting via an on-line course, a staple of today’s education. The paper first conceptualizes the disciplinary knowledge of interpreting as elite code that entails both specialist knowledge of high semantic density and tacit experience of professionals of the trade. Then, drawing on empirical data from the first interpreting MOOC in China, the paper describes how knowledge of different semantic features is built through distinctive patterns of multimodal presentation. Effectiveness of the multimodal presentation of knowledge is then triangulated with learning outcome research. Findings of this paper highlight how multimodal presentation in on-line lectures support the process of learning and hence elicit reflective perspectives on knowledge building of interpreting in the on-line space.

Despite growing academic interest in the personal experiences of translators and interpreters with a focus on status, identity, role and ethics, and job satisfaction, there have been few academic attempts to inquire into the experiences of respective genders in the profession. Also, outside of T&I studies, most occupational research has examined the experience of women in male-dominated fields. Thus, the current study aims to shed light on the professional experiences and challenges of male interpreters working in a predominantly female profession in Korea. Taking a qualitative approach to interpret the male experience from a temporal, spatial, and cultural context, a narrative inquiry was conducted with male conference interpreters currently working in Korea to closely examine the struggles they experience in the process of their professional identity formation. Data analysis reveals that male interpreters face extreme gender bias and stereotypes at work, and struggle with issues such as emotional remoteness with colleagues, job insecurity, and crisis of identity stemming from an unstable social status for male interpreters.

In South Korea where there is no national accreditation system for translators and interpreters, it is left to the respective employers to devise and administer an assessment instrument for hiring translators and interpreters. While studies calling for reliable and valid testing and assessment in the field of Translation and Interpretation Studies have increased during the past decade, empirical research on how tests and assessments are carried out in the marketplace, especially outside of Europe and North America, remain scarce. This study closely examines how tests and assessments are carried out at hiring by tapping into questions of how tests are developed, by whom, and who rates the tests and on which criteria. Then, the soundness of the overall hiring process is evaluated based on the six qualities of Bachman and Palmer’s Test Usefulness Model; construct validity, reliability, authenticity, interactiveness, impact, and practicality.

The study found that (1) the hiring process involves three stages of assessment: document screening, interpreting and translation tests, and one-on-one interview; (2) the interpreting and translation tests are developed, administered and rated by a combined group of experts: professors of interpreting and translation studies; professional interpreters/translators; subject-matter experts at the institutions; (3) the overall usefulness of the tests based on Bachman and Palmer’s Test Usefulness Model is medium to high; and (4) the employers of interpreter-translators look for qualities beyond interpreting/translation skills upon hiring. The implications of the findings on professional translators and interpreters and educators are discussed, followed by suggestions for future research.

As early as 1963, the FIT adopted the Translator’s Charter during the Congress at Dubrovnik, stipulating the rights, obligations, and social responsibilities of translators. The document inspired many professional translator associations to draft their own codes. These codes share a common goal: to inform the ethical decision-making of translators. However, some practitioners as well as scholars have questioned their value, pointing to the inconsistencies within or between codes and the difficulty of applying them to real-life situations. They view the codes as declarative documents that lay down the most basic ethical principles. Why does this gap exist between codes and practice? What should be addressed first to answer this question? We believe that these codes tend to overlook a fundamental aspect of translation. Their focus is on the relationship between translators and clients. In other words, gaining the confidence and meeting the expectations of clients are often treated as the most important elements of a code. However, the act of translation, like any human act, is a social one that impacts the community the translator belongs to. Therefore, a translator is a social agent who supports the ethical goal of living better together in a community. How can these codes be improved? To explore this question, we review the discussions of authors who have emphasized the social role of translators and interpreters, including Chesterman, Baker, and Inghilleri. We finally suggest community-related ethical principles and virtues for translator codes of ethics.

There is a misconception that film translation did not exist in China before 1949. The paper argues that the translation of Chinese silent films was vibrant in the 1920s and the early 1930s. Most of the extant copies of Chinese films from that period have bilingual intertitles. Chinese film companies have two purposes in translating their productions: the potential profit obtained from international audiences, and the desire to change the negative image of Chinese people portrayed in Hollywood films and project a positive image of China. Driven by these two objectives, Chinese film companies placed considerable emphasis on translation quality and hired both Chinese translators and foreign translators to translate their productions.

This paper proposes a model of delivering live interlingual subtitling (LIS) as a formal translation and interpreting (T&I) service in Korea, replacing the existing model of combining stenographic transcriptions with simultaneous interpreting. The model proposes that these two processes, currently delivered by two different professional groups, should be converged using respeaking technology. As a means to supply relevant talent, the paper proposes that formal interpreting and translation schools should include respeaking using automatic speech recognition technology (ASR) as part of their training.

This article points out some “loopholes” in the traditional Chinese-English translation theories, and proposes several transcreation theories to countermeasure the “loopholes”, illustrating non-equivalences. In particular, the article proposes a novel translation/transcreation theory that incorporates the writing field, in both the source and target languages, into the traditional translation field. This is for the purpose of cultural transmission and integration. In addition, the article illustrates the relationship between translation and writing by dissecting the translation/transcreation process into two processes: understanding and writing. Moreover, it suggests that the transcreation field develop some criteria, such as: fidelity, flexibility and creativity, and that all the science, social science and humanities subareas in the transcreation field are categorized according to these criteria. In order to support the transcreation theories and multidisciplinary translation theories proposed in this article, some typical examples and transcreation techniques that push the envelope of existing transcreation theories are provided. This article may shed new light on the limitations of, and possible solutions to, machine translation. It may also answer questions like: “Is understanding unimportant to machine translation?”

There has been a change in the form of patronage in translating Chinese culture/literature into English since the 1990s, that is, from sole patronage to joint patronage. This article discusses joint patronage in translating Chinese literature from Chinese into English through the case of the Chinese Literature Overseas Dissemination Project (中國文學海外傳播工程), which is under the joint patronage of Beijing Normal University, the Confucius Institute at University of Oklahoma, and the University of Oklahoma Press. The goals of this project have been well achieved with the successful launch of the journal Chinese Literature Today (CLT) and the publication of the CLT book series. The success of this project demonstrates that joint patronage is an ideal form of translating Chinese literature into English, and the Chinese Literature Overseas Dissemination Project has set a good example for the introduction of Chinese literature to the Western world.

Bob Dylan has significantly influenced American song tradition and popular music for more than five decades. As his songs are famous for the creative poetic expressions, they are not merely song lyrics, but also can be regarded as lyric poems. This paper aims to investigate the retranslation of Bob Dylan’s songs in bilingual picture books to explore how his classic musical works are repackaged both verbally and visually for contemporary children. The data for analysis are selected from two bilingual picture books on Dylan’s songs published in China in 2018. Firstly, it conducts a detailed textual analysis of the English and Chinese song lyrics to analyze the appropriate translation strategies and methods for song translation. Secondly, based on visual narratives (Painter, Martin and Unsworth 2013), it analyzes the intersemiotic relations between texts and images in picture books to discuss how the emotions and narratives in Dylan’s songs are visually represented.

Spatiality in literature has been explored in depth in recent years, but there are still few applications in literary translation studies. With space cognitively defined and the trichotomy of iconic signs adopted, we argue that the written text of a poem has its visual poetic spaces – the scene properties of linguistic signs (letters, character parts, words, lineation etc.) and relational reference of linguistic signs (distance, sequence etc.) – and that these poetic spaces are imagically and diagrammatically iconic. Our analysis of the English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation of poems’ iconic letters, lineation, distance, and sequence reveals that some translators have successfully reproduced the source text’s visual spatiality in the target text, but some have simply ignored or neglected the rendering; visual poetic spaces are semantically important and translatable, and the translation techniques involve direct reproduction and complementary renderings. We argue that, in addition to portraying the linguistic and cultural information found in poems, translators should pay more attention to visual poetic spatiality in their work in order to ensure an accurate portrayal of the original author’s work.

The rapid development of neural machine translation systems and the emergence of the e-book have broadened the scope of text types that can be translated by machines. At the early stage of the machine’s infiltration into the translation field, target texts were mainly technical texts such as patents, instruction manuals, etc. Literary texts have been considered as the last bastion of human translation because the machine translation (MT) has produced word-for-word translation, unsuitable for literary texts with distinct stylistic elements. However, it turns out that the field of literary translation was not immune to the rise of MT. Style is one of the critical elements in literary texts, but it has been dismissed in the existing MT post-editing guidelines. Therefore, this research attempts to provide methodological ideas about how to come up with a machine translation post-editing guideline (MTPE) for style improvement especially for language pairs with divergent syntax and semantics like English and Korean. First, the linguistic and cultural differences in writing styles are sorted out based on previous research. Second, the different ways in which human translators address writing style are investigated. Third, the strategies that human translators employ in their translations are applied to machine translation post-editing to demonstrate how the strategies can be incorporated into English-Korean MTPE to improve style. This preliminary research would lay the groundwork for refining post-editing style guidelines and for accumulating manually post-edited data for style improvement, which would be conducive to building and customizing automatic post-editing systems.

Journalistic translation is governed by a target-oriented norm that allows varying degrees of intervention by journalists. Given the public’s expectations for the fidelity of translated news, this norm entails ethical issues. This paper examines the ethical dimensions of journalistic translation through a case study of political news translation in the South Korean context. It investigates how newspapers translated a US president’s references to two South Korean presidents in accordance with the newspapers’ ideologies and then came to apply the translations as negative labels as the political situation evolved over time. The study demonstrates how even word-level translation can require an intricate understanding of the sociopolitical context and cumulative meanings of a word. It then draws its implications for machine translation by comparing the human translations with machine translations of the references in question. It concludes by discussing why machine translation cannot yet replace human translation, at least between Korean and English, and what translation studies should do regarding the ethics of journalistic translation.

This study aims to investigate how news reports are reframed and how a stance is in turn mediated in the process of translation by news agencies in the Chinese mainland and Taiwan when they cover the same news event. A database is built from 50 reports on the US-China trade dispute, half from Reference News (RN), a news agency based in Chinese mainland and the other half from Liberty Times (LT), a media outlet in Chinese Taiwan, as well as their corresponding source texts from foreign news agencies. The results show that the reframing practices in the two agencies vary from each other in framing the US-China trade dispute and the image of China and America. The overall pattern of stance shift in the translation by RN is towards a pro-China/anti-US direction while in the translation by LT towards a more anti-China/pro-US direction. These might be caused by the political stance of the news agency, the media environment and the relationship with the United States.