Babel - Volume 68, Issue 5, 2022

Résumé

La traductologie contemporaine replace au centre de sa recherche le traducteur dont la visibilité dans l’espace littéraire et scientifique a été longtemps occultée. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que le traducteur ait pu devenir un personnage de fiction ou le sujet d’une biofiction. Ces récits de soi entrepris par des traducteurs ont l’ambition de proposer à leurs lecteurs un geste réflexif sur ce qui se joue quand on entreprend de traduire. Aussi, en écho avec ce que certains appellent un « tournant fictionnel » (Vieira 1995), il nous semble tout à fait approprié de parler, à ce propos, de l’émergence d’un tournant métafictionnel dans les études de traduction. Dans notre article, nous mettrons en évidence le nouage (dans ses dimensions cognitive, culturelle et éthique) des discours autobiographique et traductologique tel qu’on le trouve dans, ce que nous qualifions de métafictions traductives, à savoir dans Portrait du traducteur en escroc de Bernard Hœpffner, Partages d’André Markowicz et Lycophron et Zétès de Pascal Quignard.

Abstract

The paper aims at the possible interpretation of the author’s symbol and the potential problem of its accurate translation into Russian. On the notable example of Njegoš’ lyrical poem A Night More Precious than a Century we presented the specific algorithm of the decoding procedure in deciphering the complex semantics of the author’s symbol, as well as the method of finding its translation equivalent in the Russian language. The analysis starts from the point of view of modern translatology, linguistics, and literary studies and adequately takes into account the relevant data of Njegoshology, as an interdisciplinary science. To elucidate the complex nature of the symbol, as a linguistic sign and its function in the literary text, as well as the possibility of its translation into Russian, various methods were applied: contrastive, etymological, interpretive analysis in the synchronic and diachronic plane. The conducted analysis illustrates the fundamental importance of attentively examining symbols from various aspects, starting from the most elementary linguistic level within the source language, through the literary in the style of the epoch and the idiostyle of the prominent writer and concluding with the interlingual translatological approach. This multifaceted interpretation contributes to resolving the semantics of the symbol and finding its translation equivalent.

Abstract

A neutral delivery has often been considered to be the norm in audio description, but it is unclear what a ‘neutral voice’ means. This article begins with a discussion of neutrality in prosody and with a contextualization of AD voicing. It then presents an acoustic analysis of a corpus of audio descriptions in Catalan, English, and Spanish. Based on the results of this analysis, a perception test is designed, and its results are discussed here. The perception test involves participants with sight loss (31 in Spanish, 35 in Catalan, 40 in English) and without sight loss (29 in Spanish, 46 in Catalan, 31 in English) who are asked to define what a neutral voice is for them. Respondents are also asked to select the male and female voices that they consider most neutral. The qualitative analysis of the replies, together with the selection made by participants for both male and female voices across three different languages, sheds some light on how neutrality (or non-neutrality) could be defined. The study does not aim to determine what acoustic features voices should have in the context of audio description but tries to better understand what a neutral voice is, considering that this has traditionally been a frequent expression in research on audio description delivery.

Abstract

Has post-editing changed the nature of translation? Are these tasks two sides of the same coin? These are some of the questions that recent developments in machine translation have brought to translation studies. The quality of the texts rendered by the new neural engines is good enough to challenge the traditional role of the human translator. Some voices even question whether there might be any place left for translators if, in the near future, their role is finally superseded by that of the post-editor. This paper offers a comprehensive view of the many aspects of post-editing with a view to shedding some light on the nature of this task. I first explore how the progress in machine translation has turned post-editing into an essential activity. Then, I present a proposal for a categorization of research areas in post-editing within the framework of translation studies. The central discussion of this paper revolves around three key ideas: (1) the conceptualization of post-editing as more than a simple, fast and inexpensive task; (2) the framing of post-editing as a dynamic process; and (3) the claim that defining quality in machine translation post-editing is not as straightforward as it may seem. The ultimate goal of this paper is to lay the foundations for further discussion into what it is that post-editing means for translation studies.

Abstract

This article studies the impact of Chinese biblical translation on the Taiping Rebellion in China in the nineteenth century. The rebellion built its ideology based on a unique interpretation of the Bible, aiming at overthrowing the Qing government and building a kingdom of heaven in China. The Bible that had inspired the rebellion was later altered, annotated, and became the Taiping Bible, which integrated the political agenda of the rebellion. This research traces such an event of the Chinese translation of the Bible in the nineteenth century, investigates its connection with the rise of the rebellion and analyzes the Taiping Bible. By examining the discrepancies between the Chinese translation of the Bible and the Taiping Bible, this paper explores the role that translation plays in triggering the rebellion and demonstrates the interplay between translation and the socio-cultural environment in China during that period.

Abstract

This article explores genre variation and simplification in interpreted language from both comparable (interpreted vs. non-interpreted/non-mediated) and intermodal (interpreted vs. translated) perspectives. It draws on a newly built unidirectional comparable and intermodal corpus named the LegCo+, which features legislative proceedings in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (including originals and their translations and interpretations from Cantonese to English), as well as original plenary speeches delivered by native English speakers in the UK Parliament. It investigates the variation patterns of four simplification features in three dimensions, namely, standardized type-token ratio (STTR) and list heads for lexical diversity, lexical density for informativeness, and average sentence length for lexical sophistication. It aims to uncover the effects of mediation and genre, as well as their interaction effects on linguistic variation. The results indicate that texts of different mediation statuses and genre categories vary with respect to simplification patterns. From a comparable perspective, interpretations rely on a narrower range of vocabulary than non-interpretations, but they are also more informative, and such informativeness is dependent on genre categories. Intermodally speaking, interpretations exhibit consistent patterns of simplification, indicating a strong modality (or mode of mediation) effect.

This article reviews Translating Feminism in China: Gender, sexuality and censorship

This article reviews Queering Translation, Translating the Queer: Theory, Practice, Activism