Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2001

Drawing mainly on Vidal (1998), Tymoczko (2000) and Harvey (forthcoming), Hatim and Mason (1990, 1997) and Mason (2000), the present paper proposes a threefold analytical methodology consisting of: description, ideological explanation, and perlocutionary exploration of texts. In practice, the article examines the speeches uttered in Spanish and English before the European Parliament (EP) on 9th March 1993. The main focus of the study is transitivity shifts and their connection to ideological issues. This corpus has been chosen for various reasons. Amongst them, the paper sets out to test the conclusions reached by prior research (Trosborg 1997a; Koskinen 2000). Three basic questions are posed: 1. Are EP speeches odd, ‘out of place’/þ‘strange’/þ‘unusual’ (in short literal) as Koskinen (2000) maintains? (Descriptive component of analysis); 2. Does translation affect the ideological output of original texts? (Explanatory component of analysis); 3. Which perlocutionary questions may be raised as a result of the previous questions? (Perlocutionary component of analysis).

Over the last decade, Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs) have been used extensively in process-oriented Translation Studies (TS). The serious questions regarding the experimental validity of this research methodology when applied to translation have nonetheless often remained unspoken. This paper surveys the breakthroughs as well as the limits of the growing body of literature dealing with TAPs in TS, points at the necessity to take issues of experimental, theoretical and environmental validity more seriously, and offers suggestions for improvements. The claim is that the risks involved in the adoption of a lax experimental methodology in TAP studies, often underestimated in the past, may invalidate not only the results obtained in the single projects, but, crucially, the method as a whole.

Intuitively, the suggestion that lexical simplification be a translation universal seems to run counter to the established idea of translation as enrichment. The present paper seeks to relate the two ideas, simplification and enrichment, while addressing the issue of testing hypotheses about universality in Translation Studies, especially in Corpus Translation Studies. The nature of the data used and its implications to the results are discussed. Finnish 19th century texts constitute a case in point on the problems that heterogeneous data may give rise to, and it is suggested that alternative ways of studying lexical phenomena are needed, in order to complement the findings in Corpus Translation Studies.

As a relatively new field of research, audiovisual translation still lacks conceptual and terminological consistency, especially when the object of study is factual output and its modes of transfer. Based on an empirical investigation of voice-over translations of television documentaries, the article gives a brief illustration of the commonest terminological and conceptual difficulties faced by the researcher, identifies some of their causes, and goes on to suggest some of the deplorable consequences for research. It is argued, above all, that research on audiovisual translation still has a lot to develop as far as television informative content is concerned.

Normative behaviour in situations of language transfer has been gaining ground in Translation Studies and research. The choice between subtitling and revoicing is such a situation, on a rather preliminary level. This article is a summary of an empirical study into why human agents decide to subtitle rather than revoice children’s TV programmes. Not surprisingly, the trend seems to arise from other audiovisual forms and media. Overall, however, the positive audience response towards certain dubbed products seems to depend more on the good promotion and quality of the specific programmes than on the individual merits of any language transfer method per se, as most language transfer commissioners seem indifferent to the implications of such a choice.

This article deals with three interrelated issues: first the ‘cultural turn’ of Itamar Even-Zohar in contrast to the ‘cultural turn’ in Translation Studies, then the application of an augmented version of Polysystem theory in a short case study, and finally the question of objectivity and neutrality in descriptive polysystem studies. It is argued that Polysystem theory and other cultural theories of translation, be they descriptive or politically committed, can be mutually enriching rather than incompatible, and that, with some augmentation and further development, it may serve as an adequate framework for research into the ‘external politics’ of translation.

Instead of taking a stand on the individual theses presented by Andrew Chesterman (AC) and Rosemary Arrojo (RA), we will focus on the rationale of the three questions that they have chosen as sub-headings for their paper. The questions are: (1) What is Translation? (2) Why is This (Kind of) Translation Like This? and (3) What Consequences Do Translations Have? We feel that translation scholars answer these questions implicitly, if not explicitly, through the kind of research they advocate or do themselves. Thus there is a good justification to discuss them openly every now and then, and we appreciate the initiative taken by Chesterman and Arrojo (2000). AC and RA have answered these questions in such a way, however, that makes us wonder how far the common ground extends and whether it has a centre of any kind. In what follows we will look at the three questions to see how they might bear on a shared ground as we see it.