Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2004

Cross-cultural communication can be characterized by a relatively high degree of effort required to reduce complexity, by relatively high transaction costs, by relatively low trust between communication partners, and by relatively narrow success conditions that create points of high-risk discourse. To communicate successfully between cultures would thus require a special kind of risk management. Translation, as a mode of cross-cultural communication, is held to share those same features, as well as at least two specific representational maxims concerning discursive persons and textual quantity. It is argued that the related concepts of complexity, success conditions and risk can describe not only the act of translating as a mode of cross-cultural communication, but also certain features of the professional intercultures to which translators belong. Step-by-step propositions thus synthesize an approach that runs from an analysis of cross-cultural communication to a description of professional intercultures, their sources of power, and the reasons for their apparent lack of power in a globalizing age.

This paper reports on a study of syntactic changes in alternative translations of a short story and a scientific article, each translated by a group of ten professional translators. The subject is kept in approximately nine cases out of ten, with a somewhat higher degree of change in the scientific article. Where changes occur, they can very often be traced to differences between the languages on the lexical or syntactic level, but absolute differences signalled by identical behaviour of a whole translator group are as good as non-existent. After more features have been studied, it may be possible to identify profiles for the individual translators — and the two translator groups — showing to what extent their choices are guided by adequacy in relation to the source text vs. acceptability in relation to the target language.

Contacts between Arabic and Israeli Hebrew cultures have taken place in the shadow of a prolonged and violent political conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. The intercultural dialogue between them has, therefore, been antagonistic, polemical, and fraught with stereotypes and prejudices. This antagonistic dialogue is also reflected in Hebrew–Arabic translation activity, since the elements involved in this activity and the considerations which guided them both before and in the course of the translation were, first and foremost, political. The translations themselves were not accepted as literary creations, but rather as documents reflecting the culture of the other. Neither the presence of an ethnic Arab minority in Israel nor the peace agreements between Israel and certain Arab states brought about any significant change in the nature of translation activity. Clearly, therefore, in a state of violent national conflict translation activity will produce translations whose purpose is ideological rather than literary.

This paper describes the application of a target-oriented contrastive analysis model to an extensive corpus of medical research articles. The analysis focuses on the Methods section and a subset of lexical items representing persons viewed as the object of clinical study. Quantitative contrastive analysis revealed statistically significant differences between the translations from English and the independently created Spanish texts in all the thematic, syntactic and lexical variables analysed. Qualitative contextual analysis showed that four basic criteria for thematic position and a series of associated translation strategies are capable of correcting the excesses and deficits observed, thus producing a more natural and acceptable target language text.

This paper investigates dialogue interpreting as a monologising social practice, and demonstrates how this can be done within a general theoretical framework of dialogism. Drawing on earlier research on naturally occurring, interpreted face-to-face interaction, the paper argues for treating dialogue interpreting as a separate empirical field within the general field of Translation Studies. The constant overlap between target and source environment is identified as one of its characteristic features. Adding to the current discussion on ethics in Translation Studies, the paper finally highlights the point of distinguishing between interpreters’ professional ideology and lived professional practice.

The concept of complete equivalence is highly questionable, yet it is still relied on, for all practical purposes, in connection with the translation of Latin-based medical terms. This practice is potentially harmful, a case in point being the translation of medical texts for laymen from English into Danish. Contrary to Danish (and German and other Scandinavian languages), everyday English (and French) avails itself of numerous Latin-based medical terms, as no non-specialized alternative exists. When these terms are directly transferred under the assumption of complete equivalence, the level of formality is drastically raised. Increased awareness of the potential danger to communication posed by Latin-based terms in texts meant for lay audiences in Scandinavia and Germany is therefore desirable.

Ever since the “cultural turn” in Translation Studies it has been commonplace to state that translation is an act of cultural mediation. However, the concept of culture as such has remained elusive. A number of questions remain unanswered: How can we define a culture? What kind of empirical evidence is needed to prove the existence of a particular culture? Looking for answers, I start with a personal note, with my own previous attempt at conceptualizing translators’ work in the European Commission by defining the EU institutions as a (multilingual and institutional) culture of its own. Responses to this model convey varying views of the concept of culture. By analyzing and contextualizing these responses it is my aim to provide some answers to the question of what kind of a construction culture is. The results of the analysis are then used to reflect on recent developments in Translation Studies.