Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2006

Focusing on a comparative analysis of the translations in French of literary works from four Eastern European countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania) during the communist period, this article examines the political stakes of the international circulation of literary texts. More precisely, it proposes a model for describing the different modalities of international circulation — referred to here as translation channels — based on the statistical analysis of a relevant set of variables. These channels allow us to present a gradation of the degree of politicization and institutionalization of the literary transfer, and to go well beyond an analysis in terms of the undifferentiated flow of imported books or the simple opposition of authorized vs. unauthorized translations or submissive vs. dissenting writers.

In September 1999 B.J. Habibie, then President of Indonesia, made a public statement concerning the proposed deployment of UN peacekeeping troops to East Timor. Habibie made ‘the statement’ twice, once in Indonesian, then again in English, and differences between the two resulting texts cannot straightforwardly be explained in terms of the different languages employed. This paper examines the two original versions, along with various representations of these that appeared in British and US news media. Processes of text production and dissemination are discussed, and linguistic and translational choices analysed in relation to context and audience, along with the possible reasons underlying those choices and some of their potential effects upon interpretation. In this case, it is argued, different news audiences may have received significantly different impressions of the content and tone of the original speech — depending, for example, upon the particular media through which they accessed the text.

In about ten years, linguistic transfer for TV has been studied a lot, mainly from particular points of view. So far few systematic work deals with the question of their production and/or reception, their impact, their cultural and linguistic effects. This transfer is often seen as exclusively “practical”, if not “mechanical”. And it is a paradox that the linguistic perspective is dominant, whereas the object is multisemiotic, combining images, sounds, language (oral and written), colours, proxemics, gesture, etc., integrated into audiovisual codes (directing for the stage, sets of sequences and shots, voices and lights, scenograhy, narrative conventions, etc.). Two factors may account for this paradox and limitation : on the one hand, the training of researchers and their background ; on the other constraints of (printed) publications. First the entire field of study will be circumscribed (Sections 1 and 2); then subtitling (Section 3), the other modes of transfer (Section 4) and their theoretical and socio-cultural implications (Section 5) will be dealt with. One basic and strong consideration is underlying : audiovisual translation is not necessarily either a problem or a configuration of problems, it is rather a solution and an asset in multilingual and intercultural interaction.

Although generally agreed to be an essential part of translation, revision receives little attention in translation studies with only a few exceptions such as Breedveld (2002) and Englund Dimitrova (2005). This study aims to establish what revision means to practicing translators, and their views as to what revision involves, in terms of the numbers of revisions they do, the length of their drawer-time (how long they put their draft away) and the aspects they check for in revision. Data show that translators typically claim to revise their draft translation once or twice. They do not normally have extended drawer-time. If they do, it would be overnight at most. They also describe themselves as having certain specific aspects in mind when they revise.

This paper is an empirical study on pause patterns in fluent translation and monolingual text production. By comparing pauses recorded from both processes, it discovered two temporal features: Firstly, the mean length of pause at textual category boundaries grew the higher the category was in the syntactic hierarchy. Secondly, the length of pause at clause level or lower were on average longer in translation than in monolingual text production, whereas pauses above clause level tended to be shorter in translation. Besides the differences in pause duration, translation also affected the use of total production time. Translation requires on average a longer revision and monitoring phase while the drafting phase is completed more quickly. Both writing tasks used approximately the same proportion of time for the orientation phase.

Twenty-two translation students translated two texts using Translog keystroke-monitoring software, once at the beginning of their studies and again three semesters later. Performance on the two measures of interference, lexicalizable strings and false cognates, improved significantly among both the students working into L1 and those working into L2. Students working into L1 found the task as difficult after three semesters as they had at the beginning of their studies. For students translating into their L2, translation did get significantly easier as judged by the objective measures of time and keystrokes, but the students’ subjective assessment of difficulty and satisfaction was unchanged. This study also indicates that students appreciate the contribution of translation theory to practice.