Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 29, Issue 3, 2017

The literature on translators’ professional identity has focused on role-related factors, such as traits and power, paying little attention to extra-role activities. The present study fills this void by examining the role of citizenship behaviors in consolidating the translators’ professional identity. The regression analysis of the survey data on 352 translators and interpreters in South Korea shows that citizenship behaviors inside and outside of the profession, such as voluntary services in community events or at a professional association of translators, positively affect their identity. It is also noteworthy that citizenship behaviors, particularly those within the profession, partly moderate the influence of trait factors such as master’s degree and income on identity. This study indicates that participation in social activities beyond the boundaries of one’s translation job can benefit both individual professionals and the professional group as a whole, reinforcing professional identity. This will ultimately contribute to society, in addition to the profession.

This paper presents a corpus-driven, statistical method for the visualization of semantic structure, thereby tackling the under-researched issue of semantics in corpus-based Translation Studies. We aim to investigate the influence of translation on the structure of semantic fields and in particular the extent to which the structure of the semantic field of inchoativity differs between original, non-translated Dutch and translated Dutch. The visualizations of the semantic field of inchoativity show that translated Dutch indeed differs from non-translated Dutch on the semantic level. Based on the exploration of the semantic fields, we furthermore formulate some hypotheses concerning the presence of the so-called universal tendencies of translation on the semantic level.

Metaphors have been thoroughly studied as translation problems in recent decades. However, they are still under-researched in the subfield of audiovisual translation. This is strange since this mode of translation, particularly subtitling, has very special conditions which complicate the translating of metaphors, such as the interplay between dialogue, image and subtitles, as well as severe time and space constraints. This paper investigates how metaphors in the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister were subtitled into Swedish. The results show that subtitlers treat metaphors as an important language feature, less prone to omission than other features. Furthermore, monocultural metaphors, which are not shared between cultures, are subtitled using more strategies than transcultural ones. Metaphors are also subtitled differently depending on the degree of entrenchment. Typically for metaphor translation, there is a loss of metaphor force, but more research is needed to ascertain whether this is media-specific or a general translation effect of growing standardization.

This paper is a kind of manifesto for a new conception of literary translation as a unique literary genre that is imitative but qualitatively different from, and not necessarily worse than, the model it imitates. It explores this possibility by first interrogating Gérard Genette’s model of literariness in Fiction and Diction – considering how literary translation as a unique genre might fit that model – and then considering what the literary translator imitates, and the relationship between translation and the novel as similar imitative genres. Key to this comparison is the novel’s early (and continuing) reliance on the “found-translation framing device,” which is effectively what Gideon Toury calls a pseudotranslation but is not (necessarily) designed to hide original creation – rather, to play with the illusion of reality. The paper ends with the suggestion that literature tout court might be reimagined in terms of its transformative energies – and that translation might come to be seen as one of literature’s most definitive genres.

Drawing on the concept of translatorial action by Justa Holz-Mänttäri, this article sets out to analyse the role of translation in a bilingual formal meeting without any professional translation or interpreting. The analysis reveals the central role of translatorial activities: 60% of the turns include some kind of translatoriality. The chair and expert speakers stand out as producers for most of the translations. Self-translation is the most prominent form of translation, but otherwise the translator role tends to vary dynamically with the role of the source text producer. Three types of translatorial action with varying degrees of replication of content were found: duplicating, summarizing, and expanding. In the meeting context, translatorial action is the primary means of enabling participation for all, regardless of language skills or language background, and this action was used by the participants in flexible and dynamic ways.