Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 32, Issue 1, 2020

Abstract

This article presents the results of three studies on practices in and attitudes toward replication in empirical translation and interpreting studies. The first study reports on a survey in which 52 researchers in translation and interpreting with experience in empirical research answered questions about their practices in and attitudes toward replication. The survey data were complemented by a bibliometric study of publications indexed in the Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation (BITRA) (Franco Aixelá 2001–2019) that explicitly stated in the title or abstract that they were derived from a replication. In a second bibliometric study, a conceptual replication of Yeung’s (2017) study on the acceptance of replications in neuroscience journals was conducted by analyzing 131 translation and interpreting journals. The article aims to provide evidence-based arguments for initiating a debate about the need for replication in empirical translation and interpreting studies and its implications for the development of the discipline.

Abstract

The present study focuses on (in)congruence of input between the visual and the auditory modality in simultaneous interpreting with text. We asked twenty-four professional conference interpreters to simultaneously interpret an aurally and visually presented text with controlled incongruences in three categories (numbers, names and control words), while measuring interpreting accuracy and eye movements. The results provide evidence for the dominance of the visual modality, which goes against the professional standard of following the auditory modality in the case of incongruence. Numbers enjoyed the greatest accuracy across conditions possibly due to simple cross-language semantic mappings. We found no evidence for a facilitation effect for congruent items, and identified an impeding effect of the presence of the visual text for incongruent items. These results might be interpreted either as evidence for the Colavita effect (in which visual stimuli take precedence over auditory ones) or as strategic behaviour applied by professional interpreters to avoid risk.

Abstract

The nineteenth century was a period of dramatic change in Europe for the idea of history. While from antiquity through to the eighteenth century, historiography had broadly been considered an artistic and rhetorical activity, this view gradually lost ground in the nineteenth century to an understanding of history as a science. This case study aims to explore how these shifts in attitudes towards the proper aims and methods of history writing might have shaped the interpretation and translation into English of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a work first written in classical Greek in the fifth century BCE. The analysis is carried out by means of a corpus-based methodology which, I argue, can better enable researchers to engage with each (re)translator’s overall presentation of the source through the production and interrogation of concordances listing every instance of a given search item as it occurs within digitised versions of the target texts. This is demonstrated through an investigation of the use of the term ‘fact(s)’ which reveals a striking divergence in interpretation between the six translations, with Crawley’s (1874)History in particular appearing to lend a significantly more objective and empirical tone to Thucydides in English.

Abstract

Translation norms are conventionally viewed as forces that regulate translatorial behavior. Yet little is known about how norms are validated, challenged or broken by human agents. This quasi-experimental study of Chinese institutional translation proposes a risk-management model that explains how norms are jointly negotiated among the agents embedded in different institutional milieus. It is argued that norms are validated by the translators who strategically manage and weigh various translation risks pertaining to both the start and target cultures.

Abstract

Starting with a discussion of ‘translator-centred’ translation studies, this article discusses the Italian writer Luciano Bianciardi as translation practitioner and theorist. Working in the age of mechanical labour and mechanical typewriters, Bianciardi translated at incredible speed, putting in physically exhausting daily shifts. Not surprisingly, he articulated a vision of his trade that associated it with the physical effort of shifting heavy loads of mud – a job he had seen performed by labourers in his native Tuscany. However, he saw the process of ‘turning over’ this linguistic mud as no mere slavish effort: just as he ‘infected’ his original writings with his own target texts, Bianciardi consciously imbued his translations with his personality and his style.

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the still largely unexplored intersection of translation and non-cisgender identities through a comparison of three reeditions of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) in Czech translation. While the novel is considered by many to be the most famous lesbian story published in the 20th century, it can also be read as a narrative with a transgender protagonist. This is in part supported by the fact that the hero of the story is born with a female body but is named Stephen, creating a sense of gendered dissonance throughout the novel. This article asks what happens when this masculine name changes into a feminine one in translation, and explores the sociopolitical circumstances and publishing norms that have motivated this change.

This article reviews Applied Translation Studies

This article reviews Translating Women: Different Voices and New Horizons