Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 35, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract

The field of Translation Studies has expanded rapidly in the twenty-first century, largely due to the growing demand for translation and interpreting professionals. This study provides a scientometric review of Translation Studies to identify its developmental trends and patterns over the past two decades. Document co-citation analysis was conducted on 6007 journal articles published in the fifteen translation studies journals indexed in the Web of Science between January 2001 and December 2020. Twelve document co-citation analysis networks were generated and compared. Quantitative analyses, including temporal and structural metrics, confirmed the robustness and reliability of a network comprising ten discrete research clusters. A timeline view was generated to visualize how these clusters have evolved over time. Ten clusters were identified as major research subdomains in Translation Studies, namely translation competence, translation in conflict zones, translator training, collaborative translation, translation and society, language policy, post-editing and revision, media translation, the translation profession, and web localization. In addition, burst detection analysis identified the twenty most influential publications in this sample. Based on these findings, we discuss how the observed trends in each cluster contribute to further developments in Translation Studies. The implications for teaching, research, and theory are discussed and some methodological guidelines are proposed for future research.

Abstract

Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies began to merge in the late 1990s through the bridging role of corpus linguistics. This corpus-driven, contrastive-analysis approach to Translation Studies now faces several challenges including the inappropriate use of corpora, a disconnect in the logical relationship between Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies, and the potential for distorted results caused by translational data. To overcome these difficulties, this article proposes an alternative approach called the corpus-tested Contrastive Analysis approach to Translation Studies, which draws on the typical empirical cycle of observation, induction, deduction, testing, and evaluation. The alternative approach proposed in this article requires both comparable corpora and translational corpora to account for key aspects of Contrastive Analysis and Translation Studies, and ensures the internal logical connection between these two areas, which can be attributed to the entailment law ‘if p, then q’.

Abstract

Using English and Spanish translations of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung ‘The metamorphosis’ as a case study, this article contributes to current discussions of retranslation, and of cross-linguistic approaches to retranslation in particular. Building on the work of such scholars as Matthew Reynolds and Tom Cheesman, the analysis uses computational methods to evaluate variance among translators across a range of English and Spanish translations. The aim is twofold: first, to evaluate whether we can link translator variation to specific linguistic and rhetorical features in the original; and second, to determine whether those features are stable across languages.

Abstract

This article examines the controversy over The Vegetarian (Han 2015), Deborah Smith’s English translation of Han Kang’s Korean novel, 채식주의자 Chaesikjuuija (2007). The translation, winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, provoked a heated discussion in South Korea. A close analysis of three influential articles – Cho (2017), B. Kim (2017), and W. Kim (2018) – shows how the debates on the supposed mistranslation of The Vegetarian are dominated by a preoccupation with fidelity and literal translation. They dismiss the translator’s interpretation or transformation, regarding accuracy or fidelity as the sole criterion for a good translation. Significantly, the critics’ advocacy of literal translation, and hence their objections to The Vegetarian, reflect three levels of political anxiety: over ‘superior’ translation, over ‘English’ translation, and over a female translator’s ‘feminist’ translation.

Abstract

This article revisits Gideon Toury’s (1995, 2012) definition of translation as a fact of the target culture by highlighting the transfer of cultural images through literary translation in the periodicals of a US diaspora in the interwar period between the US Immigration Act of 1924 and the beginning of World War II in 1939. I argue that literary translations in diaspora periodicals fulfilled different roles and were used for strengthening not only intercultural but also intracultural links. The analysis of 4897 interwar issues of two periodical publications of the Slovene Americans shows that these periodicals continuously published literary translations: not only from different languages into Slovene, but also from Slovene into English. By means of the latter, Slovene immigrant diaspora attempted to construct their own representation of Slovene culture, and communicate this image to other immigrant communities, mainstream US culture, and the new generations who no longer spoke Slovene. The immigrant community thus became the promoter, creator, and receiver of these translations and simultaneously represented the source and target cultures, blurring clearly circumscribed borders of a distinct cultural unity.

Abstract

Even though studies at the intersection of translation and media are a burgeoning subfield within Translation Studies, the integration of media theory into the scholarship on translation remains underdeveloped. Joining a recent surge of interest in adapting media theory to a broad analysis of the impacts of the technologies that organise and support translation, this article takes up the concept of cultural technique to argue that, just as technological revolutions have reshaped translation practices, translations have structured media systems. Following its exploration of a medial methodology in Translation Studies and the benefits of a historicist perspective, the article turns to a set of case studies, all sourced from the Romantic period, which was characterised by a complex attitude to mediality and translation prefigurative of the current digital turn. The case studies demonstrate the benefits of a medial view in the study of translation.

This article reviews Translation Under Communism

This article reviews Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age: Recent Advances and Explorations