Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 35, Issue 4, 2023

Abstract

The study reported on in the article examines the patterns and trends of statistical analysis in translation and interpreting (T&I) research, based on a longitudinal quantitative analysis of more than 3300 research articles sampled from eleven leading T&I journals (2000–2020). This evidence-based review is the first study to provide a systematic mapping of statistical methods used by T&I researchers. Our analyses suggest that (a) about 40% of the articles use statistics, and the use of statistics has been increasing over time; (b) the most frequently used inferential statistical techniques are the t-test, Pearson’s correlation, and chi-squared test; and (c) although the use of statistical methods has become increasingly diversified, about 90% of the methods used are basic-level statistics. We discuss these findings in relation to statistical teaching and learning for relevant stakeholders, especially T&I researchers.

Abstract

Previous studies in corpus-based literary translation have tended to focus on only one or two specific aspects of style. In this study we expand the existing analytical paradigm to show how the style inherent in source texts (STs) is reflected in their translations. We do this using thirty-six multilevel linguistic features. The selected texts are James Joyce’s Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and their Korean translations. We find that the general stylistic patterns in the STs are mirrored in the target texts (TTs) in terms of several linguistic measures, but that some aspects of style are not reflected in the TTs. The stylistic discrepancies between the STs and TTs may signify the translator’s strategic decisions to adhere to the target language (TL) norms and translation conventions as well as to preserve the style in the ST.

Abstract

Literary occasionalisms, new words coined by writers with a particular poetic aim in view, often pose a great challenge for translators. Given recent advances in machine translation (MT), could literary translators benefit from MT when it comes to the translation of occasionalisms? We address this question by considering the work of Austria’s most important nineteenth-century comedy writer, Johann Nestroy (1801–1862). We compare how human translators and two generic neural MT systems (Google Translate, DeepL) translated occasionalisms (compounds, derivations, and blends) in Nestroy’s play Der Talisman into English. While human translators largely refrained from creating new target expressions, the two MT systems generated a number of viable new coinages, most of them by literal translation procedures. In an interactive human-computer environment, using MT output as a repository from which to retrieve novel target solutions or derive inspiration might open up new avenues in the practice of literary translation.

Abstract

In 1951, the Communist Party of Greece published a Greek translation of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels which included a statement on the work practices followed for its creation. This article considers work practices as processes of validated knowledge production. It investigates how they were enacted to create the ‘correct’ translation of Marxist texts, and advances our understanding of the relationship between social structures, power, and processes of validated knowledge production. It argues that the party’s collaborative, centralised, and professionalised organisational model alongside mechanisms of surveillance and discipline of agents in translation supported its claims of owning the ‘correct’ interpretation of Marxism. The statement on the work practices was intended to influence the publication’s reception: the reader was encouraged to accept the party’s translation as accurate. Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, the investigation draws on party publications and archival material to study translation work practices in novel ways.

Abstract

This article explores how childhood nostalgia influences the reception of translations, specifically in the case of the (re)translation of E. B. White’s children’s book, Charlotte’s Web (1952). I concentrate on two translations – one by Xin Kang (White 1979) and the other by Rongrong Ren (White 2004). The theoretical framework complements existing reception research with theories of nostalgia, collective memory, and cultural memory. A qualitative analysis of reader posts on social media sites shows that a group of adult readers prefer Kang’s translation because they read it as children and feel a nostalgic attachment to it. This nostalgia expresses itself in three ways: (1) Kang’s version, as a memory trigger, connects adults to their childhood, (2) sharing digitized versions of Kang’s translation and the online sale of its hardcover version creates nostalgic online communities based on a collective memory, and (3) Kang’s version is considered a classic that should, as a kind of cultural memory, be passed on to the next generation. In this article, I argue that childhood nostalgia, an often ignored extratextual factor, influences adult reception of translated children’s literature. I thus offer a new perspective on translation reception and the ‘aging’ issue in studies of retranslation.

Abstract

This article introduces the cognitive prosodies model as a way to explain how some rhetorical features in persuasive texts differ across languages and rhetorical traditions, which may inform the process of translating highly rhetorical, persuasive texts. By drawing on a multidisciplinary framework grounded in comparative rhetoric, the semiotics of advertising, cognitive linguistics, and studies of rhetorical phenomena based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and event-related potential (ERP), it first describes persuasion as a textual process that weaves specific ‘static’ versus ‘dynamic’ rhetorical mechanisms. These activate varying cognitive efforts and speeds in semantic processing that differ between languages and textual genres. The second half of the article presents a corpus-based study of six English and Spanish presidential speeches on immigration – and their translations – by three consecutive Mexican and US presidents. Through the lens of the cognitive prosodies model, the analysis quantitatively and qualitatively scrutinizes how source and target texts behave and how the model can inform rhetorical awareness in translation practice.

This article reviews Reframing Translators, Translators as Reframers