Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Current Issue

Abstract

Negation is an enigmatic function of translation that has rarely been investigated. Instead of delivering the original text to the new language, translation also negates the incompatible in order to assert the validity of a target text by preventing access to the original. This form of negation is scrutinised in this article as an act of ‘foreclosure’, a term originated by Jacques Lacan and later adopted by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak to describe the disappearance of the ‘native informant’ figure in European grand narratives even before it enters the Symbolic Order. The renditions of two European, oriental-themed masterpieces — The Mikado and Der Pilger Kamanita — into Thai show how translation forecloses the original text by repudiating the source altogether to allow the totality of the Thai language as an emerging Symbolic Order befitting its time. The foreclosure of the West in these ‘translations’ points to the unconscious desire and the anxiety for the Thai cultural identity which was repeatedly undermined throughout its contacts with Europe. Translation, in this sense, serves as a defence mechanism against the encroaching West.

Abstract

This study examines multilingualism and identity construction in the first season of the American French TV series Emily in Paris and its dubbed versions in French, Italian, and Spanish. The story follows Emily, an American girl who moves to Paris for work but does not speak French. Throughout the show, Emily and the people around her navigate their identities through language, often resulting in awkward situations and misunderstandings. The analysis of the original version reveals that the concept of ‘otherness’ conveyed by using a third language, or L3 (primarily French), becomes apparent through foreign accents, code-switching/code-mixing, translation/interpreting offers/requests, and miscommunication incidents/metalinguistic references to the L3. The Italian and Spanish dubbed versions retain this third language, although opting for different strategies. In contrast, the French version blurs the cultural and linguistic divide since the target language and L3 coincide. These different approaches to multilingualism are likely to reflect the differing dubbing traditions in the three countries. The study reveals that the dubbing teams in the three translated versions have probably aimed to strike a balance between making the dubbed version understandable and appealing to their audience without undermining the original show’s multilingualism. However, the text manipulation required by the adaptation to the three languages might lead to different perceptions of the characters across the three versions, an aspect inviting further research.

Abstract

This article builds on the dynamic field of research on news translation. It presents a mixed-methods analysis of a parallel corpus of news agency dispatches to further our understanding of how news is translated and the factors influencing the translation strategies which are used. It focuses on the translation of quotations in news agency dispatches that are translated from English into French. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses of a parallel corpus of source and translated dispatches underscore the importance of quotations in news agency dispatches. However, they also show that quotations can be cut as news is translated and what determines whether quotations will be lost or retained in the translation process. The study emphasizes the need for mixed-methods approaches and calls for more comparative research on news translation.

Abstract

Revision (i.e., the verification of a human translation by a second person) takes place between two people: the translator and the reviser. The relationship between them is worth studying, as it is considered significant in handbooks, texts from practitioners, and competence models, and has been little studied so far in the field of specialised translation. In this article I report on an interview study (n = 45) conducted in Switzerland to analyse how the actors in this relationship communicate and how being revised is perceived by translators. The study shows that in the contexts studied, translators and revisers communicate extensively when revision takes place between colleagues. Furthermore, it highlights that revision can be a highly emotional process for translators, who mentioned occasional feelings of anger, aggrievement, and discouragement. Finally, the data suggest that appropriate communication can significantly mitigate the negative feelings that the translators expressed during the interviews.

Abstract

How does the variability of the language system affect translational language use? Despite inconclusive results of earlier corpus studies, machine learning approaches reach high accuracies in distinguishing translated from non-translated texts. Translations must therefore involve linguistic patterns easy to spot by computers, but harder to spot by the human analyst. Consequently, the differences have been characterized as small, but systematic. This article adopts a quantitative corpus-based approach to examining shifts in probability between translated and non-translated language. To this end, we investigate how translators handle non-agentive constructions, a phenomenon displaying contrastive usage differences in English and German. A multifactorial analysis of 7441 instances shows that differences are indeed small and that they stem from a multitude of factors. Accounting for these factors turns out to be challenging even for a sophisticated statistical procedure. Therefore, the case of how subtle the effects of translation are cannot be settled just yet.

This article reviews Retranslating the Bible and the Qur’an: Historical Approaches and Current Debates

This article reviews The Translation of Experience: Cultural Artefacts in Experiential Translation

This article reviews Debates in Translation Studies