Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Online First

This article investigates cohesion in the spoken and written registers of constrained language varieties to highlight the similarities and differences in the cohesion patterns of mediated (i.e., interpreted and translated) and non-native texts with respect to original texts produced by native speakers. In particular, it examines how different types of cohesive devices are distributed across spoken and written native, non-native, and mediated speeches originally delivered impromptu and read out at the plenary sessions of the European Parliament. The dataset comes from the European Translation and Interpreting Corpus (EPTIC) ( Ferraresi and Bernardini 2019 ). The context provides a rare opportunity to examine the spoken and written registers of professional communication, both mono- and multilingual, in a relatively homogenous setting. First, in the exploratory analysis, I investigate the distribution of different types of cohesive devices across the investigated varieties drawing on mosaic plots and correspondence analysis. Thereafter, I make use of regression modelling of the overall frequency of cohesive devices across the examined varieties to evaluate the effect of constrainedness, mode of delivery, and individual variation. The results indicate that non-native and mediated texts do diverge from native production in the use of cohesive devices, but in different ways.

The article reflects on the problem of L2 legal translation, paying specific attention to the role of L1 revision and its impact on the overall quality of the final product. Twenty non-native translations (Czech–French) of a legal text were subjected to a two-stage assessment procedure: First, by two native revisers without legal training (revision stage), and second, by two native experts (metarevision stage). In the revision stage, the average quality of the translations was rated between B (good) and C (borderline). During the metarevision stage, the experts identified a higher number or errors, especially in the domain of legal meaning. No less than 84% of the revisions made by the non-expert revisers were confirmed by the expert revisers, while the remaining cases were mostly under-revisions (12%), and, less frequently, over-revisions (4%). In situations where L2 translation is inevitable, L1 revision, even when carried out by professional revisers with little or no legal background, seems to be a viable option. However, all stakeholders should be aware of the risks associated with this practice, bearing in mind the specific nature of legal translation.

Studies of institutional translation have traditionally focused on European Union (EU) institutions and legislative genres. In order to develop a more comprehensive characterization of translation at international organizations beyond EU supranational law, this study compares a full mapping of multilingual text production at EU institutions to that of two representative intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), over three years (2005, 2010, and 2015) in three common official languages (English, French, and Spanish). The corpus-driven quantitative analysis and categorization of all texts from a legal-functional perspective corroborate the interconnection of a wide range of textual genres that perform, support, or derive from central law-making, monitoring, and adjudicative functions, or fulfill other administrative purposes. The findings also highlight interinstitutional variation that reflects the features of each legal order, in particular the prominence of hard law-making at the EU (with a high proportion of drafts and input documents) as opposed to larger translation volumes in monitoring procedures at the UN and the WTO. This mapping is considered instrumental to further analyze legal and other specialized translation practices in international institutional settings, and ultimately to inform translator training and translation quality management.

The past three decades have witnessed an increase in research on retranslation. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, this study examines the retranslation of political texts – specifically Work Reports by the Communist Party of China – as a special genre in its own right. By concentrating on the retranslation of a recurring set of Chinese political concepts, culture-specific items, and preferred usages into English from the early 1990s to the late 2010s, this study shows how and why the retranslations have been carried out, as motivated by the evolving ideologies of the original author – the Communist Party of China. The retranslations are shown to be influenced by the broader social, economic, and political dynamics within China, rather than by prevailing factors within the receiving culture or variables associated with the individual translators, as is commonly suggested in the literature. Our findings add to the existing body of research into retranslation by extending the genres and contexts of retranslation research.

Difficulties have long been observed in communicating legal rights to some Aboriginal people in Australia. In the Northern Territory, audio translations of the right to silence in Aboriginal languages can be used in police interviews. This study examines two sets of audio translations in two Aboriginal languages. Also included in each case are front-translations – intermediate English texts used to facilitate translation – as well as the legal texts that likely informed the translations. The audio translations include far more explicit information than either legal texts of the right, or oral explanations from police (evidenced in transcripts from police interviews). Analyses of context and implicature highlight that the legal text of the right is indeterminate: It is unclear what the text is intended to imply and communicate. Aboriginal translators are better placed than legal communicators to develop informative texts, because of their audience knowledge and intercultural skill. However, translators can only work with meaning provided or approved by their clients. Legal authorities, not translators, should be responsible for deciding the information to be communicated about rights, to meet the objectives of policies about rights. When the challenging and imperfect nature of intercultural legal translation is recognised, translators can use their insight into legal meaning to greatly improve communication with target audiences.