Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Online First

This article aims to problematize the role of translation in news production as a result of the invisibility of indirect translation (ITr). In the first section, I argue that in journalistic translation ITr is not merely ‘hidden translation’ but rather ‘ignored translation’ as a consequence of the traditional status of the translational activity in journalism and because researchers can hardly find traces of ITr in news production, such as the name of sources, attributions, or paratexts. I then move on to discuss the importance of the various forms of translation in the emergence of journalism in the early modern period. Human conflicts and movement meant that news texts were recycled across Europe, often via ITr. News writers used various sources from different languages and adapted the texts taking into account political and cultural considerations. This establishes a link with contemporary journalism, as news articles are characterized by their multi-authored nature. In addition, translations can be embedded and are often circular rather than linear. In the concluding discussion, I suggest that journalistic translation research, including research into ITr, can benefit not only from interdisciplinary approaches, but also from incorporating historical aspects.

The unique features of interpreting as a situated process and performance to enable communication in real time make relay interpreting a particularly complex manifestation of indirect translation and a rich area of investigation. Even so, the great potential of relay interpreting as an object of inquiry in Translation and Interpreting Studies has remained largely untapped. This article seeks to map out the conceptual territory of relay interpreting as indirect translation with reference to relevant factors and features. The analysis highlights the great diversity of scenarios that can be subsumed under the heading of relay interpreting with reference to such key parameters as mode, modality, policy, linguality, multimodality, and technology. The – regrettably modest – state of the art is reviewed with regard to types of research, topics, and methods; and some areas of special interest, such as Deaf relay interpreting and speech-to-text interpreting relying on speech recognition technology, are discussed for their potential to extend the scope of indirect translation to include intralingual and intermodal as well as technology-based manifestations.

This article investigates how translators choose between multiple competing onomasiological variants to express (verbal) inchoativity in English-to-Dutch translations. Using a corpus-based multifactorial research design, we measure the impact of three well-known socio-cognitive mechanisms on the actual choice, namely the complexity principle, risk aversion, and cognate exposure. We apply the behavioural profile method, which allows us to operationalise these three explanatory mechanisms via ID-tags, and we then use conditional random forest modelling to determine the impact of each mechanism on the choice between four competing verbs of inchoativity. The results of our analyses show that the complexity principle plays a clear role in translated texts, as there is a significant preference for the active construction and for prototypical verbs in passive constructions. Genre-specific risk-averse behaviour as well as cognate avoidance were not observed.

Because translators begin where authors end – with a completed text – their task may be conceptualized as a reverse worlding, or ascent from actual text to imaginary context. This article argues that the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for all verbal art, and that within verbal art, it is truer of the texts that Hasan ( 1985 , 101) refers to as ‘literature text’ and less so of those she calls ‘literary text’ that have some extra-artistic purpose. We demonstrate this empirically using an extreme example, the lipogrammatic French novel La disparition ( Perec 1969 ) and its English translation A Void ( Perec 2008 ). We also argue for a certain chastity in theory – a theory of translation for verbal art which excludes both the nonverbal and texts that are not purposefully artistic. Moreover, we say that there needs to be a corresponding chastity in practice – a theory of world inversion that rests not on a political program, but rather on a scientific understanding of the world and the proper place of words within it.

This study uses an error-annotated, mass-media subset of a sentence-aligned, multi-parallel learner translator corpus to reveal source-language items that are challenging in English–Russian translation. Our data includes multiple translations of the most challenging source sentences, drawn from a large collection of student translations on the basis of error statistics. This sample was subjected to manual contrastive-comparative analysis, which resulted in a list of English items that were difficult for students. The outcome of the analysis was compared to the topics discussed in translation textbooks that are recommended for BA and specialist-degree students in Russia. We discuss items that deserve more prominence in training as well as items that call for improvements to traditional learning activities. This study presents evidence that a more empirically motivated design of the practical translation syllabus as part of translator education is required.

The Star-Books collection, published by Producciones Editoriales S. A. from 1975 to 1982, is a foremost example of the post-Francoist counterculture and one of the best chronicles of this period of Spanish history. The collection became a viable platform for various national and international authors who had remained silenced for decades at a time when books were still subjected to official censorship. Star-Books stood out for its eclectic nature and its rebellious spirit, reflected in the striking covers and themes, which clashed against Francoist orthodoxy. This paper highlights the collection’s role in promoting the counterculture in Spain and sheds light on how censorship operated in this period. Detailed analyses of the sociopolitical context, the Star-Books catalogue, the available censorship materials, and several collection titles show the more permissive nature of post-Francoist censorship.

This article presents the results of an exploratory study on the timing of turn-taking in face-to-face dialogue interpreting based on a corpus of interpreted interactions that were recorded with mobile eye-trackers. Our aims were to: (1) investigate the timing of interpreters’ turns in dialogic interaction; and (2) identify features that have an impact on interpreters’ turn-taking speed. These include input processing factors (including turn type and turn duration) and gaze, which have been shown to play an important role in turn-taking. The analysis shows that, although interpreters in our study tend to orient to the maxim ‘one speaker at a time’, turn transitions between the primary speaker and the interpreter contain more gaps and longer overlaps than have been found for same-language interactions. It also shows that the type of turn produced by the primary speaker (question vs. non-question), the primary speaker’s speech rate, and, to a certain extent, turn duration affect the interpreter’s turn-taking speed. Thus, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the processes that impact the timing of turn-taking in face-to-face dialogue interpreting.

Translators may experience significant psychological and physiological responses to time pressure. This study examines such responses with the aim of identifying valid indicators of time pressure in written translation. Forty-five postgraduates participated in the study, translating three comparable English texts into Chinese under three time conditions (Short, Standard, and Free). A positive relation between time stringency and the arousal level detected by a set of self-reporting and biomarker measures was hypothesised. The hypothesis was corroborated by results derived from participants’ self-reporting on stress and anxiety, and the biomarkers of heart rate, blood pressure, and pupil dilation, but not by skin temperature, galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart rate variability (HRV). Thus, the measures that confirm the hypothesis are considered successful indicators of time pressure in translation. In addition, an inverted ‘U-shaped’ pattern was observed in the relation between time stringency and the arousal level indexed by GSR and HRV. These findings may facilitate research and training in translation and other cognitively demanding language-processing activities.