Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association - Online First

This quasi-experimental study explored professional Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters’ strategic additions when interpreting an Auslan presentation into spoken English in the simultaneous mode. The product analysis involves the researcher and a research assistant identifying and categorizing participants’ strategic additions independently, using a corpus-driven approach. The process analysis entails the researcher analyzing participants’ retrospective interviews to find their motivations for producing strategic additions. The results show that the five most frequent types of strategic additions in this corpus of signed-to-spoken language simultaneous interpretations include explicitation, adding referents to numbers, referring to previous relevant information, adding conjunctions, and elaboration. Striving for optimal relevance appears to be the interpreters’ main motivation for making strategic additions in conference interpreting. The results suggest that professional interpreters are usually user-oriented and make strategic additions, consciously or subconsciously, to enhance the communicative impact of their interpretations.

This article uses a three-way comparable corpus to compare pseudotranslations “from Chinese” written in English with genuine translations from Chinese and genuine texts written in English. The research question is “will pseudotranslations, which seek to pass as genuine translations, be closer stylistically to genuine translations or to works written originally in English?” Using hierarchic clustering analysis, the answer, surprisingly, is both. In terms of the use of specific vocabulary related to China, the pseudotranslations were closer to genuine translations, but in terms of other stylistic markers, pseudotranslations were closer to genuine works in English. The results suggest that writers attempting to construct pseudotranslations concentrate on the obvious content as a marker of authenticity, whereas the author’s natural facility in English means that there is no hint of “translationese.” In addition, the case study shows some evidence that seems to contradict Toury’s thesis concerning pseudotranslation as the imitation of genuine translation.

We present a case study of a group of activist interpreters Ciocia Wienia, a Vienna-based informal pro-choice collective. The activists facilitate abortion travel from Poland to Austria, offer onsite support and interpret in abortion clinics. We analyze original data from a corpus of 13 qualitative in-depth interviews with members and associates of Ciocia Wienia. Based on a qualitative content analysis, this contribution investigates which situations and stressors are described as emotionally challenging as well as which coping strategies and techniques of self-care and mental hygiene are employed to process burdensome emotions. Our results suggest that negative feelings such as sadness, frustration, anger, stress, and uncertainty make work in such a context emotionally taxing, even though positive emotions are reported as well. Apart from sharing with the group and supervision, only a few activists seem to have developed a set of distinct individual self-care and coping strategies.