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

This study tested the effects of the consecutive and simultaneous interpreting modes in a simulated police interview, addressing four research questions: (1) Does the consecutive interpreting mode lead to more accurate interpreting than the simultaneous interpreting mode? (2) Do language combinations moderate the performance of similarly qualified interpreters? (3) Does experience in simultaneous interpreting in legal settings increase interpreting accuracy in SI? and (4) Which mode of interpreting do interpreters perceive to require more mental effort? A total of 70 interpreters interpreted a live simulated interview between an English-speaking interviewer and an Arabic-, Mandarin- or Spanish-speaking suspect. Mode was varied within participants, and the order of the mode was counter-balanced across participants. Interpreters rated their perceived mental effort after the task. Independent assessments of performance showed better results for the simultaneous interpreting mode, regardless of language. This effect held for accuracy of style, verbal rapport markers, and interpreting protocol.

This article presents a descriptive study of the English translations of the classic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei in the context of the Anglo-American literary censorship of obscenity in the twentieth century. By scrutinizing the strategies employed in the English translations of Jin Ping Mei, this article uncovers the dynamic interactions between literary translation activities and the evolving socio-historical contexts in the target culture. The resurrection of the archaic source text, particularly its erotic component, in the Anglophone world in the twentieth century was based on the (re)discovery of its value in the contemporary target context. In the case of Jin Ping Mei, equivalence at the linguistic and textual levels was simply not a concern of the translators and publishers, who had to decide how they would deal with the social reality of literary censorship, by submissively conforming to its demands, or by creatively confronting them.

After implementing of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for four years, the Chinese government convened the BRI Summits in Beijing in 2017 and 2019, respectively. This article will address the questions of how the summits were covered in translated news by using empirical data from news published on the Reference News, a state-owned newspaper that publishes translated news, in comparison to news carried in People’s Daily, an authoritative national newspaper in China. Situated in the framework of political discourse analysis (PDA) within critical discourse analysis (CDA) and using the method of qualitative thematic analysis, the study shows that translated news is a platform where contentious ideologies are at play and where dominant ones leave little room for the confrontational. In this process, translators are submissive actors whose work is navigated by the agenda set by the authorities in either legitimizing or representing frames in mainstream media.

This study employs a pragmasemantic approach to investigate the challenges Qur’an translators encounter when rendering Qur’anic euphemisms of licit intercourse (X-phemisms) into English. To achieve the objectives of the study, two understudied translations have been selected for a contrastive analysis of source language X-phemisms and their target language renderings. The analysis reveals that Qur’anic X-phemisms do not lend themselves to an easy translation due to cultural and linguistic idiosyncrasies; they hold a variety of lexical-semantic relations, and branch out into three broad ramifications: procreation, protection, and pleasure. Several Qur’anic X-phemisms have undergone semantic change through meaning-related processes, including generalization, particularization, amelioration, pejoration, and opposition. Some linguistic mechanisms have been manipulated to create euphemistic substitutes for direct references to marital sex through periphrasis, collocation, and figuration, all of which flout the Cooperative Principle in favor of the Politeness Principle.

Park Chan-wook, one of the most internationally acclaimed Korean filmmakers, uses language as an important aspect of characterization in The Handmaiden, his adaptation of Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith. The historical background and the characters’ nationalities are changed, but code-switching between two languages – i.e., Korean and Japanese – recurs throughout the film, thereby enhancing its relevance for the Korean audience. Drawing on the notion of ‘proximity’ and reader response theory, this study examines the role of languages in Park’s characterization and proximation of the original work for the Korean audience, and the extent to which the shifts in proximity and the use of languages contribute to British audiences’ affective experiences when this Korean adaptation is subtitled in English.

Integrated university programs for deaf and hearing sign language interpreting students are rare. In Finland, deaf interpreting students have been integrated in the only university program for sign language interpreting since its beginning in the early 2000s. This article investigates the experiences of the deaf interpreting students and deaf sign language interpreters (n = 5) who attend and have attended the program. We analyzed interview responses using critical discourse analysis and the concept of identity construction, and found that deaf interpreting students, despite some disadvantages, benefited from the integrated program. We also found three identity positions – competent deaf identity, student identity, and professional DI identity – and support for recognition ( Honneth 1996 ) in both the solidarity and legal sphere developed through the program.

Usability is a key factor for increasing adoption of machine translation. This study aims to measure the usability of machine translation in the classroom context by comparing translation students’ machine translation post-editing output with their manual translation in two comparable translation tasks. Three dimensions of usability were empirically measured: efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. The findings suggest that machine translation post-editing is more efficient than human translation and post-editing produces fewer errors than human translation. While the types of errors vary, errors in terms of accuracy outnumber those related to fluency. In addition, participants perceive the amount of time and work that is saved when post-editing to be greater benefit than the overall utility of post-editing. Likewise, students report a strong desire to learn post-editing skills in training programs.

This article proposes that in order to understand the nature of literary translation as an art form, we need to complement existing approaches drawing on literary, linguistic and sociological theories with insights derived from performance studies. As a way of exploring what the theorization of translation as performance art could contribute to our understanding of literary translation, I map four basic tenets of performance as restored behavior ( Schechner 1985 ) to two translators’ (Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush) accounts of their practice. The mapping is illustrated with writings by and interviews with the translators, focusing on four points of contact: the unresolved dialectal tension between self and other, the deliberate, rehearsed nature of decisions, the need for distance between original and performance/translation, and the role of the audience.

This article critiques methodological nationalism and binaries in theoretical discussions of literary translation. The naturalization of the national story of translation is traced from the Renaissance up to its uncritical adoption when the discipline of translation studies was established. Borrowing from critiques of methodological nationalism in other disciplines, it is argued that a thorough revision of certain vocabularies is still needed to definitively break with lingering national and binary tropes. Venuti’s foreignization is challenged due to its most problematic but previously overlooked aspect: its reliance on national paradigms and circumscribed domestic and foreign groups. To eschew the image of literary translation as transfer from culture A to culture B, an alternative empirical approach to networks of intersectionally-positioned readers in transnational localities is proposed. This critique is necessary given the messiness of subjectivity and the need for new solidarities in our transforming transnational world.

Sign language version of the abstract

This article rethinks the impact of sign language interpreting services (SLIS) as a social institution. It starts from the observation that “access” for deaf people is tantamount to availability of sign language interpreters, and the often uncritically proposed and largely accepted solution at the institutional level to lack of access seems to be increasing the number of interpreters. Using documented examples from education and health care settings, we raise concerns that arise when SLIS become a prerequisite for public service provision. In doing so, we problematize SLIS as replacing or concealing the need for language-concordant education and public services. We argue that like any social institution, SLIS should be studied and analyzed critically. This includes more scrutiny about how different kinds of “accesses” can be implemented without SLIS, and more awareness of the contextual languaging choices deaf people make beyond the use of interpreters.