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

In both the Spanish-language Argentine comic strip Mafalda, created by Quino, and the Portuguese-language Brazilian comic A Turma da Mônica by Maurício de Sousa, the creators’ use of political and cultural satire unveils critical global and national issues through the eyes of young female protagonists. Character naming and effective translation of these comic strips requires an expanded view of satire as a principally literary genre by examining its linguistic and cultural purposes. Thus, this study explores the cultural and linguistic significance of satire in translation along with its associated challenges, drawing on specific examples from these two comic strips to illustrate these issues.

Translation is often considered in relation to the original, as if the original were always singular, fixed, stable, and incontestable. Readers, translators, and publishers, however, may approach the concept of original(ity) from diverse perspectives, conditioned by specific sociocultural contexts. Using Chinese translations of the Australian novel The Thorn Birds as a case study, this article situates its examination of original(ity) in the context of Chinese publishing industries, in which copyright laws and piracy unusually co-exist. The resultant tension between authorized publishers and counterfeiters gives rise to a situation where originality is highly commodified and thus frequently reconstructed. Translation research on original(ity), therefore, must move beyond legal and ethical dimensions to include economic, political, and historical contexts. Original(ity), which may be considered a collective property of both the original(s) and the translation(s), has to be constantly reinterpreted in a given sociocultural context at each new historical moment.

This article describes changes in the use of profanity in contemporary Russian poetry and its implications for translation into English. While Russian poetry now more closely resembles English-language poetry in embracing the profanity typical of conversational speech, the highly taboo nature of Russian profanity is still relevant, including gender-specific taboos. Using examples from a range of female and male poets from the 2000s and 2010s (including Dina Gatina, Elena Fanailova, Dmitri Prigov, Andrei Rodionov, Alexander Skidan, Oksana Vasyakina, Lida Yusupova and others), the article explores the ambivalent status of profane language today, whereby the same phrase for different speakers can be considered entirely unremarkable or profoundly taboo. In addition to the exigencies of poetic form, this is the most relevant factor (and vexing problem) for Russian-to-English translation. Special attention is also paid to specifically queer uses of profanity, with the suggestion that profanity is perhaps best translated in a maximally expressive sociolect-specific way.

This article considers the Spanish and French translations of nonbinary pronouns in Netflix’s One Day at a Time, a social-justice-oriented sitcom. The article compares the source text with six parallel translations taken from one episode and isolates two main translation strategies. In the first strategy, translators rely on calque translations from English that demonstrate a misunderstanding of the source text. The second strategy shows an active engagement on the part of translators with Hispanic and Francophone Queer communities, replicating authentic Queer language practices. The article goes on to describe the implications of both strategies on reception and outlines several reasons why community-informed translation should be established as a best practice for Queer-oriented texts.

Over the last two decades, ideology has evolved into a major issue in translation studies. In terms of the ideological explorations of translation, previous studies focused on the explicit or implicit ideological manifestations in translated texts, or how translation was used to serve ideology. Studies on the diachronic changes of translator’s ideology, however, remain scarce. This study of Howard Goldblatt’s English translations of three Chinese novels over three different periods finds that translators’ ideology is dynamic rather than static. In their translations, translators may follow the ideology of the source culture or that of the target culture, depending on the relative status of the source culture and the target culture as well as the capital possessed by the author and the translator. A sociological account is provided to explain the changes in translators’ ideology over time.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the hybrid language used in the U.S. by a generation who think brown and write brown. I am referring to the so-called one-and-a-halfers, a generation that includes writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora, Ilan Stavans, Ana Lydia Vega, Ana Castillo, Helena Viramontes, Esmeralda Santiago, or Tato Laviera, to name but a few. I aim to analyze how many migrants and refugees use language in a way that destroys consensus. It is in these spaces where the migration movements of the multiple souths talk back in a weird language which the Establishment fears. In these circumstances, translation becomes a tool to raise questions that disturb the universal promises of monolingualism.

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.