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- Volume 11, Issue 2, 2022
Translation Spaces - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2022
Volume 11, Issue 2, 2022
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A cartography of translation
Author(s): Philipp Hofenederpp.: 157–183 (27)More LessAbstractSpace as an epistemological category has a long history within the humanities in general and has attracted increasing attention more recently in translation studies. It has come to be understood predominantly as a discursive category (e.g., cultural spaces in a figurative sense) and the product of social interactions (cf. the relationship between agents). This contribution focuses for the first time on the physical movement within an eminent translatorial project at the beginning of the 19th century in Russia. Where do these translators come from, where do they move to and where do they leave after finishing the translation? In addressing those questions, this case study brings to the fore the relevant spatial relations of translators, translations and other agents engaged in a translation. Several thematic maps are produced, which are helpful for visualizing these movements in space and for situating a translation space in the context of its physical surroundings.
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Creativity in translation
Author(s): Ana Guerberof-Arenas and Antonio Toralpp.: 184–212 (29)More LessAbstractThis article presents the results of a study involving the translation of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut from English to Catalan and Dutch using three modalities: machine-translation (MT), post-editing (PE) and translation without aid (HT). Our aim is to explore creativity, understood to involve novelty and acceptability, from a quantitative perspective. The results show that HT has the highest creativity score, followed by PE, and lastly, MT, and this is unanimous from all reviewers. A neural MT system trained on literary data does not currently have the necessary capabilities for a creative translation; it renders literal solutions to translation problems. More importantly, using MT to post-edit raw output constrains the creativity of translators, resulting in a poorer translation often not fit for publication, according to experts.
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Some Translation Studies informed suggestions for further balancing methodologies for machine translation quality evaluation
Author(s): Ralph Krügerpp.: 213–233 (21)More LessAbstractThis article intends to contribute to the current debate on the quality of neural machine translation (NMT) vs. (professional) human translation quality, where recently claims concerning (super)human performance of NMT systems have emerged. The article will critically analyse some current machine translation (MT) quality evaluation methodologies employed in studies claiming such performance of their MT systems. This analysis aims to identify areas where these methodologies are potentially biased in favour of MT and hence may overvalue MT performance while undervaluing human translation performance. Then, the article provides some Translation Studies informed suggestions for improving or debiasing these methodologies in order to arrive at a more balanced picture of MT vs. (professional) human translation quality.
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(Mis)translating Sensitive Content
Author(s): Beatriz Naranjopp.: 234–253 (20)More LessAbstractThis article offers an exploratory approach to the role of anger in translation performance. We performed a study in which translation students translated a negative review containing opinions that they may potentially find offensive. Based on previous findings pointing to punishment and restoration of justice as the most common behaviors of anger, we predicted that angry translators would manipulate the text in an attempt to punish the author and/or mitigate the offensive content. We operationalized such manipulation by identifying attenuating and emphasizing strategies in target texts. While no significant differences were revealed between baseline and post-read anger levels, sentiment analysis tools revealed angry moods when applied to participants’ written opinions. Significant differences were also found for the strategies applied with more occurrences for attenuation than emphasis. However, these findings are acknowledged as preliminary; larger samples, control groups and more reliable indicators of anger would be necessary to corroborate these results.
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Assessing the impact of translation guidelines in Wikipedia
Author(s): José Gustavo Góngora-Goloubintseffpp.: 254–276 (23)More LessAbstractWikipedia is a multilingual, user-driven online encyclopaedia available in 325 languages and language varieties. Such linguistic diversity has drawn the attention of translation scholars over the past decade. Previous research has addressed, among other issues, the quality of translated Wikipedia entries, the motivations driving editors-translators, and the taxing negotiations behind editorial changes. Nevertheless, the processes underpinning translation practices in the encyclopaedia have often been overlooked. Consequently, this paper adopts a praxeological approach to translation by analysing documented standards across four Wikipedia language communities and the extent to which 16 experienced translators have assimilated them. The findings suggest that Wikipedia guidelines on translation have slight but tangible differences across the communities under investigation. Moreover, the interview data showed a tendency among participants to attach more importance to cross-wiki editing policies than to any local translation guidelines. This preference ultimately reinforces previous claims that translation and editing in Wikipedia form a continuum.
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Because We’re Worth It
Author(s): Joseph Lambert and Callum Walkerpp.: 277–302 (26)More LessAbstractRate-setting is a problematic area for newcomers to translation and established practitioners alike. Survey data generally support the view that translators feel underpaid and that money matters remain a chief ethical and pragmatic concern, but appropriate guidance is almost entirely absent from introductory textbooks on the translation profession and documentation prepared by industry associations remains unsatisfactory. Focusing on the translation industry in the United Kingdom, this conceptual paper explores constraints that limit price formation practices, and argues that translators feel under threat from disruptive technologies, Uberisation, and non-professional translation, now more than ever. We explore the complex interaction between status, internal and external perceptions, and regulation, and illustrate their push-pull relationship with rate-setting within a range of industry ‘educators’, uncovering the ways in which translators themselves, translation associations, and academic institutions directly and indirectly impact upon rate-setting practices. The article concludes by considering potential channels to buoy status and improve rate-setting practices in the translation industry.
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US voter rights in translation
Author(s): Matt Riemlandpp.: 303–328 (26)More LessAbstractFelons’ voting rights have featured prominently in debates over voter suppression in the United States, particularly in Florida, where a 2018 state constitutional amendment reinstated voting rights to the state’s 1.4 million former felons (Robles 2018). Florida also has a high concentration of Spanish-speaking voters with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), making Spanish-language voting information crucial. Inadequate translations of voter information may misrepresent voter eligibility for LEP Spanish-speaking former felons in Florida. Using a parallel corpus, this article’s central research question investigates how semantic shifts occur in Spanish translations of “felony” and “felon” in online voter information for seven Florida counties. The results reveal a number of misrepresentative semantic shifts in both human- and machine-translated Spanish voter information. Such shifts may impinge on individuals’ constitutional rights.
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“A tiny cog in a large machine”
Author(s): Joss Moorkens
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Training citizen translators
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