FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2020

As a pioneer of Chinese translation, Lin Shu groped for a way out of the dichotomy to achieve a balance between foreignization and domestication. His domesticating strategies have enjoyed considerable attention from critics, whereas his foreignization has so far been largely ignored. Mainly concentrating on his collaborative translation, Yinbian yanyu, this essay opens a window to see Lin’s translation strategy as an inevitable mixture of domestication and foreignization, and throws light on the contradictory nature of Lin, identifying him as both a defender and an opponent of Confucian ideology, and as both an inheritor and an innovator of Chinese literary and linguistic traditions.

Coleman Barks’ translations of Rumi’s works are astonishingly popular, especially among the American public. The study presented here deals particularly with the role of poetics in shaping the image and reception of Rumi’s works in the target language and culture. Thus, it describes and analyses Barks’ approach/strategies in rendering the poetic elements of Rumi’s poems, and examines Barks’ translation poetics in the context of the dominant poetics in the target literature. The corpus of the study is delimited to Barks’ renditions of the poems of the first book of the Masnavi included in The Essential Rumi (1995). The findings involve Barks’ modifications in favor of the formal and structural conventions of English poetry, the linguistic and literary norms of the target language and the taste and communicative needs of the target audience as well as the conformity of Barks’ translation poetics with the dominant poetics and ideology of his time.

This paper examines the fundamentals of professionalism focusing on the code of ethics as a pivotal parameter. Attention is paid to the difficulties of implementing two of the core principles of codes of ethics for interpreting in a refugee context: impartiality and accuracy. The aim of this article is to explore interpreters’ appreciation of these principles and self-identification with them versus actual observance in refugee settings. Ninety-six US-based interpreters completed a survey on self-perceptions regarding adherence to the principles and real actions performed. Findings show that a high number of interpreters do not comply with the principles despite having previously declared their full endorsement and self-identification with them. Impartiality presented more deviations than accuracy. Internal and external demands have proven to be stronger than adherence to the code. Calls to rethink and refine codes of ethics for interpreting in a refugee context are also presented.

Conference interpreting is a professional field that requires specialized knowledge, skills, and ethics, and becoming a professional in the field involves the adoption of a relevant professional identity. To understand how a professional identity begins to emerge among students and what factors influence the process, a case study was conducted involving four participants who were attending a graduate school of interpretation and translation in Korea. Multiple types of data were collected for qualitative analysis. The results show that the students initially tended to connect professional identity primarily with linguistic identity. Over time, the participants began to develop a better understanding of the profession through authentic learning experiences, real-world interpreting experiences, and interactions with the instructors as mentors, all of which contribute to their professional identity formation process.

For training translators in academic settings, the notion of translation bilingual sub-competence is fundamental. However, little research has addressed the practical methods for developing the trainees’ translation bilingual sub-competence. The present study investigated the impact of Group Dynamic Assessment on trainees’ translation bilingual sub-competence development and the ways it helps them develop their bilingual sub-competence. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and PACTE translation competence model served as the theoretical framework for the study. Methodologically, a mixed-methods study was designed. For the quantitative phase, a semi-experimental method, and for the qualitative phase, interviews were administered. The results confirmed that implementing a Group Dynamic Assessment developed the trainees’ translation bilingual sub-competence. The findings of the study can be used in professional development and in-service courses for the academic staff and could pave the way for further empirical research in translation pedagogy.

The novel Narcopolis and its translations into German and Polish start with a prologue which consists of one long sentence. The aim of this paper is an analysis of this sentence with the use of a combination of three approaches: (1) the translation theory proposed by Barańczak (1992), (2) the approach posited by M. H. Freeman (2006), and (3) the DIMEAN model by Warnke and Spitzmüller (2008) with the view to check their usefulness for translation criticism and as support in a text analysis preceding translation. In the first step, the conceptual schemata of key importance for the text are sought. Subsequently, language features of key importance which allow for the schemata to materialize are identified in the original and the translation equivalents of these are compared. The results of the analysis indicate that the eclectic approach presented in the paper appears to be quite efficient and user-friendly.