Benjamins Translation Library
The Benjamins Translation Library (BTL) aims to stimulate research and training in Translation & Interpreting Studies - taken very broadly to encompass the many different forms and manifestations of translational phenomena, among them cultural translation, localization, adaptation, literary translation, specialized translation, audiovisual translation, audio-description, transcreation, transediting, conference interpreting, and interpreting in community settings (courts, police, healthcare, social services, etc.) in the spoken and signed modalities – as well as the fuzzy boundaries between professional and amateur transfer and the crossroads between translation studies and other (sub)disciplines.
The BTL seeks to revisit and expand the current boundaries of the ever-evolving discipline by providing a forum for exploring this rich array of themes and approaches, in a variety of epistemological, methodological, social, cultural, historical, technological and pedagogical contexts. In the process, it develops - and challenges - existing theoretical and methodological frameworks, or puts existing ones to the test. Each volume represents an original scholarly endeavor - whether in the form of a monograph, a collective volume, a reference work or a postgraduate textbook.
The European Society for Translation Studies (EST) Subseries is a publication channel within the Library to optimize EST’s function as a forum for the translation and interpreting research community. It promotes new trends in research, gives more visibility to young scholars’ work, publicizes new research methods, makes available documents from EST, and reissues classical works in translation studies which do not exist in English or which are now out of print.
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Conference Interpreting. A complete course
More LessThe conference interpreting skillset – full consecutive and simultaneous interpreting – has long been in demand well beyond the multilateral intergovernmental organizations, notably in bilateral diplomacy, business, international tribunals and the media. This comprehensive coursebook sets out an updated step-by-step programme of training, designed to meet the increasingly challenging conditions of the 21st century, and adaptable by instructors with the appropriate specializations to cover all these different applications in contemporary practice.After an overview of the diverse world of interpreting and the prerequisites for this demanding course of training, successive chapters take students and teachers through initiation and the progressive acquisition of the techniques, knowledge and professionalism that make up this full skillset. For each stage in the training, detailed, carefully sequenced exercises and guidance on the cognitive challenges are provided, in a spirit of transparency between students and teachers on their respective roles in the learning process. For instructors, course designers and administrators, more detailed and extensive tips on pedagogy, curriculum design and management will be found in the companion Trainer’s Guide.
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Conference Interpreting. A trainer's guide
More LessThis companion volume to Conference Interpreting – A Complete Course provides additional recommendations and theoretical and practical discussion for instructors, course designers and administrators. Chapters mirroring the Complete Course offer supplementary exercises, tips on materials selection, classroom practice, feedback and class morale, realistic case studies from professional practice, and a detailed rationale for each stage supported by critical reviews of the literature. Dedicated chapters address the role of theory and research in interpreter training, with outline syllabi for further qualification in interpreting studies at MA or PhD level; the current state of testing and professional certification, with proposals for an overhaul; the institutional and administrative challenges of running a high-quality training course; and designs and opportunities for further and teacher training, closing with a brief speculative look at future prospects for the profession.
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Constructing a Sociology of Translation
More LessThe view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator’s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu’s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.
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Contexts in Translating
More LessContexts in Translating is designed to help translators understand the varieties of contexts and their importance for understanding a text and reproducing the meaning in another language. The contexts include the historical setting of writing a text, the cultural components that make a text unique, the types of audiences for which the translation is intended, and the most efficient and effective ways of producing a satisfactory representation of the source-language text. The structural levels of language are described, and the principal features of text organization are also explained. In addition, the main features of various books on translation are outlined, and a chapter on basic theories of translation is followed by a selective bibliography.
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Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts
More LessThis volume presents Eastern Europe and Russia as a distinctive translation zone, despite significant internal differences in language, religion and history. The persistence of large multilingual empires, which produced bilingual and even polyglot readers, the shared experience of “belated modernity” and the longstanding practice of repressive censorship produced an incredibly vibrant, profoundly politicized, and highly visible culture of translation throughout the region as a whole. The individual contributors to this volume examine diverse manifestations of this shared translation culture from the Romantic Age to the present day, revealing literary translation to be at times an embarrassing reminder of the region’s cultural marginalization and reliance on the West and at other times a mode of resistance and a metaphor for cultural supercession. This volume demonstrates the relevance of this region to the current scholarship on alternative translation traditions and exposes some of the Western assumptions that have left the region underrepresented in the field of Translation Studies.
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Coordinating Participation in Dialogue Interpreting
More LessDialogue interpreting, which takes place in institutional settings such as legal proceedings, healthcare contexts, work meetings or media talk, has attracted increasing attention in translation, language and communication studies. Drawing on transcribed sequences of authentic talk, this volume raises questions about aspects of interpreting that have been taken for granted, challenging preconceived notions about differences between professional and non-professional interpreting and pointing in new directions for future research. Collecting contributions from major scholars in the field of dialogue interpreting and interaction studies, the volume offers new insights into the relationship between interpreting and mediating. It addresses a wide readership, including students and scholars in translation and interpreting studies, mediation and negotiation studies, linguistics, sociology, communication studies, conversation analysis, discourse analysis.
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Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age
More LessCorpus-based contrastive and translation research are areas that keep evolving in the digital age, as the range of new corpus resources and tools expands, opening up to different approaches and application contexts. The current book contains a selection of papers which focus on corpora and translation research in the digital age, outlining some recent advances and explorations. After an introductory chapter which outlines language technologies applied to translation and interpreting with a view to identifying challenges and research opportunities, the first part of the book is devoted to current advances in the creation of new parallel corpora for under-researched areas, the development of tools to manage parallel corpora or as an alternative to parallel corpora, and new methodologies to improve existing translation memory systems.
The contributions in the second part of the book address a number of cutting-edge linguistic issues in the area of contrastive discourse studies and translation analysis on the basis of comparable and parallel corpora in several languages such as English, German, Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish, thus showcasing the richness of the linguistic diversity carried out in these recent investigations.
Given the multiplicity of topics, methodologies and languages studied in the different chapters, the book will be of interest to a wide audience working in the fields of translation studies, contrastive linguistics and the automatic processing of language.
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Corpus Use and Translating
More LessProfessional translators are increasingly dependent on electronic resources, and trainee translators need to develop skills that allow them to make the best use of these resources. The aim of this book is to show how CULT (Corpus Use for Learning to Translate) methodologies can be used to prepare learning materials, and how novice translators can become autonomous users of corpora. Readers interested in translation studies, translator training and corpus linguistics will find the book particularly useful. Not only does it include practical, technical advice for using and learning to use corpora, but it also addresses important issues such as the balance between training and education and how CULT methodologies reinforce student autonomy and responsibility. Not only is this a good introduction to CULT, but it also incorporates the latest developments in this field, showing the advantages of using these methodologies in competence-based learning.
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The Critical Link 2
More LessThis volume of selected papers from the second Critical Link conference (Vancouver, 1998) shows a marked evolution in Community Interpreting (CI) since the first Critical Link conference of 1995. In the intervening three
years the field has advanced from pioneering to professionalization in response to new social needs created by the influx of immigrants into the developed countries, or by an awakened sensitivity to the rights of those countries’ aboriginal peoples. Most of the papers discuss professionalization in terms of standards, tests and examinations; training; accreditation; and professional organizations that establish and administer professional standards. The collection reveals similar concerns about these issues throughout the world and a global focus on ‘standards’.
With a Foreword by Brian Harris.
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The Critical Link 3
More LessAt long last community interpreters are coming into their own as professionals in various parts of the world. At the same time, the complexity of their practice has been thrown into sharp relief. In this thought-provoking volume of selected papers from the third Critical Link conference held in 2001 (Montreal), we see a profession that is carving out a place for itself amid political adversity, economic constraints and a host of historical and cultural conditions. Community interpreters are learning to work better with governments, courts, police, psychologists, doctors, patients, refugees, violent offenders, and human rights missions in war-torn countries. From First Peoples to minority language speakers to former refugees and members of the Deaf community, interpreters are seeking out the training, legal protection and credentials they need. They are standing up to be counted in surveys, reaping the fruits of specialization and contributing to salient academic discussions on language, communication and translation studies.
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The Critical Link 4
More LessThis book is a collection of papers presented in Stockholm, at the fourth Critical Link conference. The book is a well-balanced mix of academic research and texts of a more practical, professional character.The introducing article explicitly addresses the issue of professionalism and how this has been dealt with in research on interpreting. The following two sections provide examples of recent research, applying various theoretical approaches. Section four reports on the development of current, more or less local standards. Section five raises issues of professional ideology. The final section tells about new training initiatives and programmes. All contributions were selected because of their relevance to the theme of professionalisation of interpreting in the community.
The volume is the fourth in a series, documenting the advance of a whole new empirical and professional field. It is of central interest for all people involved in this development, interpreters, researchers, trainers and others.
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The Critical Link 5
More LessThe current volume contains selected papers submitted after Critical Link 5 (Sydney 2007) and arises from its topic – quality interpreting being a communal responsibility of all the participants. It takes the much discussed theme of professionalisation of community interpreting to a new level by stating that achieving quality depends not only on the technical skills and ethics of interpreters, but equally upon all other parties that serve multilingual populations: speakers, employers and administrators, educational institutions, researchers, and interpreters. Major articles outline both innovative practices in legal and medical settings and prevailing deficiencies in community interpreting in different countries. While Part I, A shared responsibility: The policy dimension, addresses the macro environment of specific social policy contexts with constrains that affect interpreting, Part II, Investigations and innovations in quality interpreting, reveals a number of admirable cases of interpreters working together with their client institutions in a variety of social settings. Part III is dedicated to the questions of Pedagogy, ethics and responsibility in interpreting. The collection is an important reference book catering to the interpreting community: interpreting practitioners and interpreter users, researchers, educators, and students.
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The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community
More LessWhat is community interpreting? What are the roles of the community interpreter? What are the standards, evaluation methods and accreditation procedures pertaining to community interpreting? What training is available or required in this field? What are the current issues and practices in community interpreting in different parts of the world? These key questions, discussed at the first international conference on community interpreting, are addressed in this collection of selected conference papers.
The merit of this volume is that it presents the first comprehensive and global view of a rapidly growing profession, which has developed out of the need to provide services to those who do not speak the official language(s) of a country. Both the problems and the successes related to the challenge of providing adequate community interpreting services in different countries are covered in this volume.
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Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting
More LessAt conferences and in the literature on community interpreting there is one burning issue that reappears constantly: the interpreter’s role. What are the norms by which the facilitators of communication shape their role? Is there indeed only one role for the community interpreter or are there several? Is community interpreting aimed at facilitating communication, empowering individuals by giving them a voice or, in wider terms, at redressing the power balance in society? In this volume scholars and practitioners from different countries address these questions, offering a representative sample of ongoing research into community interpreting in the Western world, of interest to all who have a stake in this form of interpreting. The opening chapter establishes the wider contextual and theoretical framework for the debate. It is followed by a section dealing with codes and standards and then moves on to explore the interpreter’s role in various different settings: courts and police, healthcare, schools, occupational settings and social services.
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Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations
More LessCrowdsourcing and online collaborative translations have emerged in the last decade to the forefront of Translation Studies as one of the most dynamic and unpredictable phenomena that has attracted a growing number of researchers. The popularity of this set of varied translational processes holds the potential to reframe existing translation theories, redefine a number of tenets in the discipline, advance research in the so-called “technological turn” and impact public perceptions on translation. This book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of these phenomena from a descriptive and critical perspective, delving into industry approaches and fostering inter and intra disciplinary connections between areas in which the impact is the greatest, such as cognitive translatology, translation technologies, quality and translation evaluation, sociological approaches, text-linguistic approaches, audiovisual translation or translation pedagogy. This book is of special interest to translation researchers, translation students, industry experts or anyone with an interest on how crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations relate to past, present and future research and theorizations in Translation Studies.
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De-/Re-Contextualizing Conference Interpreting
More LessThis groundbreaking study explores Simultaneous Conference Interpreting (SI) by focusing on interpreters as professionals working in socio-cultural contexts and on the interdependency between these contexts and actual SI behavior. While previous research on SI has been dominated by cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches, Diriker’s work explores SI in relation to the broader and more immediate socio-cultural contexts by investigating the representation of the profession(al) in the meta-discourse and by exploring the presence of interpreters and the nature of the interpreted utterance at an actual conference. Making use of participant observations, interviews and analysis of conference transcripts, Diriker challenges some of the widely held assumptions about SI. She suggests that the interpreter’s delivery represents not only the speaker but a multiplicity of speaker-positions, and that this multiplicity may well be a source of tension or vulnerability, as well as strength, for interpreters. Her analysis also highlights how interpreters negotiate meaning in SI, and underscores the need for more concerted efforts to explore SI in authentic contexts.
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Decentering Translation Studies
More LessThis book foregrounds practices and discourses of ‘translation’ in several non-Western traditions. Translation Studies currently reflects the historiography and concerns of Anglo-American and European scholars, overlooking the full richness of translational activities and diverse discourses. The essays in this book, which generally have a historical slant, help push back the geographical and conceptual boundaries of the discipline. They illustrate how distinctive historical, social and philosophical contexts have shaped the ways in which translational acts are defined, performed, viewed, encouraged or suppressed in different linguistic communities. The volume has a particular focus on the multiple contexts of translation in India, but also encompasses translation in Korea, Japan and South Africa, as well as representations of Sufism in different contexts.
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Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond
More LessThis edition has been replaced by a new edition and is no longer available for purchase.
A replacement of the author's well-known book on Translation Theory, In Search of a Theory of Translation (1980), this book makes a case for Descriptive Translation Studies as a scholarly activity as well as a branch of the discipline, having immediate consequences for issues of both a theoretical and applied nature. Methodological discussions are complemented by an assortment of case studies of various scopes and levels, with emphasis on the need to contextualize whatever one sets out to focus on. Part One deals with the position of descriptive studies within TS and justifies the author's choice to devote a whole book to the subject. Part Two gives a detailed rationale for descriptive studies in translation and serves as a framework for the case studies comprising Part Three. Concrete descriptive issues are here tackled within ever growing contexts of a higher level: texts and modes of translational behaviour — in the appropriate cultural setup; textual components — in texts, and through these texts, in cultural constellations. Part Four asks the question: What is knowledge accumulated through descriptive studies performed within one and the same framework likely to yield in terms of theory and practice?
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Descriptive Translation Studies – and beyond
More LessThis is an expanded and slightly revised version of the book of the same title which caused quite a stir when it was first published (1995). It thus reflects an additional step in an ongoing research project which was launched in the 1970s. The main objective is to transcend the limitations of using descriptive methods as a mere ancillary tool and place a proper branch of DTS at the very heart of the discipline, between the theoretical and the applied branches.
Throughout the book, theoretical and methodological discussions are illustrated by an assortment of case studies, the emphasis being on the need to take whatever one wishes to focus on within the contexts which are relevant to it.
Part One discusses the pivotal position of the descriptive branch within Translation Studies, and Part Two then outlines a detailed rationale for that positioning. This, in turn, supplies a framework for the case studies comprising Part Three, where a number of exemplary issues are analysed and contextualized: texts and modes of translational behaviour are situated in their cultural setting, and textual components are related to their texts and then also to the cultural constellations in which they are embedded. All this leads to Part Four, which asks what the knowledge accumulated through descriptive studies of the kind advocated in the book is likely to yield in terms of both the theoretical and the applied branches of the field.
All in all: an innovative, thought-provoking book which no one with a keen interest in translation can afford to ignore.
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Developing Translation Competence
More LessThis volume presents a comprehensive study of what constitutes Translation Competence, from the various sub-competences to the overall skill. Contributors combine experience as translation scholars with their experience as teachers of translation. The volume is organized into three sections: Defining, Building, and Assessing Translation Competence.
The chapters offer insights into the nature of translation competence and its place in the translation training programme in an academic environment and show how theoretical considerations have contributed to defining, building and assessing translation competence, offering practical examples of how this can be achieved.
The first section introduces major sub-competences, including linguistic, cultural, textual, subject, research, and transfer competence. The second section presents issues relating to course design, methodology and teaching practice. The third section reflects on criteria for quality assessment.
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