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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(Multi) Media Translation
More LessThe globalisation of communication networks has increased the domains of translation and is challenging ever more the translator’s role. This volume is a collection of contributions from two different conferences (Misano, 1997 and Berlin, 1998). (Multi)Media translation, especially screen translation (TV, cinema, video), has made more explicit the complexities of any communication and has led us to take a fresh look at the translator’s strategies and behaviours.Several papers ponder the concepts of media and multimedia, the necessity of interdisciplinarity, the polysemiotic dimension of audiovisual media. Quite a few discuss the current transformations in audiovisual media policy. A great many deal with practices, mainly in subtitling but also in interpreting for TV and surtitling: what are the quality parameters and the conditions to meet audience’s expectations?
Finally some show the cultural and linguistic implications of screen translation. Digitalisation is changing production and broadcasting and speeding up convergence between media, telecommunications and information and communication technology.
Is (multi)media translation a new field of study or an umbrella framework for scholars from various disciplines? Is it a trick to overcome the absence of prestige in Translation Studies? Or is it just a buzz word which gives rise to confusion? These questions remain open: the 26 contributions are partial answers.
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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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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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Memes of Translation
More LessPLEASE NOTE: THIS BOOK HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEW, REVISED EDITION.
Memes of Translation is a search for coherence in translation theory based on the notion of Memes: ideas that spread, develop and replicate, like genes. The author explores a wide range of ideas on translation, mapping the “meme pool” of translation theory with chapters on translation history, norms, strategies, assessment, ethics, and translator training. The aim of the book is to search for a perspective from which the immense variety of ideas about translation can be related.
The unifying thread is the philosophy of Karl Popper. The book proposes the beginnings of a Popperian theory of translation, based on the fundamental concepts of norms, strategies, and values. A key idea is that a translation itself is a theory or hypothesis concerning the source text. This hypothesis is then subjected to testing, refinement, and perhaps even rejection, just like any other hypothesis.
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The Discourse of Court Interpreting
More LessThis book explores the intricacies of court interpreting through a thorough analysis of the authentic discourse of the English-speaking participants, the Spanish-speaking witnesses and the interpreters. Written by a practitioner, educator and researcher, the book presents the reader with real issues that most court interpreters face during their work and shows through the results of careful research studies that interpreter’s choices can have varying degrees of influence on the triadic exchange. It aims to raise the practitioners’ awareness of the significance of their choices and attempts to provide a theoretical basis for interpreters to make informed decisions rather than intuitive ones. It also suggests solutions for common problems. The book highlights the complexities of court interpreting and argues for thorough training for practicing interpreters to improve their performance as well as for better understanding of their task from the legal profession. Although the data is drawn from Spanish-English cases, the main results can be extended to any language combination. The book is written in a clear, accessible language and is aimed at practicing interpreters, students and educators of interpreting, linguists and legal professionals.
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The Habsburg Monarchy's Many-Languaged Soul
More LessIn the years between 1848 and 1918, the Habsburg Empire was an intensely pluricultural space that brought together numerous “nationalities” under constantly changing – and contested – linguistic regimes. The multifaceted forms of translation and interpreting, marked by national struggles and extensive multilingualism, played a crucial role in constructing cultures within the Habsburg space. This book traces translation and interpreting practices in the Empire’s administration, courts and diplomatic service, and takes account of the “habitualized” translation carried out in everyday life. It then details the flows of translation among the Habsburg crownlands and between these and other European languages, with a special focus on Italian–German exchange. Applying a broad concept of “cultural translation” and working with sociological tools, the book addresses the mechanisms by which translation and interpreting constructs cultures, and delineates a model of the Habsburg Monarchy’s “pluricultural space of communication” that is also applicable to other multilingual settings.
Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
The e-book edition of this title is available as Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
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The Practice of Court Interpreting
More LessThe Practice of Court Interpreting describes how the interpreter works in the court room and other legal settings. The book discusses what is involved in court interpreting: case preparation, ethics and procedure, the creation and avoidance of error, translation and legal documents, tape transcription and translation, testifying as an expert witness, and continuing education outside the classroom.
The purpose of the book is to provide the interpreter with a map of the terrain and to suggest methods that will help insure an accurate result. The author, herself a practicing court interpreter, says: “The structure of the book follows the structure of the work as we do it.”
The book is intended as a basic course book, as background reading for practicing court interpreters and for court officials who deal with interpreters.
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Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas
More LessTwo are the starting points of this book. On the one hand, the use of Doña Marina/La Malinche as a symbol of the violation of the Americas by the Spanish conquerors as well as a metaphor of her treason to the Mexican people. On the other, the role of the translations of Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias in the creation and expansion of the Spanish Black Legend. The author aims to go beyond them by considering the role of translators and interpreters during the early colonial period in Spanish America and by looking at the translations of the Spanish chronicles as instrumental in the promotion of other European empires. The book discusses literary, religious and administrative documents and engages in a dialogue with other disciplines that can provide a more nuanced view of the role of translation, and of the mediators, during the controversial encounter/clash between Europeans and Amerindians.
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A History of Modern Translation Knowledge
More LessA History of Modern Translation Knowledge is the first attempt to map the coming into being of modern thinking about translation. It breaks with the well-established tradition of viewing history through the reductive lens of schools, theories, turns or interdisciplinary exchanges. It also challenges the artificial distinction between past and present and it sustains that the latter’s historical roots go back far beyond the 1970s. Translation Studies is but part of a broader set of discourses on translation we propose to label “translation knowledge”. This book concentrates on seven processes that make up the history of modern translation knowledge: generating, mapping, internationalising, historicising, analysing, disseminating and applying knowledge. All processes are covered by 58 domain experts and allocated over 55 chapters, with cross-references. This book is indispensable reading for advanced Master- and PhD-students in Translation Studies who need background information on the history of their field, with relevance for Europe, the Americas and large parts of Asia. It will also interest students and scholars working in cultural and social history.
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A World Atlas of Translation
More LessWhat do people think of translation in the different historical, cultural and linguistic traditions of the world? How many uses has translation been put to? How distant from one another are the concepts of translation found in the different traditions? These are some of the questions A World Atlas of Translation addresses. Its twenty-one reports give us pictures taken from the inside, both from traditions that are well represented in the literature and from the many that (for now) are not.
But the Atlas is not content with documenting – no map is this innocent. In fact, the wealth of information collected and made accessible by its reporters can be useful to gauge the dispersion of translation concepts across traditions. As you read its reports, the Atlas will keep asking “How far apart do these concepts look to you?” Finally and more ambitiously, the reports can help us test the hypothesis that a cross-cultural notion of translation exists. In this respect, the Atlas is mostly a proof of concept. It hopes to encourage further fact-based research in quest of a robust and compelling unifying notion of translation.
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Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation
More LessThis book deals with the (re)production of cohesion and coherence in translation. Building on the theories and methods of Translation Studies and Discourse Analysis it answers some basic, still much debated questions related to translational discourse production. Such a question is whether it is possible to analyse the (re)production of coherence, and if yes, how? Can the models devised for the study of English original (not translated) and independent texts (unlike translations and their sources) be applied for the analysis of translation? How do cohesive, rhetorical and generic structure “behave” in translation? How do particular components of coherence relate to translation universals? The volume proposes a complex translational discourse analysis model and presents findings that bring new insights primarily for the study of news translation, translation strategies and translation universals. It is recommended for translation researchers, discourse analysts, practicing translators, as well as professionals and students involved in translator training.
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Be(com)ing a Conference Interpreter
More LessThis study offers a novel view of Conference Interpreting by looking at EU interpreters as a professional community of practice. In particular, Duflou’s work focuses on the nature of the competence conference interpreters working for the European Parliament and the European Commission need to acquire in order to cope with their professional tasks. Making use of observation as a member of the community, in-depth interviews and institutional documents, she explores the link between the specificity of the EU setting and the knowledge and skills required. Her analysis of the learning experiences of newcomers in the professional community shows that EU interpreters’ competence is to a large extent context-dependent and acquired through situated learning. In addition, it highlights the various factors which have an impact on this learning process.
Using the way Dutch booth EU interpreters share the workload in the booth as a case, Duflou demonstrates the importance of mastering collaborative and embodied skills for EU interpreters. She thereby challenges the idea of interpreting competence from an individual, cognitive accomplishment and redefines it as the ability to apply the practical and setting-determined know-how required to function as a full member of the professional community.
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Border Crossings
More LessFor decades, Translation Studies has been perceived not merely as a discipline but rather as an interdiscipline, a trans-disciplinary field operating across a number of boundaries. This has implied and still implies a considerable amount of interaction with other disciplines. There is often much more awareness of and attention to translation and Translation Studies than many translation scholars are aware of. This volume crosses the boundaries to other disciplines and explicitly sets up dialogic formats: every chapter is co-authored both by a specialist from Translation Studies and a scholar from another discipline with a special interest in translation. Sixteen disciplinary dialogues about and around translation are the result, sometimes with expected partners, such as scholars from Computational Linguistics, History and Comparative Literature, but sometimes also with less expected interlocutors, such as scholars from Biosemiotics, Game Localization Research and Gender Studies. The volume not only challenges the boundaries of Translation Studies but also raises issues such as the institutional division of disciplines, the cross-fertilization of a given field, the trends and turns within an interdiscipline.
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Common Law in an Uncommon Courtroom
More LessThis book takes you into a common-law courtroom which is in no way similar to any other courtroom where common law is practised. This uniqueness is characterised, in particular, by the use of English as the trial language in a predominantly Cantonese-speaking society and by the presence of other bilinguals in court, thus presenting specific challenges for the interpreters who work in it, and at times rendering the interpretation service superfluous. This study, inter alia, problematises judges’ intervention in the court proceedings, Chinese witnesses testifying in English, as well as English-language trials heard by Chinese jurors. It demonstrates how the use of chuchotage proves to be inadequate and inappropriate in the Hong Kong courtroom, where interpreting in an English-language trial is arguably provided to cater for the need of the linguistic majority. This book is useful to interpreters, language educators, legal professionals, forensic linguists and policy makers alike.
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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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Explicitation in Consecutive Interpreting
More LessExplicitation has been studied as a Translation Universal in corpus-based translation studies by several scholars, yet its features in interpreting have only been mildly touched upon. Given the obvious differences between translation and interpreting, it is worthwhile exploring whether explicitation has any distinct features in interpreting.
This study offers a novel view of explicitation in consecutive interpreting (CI) by investigating the effects of interpreters’ professional experience and interpreting direction on interpreters’ explicitation patterns. It not only validates but also quantifies the differences in explicitation patterns between professional and student interpreters as well as between interpreting from A (Chinese) to B (English) language and vice versa. The established theoretical frameworks (including a typology framework and a process-oriented explanatory framework) and the data collected from various channels may provide methodological and empirical support for further studies on explicitation or other shifts occurring in interpreting. The tendencies and principles of explicitation identified by the study may also shed light on the training of CI.
This volume is intended to act as a useful reference for scholars, practitioners, interpreters, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and anyone who shows interest in explicitation, interpreting expertise, interpreting directionality and interpreting training.
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Eye Tracking and Multidisciplinary Studies on Translation
More LessThrough cohesive yet wide-ranging contributions focused on the rapidly growing area of eye tracking in Translation Studies, this volume provides readers with an insightful cross-section of the state of the art in this multidisciplinary field. Showcasing the great potential and challenges of this still nascent paradigm, it offers novel, practical methods and approaches to conduct ambitious, experimental studies. Through a variety of methodologically-oriented chapters and case studies, categorised into three key areas – ‘Method’, ‘Process’ and ‘Product’ –, the book presents some of the most up-to-date eye-tracking methods and results in Translation Studies, including experiment design, statistical and analytical approaches, the translation process, audience and reader response, and audiovisual translation. The reproducible research protocols, re-iterative approaches and ambitious triangulations of data included in this volume seek to inspire new research using eye tracking in Translation Studies by providing the necessary methodological support and ideas for new avenues of inquiry.
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Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology
More LessIsn’t translation all about saying exactly the same thing in another language? Aren’t national images totally outdated in this era of globalization? Most people might agree but this book amply illustrates how persistent and multifaceted clichés on translation and nation can be. Time and again, translating involves making transfer choices and these choices are never neutral. Though globalization has seemingly all but erased national ideologies and cultural borders, such ideologies and borders continue to play a determining role in conflicts, identity politics and cultural profiles.
The place where transfer choices and forms of national and cultural representation come together is also the place where Translation Studies and Imagology meet. This book offers a wealth of chapters showing how decisive selection and transfer processes can be in representing national images, both self-images and images of the other(s). It shows also how intensely the two disciplines can work together and mutually benefit from shared data and methodologies.
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Key Cultural Texts in Translation
More LessIn the context of increased movement across borders, this book examines how key cultural texts and concepts are transferred between nations and languages as well as across different media. The texts examined in this book are considered fundamental to their source culture and can also take on a particular relevance to other (target) cultures. The chapters investigate cultural transfers and differences realised through translation and reflect critically upon the implications of these with regard to matters of cultural identity. The book offers an important contribution to cultural approaches in translation studies, with ramifications across different disciplines, including literary studies, history, philosophy, and gender studies. The chapters offer a range of cultural and methodological frameworks and are written by scholars from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds, Western and Eastern.
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Memes of Translation
More LessThis revised edition of Memes of Translation includes updates that relate the book's themes to more recent research in Translation Studies. The book contributes to the debate about whether it is worth seeking a coherent theory of translation, by proposing an approach based on norms, strategies and values, which are all seen as kinds of memes, i.e. ideas that spread. The meme metaphor allows us to see translation in the context of cultural evolution, and also highlights similarities with the philosopher Karl Popper's analysis of another kind of evolution: that of scientific knowledge. A translation is, after all, itself a theory – a theory about the source text. And as Popper stressed, theories of all kinds are like nets we make in order to catch something of reality: never perfectly, but always in the hope of better understanding.
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New Insights in the History of Interpreting
More LessWho mediated intercultural exchanges in 9th-century East Asia or in early voyages to the Americas? Did the Soviets or the Americans invent simultaneous interpreting equipment? How did the US government train its first Chinese interpreters? Why is it that Taiwanese interpreters were executed for Japanese war crimes? Bringing together papers from an international symposium held at Rikkyo University in 2014 along with two select pieces, this volume pursues such questions in an eclectic exploration of the practice of interpreting, the recruitment of interpreters, and the challenges interpreters have faced in diplomacy, colonization, religion, war, and occupation. It also introduces innovative use of photography, artifacts, personal journals, and fiction as tools for the historical study of interpreters and interpreting. Targeted at practitioners, scholars, and students of interpreting, translation, and history, the new insights presented in the ten original articles aim to spark discussion and research on the vital roles interpreters have played in intercultural communication through history.
Now Open Access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched 2017 Backlist Collection.
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Non-professional Interpreting and Translation
More LessIn the light of recent waves of mass immigration, non-professional interpreting and translation (NPIT) is spreading at an unprecedented pace. While as recently as the late 20th century much of the field was a largely uncharted territory, the current proportions of NPIT suggest that the phenomenon is here to stay and needs to be studied with all due academic rigour.
This collection of essays is the first systematic attempt at looking at NPIT in a scholarly and at the same time pragmatic way. Offering multiple methods and perspectives, and covering the diverse contexts in which NPIT takes place, the volume is a welcome turn in an all too often polarized debate in both academic and practitioner circles.
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Psycholinguistic and Cognitive Inquiries into Translation and Interpreting
More LessPsycholinguistic and Cognitive Inquiries into Translation and Interpreting presents perspectives and original studies that aim to diversify traditional approaches in translation and interpreting research and improve the quality and generalizability of the field. The volume is divided into two parts: Part I includes an introductory discussion on the input of psycholinguistics and cognitive science to translation and interpreting along with two state-of-the-art chapters that discuss valid experimental designs while critically reviewing and building on existing work. Part II subsequently presents original studies which explore the performance of expert and novice translators using a variety of methodologies such as eye tracking, keystroke logging, retrospective protocols, and post-editing machine translation. It also presents contributions for exploratory studies on interpreting and for testing several constructs such as language competence and the role of expertise, redundancy, and working memory capacity. This volume is intended to act as a valuable reference for scholars, practitioners, translators, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and anyone wishing to gain an overview of current issues in translation and interpreting from psycholinguistic and cognitive domains.
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Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation
More LessThe coming of age of audiovisual translation studies has brought about a much-needed surge of studies focusing on the audience, their comprehension, appreciation or rejection of what reaches them through the medium of translation. Although complex to perform, studies on the reception of translated audiovisual texts offer a uniquely thorough picture of the life and afterlife of these texts. This volume provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of reception studies related to audiovisual translation and accessibility, from a diachronic and synchronic perspective. Focusing on all audiovisual translation techniques and encompassing theoretical and methodological approaches from translation, media and film studies, it aims to become a reference for students and scholars across these fields.
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Reembedding Translation Process Research
More LessReembedding Translation Process Research is a rich collection of empirical research papers investigating important new facets of the relationship between translation and cognition. The common thread running through the collection is the notion of “re-embedding” the acts of translating and interpreting—and the ways we understand them. That is, they all aim to re-situate these acts within what we now know about the brain, the powerful relationship of brain and body, and the complex interaction between cognition and the environment in which it is embedded. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the overall notion of re-embedding, thereby expanding the breadth of empirical research about translating. This book refuses Descartes' distinction between mind and brain, and reaffirms the highly dynamic, emergent, and interactive nature of cognitive processes in translation. The overarching conclusion is that translation studies should reconsider, re-embed, any model of translation processes that arises without properly accommodating the interdependence of brain, body, and environment in the emergence of cognition.
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Reflections on Translation Theory
More LessOriginally published in different journals and collected volumes, these papers in conceptual analysis cover some central topics in translation theory and research: types of theory and hypothesis; causality and explanation; norms, strategies and so-called universals; translation sociology, and ethics. There are critical reviews of Catford’s theory, and of Skopos theory, and of Kundera’s views on literary translation, and detailed analyses of the literal translation hypothesis and the unique items hypothesis. The methodological discussions, which draw on work in the philosophy of science, will be of special relevance to younger researchers, for example those starting work on a doctorate. Some of the arguments and positions defended – for instance on the significant status of conceptual, interpretive hypotheses, and the ideal of consilience – relate to wider ongoing debates, and will interest any scholar who is concerned about the increasing fragmentation of the field and about the future of Translation Studies. Let the dialogue continue!
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Researching Translation Competence by PACTE Group
More LessThis volume is a compendium of PACTE Group’s experimental research in Translation Competence since 1997. The book is organised in four main parts and also includes eight appendices and a glossary. Part I presents the conceptual and methodological framework of PACTE’s Translation Competence research design. Part II focuses on the methodological aspects of the research design and its development: exploratory tests and pilot studies carried out; experiment design; characteristics of the sample population; procedures of data collection and analysis. Part III presents the results obtained in the experiment related to: the Acceptability of the translations produced in the experiment and the six dependent variables of study (Knowledge of Translation; Translation Project; Identification and Solution of Translation Problems; Decision-making; Efficacy of the Translation Process; Use of Instrumental Resources); this part also includes a corpus analysis of the translations. Part IV analyses the translators who were ranked highest in the experiment and goes on to present final conclusions as well as PACTE’s perspectives in the field of Translation Competence research.
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Teaching Dialogue Interpreting
More LessTeaching Dialogue Interpreting is one of the very few book-length contributions that cross the research-to-training boundary in dialogue interpreting. The volume is innovative in at least three ways. First, it brings together experts working in areas as diverse as business interpreting, court interpreting, medical interpreting, and interpreting for the media, who represent a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. Second, it addresses instructors and course designers in higher education, but may also be used for refresher courses and/or retraining of in-service interpreters and bilingual staff. Third, and most important, it provides a set of resources, which, while research driven, are also readily usable in the classroom – either together or separately – depending on specific training needs and/or research interests. The collection thus makes a significant contribution in curriculum design for interpreter education.
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Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation
More LessThe notion of voice has been used in a number of ways within Translation Studies. Against the backdrop of these different uses, this book looks at the voices of translators, authors, publishers, editors and readers both in the translations themselves and in the texts that surround these translations. The various authors go on a hunt for translational agents’ voice imprints in a variety of textual and contextual material, such as literary and non-literary translations, book reviews, newspaper articles, academic texts and e-mails. While all stick to the principle of studying text and context together, the different contributions also demonstrate how specific textual and contextual circumstances require adapted methodological solutions, ending up in a collection that takes steps in a joint direction but that is at the same time complex and pluralistic.
The book is intended for scholars and students of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and other disciplines within Language and Literature.
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The Fictions of Translation
More LessIn The Fictions of Translation, emerging and seasoned scholars from a range of cultures bring fresh perspectives to bear on the age-old practice of translation. The current movement of people, knowledge and goods around the world has made intercultural communication both prevalent and indispensable. Consequently, the translator has become a more prominent figure and translation an increasingly present theme in works of literature. Embedding translation in a fictional setting and considering its most extreme forms – pseudotranslation or self-translation, for example – are fruitful ways of conceptualizing the act of translating and extending the boundaries of translation studies. Taken together, the various translational fictions examined in this collection yield new insights into questions of displacement, migration and hybridity, all characteristic of the modern world. The Fictions of Translation will thus be of interest to practising translators, students and scholars of translation and literary studies, as well as a more general readership.
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The Sign Language Interpreting Studies Reader
More LessIn Sign Language Interpreting (SLI) there is a great need for a volume devoted to classic and seminal articles and essays dedicated to this specific domain of language interpreting. Students, educators, and practitioners will benefit from having access to a collection of historical and influential articles that contributed to the progress of the global SLI profession. In SLI there is a long history of outstanding research and scholarship, much of which is now out of print, or was published in obscure journals, or featured in publications that are no longer in print. These readings are significant to the progression of SLI as an academic discipline and a profession. As the years have gone by, many of these readings have been lost to students, educators, and practitioners because they are difficult to locate or unavailable, or because this audience simply does not know they exist. This volume brings together the seminal texts in our field that document the philosophical, evidence-based and analytical progression of SLI work.
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Tradition,Tension and Translation in Turkey
More LessThe articles in this volume examine historical, cultural, literary and political facets of translation in Turkey, a society in tortuous transformation since the 19th century from empire to nation-state. Some draw attention to tradition in Ottoman practices and agents of translation and interpreting, while others explore the republican period, starting in 1923, with the revolutionary change in script from Arabic to Roman coming in 1928, making a powerful impact on publication and translation practices. Areas covered include the German Jewish academic involvement in translation, traditional and current practices of translating from Kurdish into Turkish, censorship of translated literature, intralingual translations from Ottoman into modern Turkish, pseudotranslation, ideological manipulation and resistance in translation, imitativeness vs. originality and metonymics of literary reviewing.
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Training the Translator
More LessThis book begins by investigating, through the use of think-aloud protocols, the mental processes of students when they translate. The creative and successful processes observed can be used directly for teaching purposes, while the unsuccessful ones can serve to find out where remedial training is needed. The book then goes on to discuss methods for improving a translator's competence. The strategies offered are based on the pragmatic and semantic analysis of texts from a functional point of view, and they include such practical matters as the use of dictionaries and the evaluation of translations and error analysis. The book is intended for teachers in translator-training institutions, but it can also be used by students for self-training.
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Translating in Linguistically Diverse Societies
More LessThis work is the first book-length treatment on translation policy. Nearly everywhere in the world, populations are multilingual and mobile; consequently, language policies developed by the authorities must include choices about the use or non-use of translation. This book recognizes that these choices (or the absence thereof) become policies of their own in terms of translation. It builds upon the work of scholars in the fields of translation studies and language planning and policy in order to develop a new theoretical perspective on translation policy. In essence, the book proposes that translation policy can be understood as the management, practice, and beliefs surrounding the use of translation. The book deals with these issues under European and international law and then explores such management, practice, and beliefs in the UK, as a case study. Ultimately, the reader can find a fuller appreciation of both the importance and complexity of translation policy.
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Translating the Female Self across Cultures
More LessTranslating the Female Self across Cultures examines contemporary autobiographical narratives and their Italian and French translations. The comparative analyses of the texts are underpinned by the latest developments in Translation Studies that place emphasis on identity construction in translation and the role of translation in moulding various types of identity. They focus on how the writers’ textual personae make sense of their sexual, artistic and post-colonial identities in relation to the mother and how the mother-daughter dyad survives translation into the Italian and French social, political and cultural contexts. The book shows how each target text activates different cultural literary, linguistic and rhetorical frames of reference which cast light on the facets of the protagonists’ quest for identity: the cult of the Madonna; humour and irony; gender and class; mimesis and storytelling; performativity and geographical sense of self. The book highlights the fruitfulness of studying women’s narratives and their translations, and the polyphonic dialogue between the translations and the literary and theoretical productions of the French and Italian cultures.
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Translation in Transition
More LessTranslation practice and workflows have witnessed significant changes during the last decade. New market demands to handle digital content as well as technological advances are leading this transition. The development and integration of machine translation systems have given post-editing practices a reason to be in the context of professional translation services. Translators may still work from a source text, but more often than not they are presented with already translated text involving different degrees of translation automation. This scenario radically changes the cognitive demands of translation.
Technological development has inevitably influenced the translation research agenda as well. It has provided new means of penetrating deeper into the cognitive processes that make translation possible and has endorsed new concepts and theories to understand the translation process. Computational analysis of eye movements and keystroke behaviour provides us with new insights into translational reading, processes of literality, effects of directionality, similarities between inter- and intralingual translation, as well as the effects of post-editing on cognitive processes and on the quality of the final outcome.
All of these themes are explored in-depth in the articles in this volume which presents new and valuable insights to anyone interested in what is currently happening in empirical, process-oriented translation research.
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Translation of Autobiography
More LessThis book presents an interdisciplinary study that straddles four academic fields, namely, autobiography, stylistics, narratology and translation studies. It shows that foregrounding is manifested in the language of autobiography, alerting readers to an authorial tone with certain ideological affiliations. In refuting the presumed conflation between the author, narrator and character in autobiography, the study emphasizes readers’ role in constructing an implied author. The issues of implied translator, assumed translation and rewriting are explored through a comparative analysis of the English and Chinese autobiographies by Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew. The analysis identifies different foregrounding practices and attributes these differences to an implied translator. Further evidence derived from narrative-communicative situations in the two autobiographies underscores divergent personae of the implied authors. The study aims to establish a deeper understanding of how translation and rewriting have a far-reaching impact on the self- and world-making functions of autobiography. This book will be of special interest to scholars and students of linguistics, literature, translation and political science.
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Advances in Interpreting Research
More LessWith the growing emphasis on scholarship in interpreting, this collection tackles issues critical to the inquiry process — from theoretical orientations in Interpreting Studies to practical considerations for conducting a research study. As a landmark volume, it charts new territory by addressing a range of topics germane to spoken and signed language interpreting research. Both provocative and pragmatic, this volume captures the thinking of an international slate of interpreting scholars including Daniel Gile, Franz Pöchhacker, Debra Russell, Barbara Moser-Mercer, Melanie Metzger, Cynthia Roy, Minhua Liu, Jemina Napier, Lorraine Leeson, Jens Hessmann, Graham Turner, Eeva Salmi, Svenja Wurm, Rico Peterson, Robert Adam, Christopher Stone, Laurie Swabey and Brenda Nicodemus. Experienced academics will find ideas to stimulate their passion and commitment for research, while students will gain valuable insights within its pages. This new volume is essential reading for anyone involved in interpreting research.
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Agents of Translation
More LessAgents of Translation contains thirteen case studies by internationally recognized scholars in which translation has been used as a way of influencing the target culture and furthering literary, political and personal interests.
The articles describe Francisco Miranda, the “precursor” of Venezuelan independence, who promoted translations of works on the French Revolution and American independence; 19th century Brazilian translations of articles taken from the Révue Britannique about England; Ahmed Midhat, a late 19th century Turkish journalist who widely translated from Western languages; Henry Vizetelly , who (unsuccessfully) attempted to introduce the works of Zola to a wider public in Victorian Britain; and Henry Bohn, who, also in Victorian Britain, (successfully) published a series of works from the classics, many of which were expurgated; Yukichi Fukuzawa, whose adaptation of a North American geography textbook in the Meiji period promoted the concept of the superiority of the Japanese over their Asian neighbours; Samuli Suomalainen and Juhani Konkka, whose translations helped establish Finnish as a literary language; Hasan Alî Yücel, the Turkish Minister of Education, who set up the Turkish Translation Bureau in 1939; the Senegalese intellectual, Cheikh Anta Diop, whose work showed that the Ancient Egyptians had African rather than Indo-European roots; the Centro Cultural de Évora theatre group, which introduced Brecht and other contemporary drama into Portugal after the 1974 Carnation Revolution; 20th century Argentine translators of poetry; Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, who have brought translation to the forefront of literary activity in Brazil; and, finally, translators of Bosnian poetry, many of whom work in exile.
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An Approach to Translation Criticism
More LessLance Hewson's book on translation criticism sets out to examine ways in which a literary text may be explored as a translation, not primarily to judge it, but to understand where the text stands in relation to its original by examining the interpretative potential that results from the translational choices that have been made. After considering theoretical aspects of translation criticism, Hewson sets out a method of analysing originals and their translations on three different levels. Tools are provided to describe translational choices and their potential effects, and applied to two corpora: Flaubert's Madame Bovary and six of the English translations, and Austen's Emma, with three of the French translations. The results of the analyses are used to construct a hypothesis about each translation, which is classified according to two scales of measurement, one distinguishing between "just" and "false" interpretations, and the other between "divergent similarity", "relative divergence", "radical divergence" and "adaptation".
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Audio Description
More LessAudio description (AD) is a narrative technique which provides complementary information regarding the where, who, what and how of any audiovisual content. It translates the visuals into words. The principal function of this ad hoc narrative is to make audiovisual content available to all: be it a guided city tour of Barcelona, a 3D film, or a Picasso painting. Audio description is one of the younger siblings of Audiovisual Translation, and it is epigonic to the audiovisual translation modality chosen. This book is the first volume on the topic written in English and it brings together an international team of leading audio description teachers, scholars, and practitioners to address the basic issues regarding audio description strategies. Using one stimulus, Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds (2009), the authors analysed what, when, where and how to audio describe. The book is written in a collaborative effort, following a bottom up approach. The many issues that surfaced in the process of the analysis were grouped in broader categories represented in the ten chapters this book contains. A good example of a successful international collaboration, the volume sets a robust practical and theoretical framework for the many studies on audio description to come in the future. Considering the structure of the individual contributions, the book is not only oriented towards the identification of the challenges that await the describer, but it also offers an insight into their possible solutions.
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Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training
More LessBasic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training is a systematically corrected, enhanced and updated avatar of a book (1995) which is widely used in T&I training programmes worldwide and widely quoted in the international Translation Studies community. It provides readers with the conceptual bases required to understand both the principles and recurrent issues and difficulties in professional translation and interpreting, guiding them along from an introduction to fundamental communication issues in translation to a discussion of the usefulness of research about Translation, through discussions of loyalty and fidelity issues, translation and interpreting strategies and tactics and underlying norms, ad hoc knowledge acquisition, sources of errors in translation, T&I cognition and language availability. It takes on board recent developments as reflected in the literature and spells out and discusses links between practices and concepts in T&I and concepts and theories from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics.
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Between Text and Image
More LessOver the past decade interest in research on screen translation has increased sharply while at the same time fast moving technological breakthroughs are continually modifying and renewing both products and well-established methods of linguistic mediation. Thus, as more scholars choose to devote their energies to investigating this multi-faceted field, there is an ever-growing need to map out where the discipline stands and where it is going in terms of research.
This book sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and at the same time to underscore the work of scholars following new paths of investigation both in terms of innovative linguistic mediations being examined and pioneering experimental design.
The volume includes descriptions of sophisticated electronic databases and corpora of audiovisual products for the big and small screen, and the rationale behind them, e.g. how they are created and programmed for querying; technical limitations; homogeneity in querying languages. Furthermore, Between Text and Image also includes a number of cutting edge studies in audience perception of audiovisual products, i.e. empirically based viewer centred studies which are still rare yet essential if we wish to gain a thorough understanding of the field.
Finally, the volume does not fail to ignore examples of original research carried out from both a traditional linguistic viewpoint and from a more cultural perspective.
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Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies
More LessTo go “beyond” the work of a leading intellectual is rarely an unambiguous tribute. However, when Gideon Toury founded Descriptive Translation Studies as a research-based discipline, he laid down precisely that intellectual challenge: not just to describe translation, but to explain it through reference to wider relations. That call offers at once a common base, an open and multidirectional ambition, and many good reasons for unambiguous tribute. The authors brought together in this volume include key players in Translation Studies who have responded to Toury’s challenge in one way or another. Their diverse contributions address issues such as the sociology of translators, contemporary changes in intercultural relations, the fundamental problem of defining translations, the nature of explanation, and case studies including pseudotranslation in Renaissance Italy, Sherlock Holmes in Turkey, and the coffee-and-sugar economy in Brazil. All acknowledge Translation Studies as a research-based space for conceptual coherence and creativity; all seek to explain as well as describe. In this sense, we believe that Toury’s call has been answered beyond expectations.
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Bridging the Gap
More LessInterpreting has been a neglected area since the late 1970s. Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer have attempted to give a new impulse to academic research in print with this collection of 30 articles discussing various aspects of interpreting grouped in 3 sections: I. Pedagogical issues, II. Simultaneous interpretation, III. Neuropsychological research.Being a professional interpreter may not be sufficient to explain what interpretation is all about and how it should be practised and taught. The purpose of this collection of reports on non-arbitrary, empirical research of simultaneous and sign-language interpretation, designed to bridge the gap between vocational and scientific aspects of an interpreter’s skills, is to show that the study of conference interpretation, by way of scientific experimental methods, as tedious and speculative as they may often appear, is bound to contribute significantly to general knowledge in this field and have tangible and practical repercussions. The contributors are specialists from all over the world. Introduction by Barbara Moser-Mercer.
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Challenging the Traditional Axioms
More LessTranslation into a non-mother tongue or inverse translation, especially of literary texts, has always been frowned upon within Translation Studies in Western cultures and regarded by literary scholars and linguists as an activity of dubious worth, doomed to fail. The study, which received an award from EST in 2001, sets out to challenge the established view and to critically question some of the axiomatic assumptions of Western theorists. Its challenge is supported by extensive empirical research involving reader response to translations of specific literary texts. The conclusion reached is that the quality of the translation, its fluency and acceptability in the target language environment depend primarily on the as yet undetermined individual abilities of the particular translator, his/her translation strategy and knowledge of the source and target cultures, and not on his/her mother tongue or the direction in which s/he is translating.
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Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies
More LessThe volume contains a selection of papers, both theoretical and empirical, from the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) Congress held in Copenhagen in September 2001. The EST Congresses, held every three years in a different country, reflect current ideas, theories and studies covering the whole range of "Translation", both oral and written, and the papers collected here, authored by both experienced and young translation scholars, provide an up-to-date picture of some concerns in the field.
Topics covered include translation universals, linguistic approaches to translation, translation strategies, quality and assessment issues, screen translation, the translation of humor, terminological issues, translation and related professions, translation and ideology, language brokering by children, Robert Schumann’s relation to translation, directionality in translation and interpreting, community interpreting in Italy, issues in interpreting for refugees, notes in consecutive interpreting, interpreting prosody, and frequent weaknesses in translation papers in the context of the editorial process.
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Classical Spanish Drama in Restoration English (1660–1700)
More LessFrom 1660 to c 1700, England set her eyes on Spain and on the seventeenth-century Spanish comedy of intrigue with an aim to import new plots and characters that might appeal to the Anglo-Saxon audience. As a consequence, Hispanic drama in translation enjoyed a period of relative popularity never to be repeated until the turn of the twenty-first century. By analysing a corpus of translated classical Spanish plays intended for performance, this book aims to show the strategies chosen by the translators concerned. Hence, many aspects present in the source texts are naturalized in order to meet the demands of the target culture, while others are kept to clarify the “Spanishness” of the text. This study draws significant conclusions on the validity of these mechanisms within the specific framework of Drama Translation Studies. This volume will be of interest to Hispanists, drama translation scholars and theatre practitioners.
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Comparative Stylistics of French and English
More LessThe Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais has become a standard text in the French-speaking world for the study of comparative stylistics and the training of translators. This updated, first English edition makes Vinay & Darbelnet's classic methodology of translation available to a wider readership. The translation-oriented contrastive grammatical and stylistic analyses of the two languages are extensively exemplified by expressions, phrases and texts. Combining description with methodological guidelines for translation, this volume serves both as a course book and ­ through its detailed index and glossary ­ as a reference manual for specific translation problems.
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