When choirs sing in languages unknown to most of their members, they are faced with the questions... more When choirs sing in languages unknown to most of their members, they are faced with the questions: what do these words mean, and how do I pronounce them? Translation theory can help provide practical phonetic and semantic aids to choir members. Catford’s notions of phonological translation and transliteration are extended to solve the phonetic problem. The semantic problem is solved by writing multiple translations into the singers’ scores.
The gradual introduction of Translation Memory in translation workplaces, starting in the late 19... more The gradual introduction of Translation Memory in translation workplaces, starting in the late 1990s, has created a classic industrial conflict. Managers and clients of translation services want to increase productivity, but translators do not want to be told how to produce translations, and they do not want to see their incomes reduced. While the technical features of Memory programs certainly cause dissatisfaction, all technologies have defects, and a key question then is who decides how to deal with these defects-translators? or managers and clients? As a result, policies on the use of Memory in a workplace become crucial. There are objective policy questions: Are translators' productivity requirements increased when Memory is introduced? Do translators receive less pay for matches found in the Memory database? Is the translator allowed to search the Memory database? Then there is the subjective aspect: how do translators feel about their own experience of whatever is objectively happening? Do they feel they are in control of the texts they are producing? Are technologies increasing or decreasing their satisfaction with their working lives? Do they have a sense of losing the ability to compose their own translations or are they equally happy to revise wordings proposed by Memory? Do they feel that use of these technologies is reducing or enhancing the status of translators in society? This article looks at some of these subjective matters, based on two surveys of Ontario translators conducted in 2011 and 2017.
In most synonym sets, there is a neutral item that does not belong to any particular style (poor ... more In most synonym sets, there is a neutral item that does not belong to any particular style (poor is neutral whereas impecunious and broke are not). In writings about sex, French has a neutral style but English does not. The English translations of two French autobiographies detailing the authors’ sex lives are presented and some of the translators’ strategies are discussed. These two cases are seen against the general background of style options available to translators. A translator’s approach to style can be theorized by comparison to the source text (use an equivalent style, use a different existing style, create a new style, use a default ‘translating style’) or by considering how the translator ‘voices’ the translation (use the voice of the source writer, the imagined future readers, the translator, or some other voice).
ABSTRACT Are book covers ‘intersemiotic translations’ of the texts they introduce, or are they be... more ABSTRACT Are book covers ‘intersemiotic translations’ of the texts they introduce, or are they better seen as marketing devices or freestanding art objects? And if the cover of a book does reflect the text, will the cover of a faithful interlingual translation do so also, or will it conflict with the translation? The first part of the article examines the covers of a few editions of two French autobiographies and their English translations. The pictorial and verbal elements on the covers of the French source texts appear to be consistent with each other and with the main text, whereas the covers of the English translations both contradict the main text and show inconsistencies between wordings on a single cover and between wordings and imagery. The second part of the article applies five criteria for deciding whether the covers should be seen as intersemiotic translations.
This semi-autobiographical article reflects on the discipline known as Translation Studies from t... more This semi-autobiographical article reflects on the discipline known as Translation Studies from the point of view of the author, who was a full-time Canadian government translator from 1974 to 2014, but also taught and wrote about translation. The narrative begins with the emergence of Translation Studies in Canada and in Europe and continues through the present neoliberal era, with reflection on a variety of topics including the English name of the discipline, the lack of definition of an object of study, the original role of the journal Meta, and the notion of translation as applied linguistics. The last section considers two fictive scenarios in which Translation Studies does not emerge, and translation is studied, right from the start, in ways much more closely linked to the translation profession, with a focus on translators rather than translations, and therefore on translational production rather than the analysis of completed translations.
Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation
Translation is typically thought of as conveying the meaning of a text written in another languag... more Translation is typically thought of as conveying the meaning of a text written in another language. However translators frequently engage in operations that do not start from textual meaning but from phonetic form, typographic form or some other formal feature of a text. In this article, I look at several such operations, and how they are used in handling proper names, numerical expressions, text in a third language, so-called untranslatable words, passages of uncertain meaning, and poetry, as well as their use in translation studies and linguistics journals, and in pronunciation guides for tourists and for choirs singing in languages unknown to their members. I also briefly consider operations that are based on the form of non-linguistic text elements.
Bajaj, Bettina. 2009. “Meaning.” In The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by J. ... more Bajaj, Bettina. 2009. “Meaning.” In The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by J. Munday, 206–207. London: Routledge. Barnett, Ronald. 2016. Understanding the University: Institution, Idea, Possibilities. London: Routledge. Chesterman, Andrew. 2010. “Skopos Theory: A Retrospective Assessment.” In Perspektiven auf Kommunikation. Festschrift für Liisa Tittula zum 60, edited by W. Kallmeyer et al., 209–225. Geburtstag. Berlin: SAXA Verlag. Accessed August 4, 2016. http://www.helsinki.fi/~chesterm/ 2010a.skopos.html. Cronin, Michael. 2016. Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London: Routledge. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Edmund Wilson, ed. 1993. The Crack Up. New York: New Directions. Gentzler, Edwin. 2001. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Katan, David. 2009. “Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of the Great Divide.” Hermes 42: 111–153. Katan, David. 2011. “Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translators’World.” In Profession, Identity and Status: Translators and Interpreters as an Occupational Group, edited by R. SelaSheffy and M. Shlesinger, 187–209. Amsterdam: Benjamin. Levy, Jirí. 1967. “Translation as a Decision-Making Process.” In To Honor Roman Jakobson, Vol. 2, 1171–1182. The Hague: Mouton. Tannen, Deborah. 1998. The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words. New York, NY: Ballantine. Vandeweghe, Willy, UGent Sonia Vandepitte, and Marc Van de Velde. 2007. “A Linguistic ‘Return’ in Translation Studies?” Belgian Journal of Linguistics 21: 1–9. Venuti, Lawrence. 1996. “Translation as a Social Practice: Or, the Violence of Translation.” Translation Perspectives 9: 195–213.
There has recently been an upsurge of articles about 'intralingual translation': producin... more There has recently been an upsurge of articles about 'intralingual translation': producing a version of a medical document that will be suitable for a lay readership or updating the language of classic literary texts. It is argued here that updating and dialect rewording are really instances of interlingual work, while preparing plain-language derived texts for lay readerships is so different from interlingual work that the word ‘translation’ should not be used. Such intralingual work differs procedurally, formally and in particular functionally from interlingual work. The main function of those preparing such texts is to explain or to make a text more readable, whereas most translators spend most of their time engaged in ‘equivalencing’: producing a target-language wording which they think means more or less the same as the corresponding passage in the source text. Translating is best seen as invariance-oriented work between languages, with non-equivalencing activities playing a minor though important ro...
ABSTRACT It is argued that a central object of translation studies should be the mental stance of... more ABSTRACT It is argued that a central object of translation studies should be the mental stance of translators who spend most of their time trying to produce wordings which they hope will be taken by readers to mean more or less whatever they think the source means. These translators are oriented toward sameness of meaning except in a few passages where they vary meaning to make their translations receivable. Adoption of this object of study will bring the field in line with most work in the global translation industry. It will avoid a situation where this approach to translation is shunted into the background of our field, in favour of “difference”.
Dans leur declaration commune, Andrew Chesterman et Rosemary Arrojo ont observe un ecart entre de... more Dans leur declaration commune, Andrew Chesterman et Rosemary Arrojo ont observe un ecart entre deux approches de la traductologie : l'approche avec un paradigme culturel base sur le texte et l'approche empirique orientee vers la description du domaine. Afin de reduire cet ecart, ils ont tente de trouver un terrain commun entre les deux approches. Dans cette note, l'A. repond a Chesterman et Arrojo en demandant pourquoi il faut chercher un terrain commun entre differentes approches de la traductologie, car, selon lui, le seul terrain commun en traductologie est d'ordre pratique et non pas theorique : il s'agit de l'activite economique de la traduction
... their own views; it is simply a matter of them noting conflicting viewpoints.(When they summa... more ... their own views; it is simply a matter of them noting conflicting viewpoints.(When they summarize articles, the summaries should be analytical rather than critical.) There is ... Bassnett, Susan (1980)Translation Studies. ... Chesterman, Andrew (1989) Readings in Translation Theory. ...
The article discusses events that motivated or de-motivated one translator working in a governmen... more The article discusses events that motivated or de-motivated one translator working in a government setting over a period of two weeks, based on a diary. The disadvantages of diary-keeping are discussed, as are its possible advantages over questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The diary entries are compared to lists of motivators and de-motivators prepared by two translators four months before the diary was started.
A method is suggested whereby translators can state their beliefs about the meaning of the source... more A method is suggested whereby translators can state their beliefs about the meaning of the source text and their intentions about the wording of the translation. The method involves inserting items from a vocabulary into the translation as it is produced. The vocabulary consists of descriptors for various ways of producing language. Several examples are discussed: ventriloquising, quoting, fudging, guessing, explicitating, fictionising, fabricating and glossing. These words express states of mind of the translator which are not accessible to external observers. Some uses of the method are suggested.
: Translating is here defined as the quoting, in sequential chunks, of the wording of a written, ... more : Translating is here defined as the quoting, in sequential chunks, of the wording of a written, oral or signed text, with an imitative purpose. These features distinguish it from other sorts of language activity — intralingual paraphrasing, re-expressing of ideas, fictive quoting, speaking from a script, ghostwriting — and thus provide an object for a theory of translation production. The defining feature 'quoting ' is taken to involve demonstrating to someone selected features of the source text. Thus the translational quoter is engaged in a dual activity: quoting OF the source text (rendering work) and quoting TO the readers or listeners (pragmatic work). The texts commonly called translations arise from some combination of rendering, pragmatic and non-translational work. Résumé: On propose de définir l'acte de traduire comme le fait de citer, l'un après l'autre, et avec une visée imitative, les fragments et phrases qui constituent un texte écrit, oral ou signé. L'acte traductif se distingue ainsi d'autres types de production linguistique, comme la paraphrase intralinguale ou la ré-expression d'idées, et on parvient ainsi à définir l'objet d'une théorie de la production traductive. Le définisseur «citer» est à prendre dans le sens d'une démonstration de certains traits choisis du texte de départ. Le traducteur-citeur s'engage dans une activité à deux volets : citation DU texte de départ (il rend ce texte) et citation adressée AUX lecteurs ou auditeurs (travail pragmatique). Les textes communément appelés «traductions» sont produits par une combinaison de plusieurs sortes de travail linguistique: travail rendant le texte de départ, travail pragmatique, travail non traductif.
When choirs sing in languages unknown to most of their members, they are faced with the questions... more When choirs sing in languages unknown to most of their members, they are faced with the questions: what do these words mean, and how do I pronounce them? Translation theory can help provide practical phonetic and semantic aids to choir members. Catford’s notions of phonological translation and transliteration are extended to solve the phonetic problem. The semantic problem is solved by writing multiple translations into the singers’ scores.
The gradual introduction of Translation Memory in translation workplaces, starting in the late 19... more The gradual introduction of Translation Memory in translation workplaces, starting in the late 1990s, has created a classic industrial conflict. Managers and clients of translation services want to increase productivity, but translators do not want to be told how to produce translations, and they do not want to see their incomes reduced. While the technical features of Memory programs certainly cause dissatisfaction, all technologies have defects, and a key question then is who decides how to deal with these defects-translators? or managers and clients? As a result, policies on the use of Memory in a workplace become crucial. There are objective policy questions: Are translators' productivity requirements increased when Memory is introduced? Do translators receive less pay for matches found in the Memory database? Is the translator allowed to search the Memory database? Then there is the subjective aspect: how do translators feel about their own experience of whatever is objectively happening? Do they feel they are in control of the texts they are producing? Are technologies increasing or decreasing their satisfaction with their working lives? Do they have a sense of losing the ability to compose their own translations or are they equally happy to revise wordings proposed by Memory? Do they feel that use of these technologies is reducing or enhancing the status of translators in society? This article looks at some of these subjective matters, based on two surveys of Ontario translators conducted in 2011 and 2017.
In most synonym sets, there is a neutral item that does not belong to any particular style (poor ... more In most synonym sets, there is a neutral item that does not belong to any particular style (poor is neutral whereas impecunious and broke are not). In writings about sex, French has a neutral style but English does not. The English translations of two French autobiographies detailing the authors’ sex lives are presented and some of the translators’ strategies are discussed. These two cases are seen against the general background of style options available to translators. A translator’s approach to style can be theorized by comparison to the source text (use an equivalent style, use a different existing style, create a new style, use a default ‘translating style’) or by considering how the translator ‘voices’ the translation (use the voice of the source writer, the imagined future readers, the translator, or some other voice).
ABSTRACT Are book covers ‘intersemiotic translations’ of the texts they introduce, or are they be... more ABSTRACT Are book covers ‘intersemiotic translations’ of the texts they introduce, or are they better seen as marketing devices or freestanding art objects? And if the cover of a book does reflect the text, will the cover of a faithful interlingual translation do so also, or will it conflict with the translation? The first part of the article examines the covers of a few editions of two French autobiographies and their English translations. The pictorial and verbal elements on the covers of the French source texts appear to be consistent with each other and with the main text, whereas the covers of the English translations both contradict the main text and show inconsistencies between wordings on a single cover and between wordings and imagery. The second part of the article applies five criteria for deciding whether the covers should be seen as intersemiotic translations.
This semi-autobiographical article reflects on the discipline known as Translation Studies from t... more This semi-autobiographical article reflects on the discipline known as Translation Studies from the point of view of the author, who was a full-time Canadian government translator from 1974 to 2014, but also taught and wrote about translation. The narrative begins with the emergence of Translation Studies in Canada and in Europe and continues through the present neoliberal era, with reflection on a variety of topics including the English name of the discipline, the lack of definition of an object of study, the original role of the journal Meta, and the notion of translation as applied linguistics. The last section considers two fictive scenarios in which Translation Studies does not emerge, and translation is studied, right from the start, in ways much more closely linked to the translation profession, with a focus on translators rather than translations, and therefore on translational production rather than the analysis of completed translations.
Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation
Translation is typically thought of as conveying the meaning of a text written in another languag... more Translation is typically thought of as conveying the meaning of a text written in another language. However translators frequently engage in operations that do not start from textual meaning but from phonetic form, typographic form or some other formal feature of a text. In this article, I look at several such operations, and how they are used in handling proper names, numerical expressions, text in a third language, so-called untranslatable words, passages of uncertain meaning, and poetry, as well as their use in translation studies and linguistics journals, and in pronunciation guides for tourists and for choirs singing in languages unknown to their members. I also briefly consider operations that are based on the form of non-linguistic text elements.
Bajaj, Bettina. 2009. “Meaning.” In The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by J. ... more Bajaj, Bettina. 2009. “Meaning.” In The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by J. Munday, 206–207. London: Routledge. Barnett, Ronald. 2016. Understanding the University: Institution, Idea, Possibilities. London: Routledge. Chesterman, Andrew. 2010. “Skopos Theory: A Retrospective Assessment.” In Perspektiven auf Kommunikation. Festschrift für Liisa Tittula zum 60, edited by W. Kallmeyer et al., 209–225. Geburtstag. Berlin: SAXA Verlag. Accessed August 4, 2016. http://www.helsinki.fi/~chesterm/ 2010a.skopos.html. Cronin, Michael. 2016. Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London: Routledge. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Edmund Wilson, ed. 1993. The Crack Up. New York: New Directions. Gentzler, Edwin. 2001. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Katan, David. 2009. “Translation Theory and Professional Practice: A Global Survey of the Great Divide.” Hermes 42: 111–153. Katan, David. 2011. “Occupation or Profession: A Survey of the Translators’World.” In Profession, Identity and Status: Translators and Interpreters as an Occupational Group, edited by R. SelaSheffy and M. Shlesinger, 187–209. Amsterdam: Benjamin. Levy, Jirí. 1967. “Translation as a Decision-Making Process.” In To Honor Roman Jakobson, Vol. 2, 1171–1182. The Hague: Mouton. Tannen, Deborah. 1998. The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words. New York, NY: Ballantine. Vandeweghe, Willy, UGent Sonia Vandepitte, and Marc Van de Velde. 2007. “A Linguistic ‘Return’ in Translation Studies?” Belgian Journal of Linguistics 21: 1–9. Venuti, Lawrence. 1996. “Translation as a Social Practice: Or, the Violence of Translation.” Translation Perspectives 9: 195–213.
There has recently been an upsurge of articles about 'intralingual translation': producin... more There has recently been an upsurge of articles about 'intralingual translation': producing a version of a medical document that will be suitable for a lay readership or updating the language of classic literary texts. It is argued here that updating and dialect rewording are really instances of interlingual work, while preparing plain-language derived texts for lay readerships is so different from interlingual work that the word ‘translation’ should not be used. Such intralingual work differs procedurally, formally and in particular functionally from interlingual work. The main function of those preparing such texts is to explain or to make a text more readable, whereas most translators spend most of their time engaged in ‘equivalencing’: producing a target-language wording which they think means more or less the same as the corresponding passage in the source text. Translating is best seen as invariance-oriented work between languages, with non-equivalencing activities playing a minor though important ro...
ABSTRACT It is argued that a central object of translation studies should be the mental stance of... more ABSTRACT It is argued that a central object of translation studies should be the mental stance of translators who spend most of their time trying to produce wordings which they hope will be taken by readers to mean more or less whatever they think the source means. These translators are oriented toward sameness of meaning except in a few passages where they vary meaning to make their translations receivable. Adoption of this object of study will bring the field in line with most work in the global translation industry. It will avoid a situation where this approach to translation is shunted into the background of our field, in favour of “difference”.
Dans leur declaration commune, Andrew Chesterman et Rosemary Arrojo ont observe un ecart entre de... more Dans leur declaration commune, Andrew Chesterman et Rosemary Arrojo ont observe un ecart entre deux approches de la traductologie : l'approche avec un paradigme culturel base sur le texte et l'approche empirique orientee vers la description du domaine. Afin de reduire cet ecart, ils ont tente de trouver un terrain commun entre les deux approches. Dans cette note, l'A. repond a Chesterman et Arrojo en demandant pourquoi il faut chercher un terrain commun entre differentes approches de la traductologie, car, selon lui, le seul terrain commun en traductologie est d'ordre pratique et non pas theorique : il s'agit de l'activite economique de la traduction
... their own views; it is simply a matter of them noting conflicting viewpoints.(When they summa... more ... their own views; it is simply a matter of them noting conflicting viewpoints.(When they summarize articles, the summaries should be analytical rather than critical.) There is ... Bassnett, Susan (1980)Translation Studies. ... Chesterman, Andrew (1989) Readings in Translation Theory. ...
The article discusses events that motivated or de-motivated one translator working in a governmen... more The article discusses events that motivated or de-motivated one translator working in a government setting over a period of two weeks, based on a diary. The disadvantages of diary-keeping are discussed, as are its possible advantages over questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The diary entries are compared to lists of motivators and de-motivators prepared by two translators four months before the diary was started.
A method is suggested whereby translators can state their beliefs about the meaning of the source... more A method is suggested whereby translators can state their beliefs about the meaning of the source text and their intentions about the wording of the translation. The method involves inserting items from a vocabulary into the translation as it is produced. The vocabulary consists of descriptors for various ways of producing language. Several examples are discussed: ventriloquising, quoting, fudging, guessing, explicitating, fictionising, fabricating and glossing. These words express states of mind of the translator which are not accessible to external observers. Some uses of the method are suggested.
: Translating is here defined as the quoting, in sequential chunks, of the wording of a written, ... more : Translating is here defined as the quoting, in sequential chunks, of the wording of a written, oral or signed text, with an imitative purpose. These features distinguish it from other sorts of language activity — intralingual paraphrasing, re-expressing of ideas, fictive quoting, speaking from a script, ghostwriting — and thus provide an object for a theory of translation production. The defining feature 'quoting ' is taken to involve demonstrating to someone selected features of the source text. Thus the translational quoter is engaged in a dual activity: quoting OF the source text (rendering work) and quoting TO the readers or listeners (pragmatic work). The texts commonly called translations arise from some combination of rendering, pragmatic and non-translational work. Résumé: On propose de définir l'acte de traduire comme le fait de citer, l'un après l'autre, et avec une visée imitative, les fragments et phrases qui constituent un texte écrit, oral ou signé. L'acte traductif se distingue ainsi d'autres types de production linguistique, comme la paraphrase intralinguale ou la ré-expression d'idées, et on parvient ainsi à définir l'objet d'une théorie de la production traductive. Le définisseur «citer» est à prendre dans le sens d'une démonstration de certains traits choisis du texte de départ. Le traducteur-citeur s'engage dans une activité à deux volets : citation DU texte de départ (il rend ce texte) et citation adressée AUX lecteurs ou auditeurs (travail pragmatique). Les textes communément appelés «traductions» sont produits par une combinaison de plusieurs sortes de travail linguistique: travail rendant le texte de départ, travail pragmatique, travail non traductif.
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