Revisiting translation in the age of digital globalization

Babel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wu You

Abstract Globalization has gone digital and presents a new type of connectivity virtually today. Digital globalization has transformed the landscape of translation theory and practice, exerting considerable influence on translation studies and the profession of translators. The translation practice evolves with the change of literary expectations driven by the digital revolution. New translation modes have been cultivated by incorporating two essential features of the age, known as technology and participation. Against this backdrop, Chinese web fiction is going global with establishing and developing overseas volunteer translation websites. With this in mind, this paper analyzes the translation model of Chinese web fiction with respect to digital globalization and argues that the fan-based volunteer translation has emerged as a new paradigm that features the “user participation turn” in translation studies.

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangxu Zhao

Abstract For some Western translators before the twentieth century, domestication was their strategy to translate the classical Chinese poetry into English. But the consequence of this strategy was the sacrifice of the ideogrammic nature of these poems. The translators in the twentieth century, especially the Imagist poets and translators in the 1930s, overcame the problems of their predecessors and their translation theory and practice was close to that of the contemporary semiotic translators. But both Imagist translators and contemporary semiotic translators have the problem of indifference to the feeling of the original in their translations. For the problem of translating the classical Chinese poetry by the Westerners before the twentieth century and the Imagist poets and translators of the twentieth century, see Zhao and Flotow 2018. This paper attempts to set up an aesthetic-semiotic approach to the translation of the iconicity of classical Chinese poetry on the basis of the examination of both Eastern and Western translation studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Orbodoeva Larisa M. ◽  
◽  
Sambueva Vera B. ◽  
Taraskina Yaroslava W. ◽  
◽  
...  

The article deals with the requirements for the Linguistics Bachelor’s thesis, the program of Translation and Translation Studies in the Buryat State University. At present the issue of correlation between the research topics of graduate papers and needs of the translation market is becoming relevant because it helps to improve the quality of future translators’ preparation. Bachelor’s thesis should solve real complex translation objectives. The purpose of this article is to justify the need for a practical orientation of the Bachelor’s thesis. The methodological basis of the study is a practiceoriented approach to learning. The material of the study is the Federal Educational Standard in Linguistics, Bachelor’s level; the Professional Translator Standard, Buryat State University students’ graduate papers of the past five years majoring in Translation and Translation Studies. Research methods are analysis of the translation theory and practice literature; study and analysis of legal documents regulating the process of obtaining Bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics, the method of summarizing pedagogical experience. The Professional Translator Standard’s introduction requires the revision of practice-oriented approach to training and to writing the Bachelor’s graduate papers, which changes the research tasks of the Bachelor’s thesis and the selection of the material of the thesis that would meet the market requirements. Keywords: linguistic education, translator’s competencies, graduate paper, bachelor’s thesis,practical-oriented approach, translation solutions


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 462-477
Author(s):  
Klaudia Bednárová-Gibová

This paper offers a meta-reflection of contemporary translation studies (TS) through tracing its polydisciplinary tensions which are approached as both formative forces as well as hindrances. Taking a form of an argumentative essay employing the methods of a reflexive introspection, synthesis and evaluation, the principal aim is to address the potentials and controversies in present-day TS which are connected to its polydisciplinarity. This is a result from the aftermath of Snell-Hornbys integrated approach (1988/1995), TSs cultural and ideological turns as well as cognitive, sociological, anthropological, technological and economic twists. Four major strands of the consequences of the polydisciplinarity in TS are addressed: (a) the clash between the focus on the epistemological core of TS as an antidote to the expanding boundaries of the meta-discipline and embrace of reciprocal interdisciplinarity; (b) the tension between academia as Ivory Tower and practice-minded language industry; (c) the diffusion of the outer boundaries of TS and erasure of its inner boundaries; (d) a multitude of different conceptualizations of TS foregrounding either the abstract or practical. Following TSs inward orientations, two outward turns are suggested, i.e. promoting its relevance to other disciplines and reaching out to translation practice, in tune with Zwischenbergers approach (2019). A continuation of the outward turns may be seen in Gentzlers post-translation studies focusing on the study of pre-translation culture and after-effects of translation in the target culture. Although the paper does not tend to conceptual extremes, it suggests that authentic transdisciplinary TS should be mindful of a constructive and mutually enriching dialogue with donor disciplines and interlacement between theory and practice, with a focus on real-world issues, becomes imperative in order to make TS viable.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 167-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjun Sun

Since Holmes’ founding statement for translation studies in 1972, four decades have passed. During that time some trends seem to have developed in the discipline, and it is time to stop and take stock. This paper touches upon issues essential to understanding translation studies today, such as (1) the nature of translation; (2) the research scope of translation studies; (3) interdisciplinary orientation and its implications; (4) research methods; and (5) the relationship between translation theory and practice. An examination of these issues indicates that the discipline of translation studies is increasingly subject to opposing or competing research approaches and is exhibiting a kind of disciplinary fragmentation. There are imbalances in the research methods used and in the topics that emerge in the research literature. There is a growing gap between translation theory and practice. This paper tries to examine the reasons for these trends and offer perspectives on ways to reach some common disciplinary and professional ground.


Author(s):  
Georgina Heydon ◽  
Sajjad Kianbakht

The present research intends to illustrate the contributions, the newly developed multidisciplinary field of research known as Cultural Linguistics can make to the Translation Studies and the translation of humour as a culturally constructed element. The study starts with explaining the aims and objectives of the research and the key concepts that constitute our model of analysis. Then, as the main objective of this study, we propose a new model for the translation of humour encompassing a typology of conceptual structures for the analysis of humour translation, a large step in Translation Studies, that contributes to the on-going research in translation theory and practice. Later on, we describe how the proposed model and its typology of conceptual structures can be applied to the analysis of examples extracted from novels in translation between English and Persian in comparative studies.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Kurt Beals

Written in the form of a dialog between translator and translation theorist, this article considers both the difficulty and the necessity of a reciprocal, mutually informed relationship between translation theory and practice. The starting point of the article is my experience translating the poetry of Anja Utler, a contemporary Austrian poet whose linguistic experimentation poses a significant translation challenge. Utler's poetry functions in part by means of what she calls “interweaving” (“Verflechtung”), making use of highly polysemous words to efface boundaries between landscape, body, and language. In addition to blurring semantic lines, Utler also employs certain syntactical and grammatical characteristics of the German language (such as separable prefixes) in unorthodox ways that multiply possibilities of meaning. One of the greatest difficulties for a translator, then, is to find ways of approximating this semantic and syntactic play and innovation in a language that rarely offers a one-to-one equivalent. In addition to addressing specific practical issues in translating Utler's poetry, I consider the role that translation theory played in shaping my translation strategies, and more generally the interaction between the theoretical conceptualization of translation and its actual execution. I also describe my communication with the author, who has contributed greatly to the translation process, supporting an idea of translation as collaboration. Translation theory and practice appear less as correctives to each other than as a cooperative undertaking, part of a conversation between translator, theorist, author, and reader from which, ideally, all sides benefit in the end. By portraying this exchange as an internal dialog, I hope to demonstrate that the realms of translation practice and theory are not alien to one another, but rather engaged in constant, productive exchange, both within the mind of the individual translator/theorist and on the level of translation as a social phenomenon.


Author(s):  
Paul F. Bandia

Postcolonial intercultural writing has been likened to translation both in terms of the writing practice and the nature of the postcolonial text, which often involves multiple linguistic and cultural systems. To highlight the significance of this view of translation as a metaphor for postcolonial writing and its impact on current translation theory, this paper attempts to lay the groundwork for defining the linguistic and cultural status of postcolonial discourse and to establish parallels between the translation process and some strategies for crafting the postcolonial text. The ontological relation between translation theory and practice is discussed in the light of post- colonial translation practices which have broadened the scope of research in translation studies to include issues of ideology, identity, power relations, and other ethnographic and sociologically based modes of investigation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-359
Author(s):  
Irena Kristeva ◽  

This article sets out to outline the evolution of the Translation Studies in Bulgaria from 1970 till the beginning of the 21st century. It aims to provide a brief overview of some pioneering articles, the studies that marked the development of translation theory from 1970 to 1990 and some works from the post-totalitarian period. In 1976 the Publishing House Narodna kultura lays the foundation stone for Translation studies, creating the collection “The Art of Translation”. From the 1970s, the Theory and Practice of Translation are included in the courses offered by the Faculty of Western Languages of Sofia University. If the key word defining the translating activity in Bulgaria from the Second World War to the 1990s is confinement, the one that qualifies its state at the beginning of the 21st century is openness. Very controlled in the years 1970 – 1990, the translatological reflection frees itself from the ideological pressure at the turn of the 20st and 21st centuries.


2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1082-1097 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Tymoczko

Abstract The article sums up the principle trajectories of research in translation studies that are likely to be productive in the coming decades. I focus on six broad areas. The first encompasses attempts to define translation: this includes research as diverse as examinations of particular linguistic facets of translation, corpus studies of translation, descriptive historical studies, and analysis of think-aloud protocols. The second area of research pertains to the internationalization of translation, which challenges basic Western assumptions about the nature of translation and generates new case studies that shake the foundations of translation theory and practice as they are known at present. Changes in translation theory and practice associated with emerging technologies and globalization constitute the third research area to be discussed. The fourth strand is the application to translation of various interpretive perspectives based on frames from other disciplines. The last two branches of research have to do with the relationship of translation studies to cognitive science and neurophysiology. The article closes with some general observations about the implications for translation research as a whole and the structure of translation studies entailed by the six areas discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Katiliina Gielen ◽  
Klaarika Kaldjärv

Translation history is a part of cultural history and a necessary component of any literary history, but documenting it may prove to be a challenge. The present article is an attempt to describe and exemplify an ongoing project of mapping Estonian translation history through metatexts on translational issues based on the writings of translators, editors and other figures close to translation throughout Estonian literary history. The reason for collecting translational thought into one compilation lies in the importance of translation for Estonian culture both retrospectively as well as keeping in mind the future of translation and language policies and practices.The article is thematically divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with the analysis of already existing methodologies for compiling translation histories. Still, in order to get a comprehensive picture, different angles have to be considered and different methodologies applied on the material that has come down to us. Thus, what follows is the description of the ongoing project and its slightly different, empirics driven methodology.The second part of the paper gives an insight into one of the seven major topics that have emerged from the work with the texts in Estonian translation history. It is based on the discussions whether practitioners need theory, or more generally, what is translation theory and who needs it? The examples are taken from the articles and interviews with Estonian practicing translators and people close to translation such as literary critics, editors, etc. and cover the second half of the 20th century up to the contemporary times. Our aim was to show practitioners as theorists and thus narrow the gap between theory and practice of translation which has proved to be a general problem also in other cultural settings, end even currently when translation studies has established itself as a discipline. The issue has been discussed by many prominent translation studies scholars and the present article will take the opportunity to introduce their points of view.


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