A Register-Based Translation Evaluation

Target ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Text Quality ◽  
Register Analysis ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract This paper illustrates key elements of a translation evaluation based on register analysis. In Section 1, the attempts in the current paper are related to linguistics and translation studies in general, and to the evaluation of translations in particular, arguing for a theoretically-based approach. A brief overview of the concept of register is also given. Sections 2, 3 and 4 cover the detailed analysis of the field, tenor and mode variables of the register of a translation, relating them critically to those of its source text. Section 5 argues that in addition to a 'register analysis, an evaluation of translations needs to take into account criteria based on comparative linguistics and language typology. Finally, it is suggested that a register-based approach links translation to co-generation under specific constraints, thus opening up the possibility of linking the translation quality to text quality in general.

scholarly journals From many one: Novel approaches to translation quality in a social network era

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Quality Evaluation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
Network Era

For decades, the fuzzy notion of translation quality has evolved parallel to the theorizations of translation and localization. This paper focuses on a novel approach to quality evaluation in the localization industry: how Facebook crowdsourced quality evaluation to an active community of users that votes on proposed translations. This approach, unthinkable a decade ago, seems to combine and distill some of the best aspects of several previous Translation Studies evaluation proposals, such as user-based approaches (Nida, 1964), functionalist approaches (Nord, 1997; Reiss and Vermeer, 1984) or corpus-assisted approaches (Bowker, 2001). These models were largely criticized at the time because they did not explicitly indicate how they could be professionally implemented. The current paper critically reviews the emerging crowdsourcing model in light of these approaches to quality evaluation and describes how mechanisms suggested in these earlier theoretical proposals are actually implemented in the Facebook model.

scholarly journals Translation quality in English-Arabic translation of tourist texts: A product perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Mutahar Qassem ◽  
Lamis Ali ◽  
Nabil Muhayam
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Likert Scale ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Arabic And English ◽  
Main Ideas

Translation of tourist texts engenders textual, linguistic and cultural hurdles before achieving translation quality, which has not been given due account in translation studies. To bridge this gap, this study aimed to assess postgraduates' performance in translation of tourist texts from English to Arabic and vice versa, using a translation task (Arabic and English tourist texts) and a questionnaire. The questionnaire took a form of a 5-point Likert scale in which the students rated the texts they translated. Further, it retrieved information about translation time and postgraduates' translation experience. Findings revealed low translation quality and inappropriate use of translation procedures in rendering the tourist texts into English and Arabic. The postgraduates encountered hindrances in formulating the main ideas of the source text (ST), composing the target text (TT) and communicating the TT to the target language (TL) readers. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications have been discussed.

scholarly journals جوانب نصية في دراسات الترجمة الحديثة / Textual aspects in Modern Translation Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Majdi Haji Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Text Linguistics ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Traditional Language

ملخص البحث: يهدف هذا البحث إلى عرض بعض الجوانب النصية المستقاة من لغويات النص في دراسات الترجمة الحديثة على المستويين النظري والتطبيقي. ويبدأ بتقديم أهم الأسباب والدوافع وراء تحول دراسات الترجمة الحديثة من الاعتماد على النظريات اللغوية التقليدية إلى الاعتماد على النظرية التأويلية التي تدعو إلى اعتماد النص وحدة الترجمة الأساسية، ثم ينتقل إلى الحديث عن أنماط النص في الترجمة للتأكيد على ضرورة استيعاب كمالية النص الأصلي من أجل خلق كمالية النص المترجم. وأخيراً، يقدم البحث المعايير النصية التي اعتمدها روجر بيل من أجل قياس جودة الترجمة. وجدت الدراسة أن النظرية التأويلية في دارسة الترجمة اليوم أثبتت جدارتها وتفوقها على النظريات اللغوية التقليدية، من منطلق أن الترجمة لا توجد قبل النص، وعلى هذا الأساس فإن النص في عملية الترجمة يجب أن يكون وحدة الترجمة، وليست الكلمات والجمل المنفردة، وأن نظرية الترجمة بحاجة إلى ماسة إلى النظرية التأويلية.   الكلمات المفتاحية: المدخل التأويلي- أنماط النصوص-القصد- المقبولية – البينصية.   Abstract: The paper aims to present theoretically and practically some of the textual aspects derived from text linguistics in modern translation studies. It points out the impetus that led translation studies to turn to textual unit as the focus after relying sometimes on traditional language theories. It discusses text types in translation to ensure the absorption of every aspects of the source text to produce its reflection in the target text. Another textual aspect touched by the paper is the standards of textuality which became a foundation in Bell’s assessment scheme for translation quality. The paper concludes that the hermeneutic theory had managed to gain considerably solid footing in translation studies over the traditional linguistic theories, since there will not be a translation without a text, therefore text should become the focus of translation theory no single words or phrases.   Keywords: Hermeneutic approach – Text types – Intentionality – Acceptability – Intertextuality.   Abstrak: Kajian ini menumpukan secara teoretikal dan praktikal terhadap beberapa aspek tekstual yang dirumuskan daripada bidang teks linguistik dalam kajian penterjemahan moden. Ia menjelaskan tentang sebab yang mendorong kajian penterjemahan moden untuk berpaling kepada teks sebagai unit tumpuan kajian setelah beberpa ketika memberikan perhatian kepada dapatan teori-teori bahasa tradisional. Ia membicarakan jenis-jenis teks dalam terjemahan untuk memastikan pencernaan setiap aspek tekstual teks asal untuk dilahirkan semula dalam teks sasar. Aspek tekstual lain yang dibicarakan dalam kajian ini ialah piawaian tekstual yang menjadi asas kepada skima penilaian kualiti terjemahan yang dicadangkan Bell. Kajian ini merumuskan bahawa teori takwili telah diberikan tumpuan yang lebih penting dalam kajian penterjemahan daripada teori bahasa tradisional memandangkan terjemahan itu sendiri tidak akan terhasil tanpa teks. Ini memberikan satu sebab untuk memberikan keutamaan kepada teks dalam terjemahan dan bukan perkataan atau frasa.   Kata kunci: Pendekatan takwili – Jenis-jenis teks – Tujuan teks – Penerimaan teks – Hubungan antara teks.

scholarly journals Slovak thinking on audiovisual translation and the issue of the second-hand translation of Russian documentary films

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Audiovisual Translation ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Limited Diffusion

The paper, in its first part, outlines the Slovak research into audiovisual translation (AVT) from the 1950s up to the present, paying attention to the most important scholars as well as publications that helped to shape and establish the discipline within Slovak translation studies. It is based on the ongoing bibliographical research and the historical explanation mapping the development of AVT research in Slovakia by I. Tyšš – e.g. his publication Myslenie o audiovizuálnom preklade na Slovensku: 1952 – 2017 (Thinking on Audiovisual Translation in Slovakia: 1952 – 2017, 2018) – as well as on own findings covering the last two years. In more detail, the first part of the paper highlights that it was primarily thanks to a younger generation of translation studies scholars – especially E. Perez (née Janecová), L. Paulínyová (née Kozáková) and J. Želonka – that in 2012 the Slovak research into AVT finally became systematic. The second part of the paper is devoted to the phenomenon of the so-called second-hand translation of originally Russian audiovisual works that may be observed in Slovakia in recent years. The questionable nature of this phenomenon is stressed since the Russian language is not a language of limited diffusion and definitely not remote in relation to the Slovak cultural space. On the example of two documentary films – Под властью мусора (Held Captive by Rubbish, 2013) and Дух в движении (Spirit in Motion, 2015), the author discusses and analyses the problems that occur when translating originally Russian AV works into Slovak through the English language, i.e. the negative shifts resulting from mis-/overinterpretation of the source text, translation by omission, wrong order of dialogues, cultural specifics and incorrect transcription.

scholarly journals Possible Worlds in Translation: Coleman Barks’s Rendition of a Story from Rumi’s Masnavi

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahid Medhat ◽  
Hossein Pirnajmuddin ◽  
Pyeaam Abbasi
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Narrative Worlds ◽  
The Way

This article applies the theory of possible worlds to the field of translation studies by examining the narrative worlds of original and translated texts. Specifically, Marie-Laure Ryan’s characterization of possible worlds provides an account of the internal structure of the textual universe and the progression of the plot. Based on this account, one of the stories from Rumi’s Masnavi is compared to Coleman Barks’s English translation. The possible worlds of the characters and the unfolding of the plots in both texts are examined to assess the degree of compatibility between the textual universes of the original and the translated texts and how significant this might be. It also examines how readers reconstruct the narrative worlds projected by the two texts. The analysis reveals some inconsistencies in the way the textual universes of the original and translated texts are furnished and in the way readers reconstruct the narrative worlds of the two texts. The inability of translation to fully render the main character results in some loss in terms of the pungency and pithiness of the original text. It is also shown that the source text presents a richer domain of the virtual in comparison, suggesting a higher degree of tellability in the textual universe of the Masnavi’s narrative.

scholarly journals Improving Translation Quality By Using Ensemble Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 3512-3514
Author(s):  
D. Chopra ◽  
N. Joshi ◽  
I. Mathur
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Open Problem ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Ensemble Approach ◽  
Baseline Approach

Machine translation (MT) has been a topic of great research during the last sixty years, but, improving its quality is still considered an open problem. In the current paper, we will discuss improvements in MT quality by the use of the ensemble approach. We performed MT from English to Hindi using 6 MT different engines described in this paper. We found that the quality of MT is improved by using a combination of various approaches as compared to the simple baseline approach for performing MT from source to target text.

scholarly journals Termini in der technischen Übersetzung: Rettungsanker, Tyrannen – oder auch nur Wörter?

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Oster
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Specific Study ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Technical Translation ◽  
Language Pair

The understanding of ‘term’ in traditional terminology theory reduces the lexical problems of technical translation to a mere substitution of the source-text term by a target-text term. In translation studies however , a number of issues have been highlighted which are not covered by traditional terminology theory, e.g. cultural specificity or the importance of textual and pragmatic considerations. This paper first analyses how the new communication and cognition-oriented approaches to terminology account for these aspects of technical translation. Then it briefly presents results of a language-pair and domain-specific study which allows us to exemplify some of the issues that have been discussed and to reach some specific conclusions for the translator of this linguistic combination.

Immersed in the source text

Babel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-285
Author(s):  
Beatriz Naranjo Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Narrative Transportation ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract This study aims at exploring the phenomenon of psychological transportation in translation from an experimental approach. Firstly, we investigate whether the emotions depicted in source texts may influence the level of transportation experienced by translators. Secondly, we try to determine whether different levels of transportation in the texts can make a difference in terms of translation performance. Based on previous work about narrative transportation in products of fiction, as well as the phenomenon known as the “paradox of pleasurable sadness”, we depart from the hypothesis that sad texts lead to a higher degree of psychological transportation than happy texts (H1). Taking into account previous theories and empirical results about the benefits of visualization and emotional engagement in translation, we also predict that highly-transported participants will render higher-quality (H2) and more creative translations (H3) than low-transported participants. For this purpose, a pilot study was conducted consisting of two literary translation tasks with opposing-valence texts (happy vs. sad). Lack of statistically significant differences for our hypothesis suggests that some adjustments in the methodology would be needed to achieve conclusive results; however, we believe that further research on the impact of transportation in translation quality and creativity is still worthwhile.

The effects of students’ self-regulation on translation quality

Babel ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 819-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulina Pietrzak
Keyword(s):  
Self Regulation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Work Environments ◽  
Regulatory Activity ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Educational Theories ◽  
Translator Training

Abstract The article is an attempt to enter into the area of metacognitive translation studies – or metacognitive translator studies – that has so far received scant coverage, and devote closer attention to the translator’s self-regulatory activity. Self-regulation seems crucial in the development of translation expertise, “especially outside of optimally structured work environments, training academies, and other places with defined translation workflows and opportunities for feedback” (Shreve 2006: 32). The article focuses on the role and nature of self-regulation in translator training. Having identified the issues that emerge from educational theories for translator training, the author analyses the approaches to metacognition in the area of translation education. In an attempt to contribute to the discussion of the multifaceted nature of translator competence, the author investigates the correlation between translation trainees’ self-regulatory activity and the quality of their translation as reflected in their translation grades.

Taming iconicity in the Spanish and Italian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gonzálvez-García
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Selected Lines ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Secondary Predication

Abstract Building on Tabakowska’s (1993, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2013) full-blown defense of a cognitive linguistic approach to literary translation as well as on previous research dealing with the implementations of Construction Grammar(s) for translation studies (Szymańska 2011a, 2011b; Serbina 2015), this paper critically examines the role of iconicity in selected lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnets capitalizing on the passage of Time-Death and their corresponding translations in present-day Spanish and Italian. Specifically, drawing on Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006) and Contrastive Construction Grammar (Boas 2010a; Boas & Gonzálvez-García 2014), I focus on instances of secondary predication with verbs of sensory perception, causative constructions and aspectual constructions iconically connected with the above-mentioned motif and demonstrate that iconicity emerges as a very useful communicative ‘filter’ that can help to minimize any undesirable arbitrariness which may obscure the semantico-pragmatic interpretation of the source text and/or its rendering into the target text.

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