Who said it? Voices in news translation, from a semiotic perspective

Semiotica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (207) ◽  
pp. 411-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rovena Troqe ◽  
Jacques Fontanille

AbstractIn Translation studies, it has long been understood that when translation is integrated into journalism, concepts such as equivalence and authorship become highly problematic. However, there is still no reference to a general method that might explain why news production impacts the very process of translation and affects the translated texts themselves. In this paper, we introduce a new semiotic approach that measures shifts in translated texts by using semiotic modalities and relates these shifts to axiologies by actants of the practice of translation. Translated texts by an Italian weekly magazine are adopted as a case study and an analysis of the textual corpora is coupled with think-aloud protocols by editors. The semiotic approach reveals that the actantial dynamics are conflictual: while the translators’ performance is compatible with the equivalence value, journalists endorse values that result in the content of the original being altered. The divergence between the axiology of the actant initiating the practice and the axiology pursued by the translators affects the way the concept of translation is generated.

Babel ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Javier Ávila-Cabrera

The transfer of offensive and taboo language in subtitling may position translators’ choices in a challenging and controversial situation, given the effect that such terms can cause on the audience (Díaz Cintas 2001a). Nowadays, it seems that dealing with this type of language starts to gain more attention in academic circles, as it belongs to colloquial language within a low register, and as such we do speak in diverse manners depending on the context we are in. This paper delves into the way offensive and taboo language has been subtitled into European Spanish. In order to conduct this study, the subtitling of the DVD version of Quentin Tarantino’s multilingual film Inglourious Basterds (2009) has been described and analyzed, resorting to a multi-strategy design (Robson 2011) which combines quantitative with qualitative data, under the umbrella of the descriptive translation studies paradigm. Accordingly, the main purpose of this analysis is to determine any regularities in the way in which offensive and taboo language has been dealt with in this particular case study, considering the technological restrictions of subtitling as well as the translational strategies employed. Thus, this study aims to shed some light on the way this type of language has been transferred on the screen.


2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiyuki Takagaki

This case study investigated the revising patterns and intentions in L1 and L2 of Japanese writers with various writing experiences. Three participants were selected through purposeful sampling to do within-case comparisons. One participant was an experienced writer in both Japanese and English; one was an experienced writer in Japanese, but not in English; the other was an inexperienced writer in both Japanese and English. Using think-aloud protocols, these participants produced two revised essays in Japanese and two revised essays in English. The revised texts, think-aloud protocols, and retrospective interviews were analyzed to identify revision patters and revision intentions. first, it was found that all three writers produced many more revisions in Japanese than in English. Second, it was found that these writers showed similar revising intentions across languages. These findings were interpreted in terms of revision control structure, which is gained through writing experiences.


1998 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Hella Breedveld

The study of translation processes tends to focus on the local processes involved in finding translations for words or expressions in the source text. In order to find out which processes are involved in the production of a target text based on an existing source text in another language, translation studies may profit from models that have been developed in research on the writing process. Certain categories of cognitive activities found in research on the writing process can be used in the analysis of think-aloud protocols of the translation process. Especially the notion of revising, as developed in writing research, can help to understand how translators proceed in order to produce a good text in a target language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 510-538
Author(s):  
Paul Christian Dawkins ◽  
Dov Zazkis

This article documents differences between novice and experienced undergraduate students’ processes of reading mathematical proofs as revealed by moment-by-moment, think-aloud protocols. We found three key reading behaviors that describe how novices’ reading differed from that of their experienced peers: alternative task models, accrual of premises, and warranting. Alternative task models refer to the types of goals that students set up for their reading of the text, which may differ from identifying and justifying inferences. Accrual of premises refers to the way novice readers did not distinguish propositions in the theorem statement as assumptions or conclusions and thus did not use them differently for interpreting the proof. Finally, we observed variation in the type and quality of warrants, which we categorized as illustrate with examples, construct a miniproof, or state the warrant in general form.


Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (222) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Jaanika Anderson ◽  
Maria-Kristiina Lotman

AbstractIn his 1959 paper “On linguistic aspects of translation,” Roman Jakobson distinguished between interlingual, intralingual, and intersemiotic translation. As Gideon Toury (1986, Translation: A cultural-semiotic perspective. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.),Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics, vol. 2, 1111–1124. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) pointed out, such an approach centers on verbal systems and comprises only the translations that one or another way include some linguistic system, while it discards all the cases of translation from one non-linguistic sign system to another. Consequently, it seems reasonable to add intrasemiotic translation to these types of translation to encompass these cases. The paper follows from an assumption that translation studies could offer a productive perspective to describe the history and development of copy art, as well as to define and typologize the phenomenon itself. The copies in the collections of the University of Tartu Art Museum are analyzed as intrasemiotic translations, distinguishing between a number of different subtypes, while the basis for this distinction is the way and how the copy has changed in comparison with its prototype.


Target ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Bernardini

Over the last decade, Think-aloud Protocols (TAPs) have been used extensively in process-oriented Translation Studies (TS). The serious questions regarding the experimental validity of this research methodology when applied to translation have nonetheless often remained unspoken. This paper surveys the breakthroughs as well as the limits of the growing body of literature dealing with TAPs in TS, points at the necessity to take issues of experimental, theoretical and environmental validity more seriously, and offers suggestions for improvements. The claim is that the risks involved in the adoption of a lax experimental methodology in TAP studies, often underestimated in the past, may invalidate not only the results obtained in the single projects, but, crucially, the method as a whole.


2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atin Fougner Rydning

Abstract The aim of this paper is to revitalize the Paris school model of deverbalization and reverbalization of sense in translation, i.e. the representation of sense as a mental image, in light of the cognitive blending theory. Through sample examples of online process data taken from the concurrent think-aloud protocols of two experienced professional translators and the keylogged files on their writing processes, I will give evidence of the imaginative and creative work pertaining to their construals of sense, before showing that the blending theory model represents sense as the result of mapping concepts into other concepts and as relations between mental spaces.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Latifa El Mortaji

Research on gender and writing strategies in English as a foreign language (EFL) is scarce. This study investigates whether Moroccan male and female undergraduates use similar or different writing strategies when composing essays in the narrative and expository genres. Using think-aloud as a main research tool, a questionnaire, and retrospective interviews, the researcher collected data pertaining to male and female students’ strategy use and cognitive processes while writing in EFL. The analysis of 64 think-aloud protocols revealed Moroccan undergraduates’ use of a variety of writing strategies in terms of type and frequency. Both main types and subtypes of writing strategies emerged. Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that each gender group used some writing strategies more frequently than the other group; however, this difference in frequency of use was not statistically significant. In addition, the interaction of gender, writing strategy use, and discourse type yielded a significant difference in the use of the strategy of codeswitching only (i.e., language switch). On the other hand, the qualitative analysis of the protocols and interviews revealed a large variation between males and females in the use of the twelve strategies under investigation, together with overall writing behaviors. These strategies shall be presented together with recommendations for teaching composition in the EFL classroom.


2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. Boman ◽  
David P. McCabe ◽  
Amanda E. Sensenig ◽  
Matthew G. Rhodes ◽  
Meghan T. Lee

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Mansour Safran

This aims to review and analyze the Jordanian experiment in the developmental regional planning field within the decentralized managerial methods, which is considered one of the primary basic provisions for applying and success of this kind of planning. The study shoed that Jordan has passed important steps in the way for implanting the decentralized administration, but these steps are still not enough to established the effective and active regional planning. The study reveled that there are many problems facing the decentralized regional planning in Jordan, despite of the clear goals that this planning is trying to achieve. These problems have resulted from the existing relationship between the decentralized administration process’ dimensions from one side, and between its levels which ranged from weak to medium decentralization from the other side, In spite of the official trends aiming at applying more of the decentralized administrative policies, still high portion of these procedures are theoretical, did not yet find a way to reality. Because any progress or success at the level of applying the decentralized administrative policies doubtless means greater effectiveness and influence on the development regional planning in life of the residents in the kingdom’s different regions. So, it is important to go a head in applying more steps and decentralized administrative procedures, gradually and continuously to guarantee the control over any negative effects that might result from Appling this kind of systems.   © 2018 JASET, International Scholars and Researchers Association


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