scholarly journals Translating Cultural-Historical Psychology: Comments from Lay Professional

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-13
Author(s):  
Olga D. Tuchina
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Lexical Unit ◽  
Special Modification ◽  
Target Languages

In translating texts for the Chess Overall Development Project (Zaretskii, 2016), we have encountered several types of challenges that may be illustrative of what translators in the field of cultural-historical psychology (CHP) may deal with. Translators use various tools and strategies in their search for equivalence. Lack of the uniform CHP vocabulary and consensus on the CHP terms: di˙erences in transformational techniques and levels of the translators’ linguistic competence and their competence in CHP as such, result in co-existence of various translations of the same concepts, which may interfere with the process of communication and become a subject of controversy. Other challenges relate to specific linguistic features of the psychological scientific discourse of CHP, i.e. the need to observe rigorous scientific requirements to style and content, and abundance in expressive, emotionally and culturally charged utterances and vocabulary. The CHP terminology is characterized by specific word formation; lack of stylistic neutrality and lack of equivalent terms in target languages. Therefore, an appropriate translation implies using a special modification technology to create a target-language term which would have an equivalent denotative meaning; meet the requirements of the scientific style and preserve its stylistic uniqueness, emotional, and cognitive relevance (ensuring congruence of the reader’s experience with the author’s experience as mirrored by the lexical unit).

STRUKTUR KOMPLEKS DALAM BAHASA INDONESIA ILMIAH DAN MASALAH PENERJEMAHANNYA KE DALAM BAHASA INGGRIS

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ni Ketut Mirahayuni ◽  
Susie Chrismalia Garnida ◽  
Mateus Rudi Supsiadji
Keyword(s):  
Complex Structure ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Logical Relation ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Weight Structure ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Target Languages

Abstract. Translating complex structures have always been a challenge for a translator since the structures can be densed with ideas and particular logical relations. The purpose of translation is reproducing texts into another language to make them available to wider readerships. Since language is not merely classification of a set of universal and general concept, that each language articulates or organizes the world differently, the concepts in one language can be radically different from another. One issue in translation is the difference among languages, that the wider gaps between the source and target languages may bring greater problems of transfer of message from the source into the target languages (Culler, 1976). Problematic factors involved in translation include meaning, style, proverbs, idioms and others. A number of translation procedures and strategies have been discussed to solve translation problems. This article presents analysis of complex structures in scientific Indonesian, the problems and effects on translation into English. The study involves data taken from two research article papers in Indonesian to be translated into English. The results of the analysis show seven (7) problems of Indonesian complex structures, whose effect on translation process can be grouped into two: complex structures related to grammar (including: complex structure with incomplete information, run-on sentences, redundancy , sentence elements with inequal semantic relation, and logical relation and choice of conjunctor) and complex structures related to information processing in discourse (including: front-weight- structure and thematic structure with changes of Theme element). Problems related to grammar may be solved with language economy and accuracy while those related to discourse may be solved with understanding information packaging patterns in the target language discourse. Keywords: scientific language, complex structures, translation

The Role of Emergent Bilingualism in the Development of Morphological Awareness in Arabic and Hebrew

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mila Schwartz ◽  
Haitham Taha ◽  
Hanan Assad ◽  
Ferdos Khamaisi ◽  
Zohar Eviatar
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Initial Exposure ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Semitic Language ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Linguistic Transfer

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of dual language development and cross-linguistic influence on morphological awareness in young bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2). We examined whether (a) the bilingual children (L1/L2 Arabic and L1/L2 Hebrew) precede their monolingual Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking peers in L1 and L2 morphological awareness, and (b) 1 Semitic language (Arabic) has cross-linguistic influence on another Semitic language (Hebrew) in morphological awareness. Method The study sample comprised 93 six-year-old children. The bilinguals had attended bilingual Hebrew−Arabic kindergartens for 1 academic year and were divided into 2 groups: home language Hebrew (L1) and home language Arabic (L1). These groups were compared to age-matched monolingual Hebrew speakers and monolingual Arabic speakers. We used nonwords similar in structure to familiar words in both target languages, representing 6 inflectional morphological categories. Results L1 Arabic and L1 Hebrew bilinguals performed significantly better than Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking monolinguals in the respective languages. Differences were not found between the bilingual groups. We found evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic to Hebrew in 2 categories−bound possessives and dual number−probably because these categories are more salient in Palestinian Spoken Arabic than in Hebrew. Conclusions We conclude that children with even an initial exposure to L2 reveal acceleration of sensitivity to word structure in both of their languages. We suggest that this is due to the fact that two Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew, share a common core of linguistic features, together with favorable contextual factors and instructional factors.

scholarly journals The Linguistic Features of Acronyms in Arabic

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401774671
Author(s):  
Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh
Keyword(s):  
Formation Process ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Media ◽  
Processing Effort ◽  
Over Time

This study investigates the phonological, semantic, and pragmatic features of acronyms in Arabic. Acronyms in Arabic have appeared quite recently as a result of globalization and exposure to or contact with, mainly, English via radio stations and TV channels, which are broadcasting in English and in some countries, for example, Morocco in both English and French. Through in-depth analysis, it has been observed that acronyms in Arabic are subject to different restrictions: (a) The phonological combinations are formed on the basis of Arabic templates; hence, should be compatible with Arabic phonotactics, for example, consonant clusters should be broken up by vowels; (b) the connotation of the acronyms should not be negative; and (c) in conformity with relevance theory, when the acronyms are homophonous to existing words, the former maximize contextual effects with minimum processing effort. The fact that they appear in certain contexts also reduces the processing effort. It has also become evident that the period between the establishment of the movement or party and the first use of the acronym decreases over time, provided that the acronyms are frequently mentioned in the media. The examination of acronyms in different languages shows that acronymization is quite pervasive cross-linguistically; this may suggest that not any word-formation process can easily spread; it needs to be prevalent and potentially universal.

scholarly journals Optimizing Tokenization Choice for Machine Translation across Multiple Target Languages

2017 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasser Zalmout ◽  
Nizar Habash
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Statistical Machine Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Context Variable ◽  
Significant Performance ◽  
Morphologically Rich Languages ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Language Text

AbstractTokenization is very helpful for Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), especially when translating from morphologically rich languages. Typically, a single tokenization scheme is applied to the entire source-language text and regardless of the target language. In this paper, we evaluate the hypothesis that SMT performance may benefit from different tokenization schemes for different words within the same text, and also for different target languages. We apply this approach to Arabic as a source language, with five target languages of varying morphological complexity: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Our results show that different target languages indeed require different source-language schemes; and a context-variable tokenization scheme can outperform a context-constant scheme with a statistically significant performance enhancement of about 1.4 BLEU points.

scholarly journals Are ideophones translatable? The case of translating isiZulu ideophones in DBZ Ntuli’s short story Uthingo Lwenkosazana (The Rainbow)

Literator ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mthikazi Rose Masubelele
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
To Come ◽  
Target Languages

The meaning of words comes into play when words as units of translation are to be translated from one language into another. Lexical items that are extant in one language but not in others pose enormous problems for translators. The translation of ideophones – which feature very prominently in African discourse – is a case in point in this article. Translators faced with the translation of such forms are required to come up with strategies to aptly express their meanings in the target text. This article seeks to establish how CSZ Ntuli, in his English translation of an isiZulu short story Uthingo Lwenkosazana by DBZ Ntuli, has translated some of the ideophones used by the original author. Translation strategies used by CSZ Ntuli in his translation to express the meanings of the isiZulu ideophones will be brought to light in this article. It will be confirmed that CSZ Ntuli, using different lexical forms in the target language, has effectively changed unfamiliar isiZulu cultural notions to concepts that the English target reader can relate to. It will also be shown that the meanings of the isiZulu ideophones can be expressed in the target language using approximation and amplification as translation strategies provided that the translator has a good command of both source and target languages. The discussion will also look at how various translation scholars view the notion of equivalence at word level, and research on ideophones in isiZulu will also be reviewed.

Bringing Cross-Cultural Communication Analysis Into Foreign Language Classrooms

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-97
Author(s):  
Trudy O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Language Classrooms

The teaching of a second or foreign language has always incorporated some aspect of cultural information, but the full and rather complex nature of cross-cultural and intercultural communication has not always been an explicit pedagogical focus. The chapter outlines the key components of cross-cultural and intercultural communication (CCC/ICC), and reviews some major theories that have dominated the area. It is suggested that providing explicit instruction in CCC/ICC to language learners will prepare them for interacting appropriately in the target language in whatever global context they may wish to use it. Learners need to be not only linguistically and pragmatically but culturally competent as well as they move into multicultural contexts of interaction in that language. Specific elements of cross-/intercultural communication with regards to linguistic features and potential points of confusion in the EFL (English-as-a-foreign language) classroom are discussed as accessible examples. The chapter then relates some ways that cross-/intercultural mindfulness and understanding can form an active part of the teaching of a second/foreign language in order to enhance the full language learning experience and subsequent entry to successful communication.

Target Language, Target Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 1064-1081
Author(s):  
José Carlos Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Target Language ◽  
General Description ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Target Culture

Learning a language must result in becoming competent in a new culture because accessing the culture language stands for and being able to share its cultural content requires learning not just the meaning but also the historical and social background of its vocabulary. Words reveal the linguistic and social behavior of native speakers and give students a full understanding of the target language. This chapter deals with different concerns present in foreign language classrooms, a space where language and intercultural competence must be developed. It describes some linguistic competence-related concerns (Section 1), then it deals with specific intercultural related aspects of grammar and perception which are part of the linguistic competence to be developed in class (Section 2) and it finishes with a general description of three basic ways used in the Spanish-as-second-language (SSL) classroom in order to teach language and culture so as to help students to develop intercultural competence (Section 3).

scholarly journals Enhanced Meta-Learning for Cross-Lingual Named Entity Recognition with Minimal Resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (05) ◽  
pp. 9274-9281
Author(s):  
Qianhui Wu ◽  
Zijia Lin ◽  
Guoxin Wang ◽  
Hui Chen ◽  
Börje F. Karlsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Named Entity Recognition ◽  
Entity Recognition ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Named Entity ◽  
Meta Learning ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Cross Lingual ◽  
The Given

For languages with no annotated resources, transferring knowledge from rich-resource languages is an effective solution for named entity recognition (NER). While all existing methods directly transfer from source-learned model to a target language, in this paper, we propose to fine-tune the learned model with a few similar examples given a test case, which could benefit the prediction by leveraging the structural and semantic information conveyed in such similar examples. To this end, we present a meta-learning algorithm to find a good model parameter initialization that could fast adapt to the given test case and propose to construct multiple pseudo-NER tasks for meta-training by computing sentence similarities. To further improve the model's generalization ability across different languages, we introduce a masking scheme and augment the loss function with an additional maximum term during meta-training. We conduct extensive experiments on cross-lingual named entity recognition with minimal resources over five target languages. The results show that our approach significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods across the board.

THE ACQUISITION OF TEMPORALITY IN A SECOND LANGUAGE.Rainer Dietrich, Wolfgang Klein, & Colette Noyau (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1995. Pp. xii + 288. $59.00 cloth.

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-424
Author(s):  
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Multiple Target ◽  
European Science Foundation ◽  
European Science ◽  
Actual Design ◽  
Target Languages

Imagine a three-year longitudinal study of the acquisition of multiple target languages by learners of different language backgrounds. It may sound like an idealized example from a research-methods lecture, but it is the actual design of the European Science Foundation inquiry into adult second language acquisition and the latest report released by Benjamins, a substantial revision of Volume 5 of the final report on temporality (Bhardwaj, Dietrich, & Noyau, 1988). This volume reports on the acquisition of temporality in five target languages (English, German, Dutch, French, and Swedish) by 21 learners of six source languages (Punjabi, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Finnish) with learners from two source languages for each target language. The volume has eight chapters written by the main authors and cooperating contributors: “Introduction” (Dietrich & Perdue), “Frame of Analysis” (Klein), five chapters on the acquisition of temporality by target language—English (Klein), German (Dietrich), Dutch (Klein, Coenen, van Helvert, & Hendricks), French (Noyau, Houdaïfa, Vasseur, & Véronique), and Swedish (Noyau, Dorriots, Sjöström, & Voionmaa)—and “Conclusions” (Klein, Dietrich, & Noyau).

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