George Steiner’s Legacy: Assessing the Past and Future of Translation Studies

The landscape in translation and interpreting is changing deeply and rapidly. For a long time, but not necessarily everywhere, translation was denied as a need (except for the political and religious powers), as effort (translation being defined as a kind of mechanical work, as substitution of words), and as a profession (translators embodying a subaltern position). Technology is bringing in certain changes in attitudes and perceptions with regards international, multilingual and multimodal communications. This article tries to define the changes and their consequences in the labelling and characterisation of the different practices. It is organised in five sections: first, we recall that translation and interpreting are only one option in international relations; then, we explain the different denials of translation in the past (or the refusal to recognize the different values of translation). In the third section, we consider how and to what extent technology is transforming today practices and markets. The ongoing changes do not boil solely to developments in Machine Translation (which started in the 1960s): community, crowdsourced/collaborative translation and volunteer translation encompass different practices. In many cases, users provide their own translations, with or without formal qualifications in translation. The evolution is not only technical but also economic and social. In addition, the fragmentation and the diversity of practices do have an impact on a multi-faceted market. In the fourth section, we emphasize that there are nowadays different concepts of translation and competitive paradigms in Translation Studies. Finally, we tackle the organisational challenge of the field, since the institutionalisation of translation and Translation Studies cannot remain the same as when there was a formal consensus on the concept of translation.

Fostering social competence in translation studies

Babel ◽

10.1075/babel.57.3.02kra ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 57 (3) ◽

pp. 269-282 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Zita Krajcso

Keyword(s):

Social Competence ◽

Information Age ◽

Oral Communication ◽

Translation Studies ◽

University Of Vienna ◽

The Past ◽

Self Confidence ◽

Significant Movement ◽

German Speaking ◽

Training Programmes

Social competence for translators? Is social competence not a privilege for students of medicine, pedagogy and economics? Is translation not a course of studies preferred by students who are shy and introverted? By students lacking self-confidence? Hiding themselves as translators behind the computer, isolated from the outside world? Obviously this image of the translation profession belongs to the past, before the information age. Globalization and worldwide competition influence the language mediation market, which is programmed for perpetual change. But, to what extent are translation education programmes ready to meet the ongoing, changing needs of the market, which call for able and well-qualified translators?<p>Indeed, if translation education wants to succeed, it should keep up with the current market and equip students not only with strong skills but also with social competence to meet the needs of society. But can social competence be taught? And which methods are appropriate in translation studies to convey it? These questions will be discussed in this paper.<p>While social competence is now commonly employed in the fields of economy and pedagogy, there has not yet been any significant movement to introduce this approach in the area of translation training programmes. I will present some recommendations based on the results of an empirical study. As the study was carried out in the course “oral communication” at the Centre for Translation Studies, University of Vienna, the attention is focused on the German-speaking environment, especially on the Austrian context.<p>

A multifactorial analysis of explicitation in translation

Target ◽

10.1075/target.26.3.02zuf ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 361-384 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Sandrine Zufferey ◽

Bruno Cartoni

Keyword(s):

Translation Studies ◽

Multifactorial Analysis ◽

The Past ◽

Discourse Relations ◽

Target Languages

The search for translation universals has been an important topic in translation studies over the past decades. In this paper, we focus on the notion of explicitation through a multifaceted study of causal connectives, integrating four different variables: the role of the source and the target languages, the influence of specific connectives and the role of the discourse relation they convey. Our results indicate that while source and target languages do not globally influence explicitation, specific connectives have a significant impact on this phenomenon. We also show that in English and French, the most frequently used connectives for explicitation share a similar semantic profile. Finally, we demonstrate that explicitation also varies across different discourse relations, even when they are conveyed by a single connective.

On the possibilities and impossibilities of cross-cultural communication

Linguistica ◽

10.4312/linguistica.46.1.71-80 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 71-80

Author(s):

Martina Ožbot

Keyword(s):

Translation Studies ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Half Century ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

The Past ◽

Past Half Century ◽

Past Half ◽

Practical Level

As is well known, the second half of the last century has witnessed an un precedented increase in cross-cultural communication at a practical level as well as a remarkable development of research on various aspects of translation as cross-cultural communication par excellence. Such an interest in the study of translation appears to be directly linked with the expansion of translational activities and reflects the impor tance attributed to them in the society at large. At the same time, the burgeoning growth of translation studies is to be explained within the context of the expansion of the discipline of linguistics over the past half-century , an important part of which is the development of various text-oriented branches in which attention has been given to previously largely unstudied phenomena of the functioning of language in real communicative situations.

The past, present and future of Chinese MA theses in Interpreting Studies: A scientometric survey

10.7287/peerj.preprints.958 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Ziyun Xu

Keyword(s):

State Of The Art ◽

Chinese Language ◽

Translation Studies ◽

Statistical Techniques ◽

Human Hand ◽

The Past ◽

Dynamic Field ◽

Research Themes ◽

In Cis ◽

Over Time

This paper takes a scientometric approach to examining one of Chinese Interpreting Studies’ (CIS) most productive sources of research, MA theses, with the aim of answering the following questions: How has the discipline changed over time? What fields and theories influence it? And what are its most common research themes? The study’s comprehensive corpus of nearly 1,300 Chinese-language theses addresses a data-based limitation faced by earlier scholars. A range of state-of-the-art statistical techniques have made it possible to detect patterns in CIS that are difficult to tease out by human hand and eye alone. The field has grown rapidly in recent years and is now producing a steady and consistent stream of research: the majority of students in China draw inspiration from theories within Translation Studies, but no particular theories or topics have grown more popular over time. Despite this consistency, CIS remains a complex and dynamic field of academic enquiry.

The use of corpora in legal and institutional translation studies

Translation Spaces ◽

10.1075/ts.00010.pri ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 1-11

Author(s):

Fernando Prieto Ramos

Keyword(s):

Corpus Linguistics ◽

Translation Studies ◽

The Past ◽

Legal Translation ◽

Wide Range ◽

Comparative Examination

Abstract Research in legal and institutional translation within the realm of Legal Translation Studies (LTS) has greatly benefited from embracing the advances of Corpus Linguistics in the past few decades. This paper provides an overview of corpus-based approaches in LTS and illustrates their increasing prominence and sophistication through the description of seven selected representative projects, including a wide range of corpus types, translation contexts, legal genres, jurisdictions, sizes and languages. The comparative examination of these studies confirms the relevance of corpus methods for LTS, the need to integrate quantitative and qualitative considerations (crucially including legal parameters) into corpus-building criteria, as well as the correlation between research scope and methodological nuance in ensuring corpus suitability.

What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram? Éva’s Story as a case of indirect translation

Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance ◽

10.1386/jafp_00032_1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 285-303 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ayelet Kohn ◽

Rachel Weissbrod

Keyword(s):

General Framework ◽

Translation Studies ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Unique Case ◽

Written Text ◽

The Past ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Two Factors ◽

Second World

This article deals with the adaptation of a written text – the diary of 13-year-old Éva Heyman who died in the Holocaust – into a series of Instagram stories, joined to create a 50-minute film. We employ translation studies and the concept of ‘indirect translation’ to investigate this unique case in which a genre characterized by its ephemerality is used to commemorate and perpetuate the past. The project, which caused a furore because Instagram was considered inappropriate for dealing with such a grave subject, was motivated by the desire to transmit the diary to contemporary audiences and retain its relevance for them. We have found that the diary served as a general framework, but its contents and the character of Éva that emerges from it were overshadowed by two factors: turning Éva into a contemporary youngster, so as to attract today’s youth; and relying on Hollywood traditions of filming the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Reacting to Translations Past

Translation and Interpreting Studies ◽

10.1075/tis.10.1.07dol ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 133-152 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Julie McDonough Dolmaya

Keyword(s):

English Translation ◽

Translation Studies ◽

Role Playing ◽

The Other ◽

Pedagogical Approach ◽

The Past ◽

Role Playing Games ◽

The Bible ◽

Translation Services ◽

Historical Role

Reacting to the Past is a pedagogical approach that incorporates historical role-playing games into the classroom. In this paper I discuss this approach and demonstrate how it could be adapted for translation studies courses. Two games are described: one is set in England in the early 1500s and focuses on William Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible, while the other is set in Canada in 2007 and focuses on the development of the Canadian standard for translation services. Finally, to shed some light on the experiences and reactions of students who are taught using the Reacting to the Past approach, I briefly discuss the results of a survey of translation students who played the two games in an undergraduate theory of translation course during the Fall 2012 term.

Highlights of Translation Studies in China Since the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Meta Journal des traducteurs ◽

10.7202/002716ar ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 27-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shouyi Fan

Keyword(s):

Translation Studies ◽

Mass Scale ◽

Third Wave ◽

New Wave ◽

New Era ◽

The Past ◽

Literature And Philosophy ◽

Orderly Fashion ◽

Training Schools

Abstract This article attempts to highlight the thoughts of some of the prominent figures in translation studies over the past hundred years or so. With the onset of the third wave in translation activities, some patriotic scholars called for the establishment of translator training schools to meet the challenges coming from the West, while others set about introducing Western literature and philosophy into China. In the course of translating, problems cropped up, translators and scholars began to argue about what criteria they should follow, what methods they should use, and how to judge the quality of translation. As China moved into a new era, translation activities boomed and translation studies flourished, all proceeding in an orderly fashion and on a mass scale. A new wave emerged, bringing China closer to the outside world.

Taking Matters into our Own Hands: Humanizing Slovak Translation History

Porównania ◽

10.14746/por.2020.1.9 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

pp. 157-176

Author(s):

Igor Tyšš ◽

Edita Gromová

Keyword(s):

Translation Studies ◽

The Past ◽

The Future ◽

Significant Research ◽

Research Initiatives

Translation history has always played an important role in Slovak literary and translation studies. In our paper we discuss the beginnings of Slovak translation historyresearch, which have their roots in formalism and structuralism, and reconstruct lines of influence to the present when translation history is a lively, open, interdisciplinary,and empirical discipline. With the past in mind, we look at several of the most recent and significant research initiatives in Slovak translation history research and evaluate their potential for the future.