Translationese and interlanguage in inverse translation: A case study

Current translation studies do not present a clear distinction between ‘translationese’ and ‘interlanguage’, giving rise to conceptual and terminology confusion. To disentangle these two concepts, we start with a relatively conservative working definition of translationese, then find it necessary to first differentiate between direct and inverse translations, according to whether the translator's L1 equals to TL or not. Taking Zhuangzi (a Daoist classic) as a case, we made both inter- and intra-speaker comparisons among Lin Yu-tang's inverse translation, James Legge's direct translation, and the two translators' creative works in English, with well-established language complexity metrics and quantitative methods. Results show that: (1) Inverse and direct translations are remarkably different in terms of complexity; (2) Inverse translation demonstrates both features of interlanguage and translationese, with the former mostly at lexical level and the latter at syntactic level; (3) Similar patterns are also discovered in Lin's other inverse translated works, suggesting our quantitative comparative method proposed may be reliable to some extent. Such results support our proposal that translationese and interlanguage should and can be differentiated for both theoretical and practical purposes.

Translating the homoerotic from and into Russian

The translation of a text with homoerotic content reveals complex political, social and cultural contestation in the transnationalization of sexual desire and identity. This article examines the translations of homoerotic poetry by Russian émigré writer Valerii Pereleshin from and into Russian. Pereleshin’s different approaches in his inverse translation (Pushkin’s “Imitating the Arabic” and Kuzmin’s Alexandrian Songs) and direct translation (Pessoa’s “Antinous”) demonstrate how translation choices are governed by the interplay of discourses of same-sex desires in different cultural contexts, as well the poet-translator’s expression of sexual otherness.

Inverse translation and the language student: A case study

This article explores the agency of the student in translation in language teaching and learning (or TILT). The purpose of the case study discussed here is to gain an overview of students’ perceptions of translation into the foreign language (FL) (also known as “inverse translation”) following a module on language and translation, and to analyse whether there is any correlation between students’ attitude to translation, its impact on their language learning through effort invested, and the improvement of language skills. The results of the case study reveal translation to be a potentially exciting skill that can be central to FL learning and the analysis gives indications of how and why language teachers may optimise the implementation of translation in the classroom. The outcome of the study suggests that further research is needed on the impact of translation in the language classroom focussing on both teachers’ expectations and students’ achievements.

Translation Product: How is it Assessed by the Trainees, the Trainers and the Employers?

According to Koby (2014), translation assessment for pedagogical implications needs to be investigated further. This paper discusses how translations of university senior students in the Jordanian context are assessed by university translation teachers, employers in the translation labour market and by the students themselves. It probes into the assessment criteria employed by the teachers and the employers for pedagogical implications. Teachers and students were sampled from five different universities in Jordan while the employers were sampled from translation service providers Amman. Twenty six senior students were requested to perform a task of inverse translation to be assessed by the three groups of assessors. The teachers and the employers were asked to rate the product on a five-point scale and comment on the errors and deficiencies that are considered crucial from their perspective. In addition, they were requested to elaborate on the assessment criteria they used. Students, on the other hand, had to respond to a self-criterion rating scale. The results show that there was a high level of concurrence in the assessment of the teachers and the employers and a disjunction between that and the self-assessment where the latter showed some over-estimation in comparison with the second party assessment.

The Role of Expertise in Peer Feedback Analysis

Since Kiraly pointed out the beneficial role of collaboration in translation training, increasingly more attention has been paid to the potential benefits of peer collaboration. While Wang and Han studied translation trainees' explicit perceptions of any benefits resulting from peer feedback, the present contribution first investigates the role of translator's implicit perceptions of reviewer expertise in the effectiveness of a peer comment in a case study. It then inquires into the number and type of peer feedback comments in relation to whether the target language that is to be reviewed is the reviewer's L1 or L2. Here, two data sets are hypothesized to yield similar results: (1) a set of native and non-native reviewer comments and (2) the comments written by translators in a direct translation situation and in an inverse translation situation. Findings were surprising, however, and professional, methodological, and theoretical research implications for translation and revision competence models are suggested.

On Zero Translation in Howard Goldblatt’s Translation of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

Zero Translation, mainly referring to transference and transliteration, is inverse translation. This study, by way of parallel texts analysis, discussed the application of Zero Translation in the English version of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out translated by Howard Goldblatt, and its enlightenment on transmission of Chinese literature. It is found that Relative Zero Translation is commonly used in translating cultural-specific items, partly due to the huge difference between English and Chinese. Moreover, Zero Translation is complementary to other translation strategies. These translation strategies always work together to facilitate target language readers to better comprehend the source language culture behind the target text.

Reconciling Institutional and Professional Requirements in the Specialised Inverse Translation Class – A Case Study

Translating into a language that is not one’s native language is no easy task, but one which may be necessary in certain settings. If a market niche exists for professional translators whose working language is not their native language, as studies have shown it does in Spain, it seems appropriate that translation trainees should be encouraged to develop their competence in what is generally known in Translation Studies as inverse (A-B/C) translation, in order to satisfy market requirements. Given current European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requirements for training students for the professional workplace, most translation degree programs in universities in Spain include subjects in which students are required to translate into the foreign language. This paper describes an early attempt to reconcile institutional requirements (curriculum design, assessment, reporting) and professional requirements (development of translation and instrumental competences, together with so-called softskills) in the specialised inverse translation class in the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. A competence-based, learner-centred, process-oriented curriculum was instituted.