Targeted individuals

This article argues that researchers in Translation Studies may proactively aim to understand the consequences of an envisaged merger between targeted advertising and automated translation. Functional translation software is widely available online, and several platforms now perform instant translation, sometimes without asking the user whether this is required. Indeed, the user’s main language is known to various applications, which keep track of this information along with other settings and preferences. Data tracking is commonly used to produce targeted advertising: people receive commercial information about products they are likely to be interested in. If text can instantly be altered according to a user’s linguistic preferences, it can also be altered according to aesthetic, commercial, or political preferences. The article discusses theoretical and ideological aspects of the sociotechnical evolution towards the production and consumption of personalised content, highlighting the role translation may come to play.

The Usefulness of Different Forms of Translation in a CLIL Environment

This article aims to explore the role translation can play within a CLIL environment. The hypothesis that the research project, on which this paper is based, wanted to prove, was that the introduction of materials and activities informed by the use of various forms of translation could lead to an enhancement of the performance in students attending CLIL courses at the level of both content and language. As Snell-Hornby stated at the end of the twentieth century, the practice of translation in our society has increasingly acquired a fundamental importance. Yet, for many years, translation has often been excluded from the language class. However, in our multicultural society, translation has become an essential tool in various professional and social contexts, including the multicultural classrooms teachers act in. This article is based on my experience as a teacher trainer (English language and CLIL methodology) and on the results obtained during research which focused, in particular, on the use of various forms of translation in CLIL courses and which extended over the school years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. As a result, this article argues in favor of translation in the CLIL class. On the basis of the outcomes obtained, it is my contention here that Learning Units such as those presented here, where translation works in synergy with CLIL methodology, are perceived as motiving by students, thereby facilitating the development of various disciplinary and communicative skills.

FINANCIAL TRANSLATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS FOR THE INDIGENOUS AFRICAN LANGUAGES

In terms of the Census 2011 in South Africa, the majority of the South African population use indigenous African languages as mother tongue, compared to the minority that use English, Afrikaans and other languages. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act 108 of 1996) declared Sepedi (N. Sotho), Sesotho, Setswana, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, Siswati, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu as official languages of the Republic of South Africa. Even though in 1996 eleven languages were declared official by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act 108 of 1996), English and Afrikaans have maintained their pre-1994 status as de facto languages in the technical and scientific fields. The anomaly of the dominance of English and Afrikaans, particularly in the financial industry, has implication for the development of the majority of the citizens in the country, especially in poverty-alleviation and national development interventions. Without paying a special focus on the dynamics in languages, it could be extremely difficult to understand how issues of power, identity, conflict and resistance are established and maintained within organisations and even governments. The purpose of this paper is to investigate reasons for the persistence of the status quo in the positioning of languages in South Africa in particular regarding financial documents. This paper also looks at some of the challenges the African languages are faced with in making inroads in fields such as the finance, as well as implications for the speakers of the African languages over the two decades after the new dispensation was ushered in. The polysystem theory championed by Even-Zohar assists in putting the role translation can play in the effort of developing African languages and putting African languages into perspective. It is also hoped that this paper will contribute towards the debate on intellectualisation of the African languages in South Africa. Keywords: African languages, financial translation, multilingualism, polysystem, poverty, South Africa.

Humanities Fiction: Translation and ‘Transplanetarity’ in Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival

One of the more interesting science fiction movies of recent years, at least to Humanities academics, is Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 alien-invasion movie, Arrival. It is a film which not only features a Professor of Linguistics as its heroine, but the plot of which is organised around the critical global importance of a multi-million dollar translation project. This essay compares the film with the original novella upon which it was based – Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” (1998) – to examine the role translation plays in both, with the aim of placing this in the context of the crisis in the Humanities which has marked universities over the last few years, and can be linked to a more general crisis in liberal values. While founded upon a time-honoured science fiction scenario the movie also clearly articulates the sense of global peril which is typical of much of the cultural production of our current times, manifested in fears about ecological catastrophe, terrorist attacks, and the anthropocene, etc. Another of its crisis-points is also ‘very 2016’: its ability to use science fiction tropes to express an anxiety about how liberal values are in danger of being overtaken by a self-interested, forceful, intolerant kind of politics. Arrival is as much a work of ‘hu-fi’ as it is ‘sci-fi’, that is, ‘Humanities fiction’, a film which uses Chiang’s original novella to convey a message about the restorative potential of ‘Humanities values’ in the face of a new global threat.

Creating Reading Habits Through Translation in Turkey (1840–1940)

Although translated books and readers are visibly and inextricably linked, readers, readers’ expectations, attitudes and habits have only been partially analysed in translation research. In a similar vein, the relationship between translation and reader was rather left undiscovered by scholars studying translation/book/reading history. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of my comprehensive doctoral research on the pioneering role translation played in the history of reading and readers in Turkey between 1840 and 1940 by problematizing the relationship between translation, readers and their reading habits. This hundred year period is characterized by an apparent transformation in the literary production (especially in the number of translated works) and the publishing industry, which created an expansion in the number of readers and the development of new forms to suit the needs and tastes of this new readership. Data from a variety of sources including readers’ letters and auto/biographical accounts will be used in this article to investigate readers, their reading habits and the transformative process they experienced through this reading (r)evolution. In the absence of library records and marginalia due to the inherent characteristics of the period under study, these letters and auto/biographical accounts are of primary importance in providing evidence of what and how the readers were actually reading. Their active involvement in the process (of selection and consumption of translated and/or indigeneous works) is also reflected through the views, experiences and perceptions that are present in these letters and accounts.

Cultural Change and Cultural Mediation in the Translation of Culture-Specific Lexis

This chapter looks at the cultural mediator role of translation trainees dealing with culture-specific lexis. Translators need to be able to make connections between and across the cultures they are dealing with, and to negotiate and overcome any differences, conveying the message of the source text to the target readers with optimum effect. Five translation classes which placed emphasis on optimal relevance in translation were provided to 10 undergraduate students learning translation in Seoul, South Korea. The chapter highlights the significant role translation of culture-specific lexis can play in forming and developing learners' identities as mediators between source and target text cultures, no doubt an important role in light of cultural change in an era of globalization which calls for culture or cultures to be viewed from a multifaceted and diverse perspective.

The Role of Translation in Forming Interdisciplinarity in Arab Medieval Times

Medieval Arabic translation (MedAT) played a crucial role in the formulation of the Islamic and Arab civilization. For the first time in the history of medieval Arabs, materials related to an array of multidisciplinary fields were translated, allowing the Arabs to import and master disciplines they did not have or never bothered about, and to subsequently become exporters of knowledge and their language, Arabic, the global donor of such knowledge for centuries. The glorious history of Arabic translation at medieval times put translation at the heart of society, but there is little written about the role translation in forming an interdisciplinary unique Arab culture, bringing various disciplines together. This chapter investigates the role of translation in the formation of the interdisciplinary role of translation in the Arab culture during its medieval times, particularly the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. It examines the position medieval Arabic translation had in transferring and diffusing new disciplines and in creating an interdisciplinary environment which nurtured the production of native knowledge.

Un regard sur les recherches roumaines en histoire de la traduction

This article sets out to offer a panoramic view of the history and historiography of translation into Romanian from a variety of approaches, among them the history of language, of literature, and of cultural and artistic practices. The following aspects will be focused on in carrying out this survey: translation as an act, the participants in the translation process (partially recorded in indexes and/or indirectly listed in dictionaries and indexes of translated works), and translation as a result. Our intention is to emphasize how valuable research in the field of Romanian translation is, in particular in order to reveal the role translation has played in the process of linguistic and administrative self-determination, and, through this, in the construction of the national past.

Intertextuality and Translation in Three Recent French Holocaust Novels

This essay highlights the role translation plays in constructing Holocaust memory in fiction. Considering for example references to the work of Primo Levi in French texts, it shows how recent Holocaust novels have recourse to intertexts originally written in another language in order to evoke shared knowledge about the Holocaust. The translation of Holocaust novels therefore poses the problem of translating an intertext that is itself a translation. Analysis of recent novels by Fabrice Humbert, Boualem Sansal, and Sylvie Germain suggests that such translated intertextuality can produce complex and unpredictable reinterpretations. The essay argues that translation and multilingualism are rhetorical strategies used in Holocaust fiction to approach complex questions of identity and unrepresentability.

From the Dutch corantos to Convergence Journalism: The Role of Translation in News Production

This article provides a overview of the role translation has played in news transmission since the birth of journalism until the 21st century. The paper focuses on three periods and the ways in which translation has been present in news production: (1) translation at the origin of newspapers in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, with particular reference to England, Spain and Scandinavia, where translation was, in fact, the staple diet of the first pamphlets published in those countries, (2) from the late 19th century onwards, the interplay between language and translation has also been present in the activity of foreign correspondents, albeit often in a very invisible manner, and (3) as the journalistic activity was professionalized, the importance of translation can be traced in the need for journalists to be trained in foreign languages as well as in the appearance of news agencies whose activity is to a great extent translational. Finally, the advent and spread of the Internet has made the role of translation more apparent, even if it remains an invisible second-rate activity within the news production process.