Humour in audiovisual translation: Theories and applications

The first 20 years of the 21st century have witnessed an explosion of audiovisual translation (AVT) products. Unlimited as to time, space and economic status, the widespread use of online streaming media has made AVT entertainment a feature of daily life. Among the various genres, comedy – with the laughter, happiness, and social commentary it brings – continues to enjoy popular appeal. Humour is indeed a universal phenomenon; its presentation in audiovisual products understandably attracts wide scholarly attention, and Margherita Dore’s monograph, Humour in audiovisual translation: Theories and applications, is one of the latest works to explore it.

Yes! We’re open. Open science and the future of academic practices in translation and interpreting studies

This article offers an overview of open science and open-science practices and their applications to translation and interpreting studies (TIS). Publications on open science in different disciplines were reviewed in order to define open science, identify academic publishing practices emerging from the core features of open science, and discuss the limitations of such practices in the humanities and the social sciences. The compiled information was then contextualised within TIS academic publishing practices based on bibliographic and bibliometric data. The results helped to identify what open-science practices have been adopted in TIS, what problems emerge from applying some of these practices, and in what ways such practices could be fostered in our discipline. This article aims to foster a debate on the future of TIS publishing and the role that open science will play in the discipline in the upcoming years.

Trainee translators’ research styles: A taxonomy based on an observation study at the University of Silesia, Poland

This paper presents a typology of information-seeking styles exhibited by 52 students of the MA translation and interpreting programme at the University of Silesia, Poland. The typology emerged during the large-scale investigation into trainee translators’ research behaviour occurring during translation of a legal text from English into Polish (Sycz-Opoń 2019). The method of investigation combined observation of students’ recorded performances with a think-aloud protocol (TAP). The case-study analysis brought to light significant variation in student’s information-seeking behaviour, which had gone unnoticed in the aggregate statistical data. Individual differences included students’ source preference, search intensity, level of criticism towards sources, diligence, risk-taking, self-confidence, and source reliance. As a result of the analysis the six research styles emerged: traditionalist, innovator, minimalist, true detective, procrastinator, and habitual doubter. They are presented in this paper with special attention to each style’s strengths, weaknesses and recommended teaching approaches. The results suggest the need for information-seeking training geared towards the diverse needs of individual students.

Style shift in translation: The case of translating Susan Glaspell’s Trifles into Arabic

This study examines style shifting in an Arabic translation of Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles by Abbas Brashi. It presents an overview of the play, as well as its importance and relevance to Arab culture. It describes the different varieties of Arabic that exist as well as the one chosen for the translation, namely Modern Standard Arabic. The paper explains that the formal style of the target language text was chosen for the sake of wide readability and comprehensibility, as dialectal varieties of Arabic differ across and within Arab states and there is no standardised script. The other reason for the shift is to adhere to the norms of acceptable Arabic writing. The style shift observed in the translation of Trifles into Arabic is demonstrated in the translation of a number of linguistic phenomena, namely contraction, ‎elision, subject-verb agreement, and figurative multi-word ‎expressions.‎ The paper concludes that the formal Arabic version of Trifles may later be shifted to different informal dialectal varieties of Arabic when it is to be performed on stage. Therefore, the formal Arabic version of the play may be customised or adapted to one or more specific dialects of Arabic according to the time and place of each performance.

Trends in e-tools and resources for translators and interpreters

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of translation technology, which has achieved tremendous success in both academia and industry. Due to these rapid advances, it is clear that technology has already profoundly affected the way translation is produced. More recently, translation technology – ranging from translation-specific technologies such as MT to more general-purpose speech technologies and cloud computing – calls into question some of the assumptions about how, by whom, and to what level of quality translation should be done. Commercially viable translation today is almost entirely the computer-aided variety, given the ubiquitous use of computers in text production practices (O’Hagan, 2020).

Consecutive interpreting: A short course

Consecutive interpreting is the most popular type of interpretation work, and its highly cognitively complex nature usually poses challenges for student interpreters (Arumí Ribas, 2012). However, compared with the theoretical issues of translation and interpreting (with which the bulk of the published literature is concerned), the practical aspects of consecutive interpreting have not been paid due attention. As “a response to the almost total lack of published material on consecutive [interpreting] as a whole” (Gillies, 2019, p. 13) and also based on the author’s 20-year experience in reading, practising, and teaching consecutive interpreting, the recently published Consecutive interpreting: A short course has broken down consecutive interpreting pedagogically into its basic components...

Exploring predictors of translation performance

The study reported on examined the question of whether translators’ cognitive faculties might be able to predict their performance on a translation task. Research on individual cognitive differences in translation has been a new issue in the realm of Translation Studies. However, the majority of previous studies have targeted single cognitive faculties for the purpose of investigation and we therefore know little about how sets of cognitive faculties can affect the process of translation from one language into another. In this study, three individual cognitive differences were targeted: emotional intelligence (EI), tolerance of ambiguity (TA), and working memory (WM). For the purposes of the study, 54 Iranian MA students of Translation Studies were sampled as participants. The participants completed measures of their EI, TA, and WM. In addition, they were requested to translate an excerpt from English (Source Language) into Persian (Target Language). The results of multiple regression analysis indicated that the regression model, incorporating EI, TA, and WM as its predictors, was able to predict a significant amount of variance in participants’ translation performance. Of the three predictors, the contributions of TA and WM to the total variance in the participants’ translation scores were statistically significant, while the contribution of EI to the total variance was not. The findings of the study have some implications for research and practice in the field of Translation Studies.

A pre-translation framework for public service translation: A sociological approach to enhance translation effectiveness

In this paper a pre-translation framework developed for public service translation is presented. The framework was developed from a sociological standpoint “whereby translation practice can be viewed in relation to people and institutions involved in it or affected by it” (Taibi & Ozolins, 2016, pp. 63-64) with the aim to provide contextualization and understanding that precedes the actual translation stage. After outlining the framework, its usefulness in obtaining key pre-translation information is showcased through an application form in the Spanish immigration context, i.e. an authentic public service text. Lastly, the paper shows how the information gathered based on the framework will assist in proposing an effective English translation of this application form in the future.

Issues in Arabic video game localization: A descriptive study

Because Arabic video game localization is a relatively new area of study, little in-depth research has been done on the topic within Arabic translation studies. The few articles that address video game localization in Arabic remain limited, either due to examining a single video game and its various localization issues, or examining various games but considering the transfer of their linguistic assets only. This paper aims to address the existing gaps in Arabic video game localization studies by delving into multiple video games localized into Arabic, and analysing the technical, linguistic, and cultural issues found within them. Technical issues are related to the Arabic script, video game variables, and subtitling conventions. Linguistic issues, on the other hand, include Arabic video game terminology and acronyms as well as the translation of proper names and NPCs’ titles into Arabic. Lastly, the paper discusses cultural challenges that arise when localizing video games into Arabic, such as how to navigate nudity, profanity, and alcohol. The paper concludes by calling for more research into the area of video game localization. Such research should not only flag linguistic, cultural, and technical issues but also establish a body of literature that would help practitioners and video game developers provide a more authentic, unique gaming experience for Arab gamers.

Implementing the flipped classroom model in teaching a translation module in Vietnam

This study provided a novel flipped classroom model with a detailed combination of in-class and out-of-class activities to teach a Vietnamese-English Translation module. The study aimed to (1) provide an in-depth insight into how the model was actually implemented in a specific scenario to make the teaching-learning process more interesting and meaningful, and (2) investigate the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model towards learners’ translation performance through various assessments. 39 English-majored juniors at Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam participated in the study during the second semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. The study implemented a case-study mixed method design, applying assessment analysis and content analysis of one specific learning scenario to clarify how the flipped learning model contributed to the training process. Results show that a careful design of the flipped model contributed to the relevant literature on how to implement flipped learning in actual classroom settings, but also effectively improved learners’ performance in translation studies.