On the translator’s voice from the paratextual perspective–exemplified by Goldblatt’s English translation of Red Sorghum and Massage

The paper explores the translator’s voice from the paratextual perspective combined with a descriptive case study of Goldblatt’s English translation of Red Sorghum: A Novel of China and Massage. In the multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary integrated analytical framework of narrative stylistics and socio-translation studies, the author argues that the translator’s voice could be studied at two levels, i.e. narrative voice in the target text as well as peritext and situational voice in the translation process. Paratexts could be employed to endorse the existence of narrative voice. Besides, paratexts serve to shed light on the implied multiplicity of situational voice and probe into the pivotal aspects of the translator therein. The article aims to strengthen the bonds between paratexts and the translator’s voice, enrich the theory on the translator’s voice and further feed vigor into the field of translation studies. Meanwhile, the study deduces implications for enhancing the international communication of Chinese literature.

Market demand for conference interpreting

This study explored market demand for conference interpreting in South Korea, focusing on clients’ views on the key factors that affect their recruiting decisions. The study conducted a semi-structured interview using fictitious resumes with 14 participants who are clients of conference interpreting services. The study’s results indicate that: (1) participants place high importance on interpreting quality, particularly emphasizing quality items such as content accuracy and terminology awareness; (2) domain-specific interpreting experience, academic background, and price serve as important quality signals in their recruiting decision-making; and (3) price-quality association is present. Furthermore, the interview results suggest that a collaborative approach from clients is necessary to create an enabling environment for quality interpreting services. Ultimately, this study presents noteworthy information regarding clients’ rationales for their recruitment criteria. This information is expected to widen our understanding of the interpreting market in South Korea.

Reconceptualising the interpreter’s role

The interpreter’s role and performance in interpreting-facilitated interactions have attracted considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s. Seminal field research on interpreting in courtrooms, in hospitals, and in war zones describe interpreters as active participants. Nevertheless, Hale (2006) and Pöchhacker (2006) critique that much data-driven research in the area suffers from a lack of theoretical conceptualisations, and is short of diversified sociocultural and linguistic contexts for investigation. To strengthen the theoretical background to research on the interpreters’ role, this study draws on social psychology theories of social identity and optimal distinctiveness, and the sociolinguistic notion of face, to develop an interdisciplinary framework for conceptualising how identity claims may influence interpreters’ choice of linguistic strategies in delivery. The English-Mandarin political press conference interpreting context is examined to illustrate how the proposed framework may shed light on our understanding of interpreters’ behaviour in action.

Translating punctuation between English and Persian and issues for the replacement of non-lexical items

The consideration of the importance of punctuation marks has widely been ignored in studies of translation. Here we report on a case study of English-Persian translation, in which we found that the attitude towards punctuation has not only been due to the different patterns used by different languages but also to the fact that some languages like Persian have never assimilated punctuation marks into the writing styles. Therefore, the meanings and functions of punctuation marks are worth investigating to enhance our understanding of what are termed non-lexical items in this paper. We show how unawareness of such differences could cause problems and complications in conveying the message. The main focus of this study is the survey of translation of punctuation into lexical items as a new tendency. This strategy will be considered as an intersemiotic approach illustrated through a comprehensive series of literary and non-literary examples.

Self-edition hypothesis

‘Self-editing’ refers to the practice of translators who edit their own earlier translations. Self-editions have been less investigated than retranslations. No attempt has been made so far to formulate a hypothesis concerning self-edition. Therefore, the present piece of research was conducted to fill the gap. The corpus of the study includes the modern Persian novella The Blind Owl written by Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) and translated (and self-edited) by Iraj Bashiri (in 1974, 2013 and 2016). The findings showed that self-edited versions appeared to be more target-oriented than their original translations. Therefore, although they appeared after the original translation, and could somehow be thought of as ‘retranslations’, they do not seem to confirm the Retranslation-Hypothesis (RH). The main principle of the tentative ‘Self-edition Hypothesis’ is contrary to that of the Retranslation-Hypothesis. It was also found that a self-edited translation is more ‘natural’, ‘accurate’, and ‘expanded’, but slightly less clear than its original translation. It should, however, be underscored that the reduction in clarity of self-edited versions was not so significant. Future researchers are encouraged to focus their study on ‘comparing strategies used by translators with those adopted by editors’ and ‘taking into account socio-cultural factors involved in the production of new editions’. Prospective researchers can test the hypothesis by concentrating on various language pairs and other text-types.