Impact of technology on Translation and 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.

The Deformation of Language in James Joyce’s Literary Works: Interpretation and Translation Challenges

The paper deals with studying language deviations of different types in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake . Deviations in general are known to be a departure from a norm or accepted standard; in linguistics deviations are viewed as an artistic device that can be applied in different forms and at various textual levels. The author’s language deformation is analyzed as a form of deviation used for expressing the writer’s language knowledge. It is concluded that in Ulysses the destruction of the language is thoroughly thought out and multi-aimed. For instance, occasional compound units that dominate the novel imitate the style of Homer, reviving the ancient manner in contemporary language. Despite the use of conventional word-building patterns, rich semantic abundance being the basic principle of Joyce's poetics seriously complicates interpretation of the new words in the source language. The attempt is also made to systematize deviation techniques in Finnegans Wake . In particular, multilinguality is found to be the base of the lexical units created by J. Joyce. Such hybrid nonce words produce the polyphony effect and trigger the mechanism of polysemantism together with unlimited associativity of the textual material, broadening the boundaries of linguistic knowledge as a whole. Additionally, certain results of a deeper comparative analysis of the ways to translate the author’s deviations into Russian are given. The analysis of three Russian versions of Ulysses and the experimental fragmentary translation of Finnegans Wake show that there exists some regularity in the choice of translation method, particularly its dependence on the structural similarities/ differences of the source and the target languages, as well as the language levels affected by J. Joyce in the process of lingual destruction. The impossibility of complete conveyance of the semantic depth of the text and stylistic features in the target language is noted.

Speaking for Bakhtin: Two Interpretations of Reported Speech A Response to Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018)

Vološinov ([1929]1973) is one of the most frequently cited works in studies on reported speech, but its interpretation varies considerably between authors. Within the linguistic anthropological tradition, its central message is often conflated with Erving Goffman’s ‘speaker roles’, and in a recent publication, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) marry ideas they attribute to Vološinov (1973) and Mikhail M. Bakhtin to those by the formal semanticist Donald Davidson. Responding to Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) (and a shorter version of a similar argument in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2019), this paper seeks to explore the philosophical foundations of reported speech research, particularly in relation to Vološinov/Bakhtin. It suggests that reported speech research is motivated by two fundamentally distinct goals, one here labelled ‘Fregean’ and the other ‘Bakhtinian’. Questions and methods used in both of these research traditions lead to two radically different understandings of reported speech. This affects the applicability of the definition of direct/indirect speech Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) propose. It also motivates an alternative approach to reported speech advocated by the current author and others that is criticised by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018). The article further seeks to rehabilitate the analysis of Wierzbicka (1974), which Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) partially reject. Whereas Wierzbicka (1974) treats direct and indirect speech as constructions of English, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) elevate the opposition to a universal, which belies the cultural sensitivity to semantic variation the authors display in other work. The paper concludes with a brief note about the semantic status of ‘say’ in Australian languages and states that the relevance of Vološinov ([1929]1973) is undiminished, also in the light of recent developments in language description. It remains a highly original study whose implications are yet to fully impact research on reported speech.

Inpretation of Associative Data as a Methodogical Issue of Psycholinguistics

Associative experiments uncover people’s active attitude to the world represented by language means that determines their relevant strategies of verbal activity and mediates the specifics of their world conceptualization. A word’s associative field modeled on the basis of experimental data is a psychological structure of a word’s content that is relevant for native speakers. Associative meaning distinguished via the analysis of distribution of reactions to a stimulus word proves to be an effective method of discovering emerging trends in the change of word meanings. The author researches the issue of data interpretation in associative experiments. Despite the long history of usage, the notion “associative field” and the correlation of stimulus and reaction are often interpreted in different ways because, firstly, they model the most complex processes of speech activity; secondly, most of suggested typologies of associates do not have a common systematization criterion, which hinders the usage of such classifications in research practice and sometimes leads to an ambiguous interpretation of associative data. Therefore, the author argues that classifications of associates should be developed depending on: (1) characteristics of psycholinguistic/linguistic object researched through an associative experiment; (2) isomorphism of speech and the activity it accompanies; (3) characteristics of mental supports in the cognitive process; (4) the way of representation of these supports. Such criteria of classification require an analysis of the correlation between stimulus and reaction as a unit of association. This correlation is a separate speech act where the stimulus is a motive producing the reaction and the associate expresses the author’s communicative intention. This helps to establish motives of associating and thus acquire a more veracious database for modelling different components of speech activity and its overall production/ comprehension processes. Besides, this approach justifies the principles of worldview modelling. The author presents theoretical and methodological grounds for an effective analysis of associates on the basis of a psycholinguistic object defined by several parameters: strategy of association, dominant psychological function of a language sign that realizes the strategy and the motive of activity explicated in associates.

Cultural Words in Sacral Text and their Translation: Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic Factors

The purpose of this article is to study the issue of key features of the so-called cultural words (realia) in sacred texts (the Bible is taken as an example) as well as a distinctive nature of their cross-language transfer. This problem is essential not only for the Bible translation as such but it also enables to clarify some aspects related to the representation of the vocabulary with cultural identity in the target language that is explained by the very nature of the Old and New Testaments containing a wide variety of the realia that refer directly to a religious cult and to the everyday life of Palestinian people and their neighborhood in the Bible times. The material for the present research includes versions of the Holy Writ created in different periods in a number of languages (Latin, Church Slavonic, Russian and English). While analyzing, the classical translations labelled often as “national” ones have been used (the King James Bible, Synodal Translation), as well and the versions created in the 20th and 21st centuries. The main approach applied herein is the identifying of the corresponding units in the said Bible texts, the ascertainment of the possibility of their ambivalent interpretation, the correlation within the considered versions of translation, the determination of translation strategies used for representing the realia and their comparative analysis. When considering the options presented, special attention has been paid to extra-linguistic factors, since they often play a decisive role in solving the said task. The key results of the made survey can be formulated as follows: 1) since translations could have been made from different versions of the source text, there are cases when certain realia are available in some translations but are missing in others; 2) the use of transcription / transliteration of the realia in Russian versions of the Old Testament in some cases is determined by their representation in the Greek and Church Slavonic texts of the Bible and therefore in both the Synodal and the new translations they can be presented in a form different from that available in European languages; 3) the representation of the Greek word diopetês ( fallen from heaven ) as the proper name Diopet in the Synodal Translation is usually qualified as an elementary mistake, but it could have been also provoked by an intention to follow Greek and Church Slavonic traditions; 4) the existence of the so-called ‘undefined realia’ in the source text, an exact meaning of which is not known, causes their various interpretations in the target language; 5) during the analysis of the units of the target language used in the translation of the Holy Writ, the diachronic aspect must be taken into account considering, on the one hand, the possibility of losing or changing the meaning in the course of linguistic evolution, and on the other hand, avoiding vesting the reality with the meaning that it could not have; 6) a number of translations made in recent decades are characterized by a pronounced pragmatic orientation, in some cases causing a significant neutralization of the national-cultural specificity or its adaptation to the corresponding cultural environment, the degree of admissibility of which in some cases is controversial. The above items enable to clarify a number of aspects related to the methods of translating the realia and the importance of such aspects for attaining the translation adequacy.

“A Sensible Image of the Infinite”: Intersemiotic Translation of Russian Classics for Foreign Audiences

The article is a continuation of the author’s cycle of works devoted to foreign cinematographic and stage adaptations of Russian classical literature for foreign audiences. The research material includes 17 American, European, Chinese, Indian, Japanese fiction films and TV series, one Broadway musical and 9 Russian films and TV series used for comparison. The paper analyses different theoretical approaches to intersemiotic translation, ‘de-centering of language’ as a modern tendency and intersemiotic translation of literary works in the context of intercultural communication. Key decisions about the interpretation of original texts are made by directors and their teams guided by at least three goals: commercial, creative and ideological. Intersemiotic translation makes use of such strategies as foreignization, domestication and universalization. The resignifying of a literary text by means of the cinematographic semiotic system is connected with such transformations as: a) reduction - omission of parts of the original; b) extension - addition, filling in the blanks, and signifying the unsaid; c) reinterpretation - modification or remodeling of the original in accordance with the director’s creative ideas. A challenge and at the same time one of the key points of intersemiotic translation is a difficult choice between the loyalty to the original, comprehensibility for the target audience and freedom of creativity. The research shows that transformations and use of different translation strategies can have both positive and negative consequences. Positive outcomes include: visualization and comprehension of the Russian cultural space; adaptation of Russian experiences for the target culture; retranslation of universal values expressed by the original. Negative consequences result in: the distortion of the original due to insufficient cultural literacy; purposeful deformation of cultural meanings for ideological reasons; erroneous interpretation of the literary text; deformation of the original macromeaning; preservation of the plot, but loss of the in-depth meaning of the original text. Any degree of creative freedom still requires intercultural competence and a careful choice of semiotic signs aimed at expressing the key ideas of the original.

Mode in Arabic-English Translation: with Reference to the Quran

A rhetorical question has the form of a question but does not perform its function, i.e. does not seek any information but rather, is used to give a specific or rhetoric function such as denial, assertion, testing, equalization and negation. The present study investigates the two English translations that were used in the translation of the Quranic rhetorical questions. In a nutshell, this is a comparative study that aims to discover if the grammatical shifts that had occurred in the two English translations would have an effect on the denial, assertion, testing, and equalization and negation modes of the Quranic rhetorical questions. For this purpose, we had adopted the register theory of Halliday and Hassan (1985) as well as the translation shifts of Catford (1965) in the comparison of the two English translations, namely the Koran Interpreted that was authored by Arberry (1955) and the Noble Quran: English translation of the meanings and commentary as transcribed by al-Hilali and Khan (1996). According to the analyses, the occurrence of grammatical shifts between the two translations had in fact affected the mode of the ST rhetorical questions, their rhetorical meanings and consequently, issues on mode sustenance. Therefore, it can be said that the register theory of Halliday and Hassan (1985) had been a beneficial tool used in the analysis of the translation process.

Contextuality in the Russian language

The modern scientific paradigm of linguistics that replaced comparative historical and linguistic-centric paradigm is focused on the relationship between language and reality which is inherently asymmetric in nature. In this situation, the problem of an accurate and complete mutual understanding of the participants of communication becomes more and more urgent. This problem considered in the framework of cultural studies suggests the division of cultures into high context cultures, i.e. those where the behavior of communication participants does not directly express their goals and intentions, and low context cultures, implying direct and frank manifestations of those intentions. The author applies the idea of high and low contextuality to the Russian language, setting the task of identifying those typical manifestations of Russian discourse in which the linguistic signs show a high dependence on the situational and verbal context, and in this way, by virtue of the language structure, cause difficulties for mutual understanding. From this point of view, the study investigates the polysemy of Russian words and grammatical forms, as well as the conditions in which their unambiguous understanding is or is not achieved. It emphasizes the insufficiency of merely stating the possibility of several solutions and the need for algorithms that provide the only (or not the only) correct solution. The author sees another obstacle for successful communication in hyperonyms that do not have a distinct hyponymic content for each participant of communication. The third obstacle is the omission of the verbal designation of modifying and / or substantial characteristics of reality. The article emphasizes that those who speak Russian, in principle possessing the resources necessary for overcoming these difficulties, seek to use them effectively only in certain specialized areas (science, sports, trade) and do not care about the maximum adequacy of language units and reality in everyday and political discourse. In conclusion, the article describes how to take into account the noted features of the Russian language when consciously learning Russian as a native language, as well as when teaching it as a foreign language.