Translation, Ideology, and Social Practice

Translation is never completely neutral. On the contrary, it can be used in a double ideological-social sense: to orient people toward unaware, passive acceptance of a given situation or, instead, to evidence the possibility of change. On this account, most interesting are observations made by Marcuse. He analyzes a study conducted on work conditions in a firm in the United States, evidencing how complaints originally formulated by workers as general statements about a common condition lose their “generality” when “translated”: The actual meaning of their statements changes in the “translation.” The tones of protest in accusations denouncing bad work conditions for all are reduced to the status of isolated complaints concerning the life of single individuals. Similar situations abound in social practice and translation today, in the global “communication-production” order where language usage anaesthetizes critical awareness and the common sense of responsibility. This chapter investigates the relationship between words and values, the ideological dimension of sense, and translation, whether intralingual, interlingual, or intersemiotic, either to favor passive compliance to the order of discourse, the condition of “linguistic alienation,” or to develop the capacity for interrogation and conscious awareness in a world, today’s, that, like Orwell’s, resorts to a sort of Newspeak to obtain consensus and assent to the order of discourse, the official order.

The Translation of Polder

Polder is a Dutch word that occurs in many world languages. As sea level rises and coastal cities subside, the polder is a preferred way to protect land from flooding. Because polder combines infrastructure with governance and social resilience, the translation of polder involves more than finding a linguistic equivalent. Successful translation of polder as both a term and an approach to water management depends on the openness of the translation process to adaptations called for by the local language, culture, climate, and terrain. This chapter begins with cultural histories of the polder in The Netherlands and Indonesia and concludes with close analysis of the translation process as it played out in Water as Leverage for Asian Cities, a Dutch urban design initiative that took place in Semarang, Indonesia in 2018–2019.

Political Translation and Civic Translation Capacities for Democracy in Post-Migrant Societies

Translation’s transformative potential has been studied by students of comparative literature, culture, gender, and social movements; but it has received less attention in theories of democracy. This contribution gives a survey of theories of translation, democratic dialogue, and social change drawing on migration and citizenship studies, gender and intersectionality, and research on political participation, transnational social movements, and diffusion. Based on an interdisciplinary conceptualization of translation in the literature, it first reviews existing political theories of democratic dialogue and deliberation. It then provides a sociological critique of democratic theories to explore how structural inequality creates conflict and “positional” misunderstandings within culturally diverse settings for civic participation and deliberation in globalized, unequal, and increasingly diverse societies and transnational publics. Finally, it reviews contemporary practices and radical democratic interventions used by migrants and activists, civic volunteer translators and interpreters, in order to address power inequality and diversity within contemporary democratic processes. By interpreting these grassroots democratic practices, the contribution of this chapter is to infuse democratic theory with timely sociological insights into the potential of activist “political” translations and comparative research on civic translation capacities. Political translation, distinct from conventional definitions of linguistic translation, is a disruptive and communicative practice for challenging power asymmetries and inequality in democratic processes or institutions. Based on cross-national empirical evidence, it discusses the benefits and challenges of political translation and civic translation capacities benefiting female asylum seekers and low–socioeconomic status groups who face structural barriers to access social and civic rights and education.

Terminological Resources for Geosciences Translation

Geosciences are part of a complex network of environmental disciplines of growing importance both for scientific purposes and for social issues. Researchers and geoscientists are called to engage with the public, not only to share their knowledge but also to persuade people and decisionmakers. The authors believe that language is the building block to start sharing and organizing knowledge, but language has its complexity and pitfalls, especially when translating from one language to another or from jargon to natural language. There is a growing need for precise, correct, and clear scientific and technological translation, starting from the meaning of specific terms to the structure of semantic relationships between terms of a certain knowledge domain. Terminology and terminological resources (thesauri, ontologies, and glossaries) dedicated to geosciences can help with these difficult tasks.

Designing Terminology Resources for Environmental Translation

A well-designed terminological knowledge base is a structured repository of linguistic data, which is enriched with metadata and structured according to specific classification schemes and concept-based analysis. There is now no limit to the quantity and type of information in each entry since the digital age has liberated lexicographical and terminological resources from space constraints. More specifically, a terminological knowledge resource for environmental translators should be tailored to the specific needs of users who work with this multifaceted type of specialized text. Accordingly, the type and configuration of the environmental information should reflect the micro- and macrostructural design of the resource and provide frame-like structures in which concepts and terms are dynamically related to others. Designers must also decide how each type should be accessed and in what sequence. The map of the resource can have an underlying conceptual frame that allows users to derive the maximum benefit from it. This chapter provides an overview of the needs of environmental translators and explains how they can be met in the design of a knowledge resource. This is illustrated by the type and number of data fields, their underlying principles, and their mode of visualization.

User-Oriented Healthcare Translation and Communication

Healthcare translation provides a useful and powerful intervention tool to facilitate the engagement with migrants with diverse language, cultural, and health literacy backgrounds. The development of culturally effective and patient-oriented healthcare translation resources has become increasingly pressing. In this chapter, the authors explore, firstly, patient-focused and culturally effective healthcare and medical translation methodologies by integrating insights from health literacy research and corpus-based textual readability evaluation and, secondly, user-oriented criteria which can be used in the development and evaluation of new medical interpreting technologies with a view to enhancing the usability among patients from refugee, migrant, or other socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.

The (Un)translatability of Well-Being

Positive psychology—the scientific study of well-being—has made considerable strides in understanding its subject matter since emerging in the late 1990s. However, like mainstream psychology more broadly, it can be deemed relatively Western-centric, with its concepts and priorities influenced by ways of thinking and understanding that are prominent in Western cultures. Consequently, the field would benefit from greater cross-cultural awareness, engagement, and understanding. One such means of doing so is through the study of “untranslatable” words (i.e., those lacking an exact equivalent in another language, in this case English). This chapter reflects on the nature of untranslatable words, considers their significance to positive psychology (and psychology more broadly), and offers suggestions for why and how the field should engage with them.

Accessible Filmmaking and Media Accessibility

Despite their importance in the reception and distribution of films, translation and accessibility have traditionally been neglected in the film industry. They are regarded as an afterthought, which results in translators being isolated from the creative team and working in conditions that hamper their attempts to maintain the filmmaker’s original vision. As a potential solution to this problem, accessible filmmaking (AFM) aims to integrate translation and accessibility into the production process through the collaboration between the creative team and the translator. This chapter outlines, firstly, the theoretical framework that underlies AFM, drawing on both translation/media accessibility and film studies and incorporating the notion of the global film. It then reviews the application of AFM in the filmmaking industry through the collaboration between accessible filmmakers and directors of translation and access. Finally, it introduces a new engagement-based approach to media accessibility that has resulted from AFM and compares it to the comprehension-based approach that has traditionally been used in this area.

Pedagogical Translation in School Curriculum Design

The main question regarding the use of pedagogical translation in schools has now shifted from the if-question to the how-question, especially given the challenges posed by the increasing worldwide migration. Pedagogical translation is recognized today as an extensive social practice, and recent research is interested in how pedagogical translation can become more effective through novel types of translation, such as media translation. This chapter argues that pedagogical translation is a type of literacy and focuses on what pedagogical translation, notably both the interlingual and the intralingual types, can afford in mixed classrooms in terms of the main methodological approaches used. It also examines how these two types of translation can best be integrated in various types of school curricula with the aim to serve the specific needs of mixed classrooms and the idea of educating emergent bilinguals.

Corpus Statistics for Empirical Translation Studies

In recent years a number of authors have made good use of statistical texts in empirical translation studies. These tests are well established in the scientific literature but have only recently been applied to the comparison of original and translated texts for the identification of the characteristics of “translationese.” There has also been interest in the comparison between professional and student translations and between machine and human translation. In this chapter, various statistical tests are examined in the context of real-world empirical studies in translation: analysis of variance and Tukey’s “honestly significant difference” test, the chi-squared test and the G-statistic, and the visualization techniques of hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the linguistic features chosen or found to characterize the original and translated texts.