A Note from the Editor
Mikel Garant 1 – 3 FULL TEXT
College of Global Talent
Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai
COLLABORATIVE TRANSLATION: STUDENT TRANSLATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Tanja Pavlović and Sanel Hadžiahmetović Jurida 4 – 28 FULL TEXT
University of Tuzla
Abstract
In the globalized world, now more than ever, translation practices have been under constant change. Due to the requirements of modern business trends, the traditional image of translators working alone is now somewhat left behind. The practices of large translation agencies force individual translation to give way to collaborative translation. However, collaboration in translation is still a relatively unexplored terrain, with many of its advantages and disadvantages. Bearing this in mind, higher education institutions should be prepared to tackle the issue of collaborative translation from the aspect of curricula design as well as of market requirements, which requires additional research focusing on collaborative work. This article addresses the study conducted to examine the usage of in-class collaborative translation practices at the university level, and the effects such activities might have on increasing translation competence. It discusses the characteristics of collaborative translation and provides an insight into student translators’ perception of the usage of such activities thus attempting to explore the concept of collaboration in translation from the perspective of active participants.
Key words: collaborative translation, student translators, higher education institutions, student perspective
ON INTERNSHIP REPORTS OF MASTERS OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING IN CHINA—A MIXED-METHODS APPROACH
Mianjun XU 29 – 74 FULL TEXT
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China
Abstract
Internship reports, which are based on Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) students’ translation or interpreting internships, can reveal, to some extent, the effectiveness of internships, a compulsory component of MTI education in China. However, scholars or MTI students have not paid much attention to internship reports. For this reason, this paper tries to present an overall picture of MTI internship reports in China with a mixed-methods approach, including bibliometric analyses and semi-structured interviews with 10 MTI graduates. It is found that the numbers of internship reports, internship institutions and MTI institutions involved are all small but the internship experiences turn out to be positively received by MTI students. It is hoped that this study can draw more scholarly and professional attention to MTI internships and internship reports in China and beyond so as to improve the quality of translator and interpreter training.
Keywords: MTI education, internship reports, bibliometric approach, mixed-methods approach
WRITING ONE'S OWN TEXTS FOR TRANSLATION ASSIGNMENTS
Marián Kabát 75 – 104 FULL TEXT
Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave
Abstract
The paper examines the possibility of teachers of literary and non-literary translation writing their own texts that are then given to students of translation as assignments to translate at home and later checked and discussed with the teacher during classes. The author discusses several pros and cons of the writing process of such texts and then goes on to show several kinds of translation problems a teacher of translation can include in a literary and a non-literary text (e.g. terminology, cross-cultural differences, linguistic differences, charactonyms, word play, intertextual problems, text analysis, conventions, etc.). The stated examples are taken from his own texts that he created for the purpose of teaching literary and non-literary translation courses. He also adds possible steps the students can take in order to solve the given problems and a possible solution to them.
Key words: text creation, teaching translation, translation assignments, literary translation, non-literary translation, translation didactics, own text writing
A FOCUS-GROUP STUDY: STUDENTS’ PERCEIVED BENEFITS FROM LEARNING WITH PRACTITIONERS’ NOTE-TAKING AND CONSECUTIVE INTERPRETING DEMONSTRATION VIDEOS
Maggie Hui 105 - 159 FULL TEXT
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Abstract
This project sets out to videotape interpreters’ processes of note taking and consecutive interpreting, followed by note-symbol explaining. The videos are to serve as scaffolds for interpreter training. To explore students’ perceived benefits from learning with practitioners’ videos, a focus-group study was carried out with four Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) undergraduates having completed two interpreting courses. The experiment consisted of four parts: (1) Each subject was instructed to perform consecutive interpreting for an English news recording lasting about 3 minutes, assess the quality of the delivery according to the rubrics used in the interpreting courses, and describe their performance at a retrospective interview. (2) Videos of a practitioner interpreting the same recording were presented to the subject. (3) The subject was assigned to interpret another related English news recording into Chinese, assess their work, and share with the researcher if and what they had benefited from the videos. (4) The subject was to fill out a post-project questionnaire mainly regarding the user-friendliness of the videos.
Inspired by the practitioner’s performance and explanation, all subjects showed improvements in the second interpreting exercise as their notes were simplified and increasingly to-the-point, hence saving time and freeing up short-term memory for better analysis of the source text and thus coming up with better interpretations. They believed a demonstration video repository would be a valuable self-learning aid complementary to classroom learning.
Keywords: consecutive interpreting, demonstration video repository, interpreter training, note taking, scaffolding
TRANSLATION PROJECT MANAGEMENT – AN ULTIMATE SKILL FOR TRANSLATORS?
Jurgita Motiejūnienė and Ramunė Kasperavičienė 160 - 192 FULL TEXT
Kaunas University of Technology
Abstract
The existing standards in the translation market rather vaguely define translation project manager’s competences and how they can be interpreted, acquired and developed. There is also a lack of detailed research in the translation field that would focus on defining the particular skills necessary for successful translation project management. This paper aims to discuss and describe the skills necessary for translation project managers in the translation market by presenting an overview of the Lithuanian translation market and providing significant insights of translation service providers and university translation students about translation project management. The study is based on surveys carried out to determine translation service providers’ and students’ attitudes and experiences in translation project management, with the emphasis on the set of skills needed in the field. The main questions analysed are related to the importance of particular skills for translation project managers, the ways of acquiring and developing the skills, and the benefits of the use of translation project management software for freelance translators. Studying these issues may provide helpful theoretical, practical and pedagogical implications as to the training of translators and translation project managers.
Keywords: translation project management, communicative skills, IT skills, translation service providers/agencies, freelance translators
WIKIPEDIA-BASED ACTIVITIES AND TRANSLATION COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT
Małgorzata Kodura 193 – 231 FULL TEXT
Pedagogical University of Krakow
Abstract
This paper analyses advantages of introducing Wikipedia-based translation activities into translation courses, leading to the development of translation competence among university students, with reference the 2017 EMT competence framework of requirements. It also discusses the approach of the academic world towards Wikipedia as both a source of knowledge and a pedagogical tool, and provides practical examples of Wikipedia-related translation assignments, along with the challenges to be overcome by students, thus leading to the acquisition of skills important in their future careers as professional translators.
Keywords: translation pedagogy, Wikipedia, digital literacy, translation competence, EMT 2017
IMPACT OF PARALLEL CORPORA AS TRANSLATION MEMORIES ON PHRASEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION QUALITY IN STUDENT TRANSLATIONS OF SPECIALIZED MEDICAL TEXTS
Heidi Verplaetse and An Lambrechts 232 – 268 FULL TEXT
KU Leuven (Research Group QLVL)
Abstract
The implementation of parallel corpora (source texts and their corresponding translations) as translation memories (TMs) in translation practice is widespread. This implementation may have different effects with regard to translation quality on stylistic, phraseological and terminological levels. In order to analyse these effects we conducted a small-scale experiment with 14 students from the English Translation Workshop: Translating Scientific/Medical Texts at KU Leuven. The students translated two short patient information leaflets (PILs) containing pre-selected phraseological test items (e.g. lexical collocations, grammatical collocations or colligations, complex prepositions, etc.) from English into Dutch. 6 students used a CAT tool (SDL Trados Studio) with two specialized TMs and/or any available external resources, whereas 8 students used external resources only. Afterwards the translations were error annotated. The results showed that TM use speeds up the translation process. The CAT tool users in the experiment heavily relied on the TMs they had at their disposal. The lowest number of phraseological errors was generated using a TM in combination with external resources. The most popular bilingual resources among all students were bilingual dictionaries and corpus-based resources (e.g. Linguee). If deemed necessary by the students, the TM translations were overruled to create more concise or idiomatic translations. It is important that a critical stance is taken with regard to TM quality and students also need to be made aware of the possibilities additional resources (e.g. corpora) in translation have to offer.
Keywords: corpora, CAT tools, translation quality, translation training, phraseology, LSP, medical translation
A TWO-DIMENSIONAL HYPOTHETICAL MODEL FOR LEGAL TRANSLATION COMPETENCE ENHANCEMENT
Lianhong Gao 269 – 305 FULL TEXT
China University of Political Science and Law
Abstract
Legal translation competence has been conceived as the combination of language knowledge, subject knowledge, cultural knowledge and cognitive psychological process of translation activities. Based upon the conceptualization, this study proposed a two-dimensional hypothetical model for cultivating legal translation ability. The model was illustrated by a pair of coordinates with language features at different language levels as the transverse and various cognitive activities as the vertical. A module composed of ten aspects of curricular objectives was generated from the model by the Q-methodology inferential research process.
Keywords: a two-dimensional hypothetical model, legal translation competence, Q-methodology
SUBTITLING AS AN ACTIVE PEDAGOGICAL TOOL IN THE DIDACTICS OF TRANSLATION. FIRST RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY
Sonia González Cruz 306 – 330 FULL TEXT
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Abstract
This article is framed within the field of the didactics of translation and it focuses on the relationship between the didactics of general translation and active subtitling as a pedagogical tool. It is interesting to analyze the level of inclusion of new resources into the existent curricula and observe to what extent these different teaching methods are being used in the general translation classroom. Although subtitling has already become an independent discipline of study and it is a type of translation on its own, it is necessary to do further research on the different didactic varieties that this type of audiovisual translation offers.
Therefore, the main objective of this article is to analyze the inclusion of interlinguistic active subtitling in general translation curricula at several Spanish universities and present an overview of the preliminary results. Far from analyzing the use of subtitling in the classroom in relation to the didactics of Audiovisual Translation, I focus on the use of subtitling as a pedagogical active tool to develop the so-called translation competence in a non-specialized didactic context. The first results obtained from the analysis of the existent teaching curricula and the actual teaching practices which are being carried out at three different universities in Barcelona will be presented throughout this paper.
Keywords: active subtitling, didactics of translation, translation competence, translation curricula
TRANSLATION IN FINANCIAL SPANISH: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY ON THE USE OF METAPHOR
Carmen Álvarez García 331 – 359 Full Text
Universidad de Sevilla
Abstract
This paper presents a study aimed to analyse variation in one of the characteristics commonly attributed to economic and financial language, the frequent use of metaphor as an expressive resource, in order to help the translation into Spanish of economic texts and its training. To this end, a corpus of texts has been compiled pertaining to economic and, more specifically, financial language. The sources have been the European Central Bank, Spanish press, whether specialised in economics or generalist, and websites of different financial institutions. The texts included in the studied corpus deal with the same subject matter, more specifically the regulation of banking transfers between countries in the Eurozone, ruled by the Single Euro Payments Area legislation, and can be classified into different textual genres. The findings show significant variation in the use of metaphor in the texts studied depending on the type of discourse within which the text is framed, which has implications for the teaching of translation and for the profession itself.
Key words: translator training, metaphor, economic language, financial language, corpus-based study