Anthony Pym

What technology does to translating

This is an exploratory inquiry into signed language interpreters’ perceptions of interpreter e-professionalism on social media, specifically Facebook. Given the global pervasiveness of Facebook, this study presents an international perspective, and reports on findings of focus groups held with a total of 12 professional signed language interpreters from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Denmark, all of whom are also Facebook users. The findings reveal that Facebook is seen to blur the traditional boundaries between personal and professional realms – an overlap which is perceived to be compounded by the nature of the small community in which signed language interpreters typically work –necessitating boundary management strategies in order to maintain perceptions of professionalism on the site. Facebook is considered a valuable professional resource to leverage for networking, professional development, problem solving and assignment preparation, but it is also perceived as a potential professional liability for both individual interpreters and the profession at large. Maintaining client confidentiality was found to be the most pressing challenge Facebook brings to the profession. Educational measures to raise awareness about e-professionalism were generally viewed favourably.The study probes into translation students’ perception of the value of online peer feedback in improving translation skills. Students enrolled in a translation degree in Australia translated a 250-word text on two separate occasions. On each occasion, the students were given another fellow student’s translation of the same text to mark and provide anonymous peer feedback. The original translations from all the students, together with any peer feedback, were uploaded onto an online forum. The students were encouraged to download their own translation to review the peer feedback in it. They were also encouraged to download and peruse other students’ peer reviewed translations for comparison. Upon completion of the project, the students were surveyed about their perceptions and appreciation of their engagement in the process in the following three capacities: (i) as a feedback provider, (ii) as a feedback recipient, and (iii) as a peruser of other students’ work and the peer feedback therein. Results suggest that translation students appreciate online peer feedback as a valuable activity that facilitates improvement. The students found receiving peer feedback on their own translation especially rewarding, as it offered alternative approaches and perspectives on tackling linguistic/translation issues. In comparing the three capacities, students perceived reviewing feedback on their own work and perusing other students’ work as more beneficial than engaging in giving feedback to others.Title: Tarjamat al-khadamaat al-’aammah ( Community Interpreting and Translation) Author: Dr. Mustapha Taibi (University of Western Sydney) Year of publication: 2011 Publisher: Dar Assalam , Rabat (Morocco) ISBN: 978-9954-22-088-7 191 pagesAccent is known to cause comprehension difficulty, but empirical interpreting studies on its specific impact have been sporadic. According to Mazzetti (1999), an accent is composed of deviated phonemics and prosody, both discussed extensively in the TESL discipline. The current study seeks to examine, in the interpreting setting, the applicability of Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson and Koehlers (1992) finding that deviated prosody hinders comprehension more than problematic phonemics and syllable structure do. Thirty-seven graduate-level interpreting majors, assigned randomly to four groups, rendered four versions of a text read by the same speaker and then filled out a questionnaire while playing back their own renditions. Renditions were later rated for accuracy by two freelance interpreters, whereas the questionnaires analysed qualitatively. Results of analyses indicated that 1) both phonemics and prosody deteriorated comprehension, but prosody had a greater impact; 2) deviated North American English post-vowel /r/, intonation and rhythm were comprehension problem triggers. The finding may be of use to interpreting trainers, trainees and professionals by contributing to their knowledge of accent.The title Conference of the Tongues at first sight raises questions as to the particularities of its pertinence to translation studies, i.e. the range of possible subject matters subsumed, and is somewhat loosely explained in the preface by a short and factual hint to its historical origins (in sixteenth-century Spain in a paratext to a translation of Aesop). There is no further elaboration on the motivation for the choice of this title however.The market for translation services provided by individuals is currently characterized by significant uncertainty because buyers lack clear ways to identify qualified providers from amongst the total pool of translators. Certification and educational diplomas both serve to reduce the resulting information asymmetry, but both suffer from potential drawbacks: translator training programs are currently oversupplying the market with graduates who may lack the specific skills needed in the market and no certification program enjoys universal recognition. In addition, the two may be seen as competing means of establishing qualification. The resulting situation, in which potential clients are uncertain about which signal to trust, is known as a signal jam . In order to overcome this jam and provide more consistent signaling, translator-training programs and professional associations offering certification need to collaborate more closely to harmonize their requirements and deliver continuing professional development (CPD) that help align the outcomes from training and certification.Interpreting is rather like scuba diving. With just a bit of protective equipment, we interpreters plunge for a short time into an often alien world, where a mistake can be very serious, not only for ourselves but for the other divers who are depending on us to understand their surroundings. And as all who dive, we interpreters find this daily foray into a new environment fascinating, exhilarating, but also at times, challenging. One of the high-risk dive sites into which we venture often is the sea of healthcare, where the strange whale-song of medical dialogue, the often incomprehensible behavior of local denizens such as doctors, and the tricky currents of the healthcare system itself require special knowledge and skill to navigate successfully. Did you ever wish for a dive manual for unique world of healthcare? Well, here’s a good one, from linguist, RN and interpreter trainer, Dr. Ineke Crezee of New Zealand.Among all the difficulties inherent in interpreting, numbers stand out as a common and complex problem trigger. This experimental study contributes to research on the causes of errors in the passive simultaneous interpretation (SI) of numbers. Two groups of Italian Master’s degree students (one for English and one for German) were asked to interpret simultaneously a number-dense speech from their respective B language into their mother tongue, Italian. Note-taking was allowed during the test and both the study participants and their lecturers completed a questionnaire afterwards. Data analysis was conducted with statistical and qualitative methods, combining the cognitivist and contextualist approach. The objective was to ascertain whether one main variable may be held responsible for the high error rate related to interpreting numbers and the difficulty perceived by students in the task. The analysis quantifies the relative impact of different causes of difficulties on participants’ delivery of numbers. It stresses the crucial role of the subjective variable represented by interpreters’ skills. Didactic implications and directions for future research are discussed in the conclusion.

On translator ethics : principles for mediation between cultures

This is about people, not texts – a translator ethics seeks to embrace the intercultural identity of the translatory subject, in its full array of possible actions. Based on seminars originally given at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, this translation from French has been fully revised by the author and extended to include critical commentaries on activist translation theory, non-professional translation, interventionist practices, and the impact of new translation technologies. The result takes the traditional discussion of ethics into the way mediators can actively create cooperation between cultures, while at the same time addressing very practical questions such as when one should translate or not translate, how much translators should charge, or whose side they should be on. On Translator Ethics offers a point of reference for the key debates in contemporary Translation Studies.

Nicole Slapped Michelle

AbstractThe public perception of court interpreters operates through theories located in discourses both within and around the court. Analysis of interpreting at the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson shows that such theories are able to explain apparent linguistic shifts in terms of lexical non-correspondence, intralingual discursive coherence, sociocultural bias, variety alignment, a ‘user-expectation’ principle, the fiction of non-hermeneutic rendition as a mode of professional demarcation, the priority of the cultural component, and various appeals to linguistic and academic expertise. Although all these approaches can provide explanations of apparent shifts, only cost-beneficial theories are found to be successful within the court context. It is concluded that any scholarly intervention in this field should be in terms of theories able to provide explanations adequate to the amount of analytical effort to be invested.

Okay, So How Are Translation Norms Negotiated? A Question for Gideon Toury and Theo Hermans

Norm, you see, was a typical Australian slob who watched football on televisionas he drank beer. Norm was the norm, or at least the behaviour pattern that theenlightened Australian government of the day was seeking to change. ‘Life, bein it ¼’, read the slogan that followed the image of Norm, telling us all to get upand do things. So the advertising campaign was aimed at changing a norm(changing, not necessarily breaking) and would seem to have been successful, tojudge by the figures one now sees jogging along Australian beaches, not tomention the guilt I feel as I sit and watch football on television. One set of normswas transformed into another. And yet the change was by no means betweenequal objects; it required investment, effort, and exchange between people.Now, norms are all very well. They exist, they change, and they can be changedfrom above or below, by reason, technology, or creativity. Norms are certainlypart of anything we do, including translation. Their empirical study usefullyinsists that most of what we do, including translation, varies from place to place,time to time, and is subject to social conditioning. This relativist reminder issometimes much needed. Yet the general concept of norms doesn’t really get memoist in the nether regions, neither with excitement nor disgust. Why? Probablybecause norms, such as we find them in the papers by Gideon Toury and TheoHermans, aren’t really opposed to much except norms. You can have Norm 1 orNorm 2, or Norm 1.5 if necessary, as the scientific stance holds its object at arm’slength to make the appropriate measurements. But what I don’t find, or don’tfind enough of in the oppositions of norm and norm, is a radically opposedcategory that might broach what the Australian advertising campaign was allabout: Is life, in any mildly participative sense, really just another set of norms?It could be more like the activity, the interactions, from which norms ensue andwhich they in turn constrain. No, I don’t want to give a theory of life here. Godforbid! What I want to do is simply to edge the descriptivists a little further outof their armchairs; I’d like them to participate in the active construction of theirobject, or, better, to recognise more consistently that this is what we are all doing.My brief comments will thus focus on a question that remains largelyunanswered in the papers by Toury and Hermans (nor really answered in theother material at hand, for example, Simeoni, 1998; Chesterman, 1997; Hermans,forthcoming). I want to ask about how norms might be related to some kind ofparticipative social life. But I’ll be more technical and ask how they are apparently‘negotiated’ (since Toury uses the term). I would like to know how this is done,where it is done, and by whom.

Strategies of the Frontier in fin de siècle Australia

principles to an equally abstract text like “L’Après-midi d’un faune.” Yet the exegete was working for the texts rather than for any living public. Brennan’s orientation toward the written rather than spoken word contrasted sharply not only with the popular Australian verse of the period (Paterson in particular was then tapping the sources of oral tradition) but also with the Parisian circle from whence it had been derived. Whereas Dujardin claimed that Mallarmé’s writings were “but faint echoes of his spoken teachings” (1936: 5), Brennan insisted that his inscribed Mallarmé was “intelligible out of himself” (1962: 147). This may have been so. But the Australian never wrote the book that would make it universally evident. The definitive critical study he was no doubt capable of producing was written elsewhere, in England, by Arthur Symons, whose Symbolist Movement in Literature of 1899 was to have a significant influence on Yeats and Eliot. An idea of Brennan’s reception of Mallarmé can be gleaned from his translation of the “Scène” from Hérodiade (1962: 138-141). Comparison with Symons’ 1896 translation of the same text (ed. Beckson 1981: 159-161) shows Brennan giving a far more literal version, often at the expense of gallicisms and archaisms. He is also given to using indirect analysis to cover over erotic reference. Consider, for example: Mallarmé: “le frisson blanc de ma nudité” Brennan: “white shudder of my birth” Symons: “white quiver of my nakedness”

Student Exchange Programmes and Translator Training: Three Economic Principles.

Abstract The importance of student exchange programmes is mostly overlooked in the planning and discussion of translator training. However, application of a few basic economic principles shows that these programmes present quite radical possibilities for rationalising current teaching practices. In particular, when exchange programmes are seen as a mode of international trade, as a distribution of resources and as a general relation of intellectual production, serious questions must be raised about the ideal cost‐effectiveness, specialisation, student coverage rate, socialisation and professionalisation of the training process.

Translation and economics: inclusive communication or language diversity?

ABSTRACT Translation as a communication act has been studied with tools developed in neo-classical economics, particularly cooperative outcomes, transaction costs, asymmetric information and risk management. Although those tools bring across some of the empirical virtues of economics as a discipline, notably its capacity for formalism and modification on the basis of data, they do not account for the economics of languages, which is an alternative tradition that has become important for European language policy. An attempt to contrast these two approaches reveals some of the deficiencies in the economics of languages, notably with respect to attempts to formulate ethical bases for language policy, including translation policy. A certain compatibilist position might nevertheless be sought by seeing communication acts as performative language policy, and by thus paying close attention to the way language users choose between otherwise incommensurate values.

The case of the missing Russian translation theories

Translation Studies is performed through an international network of relations between largely isolated scholars, many of whom cooperate in order to create knowledge. The sparse nature of the relations, however, coupled with the difficulties of relatively opaque languages and hard-to-assemble materials, means that the cooperative production of knowledge is often fraught with difficulties: the network only vaguely discerns its international extension (rarely reducible to the West vs. the Rest) and has a very sketchy awareness of its own origins. Russian translation theories published between 1950 and 1953 constitute an acute case in point. Although highly innovative precursors of later theories of text types, purposes, and indeed of Translation Studies as a unified field, the formalist theories of Retsker, Sobolev and Fedorov were associated with the final years of Stalinism and were thus strangely cut off from the development of Translation Studies in most other languages. We recount our attempts to locate, construe and make known the translation theories trapped in a very particular time capsule.

Risk mitigation in translator decisions

The translator’s risk management while translating can involve several general dispositions, of which risk taking, risk avoidance, and risk transfer have been modeled previously (Pym 2015). In this...

Response by Pym to “Invariance orientation: Identifying an object for translation studies”

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