Chong Han

Accomplishment in the multitude of counsellors : peer feedback in translation training

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.

Metaphor and Creative and Playful Entertainment

While these two examples may be incomprehensible even to some Chinese readers, they will be instantly recognised by people familiar with the TV talent show Super Girl, a singing competition for female contestants organised by Hunan Satellite Television between 2004 and 2006. These examples involve the use of two metaphorical expressions, which are among the top five metaphor candidates in the keyword list, but do not occur in the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese. These two expressions are presented in Table 6.1.

Metaphor, Entertainment and Contemporary China

This study has shown that news writers employ a variety of metaphors in their writing, and this makes metaphor a distinctive feature of entertainment writing. The findings also suggest that the choice of metaphor is an integral part of the rhetorical goal of the People’s Entertainment Channel, that is, ‘to produce pleasure’. In this section, I summarise four key rhetorical strategies for the construction of entertainment in news writing and the role of metaphors in them. These are: highlighting conflicts while downplaying moral justification; establishing emotional ties with readers; recycling people’s collective entertainment resources; cultivating illusion and satisfying voyeurism.

Metaphor in Chinese ‘Entertainmentalised’ News

The booming entertainment industry and the desire for markets in China has made entertainment a crucial element in news production and writing. This has given rise to what Chinese media researchers term as ‘entertainmentalisation of news’.1 Even political news and current affairs, which represents the most serious news genre in China and is under the tight control of the Communist Party, is no exception (Luo 2005; Yan 2005): political cliches are removed or replaced with novel expression; the rigid writing style has become more flexible; and the page layouts are more vividly designed. Sports news, which lies in close proximity to entertainment news, is also inclined to be written in a highly dramatised and sensationalised style in order to maximise the entertaining experience for the readers (Luc 2003; Zhang, M. Z. 2005). Therefore, it is interesting to compare the use of metaphors between entertainmentalised news and entertainment news.

Metaphor and Onlookers’ Entertainment

It has been widely demonstrated that news has great potential to influence people’s perception and beliefs about the world. Some researchers even describe news as ‘myth’ or its creators as ‘myth makers’ (Barthes 1967; Hartley 1982; Koch 1990). Here, myth does not mean ancient stories about supernatural beings. Rather, it is used in the sense of a specifically selected representation of reality which may have no substantial and verifiable evidence, but is communicated as if true (cf. Gaines 2010). Although it may claim to be impartial and objective, news reporting is mythic since it produces biased or incomplete reports which are consistently mediated through cultural values and ideologies. For example, in his analysis of a news story about an ordinary woman who was selected by people as the Sex Symbol of 1980 entitled ‘SEXY ANNA TOPS POLL’, Hartley (1982: 30) points out that it conveys two myths. First is the showbiz myth of glamour and celebrity since Anna is ‘known for being well known’, and ‘celebrities’ are newsworthy by definition. Secondly, it also conveys the myth of female sexuality — a woman is defined by her body, that is, through attractiveness to men. This reinforces a common belief that women are objects being viewed by men. Hartley also argues that language is important in conveying these myths since ‘myths are a product of the active generative process of language, formed and reformed according to the relations between social groups and forces’ (ibid: 29).

Metaphor Analysis and News Corpora

Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) is a model that combines Conceptual Metaphor Theory Critical Discourse Analysis and corpus methodology. This model is based on the idea that ‘covert’ and ‘unconscious’ intentions and ideologies underlie the use of metaphor in discourse, and through critical analysis of metaphor these intentions and ideologies can be revealed. In order to explain how this aim can be realised, Charteris-Black (2004: 35) proposes a three-stage procedure: stage 1) Metaphor Identification: it aims “to identify the presence of metaphor and determine whether there is a tension between a literal source domain and a metaphorical target domain”; stage 2) Metaphor Interpretation: it aims “to identify the type of social relations constructed through metaphors”; and stage 3) Metaphor Explanation: it aims “to examine the way that metaphors are interrelated and become coherent with reference to the context in which they occur”.

Researching Metaphor in Chinese

Characteristics specific to the Chinese writing system and to the structure of the language may have an impact on the identification and interpretation of metaphor in Chinese.

Entertainment News Genre in China

Although entertainment news is one of the most popular news genres in contemporary China, it has so far received little attention in academic research. This may be due to the perception that it focuses on trivia, gossip and other lightweight topics and is therefore much less important than, for example, political news and current affairs. Thus, a brief summary of the history and characteristics of the genre may help demonstrate its inherent interest as linguistic data.