Helle V. Dam

Translator Status A Study of Danish Company Translators

Abstract The consensus amongst translators and translation scholars regarding translator status is that it is decidedly low. But is translator status as low as often claimed, and how do we measure status? Is it only a question of salary? This article explores the concept of status and reports on the first step of a comprehensive empirical project aimed at investigating the status of professional translators in various contexts. The first study focused on here involved a group of translators working for 13 major Danish companies considered to be at the high end of the translator-status continuum, namely full-time Danish staff translators with MA qualifications in translation. The concept of status and how to define it were considered in relation to four parameters of occupational status: (i) salary; (ii) education/expertise; (iii) visibility/fame; and (iv) power/influence. The analysis, based on written questionnaires, charts the status of these translators as perceived by themselves and their fellow employees. On the basis of the findings, the authors suggest avenues and approaches for further research in this area.

Lexical Similarity vs Lexical Dissimilarity in Consecutive Interpreting

AbstractThe present paper reports on a product-oriented study of consecutive interpreting in which lexical similarity and lexical dissimilarity, i.e. similarity and dissimilarity between source and target texts as regards the choice of lexical items, are proposed as tools for the identification of form-based and meaning-based interpreting, respectively. A model of analysis designed to investigate the two phenomena is presented and applied to data drawn from a Spanish source text as rendered consecutively into Danish by five professional interpreters. Contrary to current claims regarding the typical distribution of form-based and meaning-based interpreting, the findings of the study suggest that form-based interpreting is more frequent than meaning-based interpreting.

Knowledge Systems and Translation

It is generally agreed that knowledge plays an important role in translation and interpreting and that it should therefore be of central concern to studies in this field. However, present-day translation and interpreting studies offer only a limited amount of research specifically dedicated to knowledge-related issues. This book is one of the first to systematically address the question of knowledge in translation and interpreting. It is a collection of papers by leading scholars who address both theoretical and conceptual aspects of knowledge, questions of methodology in research into knowledge in translation and interpreting, and the application of knowledge-based methods in empirical investigations. The book is thus a state-of-the-art report on the question of knowledge in the field of translation and interpreting.