Luis Perez-Gonzalez

Non-professionals translating and interpreting : participatory and engaged perspectives

Abstract Translation studies finds itself today at a stage where its traditional focus on translator and interpreter training and on the advancement of the status of translators and interpreters as professionals is no longer sufficient to address the complexity of real-life situations of translating and interpreting. As increasing numbers of non-professionals translate and interpret in a wider range of contexts and in more diversified forms, their work emerges not only as an alternative to established professional practice, but also as a distinctive phenomenon, which the discipline has yet to recognize as a noteworthy area of study. This article looks into the relatively uncharted territory of non-professional translation and interpreting, drawing mainly on Arjun Appadurai’s conceptualization of global transactions, and offers a number of insights into what these new developments might mean for the discipline at large.AbstractTranslation studies finds itself today at a stage where its traditional focus on translator and interpreter training and on the advancement of the status of translators and interpreters as professionals is no longer sufficient to address the complexity of real-life situations of translating and interpreting. As increasing numbers of non-professionals translate and interpret in a wider range of contexts and in more diversified forms, their work emerges not only as an alternative to established professional practice, but also as a distinctive phenomenon, which the discipline has yet to recognize as a noteworthy area of study. This article looks into the relatively uncharted territory of non-professional translation and interpreting, drawing mainly on Arjun Appadurai’s conceptualization of global transactions, and offers a number of insights into what these new developments might mean for the discipline at large.

Appraising Dubbed Conversation: Systemic Functional Insights into the Construal of Naturalness in Translated Film Dialogue

Abstract The ‘authenticity’ of fictional dialogue is widely held to play a pivotal role in shaping the audience’s perception of the quality of a film. Yet the factors that account for the authenticity of both original and dubbed film conversation remain largely under-researched. This paper begins by outlining key contributions from the fields of stylistics, film studies and corpus-based translation studies that have enhanced our understanding of the specific nature and dynamics of fictional dialogue and its translation. A common assumption that underpins these approaches is that the success of the narrative and characterization-enhancing resources deployed in a film is contingent on the build-up of interpersonal alignments through a combination of prefabricated orality and spontaneous-sounding conversation. And yet both film theory and dubbing studies have so far focused on phenomena that take place within a single turn-at-talk and hence neglected the study of the sequential dimension of film dialogue. Drawing on the analysis of four scenes of the English and Spanish versions of Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957), this article attempts to demonstrate the advantages of Martin’s (2000a) systemic functional modelling of the exchange, especially his notion of ‘telos’. Ultimately, this paper assesses the advantages of a heightened awareness of the sequential configuration of dialogue among dubbing practitioners.

Co-creational subtitling in the digital media: Transformative and authorial practices

This article explores the emergence of transformative subtitling practices in the digital culture, a context of production shaped by the dialectical relation between technological advances and cultural change. Drawing on a qualitative discussion of fansubbing practices, the article contends that transformative subtitling signals a clear move towards a regime of co-creation between producers and users of media content, fostering mutual recognition between these increasingly blurred camps. The second part of the article delivers an analytical discussion of examples of authorial titling in mainstream British drama to demonstrate the penetration of transformative subtitling in commercial media products that also posit spectatorial subjectivity. The article concludes by reflecting on the parataxic reading practices that these new subtitling practices encourage and the fluid nature of the transnational collectivities it caters for.

Amateur subtitling and the pragmatics of spectatorial subjectivity

Abstract Developments in communication technologies have brought about the proliferation of self-mediated textualities and empowered networks of non-professional translators to engage in participatory subtitling practices. These subtitling agencies are often part of a movement of cultural resistance against global capitalist structures and institutions, whether for aesthetic or political reasons. This article gauges the extent to which participatory subtitling challenges assumptions underpinning traditional scholarship on intercultural communication, as instantiated in the pragmatics of audio-visual translation. It is argued that affectivity emerges as a powerful non-representational force behind amateur mediation. Rather than simply aiming to deliver ‘accurate’ representations of the source text meaning, amateur subtitles seek to performatively intervene in the articulation and reception of the audio-visual semiotic ensemble. Drawing on selected examples of aesthetic and political subtitling activism, this article examines the relevance of non-representational theory, originally developed within the field of human geography, to the study of the expressive or transformational role of amateur subtitling. It is suggested that the epistemological and political dimensions of this non-representational phenomenon are symptomatic of a wider trend towards a radical model of democracy.

Amateur subtitling as immaterial labour in digital media culture: An emerging paradigm of civic engagement

Media sociologists and cultural globalization theorists have tended to overlook the contribution of translators to the circulation of media content in the era of digital culture. After critiquing the reasons for the invisibility of translation in the literature on global cultural transactions, this article moves on to examine the emergence of new amateur subtitling collectivities in today’s informational society, exploring the role that non-professional translators – specifically, networks of activist subtitlers – play within the participatory media industries. Using examples from a case study of Ansarclub, a Spanish group of engaged amateur translators, this article gauges the extent to which their participation, remediation and bricolage practices – the main components of digital culture (Deuze [2006] Participation, remediation, bricolage: considering principal components of a digital culture. The Information Society 22: 63–75) – fit in or divert from the cocreational dynamics underpinning other domains of the media marketplace. It is argued that the interventionist and ‘monitorial’ quality of activist subtitling lies at the heart of an emerging paradigm of civic engagement, with fluid transnational communities of interest acting as the building blocks of participatory translation.

Translation and New(s) Media: Participatory Subtitling Practices in Networked Mediascapes

This chapter sets out to investigate the role that amateur translation plays in the process of media convergence and to gauge the extent to which the proliferation of co-creational practices pertaining to the production, translation and distribution of subtitled media content blur the distinction between the roles of producer and consumer in political news interviews. I begin by exploring how the role of translation within global news media has been theorised in recent years and teasing out the implications of technological changes for the blurring of news production, consumption and translation. I then focus on the social processes that have prompted the emergence of amateur communities of journalists/translators, whether in the form of structured activist networks or fluid groupings of engaged citizens, as influential agents in the digital mediascape. The chapter then articulates the implications of these developments for the discipline of Translation Studies, including the shift from referential accuracy towards narrative negotiation and the politics of affinity as the main drives informing amateur news mediation. The issues raised in this chapter are illustrated with a case study involving the subtitling of a political news interview by amateur mediators.

Motherless tongues. The insurgency of language amid wars of translation, by Vicente Rafael, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2016, 255 pp.,

ISSN: 1355-6509 (Print) 1757-0409 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrn20 Motherless tongues. The insurgency of language amid wars of translation Luis Pérez-González To cite this article: Luis Pérez-González (2018) Motherless tongues. The insurgency of language amid wars of translation, The Translator, 24:3, 275-279, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2017.1339974 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2017.1339974