期刊动态 | 翻译学SSCI期刊Perspectives 2020年第1期目录 | 自由微信

The use of machine translation (MT) in professional translation tasks can change not only how translators work, but also how projects are managed and the expectations they entail across translation supply chains. Previous research has looked extensively into translators’ attitudes to MT but has often ignored important aspects of how translators’ views interact with those of other language industry stakeholders. This article presents a contrastive analysis of attitudes to MT which covers management and production perspectives. The discussion draws on semi-structured interviews which were thematically coded and qualitatively examined. The study shows how MT adds uncertainty to translation production networks. It argues that the challenges posed by MT are exacerbated by how the current makeup of the language industry restricts translators’ field of influence to texts while possibly alienating them from wider aspects of business strategy. The article makes two suggestions. First, it calls for increased translator involvement in the management aspects of service provision. Second, it emphasises the need for a deeper discussion of MT which, rather than framing the technology itself as a potential ‘threat’, addresses broader societal issues involving misguided perceptions and mismatched expectations.

Article

Polyglot orientalist-translator Joseph Benoliel: a study of his Hebrew translations for the Lisbon 1892 International Congress of Orientalists

Marta Pacheco Pinto

Pages: 185-201

As a field of study that developed under a philological impulse, Orientalism created its own sites of knowledge exchange and sociability, well-illustrated by the International Congresses of Orientalists (1873–1973). This article focuses on Hebraist and Arabist Joseph Benoliel (1857–1937) who published two Hebrew translations within the orientalist congress that was supposed to have taken place in Lisbon in 1892. These translations will be examined peritextually so as to analyse the orientalist translation paradigm followed to voice otherness considering the (con)texts selected for translation, to unveil perceptions about translation, and inquire into a discursive form of knowledge as subordinated to an epistemological or hermeneutical agenda. To this end, the article is structured as follows: first, I will outline Benoliel’s life narrative to shed light on his polyglot background; second, I will formally describe the translations he prepared for the Lisbon congress in which Hebrew is the privileged target language; third, the peritextual analysis of these texts will be discussed against the voices paratextually framing them. The last part reviews the implications of Benoliel’s idiosyncratic translation strategy under the idea of a translational epistemology, or hermeneutics, in that Benoliel openly relies on the use of the Bible as intertext.

Article

EU lay communication in translation: mediation, affectivity and EU citizenship

A contrastive multilingual critical discourse analytic approach to translation

Maria Constantinou

Pages: 202-223

Translation within European Union (EU) institutions has attracted the attention of scholars in Translation Studies who have mainly investigated legal documents and focussed on their hybridity, ideological significance, quality or their normative function. This study deals with an under-researched genre, that of EU lay communication. In particular, it examines some versions of a recent EU promotional material: 60 Gründe für die EU’. Warum wir die EU nach wie vor brauchen, initially drafted in German and then rendered in the linguacultures of the EU. Capitalizing on Systemic Functional Linguistics and appraisal theory, it focusses on two versions for Greece and for Cyprus, alongside other translations of the same document (for Ireland, Malta, France, and Germany). It investigates the translators’ intervention, and how ideological shifts are likely to distort the meaning potential from the viewpoint of the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of the texts studied, which seem to affect the EU’s agency and affective citizenship. It concludes that the version for Greece is often maximally mediated, introducing shifts that do not serve the purpose of the initial text, while the version for Cyprus, like the other versions under attention, contributes to a more positive evaluation of the institutions.

Article

Translation and prefiguration: consolidating a conceptual encounter

Jan Buts

Pages: 224-237

The concept of prefiguration, generally referring to the creation of an alternative society within the here and now, has proven highly productive in coming to terms with contemporary social movements, as the term ‘prefigurative’ is used to group a number of political phenomena that share at least the sense of presenting an alternative to the problematic entanglement of capitalism and democracy. Today, the concept is rapidly crossing disciplinary boundaries, due to its perceived capacity for intersemiotic mobilization, and has consequently come to serve as an important reference point in discussions of translation as an activist practice. This article draws upon the present-day political as well as historical theological usage of ‘prefiguration’ to examine the concept’s circulation in translation studies, which covers a number of distinct but interrelated phenomena concerning the process as well as product of translation. In this context, prefiguration is shown to depend upon performative declarations of equivalence between signs and social practices. Ultimately reversing the suggestion of translation as a potential site of prefiguration, I argue that prefiguration is fundamentally a trope of translatability.

Article

Tenacious technophobes or nascent technophiles? A survey of the technological practices and needs of literary translators

Stephen Slessor

Pages: 238-252

In a context of increasing investigation of technology use by translators of pragmatic texts, there appears to be an assumption that literary translation is a unique practice and that digital tools designed to improve the productivity of non-literary translators have few applications in the literary domain. The present study seeks to challenge that assumption and find out what tools and resources literary translators actually employ in practice; how they interact with source and target texts, manage terminology, and conduct linguistic research; and what their needs may be for training in this area. Members of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada were invited to complete an anonymous self-administered online questionnaire on their use of technology and digital resources. Results indicate that literary translators make extensive use of standard tools and electronic resources but little use of more specialized technology. However, it was also found that some respondents make ‘creative’ use of specialized technology and that literary translators have a broad range of needs, particularly for linguistic and cultural research, leading to a recommendation that future investigation in this area focus on the improvement of digital tools and resources to support literary translators in meeting their ad hoc needs.

Article

Translation technology adoption: evidence from a postgraduate programme for student translators in China

Deliang Man, Aiping Mo, Meng Huat Chau, John Mitchell O’Toole & Charity Lee

Pages: 253-270

The ability to use translation technology is considered a key component of a translator’s translation competence. However, few studies have investigated the extent of use of translation technology, especially among student translators. This paper reports on a survey of translation technology adoption among 441 students enrolled on a Master-level Programme in Translation and Interpreting. A questionnaire was used to measure student knowledge and frequency of use for six common types of translation technology tools and resources: electronic dictionaries, search engines, online encyclopaedias, corpora, machine translation and computer-aided translation tools. The results show that there is a strong, positive correlation between student knowledge and their use of translation technology. More specifically, the second-year students generally used translation technology more frequently than the first-year students. This paper provides a baseline for future comparisons of translation technology use, which has implications for teaching translation technology in China and similar contexts elsewhere.

Article

Not a footprint to be seen: isolation in the interplay between words, music and image in two Dutch-language dubbed versions of ‘Let it go’

Tim Reus

Pages: 271-283

Animated musical films, such as Disney’s Frozen, have long been immensely popular among the globe; however, the investigation of the songs of such films in a dubbing context constitutes a relatively new area of research. This paper compares the theme of isolation in one song from Frozen, ‘Let it go’, in the two Dutch-language dubbed versions released in, respectively, the Netherlands and Belgium. The triangle of aspects, an analytical model for animated musical films, is used to analyse the musical, visual, and verbal codes of ‘Let it go’ and categorise differences between the TTs and the ST. This model combines qualitative and quantitative data to compare different-language versions of songs from animated musical films. The analysis finds that the TT-NL is most similar to the ST concerning musical aspects such as rhyme scheme and rhythm, and expresses the theme of isolation most strongly through the connection between the lyrics and the music. The TT-BE is most similar concerning verbal aspects, such as semantic meaning and style, and expresses isolation most strongly through metaphor and symbolism. It is hoped that this exploration of the research field of animated musical film song dubbing stimulates further research into the genre.

Article

Prefabricated orality at tone level: Bringing dubbing intonation into the spotlight

Sofía Sánchez-Mompeán

Pages: 284-299

The focus of this article is placed on dubbing intonation and more specifically on the tonal patterns that are regularly found in dubbed speech and characterise prefabricated orality at tone level. Research suggests that dubbed dialogue is governed by its own network of rules and differs greatly from spontaneous and naturally-occurring speech. The prefabricated nature of this type of dialogue has received attention from many scholars, but no attempt has been made to date to describe orality at tone level from an empirical perspective. The aim of this paper is to search for regularities in the delivery of dubbing intonation in a Spanish corpus and to explore whether they can have an impact on the reception of orality by the Spanish audience. A speech analysis programme has been used to examine a repertoire of tones in a number of extracts from the Spanish dubbed version of the sitcom How I met your mother (Bays & Thomas, 2005–2014). Findings reveal that there are several prefabricated patterns that belong to dubbing intonation itself and that some of the dominant trends found could directly impinge on the target audience’s perception.

Article

Inverse (A-B/C) translation education in Spain under the EHEA

Sara Horcas-Rufián & Dorothy Kelly

Pages: 300-319

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review on the state of the art of translator education into B/C languages in the Spanish post-Bologna university system. During the last ten years, Translation Studies in Spain have witnessed the implementation of new programmes adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Universities have gained autonomy to design their translation curricula, which has led to significant differences between programmes. This could not but affect approaches to translation into B/C languages, whose role in translator education has long been considered a sensitive issue. Results from an analysis of working languages and A-B/C translation course units embedded in undergraduate and postgraduate (Master) curricula show that a large number of translator-education units no longer offer the ‘inverse’ translation direction. This perception is felt more strongly in Master programmes despite translation out of the A language has been listed in a number of translation competence models. More importantly, it is a competence considered important or essential in the local and European employment markets, especially in translation environments where English has a place.

Book Reviews

Book review

Translation and migration

by Moira Inghilleri, London & New York, Routledge, 2017,xi + 212 pp., USD 45.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-04-158-2811-6

Hong Diao

Pages: 320-322

Book review

Multimodal pragmatics and translation: a new model for source text analysis

by Sara Dicerto, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 178 pp., $37.55 (Hardcover), ISBN 978-3-319-69343-9 / eBook, ISBN 978-3-319-69344-6

Li Mi, Wei Jin & Mo Aiping

Pages: 322-324

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