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Analysis on the English-translation Errors of Public Signs
Abstract
With the rapid progress of economy, the intensification of China's reform and opening-up policy, as well as the successful celebration of a number of great global events, China is attracting more attention worldwide and myriad foreign visitors stream into China. An increasing number of public signs are presented in both Chinese and English which are regarded as a symbol of a city's internationalization degree. However, the frequent problems in the translation of public signs degrade China's international status as a major role on the global platform. Mistranslation of public signs is an emergent issue that needs immediate attention.
... Çin gibi çok kalabalık nüfusa sahip, dünyanın fabrikası (Zhang, 2006) olarak tanımlanan ve bu sayede tüm dünyadan iş odaklı ya da gezi amaçlı milyonlarca turist ağırlayan bir ülkede dahi turizme yönelik dil ve çevirilerin kontrol edilmesi ancak 2008' de Pekin' de 29. su gerçekleştirilen olimpiyat oyunları (Guo, 2012) ve 2010' da Şangay' da gerçekleştirilen World Expo (Ko, 2010) etkinliği öncesinde farkındalığa kavuşmuş ve belli oranda yönelim kazanmıştır. ...
... Wan (2016) imla hatalarının dikkatsizlikten kaynaklandığını öne sürerken yanlış sözcük seçiminden kaynaklanan hataların da çevirmenlerin sözlüğe bakmaya üşenmelerinden ya da dikkatsizlik, dalgınlık ve yorgunluk gibi kişisel nedenlerden kaynaklandığını savunmaktadır. Benzer şekilde, Guo (2012) bir ya da birkaç harfin eksik ya da yanlış yazılabildiği yazım hatalarına da vurgu yapmaktadır. Bu durumun da çevirmenlerin ya da matbaacının basitçe dikkatsizlik ya da sorumsuzluğundan kaynaklanabileceğine işaret etmektedir. ...
A QUICK GLANCE AT THE TRANSLATION OF INFORMATIONAL TEXTS OF SAMSUN ILKADIM DISTRICT’S CULTURAL ASSESTS WITH RESPECT TO LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND TOURISM
... A number of studies have reported on findings regarding linguistic problems in translation of tourist texts, including grammatical problems (e.g., Albir & Pavani, 2018;Napu, 2016;Pierini 2007), semantic problems (Ma & Song, 2011;Guo 2012;Liu & Wen, 2014), and stylistic problems (Wang 2011;Sulaiman 2013). Other studies account for cultural features in tourism texts (Turzynski-Azimi, 2020;Sulaiman,2018Sulaiman, ,2015Sulaiman, , 2013. ...
... The students' translations of texts 1 and 2 revealed that the quality of their composition of the TT was lower than the formulation of the ideas of the ST to the TL readers. Several studies have reported on findings regarding linguistic problems, including grammatical problems (e.g., Albir & Pavani, 2018;Napu, 2016;Pierini 2007;Al-Fahad, 2012) semantic problems (Guo, 2012;Liu & Wen, 2014), and stylistic problems (Wang, 2011;Sulaiman, 2013). ...
Translation of tourist texts engenders textual, linguistic and cultural hurdles before achieving translation quality, which has not been given due account in translation studies. To bridge this gap, this study aimed to assess postgraduates' performance in translation of tourist texts from English to Arabic and vice versa, using a translation task (Arabic and English tourist texts) and a questionnaire. The questionnaire took a form of a 5-point Likert scale in which the students rated the texts they translated. Further, it retrieved information about translation time and postgraduates' translation experience. Findings revealed low translation quality and inappropriate use of translation procedures in rendering the tourist texts into English and Arabic. The postgraduates encountered hindrances in formulating the main ideas of the source text (ST), composing the target text (TT) and communicating the TT to the target language (TL) readers. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications have been discussed.
... Several researches with the topic public signs were conducted in the context of translating Chinese to English, and one of them is a study on translating public signs in China as seen in Skopos Theory Approach by Hua (2007), classification of public signs based on their functions and their linguistic features (Kang & Zhang, 2008), the application of communicative translation approach in translating public signs from Chinese to English (Jing-Jing, 2011), and a research on mistakes/errors in translating public sings from Chinese to English by Guo (2012). Similar study is very rarely found in Indonesia, which proves the fact that theory and discussion of public sign translation is rare. ...
... According to Lü He-fa (2005) To translate public signs into English, an understanding of linguistic features of public signs is required to enable the researcher in analyzing school sign board translation, giving suggestions in revising the translation, and also giving standards in making excellent quality of school signboards. In his/her article, Guo (2012) states that the basic characteristic of public signs in general must consider a correct grammar and spelling, with a short and clear language, a precise word choice, commonly used words, comprehend the cultural differences. Agreed to Guo, Kang & Zhang (2008: 125) also state that public signs should use simple words or everyday language with short vocabularies, clear and brief. ...
This research aims to map out types of bilingual signboards found in Elementary and Secondary schools in Surakarta based on their functions, to assess their quality in terms of accuracy and acceptability, and to describe factors influencing the translation quality. This descriptive qualitative research used data sources in the form of documents and persons, i.e. bilingual signboards displayed on school walls and those called raters who have competencies in assessing translation quality. Content analysis, Interview, and Focus Group Discussion were applied as the methods to collect and analyze the data of bilingual signboards. As a result, there are three types of school signboard, namely signboards showing names of place, signboards showing the condition of a particular place, and those saying proverbs. Dealing with the function, signboards having informative, suggestive, restrictive and mandatory functions are identified. The majority of the data resulting accurate and less acceptable translation is found in universal signboards, while culture-bound signboards tend to be rendered less accurate and less acceptable due to some factors that can be read thoroughly in this article.
... The poor translation quality in tourism texts has long been discussed from different perspectives. From a linguistic perspective, focal points are grammatical problems (e.g., Milton & Garbi, 2000;Pierini, 2007;Napu, 2016Napu, , 2019, semantic problems (e.g., Valdeon, 2009;Wang, 2011;Guo, 2012;Napu, 2016), spelling problems (e.g., Ko, 2010;Wang, 2011), and stylistic problems (e.g., Wang, 2011;Sulaiman, 2013Sulaiman, , 2014Budiharjo et al., 2022). ...
The present study aims to scrutinize the trainee translators’ errors in their translations of tourism promotional material, a brochure, from Turkish into English. Thus, this study is designed as a descriptive qualitative research and corroborated with quantitative analysis, presenting a thorough analysis of the translated texts based on the American Translation Association (ATA) translation error taxonomy. The framework of this study employs Corder’s taxonomy of phases for error analysis, namely, selection of a text, identification of errors, classification of errors, and explanation of possible reasons for those errors. The data discussed in this paper derive from the translated texts of fifteen trainee translators i.e., third- and fourth-year T&I students at a private university enrolled in the Cultural Aspects of Translation and Interpretation course. The results revealed a statistical difference between the main error categories. According to the findings, trainee translators made most errors in the form of the language, i.e. target language mechanics, followed by errors in meaning and errors in writing quality. In acting as a “cultural mediator” in tourism text translations, trainees have also been found to be not so effective as they are supposed to be. With the results unfolded, it is hoped to benefit to both translation professors and trainees themselves.
... A paramount challenge in nurturing high-quality neural machine translation models lies in securing a substantial parallel corpus; the corpus's caliber, magnitude, and thematic breadth significantly impact translation model performance [7]. While high-resource languages benefit from copious, diverse corpora, low-resource or zero-resource languages, characterized by limited usage and prohibitive manual corpus construction costs, often undermine the effectiveness of neural machine translation, sometimes trailing behind statistical-based methods in low-resource scenarios [8]. ...
Machine translation technology, which employs computers to autonomously convert text between source and target languages, represents a pivotal realm within artificial intelligence and natural language processing research. This paper introduces a novel algorithm grounded in multi-task learning, which is aimed at enhancing the efficacy of Chinese-English neural machine translation systems. This proposition addresses three key challenges: the scarcity of parallel Chinese-English corpora, substantial disparities in sentence structure between the two languages, and the intricate, mutable nature of word formations in Mongolian, a factor influencing Chinese due to historical linguistic interactions. To counter these issues, we devise a parameter transfer strategy. Our methodology commences with the training of a high-resource neural machine translation model leveraging the encoder-decoder architecture prevalent in neural machine translation systems. Subsequently, the learned parameters are utilised to initialise a low-resource model, thereby kickstarting its training with a more informed starting point. It should be noted that the word embeddings and fully-connected layers of the low-resource model are randomly initialised and undergo continuous updating throughout the iterative training process. The experimental outcomes affirm the superiority of our proposed Dual-Task Multi-Task Learning (DFMTL) method, which achieves a BLEU score of 10.1. This not only outperforms the performance of three established baseline models but also demonstrates a notable 0.7 BLEU score increase over models trained exclusively on a mixed-corpus dataset. These findings highlight the potential of our parameter migration strategy in enhancing the precision and fluency of Chinese-English machine translations under resource-constrained scenarios.
... In the domain of linguistic landscape, as outlined by scholars such as Backhaus (2006), Cenoz & Gorter (2009), and Kallen (2009), bilingual or multilingual signs are commonly classified into two main categories: "public" and "private," although alternative terms may be utilized. Public signs typically encompass those associated with government institutions, and street and road names, serving fundamental functions such as directing, prompting, restricting, and compelling, as elucidated by Guo (2012). On the other hand, private signs, including commercial and business signs, as well as private announcements, primarily serve the purpose of promoting and advertising goods and services. ...
This article delves into the emerging field of linguistic landscape (LL) studies, which focuses on the examination of languages displayed publicly on billboards, road signs, shop fronts, graffiti, and other inscriptions in urban environments. It contends that language serves as a direct identifier of people and a sensitive gauge of societal transformations. Despite its pervasive presence, the linguistic landscape often goes unnoticed by the public. The article provides an overview of approaches to linguistic landscape research, with a particular focus on bilingual signboards in Abha City, Saudi Arabia, reflecting a growing interest in this interdisciplinary field.
... tly giving rise to serious semantic-conceptual problems. The latter includes a variety of socio-cultural and promotional factors that have a great impact on the way shop signs are verbalized. They also figure out that in some shop signs there is no relationship between the source language text (SLT) and its supposed target language (TL) equivalent.Guo (2012), in his study entitled by "Analysis on the English-translation errors of public signs", has shown that the current situation of the translation of publicity in big cities in China shows up its deficiency. There is no denial that public signs play an important role in daily life, and their English versions contribute great help and conve ...
The present study is an attempt to investigate the omission of the third person singular morpheme done by the Kurdish EFL learners. The study of inflectional morpheme omission is crucially important in English language learning because this error requires the language teachers and researchers to observe the stages of language learning process attentively. The foreign language learners come across several difficulties in comprehending and using these morphemes that do not exist in their native language. This study gathers data from a group of junior students through a couple of instruments; they are spoken test and written production test. The central issue of this study is the error of the absence of third person inflectional morpheme in present simple tense. It aims to describe and provide an overall analysis for omitting this inflectional morpheme from the Kurdish EFL learners’ perspectives.
... The quality has always been a key issue. Once the poor quality of tourism translation occurs, on most occasions, the translator is the first and only one to be criticized bitterly (Guo, 2012). It seems that if translators' insufficient linguistic and cultural knowledge could be enhanced as soon as possible, the poor quality of translation in tourism materials would be solved (Xie, 2015). ...
... Tourist translation studies have examined the problem of translation quality from different aspects. Many studies show some findings related to linguistic issues, such as grammatical problems [14][15][16][17][18], semantic problems [14,15,[19][20][21][22][23], stylistic problems [23][24][25][26], and spelling problems [14,27]. These studies explain that these issues can result from limited English translators. ...
This study is about an analysis of the content that tries to identify weaknesses of Persian-English translation in the tourism industry and show the most common and fairly frequent error patterns committed by Iranian translators who are nonnative by using Napu model. Although these problems in the information of the booklet are underresearched, there is little discussion of tourism material in translation research. To fulfill the aims of this study, the weaknesses and strengths of the booklet of Bazare Vakil complex, Pars museums, Fort of Karim Khan, Vakil mosque, and Vakil bath and their English translations were examined in terms of language and communication. According to the findings, it is recognized that the tourist texts under study (Zandiyeh Complex) present a large number of semantic errors, and, as expected, these significantly prevent the quality of the translations. The analysis results indicated that the semantic area is where these booklets fall short, whereas the language (syntax) is regarded as the strength.
... Differences between Chinese and English grammatical rules can also cause mistranslation. Guo (2012) examines common errors in translating Chinese public signs to English. He identifies the following errors: incomprehensible rules for Chinese pronunciation (Pin yin 2 ), inconsistency in the translation of names, embarrassing spelling mistakes, redundancy, change or loss of information, Chinglish, grammatical mistakes, inappropriate choice of words, and mistranslation on the cultural level. ...
Multicultural education has become embedded in higher education as the student population has become more diverse. This chapter examines how to apply brave space and transformational teaching in a web-based multicultural education course. In order for brave space to be effective, it is vital to establish a shared vision for the course by applying transformational teaching practices. This chapter draws on perspectives from faculty and students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
... Keeping in mind the end goal to manage the futile or excess data legitimately amid the procedure of translation, Qiu proposes that translators ought to work the source messages by methods for the omission. Another researcher conducts an observational investigation of the translation of School News of universities from the point of view of "cultural turn" in the studies of translation, which reaches the conclusion that, from the cultural point of view, translators may break the shackles of the source messages and control the translation of them by omission, in addition to other things(Guo, 2012). ...
Translation Studies is a clear, vivid, creative, diverse and in a general sense interdisciplinary field. It has built up its level and standards to a great extent in the previous twenty years. After that it makes its own unique place in 1970s and moved past the control of biased and simple ways in the light of etymology or formalist points of view amid 1980s. Exchanging culture through translation demonstrated the relationship between cultures and languages in the conceptual frameworks which opened new horizons. Cultural turn stress in 1990's produced a more extensive comprehension of globalization and national personalities and the effect of cultural turn made an unique setting of translation impacted by culture. This research is the analysis of the cultural turns in the selected parables and poems of Gulistan of Saadi. For this purpose the research selects two translations in that the Urdu language is the source language and English language is the target language. The Urdu translation is done by Maulana Qazi Sajad and English translation is done by Richard Francis Burton. Susan Basnett and Andre Lefevere’s manipulative theory has been exploited by the researcher to carry out the critical analysis of the parables and poems of Saadi. In order to find out the cultural turn the themes of omission, addition, explanatory note and rewriting have been considered by the researcher. In the analysis of the selected parables and poems in the light of these themes, it has been found that these themes and techniques played an important role in the translation of the text and to point out the cultural turns and shifts. This thing indicates that the cultural turn is the fundamental point for the translation of the text.
... tly giving rise to serious semantic-conceptual problems. The latter includes a variety of socio-cultural and promotional factors that have a great impact on the way shop signs are verbalized. They also figure out that in some shop signs there is no relationship between the source language text (SLT) and its supposed target language (TL) equivalent.Guo (2012), in his study entitled by "Analysis on the English-translation errors of public signs", has shown that the current situation of the translation of publicity in big cities in China shows up its deficiency. There is no denial that public signs play an important role in daily life, and their English versions contribute great help and conve ...
Strategies of Translating Allusions from Kurdish to
English and Vice Versa is research paper which tries to employ Mona Baker strategies for translating allusions from Kurdish to English and Vice Versa.
... They also figure out that in some shop signs there is no relationship between the source language text (SLT) and its supposed target language (TL) equivalent. Guo (2012), in his study entitled by "Analysis on the English-translation errors of public signs", has shown that the current situation of the translation of publicity in big cities in China shows up its deficiency. There is no denial that public signs play an important role in daily life, and their English versions contribute great help and convenience to the foreigners in China. ...
... There were several researches have been conducted on error analysis on translation with public signs, such as the application of communicative translation approach in translating public sign from Chinese to English [5], Research on translation errors of Public signs from Chinese to English by Guo [6], Research on the Translation of Public Signs by Qiannan [7] and The English Translation of Public Signs in Qingdao-From the Perspective of Eco-thanatology by Ma [8]. ...
... (2018), İngilizce ve Endonezce dil çifti arasındaki bilimsel metin çevirilerine yönelik bir çalışma gerçekleştirmiş ve çeviri stratejisi, sözcük düzeyindeki hatalar, morfolojik hatalar, sözdizimsel hatalar ve çeviri hatalarına sebep olan kaynak olarak hata değerlendirilmesinin beş ana unsur üzerinden ele alınacağı sonucuna ulaşmışlardır. Öte yandan, kamuya açık alanlardaki levhaların çevrilmesine ilişkin ortaya çıkan hataları irdelemek üzere Minghe Guo (2012), büyük bir turizm destinasyonu olan Çin Halk Cumhuriyeti çevresinde bulunan levhaların nasıl çevrildiğine ve çevirisi yapılan yazıların hatalar içerip içermediğine odaklanarak belirgin bir şekilde gözlenen hataların Çin'in uluslararası statüdeki büyük rolüne bir ket vurduğu sonucuna ulaşmıştır. Nouroddin Yousofi (2014), İngilizce-Farsça dil çifti üzerine çevirmen olarak çalışmayı amaçlayan lisans ve lisansüstü düzeyindeki öğrencilere yaptırdığı çeviriler üzerinden yaptığı bir hata analizi ile çevirmen adaylarının dilbilimsel, kültürel ve biçimsel alanlar kapsamında hatalar yaptıklarını keşfetmiştir. ...
... Moreover, related department of the government should help to build up right attitude in translation. (2) enhancing he supervision on the translation of public signs. For example, some of the translated words imprinted on the sign board may be blurred and even been misprinted the careless workers. ...
... Extensive studies have looked at the quality in terms of linguistic aspects to see the quality in relation to the source text and the accuracy of the target text in reflecting the source text (e.g. Valdeon, 2009;He & Tao, 2010;Milton & Garbi, 2000;Wang, 2011;Guo, 2012;Muñoz, 2012;Liu & Wen, 2014). Findings of these studies are mostly limited at the level of grammatical errors in the translations. ...
APA Citation: Napu, Novriyanto. (2018). Does commissioning process matter? Understanding translation quality with a case of tourism promotional texts. Abstract This paper aims to shed light on how translation commissioning process relates to the level of the quality of translation set within the context of tourism promotional text translation. Translation quality has been one of the main concerns in the translation of tourism promotional materials. The translation of tourism promotional materials is necessary because they serve as a bridge of communication between visitors and a destination they consider visiting. Therefore, a high quality of translation is essential to create a full understanding of the visitors. Studies on the role of commissioning process have, however, remained limited. The analysis is based on two data; interview and corpus analysis. The interview involved six tourism professionals at the tourism board participating in the commissioning process. The corpus analysis examines six tourism brochures and their translation to consider the quality of the translation as the outcome of the commissioning process. The discussion of the paper focuses on the commissioning process by looking at how the tourism professional understand the purpose of the translation, the translator's selection procedure, the translation brief and quality assurance. The translation of tourism texts are then examined to find out the extent to which the commissioning procedure has influenced the quality of the translations. The paper argues that the commissioning process is inadequate and that has significantly affected the level of quality of the translation that has been commissioned by the Tourism Board in Gorontalo.
... 1. Error analysis and proposals to improve the accuracy of Chinese-English public signs (e.g. Guo, M., 2012aGuo, M., , 2012bLi, B., 2008;Wang, Y., & Chen, X., 2004;Xia, K., 2005); 2. Error analysis on the data collected in a certain city/area/school system (e.g. Dai, Z., & Lü, H., 2005;Hu, H., 2008;Mai, X., 2012;Yang, F., 2007); 3. Discussion on translation theory of public signs, their classification and characteristics (e.g. ...
In Taiwan, bilingual public signs are posted in many tourist areas giving information, direction, instruction or warning, and they serve as a window to foreigners living or travelling in the country; therefore, their English translation is of utmost importance. Although many educators/researchers and the media have proposed various methods to the authorities in charge, together with the government's concerted action, to improve the accuracy of the translation, and indeed, the mistakes have been largely reduced in recent years, erroneous English translations of public signs are still often seen. While linguistic aspects have long been a focus of translation research, the communicative feature of translation cannot be overlooked as translation is a means of communication as well. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze and correct the errors found in the English translations of Taiwan's public signs for tourism. Rich examples of wrong English translations of tourism public signs collected by the author and her university translation classes between 2010 and 2014 have been categorized and examined. Furthermore, the corrections of the mistakes have been suggested and discussed based on the communicative and reader-centered translation approaches.
... They also figure out that in some shop signs there is no relationship between the source language text (SLT) and its supposed target language (TL) equivalent. Guo (2012), in his study entitled by "Analysis on the English-translation errors of public signs", has shown that the current situation of the translation of publicity in big cities in China shows up its deficiency. There is no denial that public signs play an important role in daily life, and their English versions contribute great help and convenience to the foreigners in China. ...
... Differences between Chinese and English grammatical rules can also cause mistranslation. Guo (2012) examines common errors in translating Chinese public signs to English. He identifies the following errors: incomprehensible rules for Chinese pronunciation (Pin yin 2 ), inconsistency in the translation of names, embarrassing spelling mistakes, redundancy, change or loss of information, Chinglish, grammatical mistakes, inappropriate choice of words, and mistranslation on the cultural level. ...
The purpose of this study was to identify problems and provide solutions for improving Chinese to English translation quality, including ways to avoid Chinglish. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used, including interviews of 20 faculty members and a survey of over 300 students at 7 universities in China. The study researched four problem areas: Chinglish, cultural awareness, machine translation (MT), and translation profession. The results indicated that causes for Chinglish stem from different levels including vocabulary, syntax, and cultural levels. Cultural awareness was found to be a key factor for improving translation quality, especially when it comes to idiomatic translations. MT is best when used for gisting, which means a rough translation of the source text that allows the reader to understand the essence or general meaning of the source text even though the sentence structure, grammatical agreement, parts of speech, or word meanings are not accurate. Finally, it was found there is a need to train more competent translators. Solving these problems will improve the quality of Chinese to English translation.
This research aims to find out the errors occur in students’ translation product, this is a qualitative research and the object of the research is 4th- semester college students. The data was analyzed by using an error category by ATA’s standardized error making. The analysis reveals that the most errors occured on students’ translation are literalness: 258 occurrences (30,71%), misunderstanding: 221 occurrences (26,31%), terminology: 111 occurrences (13,21%), the last omission: 88 occurrences (10,48%), faithfulness: 73 occurrences (8,69%), then the next is grammar: 40 occurrences (4,76%), cohesion: 38 occurrences (4,52%) and the last is syntax: 11 occurrences (1,31%). Based on the research result it can be concluded that students’ knowledge of translation techniques is very limited, that caused errors in translating the text. In translating process, they must master translation techniques to translate certain text. This research will probably give some literature about the errors made by students, so it can be used by the teacher of translation material to give more lesson of translation techniques and give them more exercise in translating certain text. Then for the students, this research can be used as guidance to be more aware of errors that occur in translation process, for another researcher should conduct other research with another point of view.
Linguistic landscape plays an important role in the globalization of the higher education environment. In particular, the signage system is seen as a fundamental part of the linguistic landscape, contributing to the promotion of university systems’ images and identities in the world. However, there has not been sufficient attention on the signage use at many universities in Vietnam, and one of them is the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City system (VNUHCM). This survey aims at examining the current status of the signage use at four of the six VNUHCM member universities. Using quantitative methods, the paper synthesized and analyzed 564 signs, including monolingual ones in Vietnamese and in English, bilingual ones in Vietnamese and English, and multilingual ones which were all collected via fieldwork during the first quarter of 2020. Based on the signage guidelines of some globally popular university systems in the top of the QS Rankings 2021, the paper points out it is the lack of a signage guide manual at the VNUHCM system that leads to inconsistencies in the signage use at its member universities. Then, the survey findings reveal some specific problems and suggestions with the hope to encourage the improvement of the linguistic landscape at the VNUHCM system. Also, the research may serve as a useful reference for other universities in Vietnam.
Globalisation has had an enormous impact on our lives and cultures. At the same time, it has great effects on language, which is considered an important tool for enhancing understanding and communication between cultures. Though many languages have benefited from globalization, English is the first among those languages. Its use is an important trend in world communication, which implies various aspects. Such communication leads to acculturation, which is a process of culture learning and behavioural adaptation that takes place when individuals are exposed to a new culture. Consequently, as a part of this process, individuals may undergo changes in language use, personality, identity, and attitude. These changes affect, to some extent, the identity of the country that is exposed to the culture of the other one. So, one of the novel phenomena of globalization in Arab countries today is the desire to inoculate everyday conversations and talks with foreign words, especially English. Such a case is obvious in Arab countries. The people of those countries tend to flavour their talks with many English words on the pretext that it is civilized and prestigious as opposed to their mother language, which is inferior. Most of the names of supermarkets, streets and airports are written in a language called by some linguists (Arablyziya), which is considered the main reason behind the haste towards the West and the blind imitation with the loss of identity, namely that of the original language. This study is devoted to shedding light on some landmarks that contain erroneous bilingual public signs in different regions and /or districts in Iraq (Basrah) and the suggested solutions to overcome errors resulting from Anglicizing Arabic and errors in translation when English and Arabic are used in the same sign and, thus, leads to mistranslating. A sample of such landmarks of bilingual public signs gathered from these regions and districts is introduced in this study.
The researcher intends to conduct a study to examine advertisement banners that have an error in translating or modifying the word from source language to target language. the research is to investigate the many sorts of translation errors in advertisement banners. The study concentrated on the incorrect translation of source language to target language that occurred in advertising. This research is classified as Descriptive Qualitative Research. Qualitative research is a descriptive method in which data is collected in the form of written or spoken words. The data was collected from 20 public signs in Medan by the researcher. These public signs display the name of the service to the public. After assessment the data, it was discovered that translation error is 70% in spelling mistakes, 10% in grammatical errors, 15% in vocabulary misspellings, and 5% in punctuation. The greatest percentage is found in spelling errors. In the interview section, spelling mistakes and vocabulary misspellings occurred because they did not know how to produce the correct word due to a lack of vocabulary in English. Grammatical errors occurred because they did not know how to arrange the words correctly, and punctuation is the lowest error since it is not difficult to know how to apply proper punctuation in text
This study seeks to shed light on the analysis of translation errors occurring in the abstracts of research papers by MA students in the College of Languages and Translation at Imam Mohamed Ben Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The papers were translated from English into Arabic. A sample consisting of forty abstracts has been collected for this end. Liao’s (2010) model of analysis has been used to classify and analyze the errors made in the translations. The final results of this study show that the most occurring errors made by students when translating their abstracts from English into Arabic are mainly language ones. The study puts forward a number of suggestions, which may be very helpful to future students to avoid making translation errors in such abstracts.
This paper proposes a sociolinguistic approach to understanding the phenomenon of divergence from the standard norms of English that can be observed in public texts in the Greek city of Thessaloniki’s translation landscape. This approach fits in with the growing body of research that recognises that not all translations are carried out by professional translators. Certainly in the case of Thessaloniki, translations are typically carried out by non-professionals who draw on the linguistic experience and resources they possess in order to communicate with visitors and residents who do not understand Greek. As a result, several linguistic and pragmatic divergences from Standard English can be observed in the target text, which native speakers of English seem to be willing to disregard, provided that the message is intelligible. The sociolinguistic approach adopted in this paper reveals the translators’ effective use of the English language in conveying the message of the Greek source text, on the basis of the judgements expressed by translation professionals as well as native speakers of Greek and English.
The accuracy of performance validity tests (PVTs) with culturally diverse populations has increasingly been questioned. High false positive rates have been found in some PVTs in culturally and linguistically diverse individuals within the U.S. and internationally. No study to date has investigated the accuracy of PVTs with Chinese-speaking immigrants (CSI) in the U.S. The current study aimed to evaluate two PVTs, the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) and Dot Counting Test (DCT), to determine their accuracy in a community sample of CSI with limited English proficiency. These two measures were used in a simulation design, contrasting 52 participants who were instructed to respond honestly to 22 participants instructed to feign incompetency to stand trial. Results demonstrated the scores of TOMM Trial 1 and Trial 2 were effective in classifying honest responders from simulators, whereas the DCT E-score did not differentiate the groups better than chance. However, false positive rates for the TOMM Trial 1, Trial 2, and the DCT E-score were relatively low. Only one honest responder (1.9%) was classified as exerting insufficient effort in TOMM Trial 1 and DCT E-score, and the TOMM Trial 2 did not misclassify any honest responders. Implications and cautionary statements are provided and discussed.
This paper examines the English translations of Greek Covid-19 notices in the city of Thessaloniki which either inform the public about the precautions necessary to avoid infection with Covid-19, how the pandemic has affected the running of a particular service or business or how a business can help with the pandemic. Ιt combines methods from linguistic landscape research, sociolinguistics, and the sociology of translation, in order to examine how business people and employees have translated notices from Greek into English with the aim of communicating information with non Greek-speaking visitors to the city in relation to the pandemic. The qualitative data that will be presented here include translated notices from local businesses and state-run services. The data and analysis show that these particular translations are typically carried out by non-professional translators with varying degrees of competence in English, who rely on their existing linguistic resources to achieve their communicative goals.
The purpose of this article is to investigate several key sociolinguistic aspects of texts that have been translated from Greek into English in public spaces in the Kastra neighbourhood of Thessaloniki. It approaches these translations through a sociolinguistic lens, drawing from the ethnographic methodology used in studies of linguistic landscapes, whilst also taking into account the need to combine approaches from the sociological turn in Translation Studies, which have largely adopted Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in an attempt to place the translator at the centre of related academic enquiry. The qualitative findings derive from public texts that can be grouped into the following categories: Official signs and notifications, ad hoc signs and notices, and translated texts for businesses offering services. The analysis of the texts focuses on issues concerning superdiversity, social background, identity, and translation practices.
public signs, classifications, functions, characteristics, effectiveness, locals and tourists
The boom in Chinese tourism has occurred over the last two decades and it has highlighted many cultural aspects that need consideration. An example of this is travel signs, which are translated from Chinese into English and situated in countless travel destinations in China. This is not only convenient for international tourists but also establishes a dialogue between international tourists and Chinese culture. However, translation errors often appear on these English signs and therefore they do not clearly convey the meaning to English-speaking tourists. This article discusses some issues pertaining to the English translation of travel signs in China and investigates the role culture plays in these translations. The subsequent analysis advocates that more attention should be paid to the English translation of travel signs in the hope that this will, in turn, contribute to a sustainable development of tourism in China.
Taking a prospective approach to translation, translators choose their translation strategies according to the purpose or function the translated text is intended to fulfill for the target audience. Since communicative purposes need certain conditions in order to work, it is the translator's task to analyze the conditions of the target culture and to decide whether, and how, the source-text purposes can work for the target audience according to the specifications of the translation brief. If the target-culture conditions differ from those of the source culture, there are usually two basic options: either to transform the text in such a way that it can work under target-culture conditions (= instrumental translation), or to replace the source-text functions by their respective meta-functions (= documentary translation).
On the Translation of
- Bian Zhengdong
Bian Zhengdong. (2005). On the Translation of Publicity. Shanghai Translation,1, 27-31.
Globalization and Standardization of
Dai zongxian & Lv Hefa. (2006). Globalization and Standardization of Bilingual Graphic Symbol. Advertising, 6, 38-45.
Understanding Pragmatics
- Jef Verschueren
Jef Verschueren. (2000). Understanding Pragmatics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Chinese-English Translation of Public Signs
- Lv Hefa
Lv Hefa. (2004). Chinese-English Translation of Public Signs. China Technology Translation,1,38-40.