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Defining translation functions. The translation brief as a guideline for the trainee translation Defining translation functions. The translation brief as a guideline for the trainee translation

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Abstract

It can be regarded as widely known that, from a functionalist point of view (cf. Reiss/Vermeer 1984, Nord 1991), the translator’s decisions in the translation process should be governed by the function or communicative purpose the target text (TT) is intended to fulfil in a particular target-culture situation. This is a normative statement which does not describe an existing state of things (otherwise we would not have to lament the poor quality of so many translations) but rather an aim towards which prospective professional translators should be geared in their training. It can be regarded as widely known that, from a functionalist point of view (cf. Reiss/Vermeer 1984, Nord 1991), the translator’s decisions in the translation process should be governed by the function or communicative purpose the target text (TT) is intended to fulfil in a particular target-culture situation. This is a normative statement which does not describe an existing state of things (otherwise we would not have to lament the poor quality of so many translations) but rather an aim towards which prospective professional translators should be geared in their training.
Defining Translation Functions
... 41
DEFINING TRANSLATION FUNCTIONS.
THE TRANSLATION BRIEF AS A GUIDELINE FOR THE
TRAINEE TRANSLATOR
Christiane NordChristiane Nord
Christiane NordChristiane Nord
Christiane Nord
IntroductionIntroduction
IntroductionIntroduction
Introduction
It can be regarded as widely known that, from a functionalist point
of view (cf. Reiss/Vermeer 1984, Nord 1991), the translator’s decisions
in the translation process should be governed by the function or
communicative purpose the target text (TT) is intended to fulfil in a
particular target-culture situation. This is a normative statement which
does not describe an existing state of things (otherwise we would not
have to lament the poor quality of so many translations) but rather an
aim towards which prospective professional translators should be geared
in their training. Functionalist approaches to translation, among them
Skopostheorie (cf. Vermeer 1978), have been designed in and for
translator training, and this is why they have been criticized by the
followers of a descriptive approach who, often drawing on examples
taken from literary translation, claim that translation studies ‘should
be’ (another normative statement) based on empirical research only.
Referring to several apodictic statements presented by Reiss and
Vermeer (for example, “Translators offer just so much information and
in just the manner which they consider optimal for the target-text
42 Christiane Nord
recipient in view of their translation”, Reiss/Vermeer 1984:123), Koller
asks the following questions:
Do these sentences refer to a given set of translations, say in
German, i.e. are they based on empirical investigations which justify
results of the type: The analysis of 1000 translations from English into
German reveals that in 95% of cases the important factor for the
translation/interpretation was the respective translator’s decision as to
what and how to translate/interpret? Or is the idea that: For a translator/
interpreter to translate well, s/he must decide what and how to translate?
(Koller 1995: 215, note 21)
Koller is quite justified in asking this kind of question. To my
knowledge, the principles of Skopostheorie have so far not been based
on any thorough analysis of large, possibly electronically-held corpora.
They are founded on observations of translation practice in various
fields, as indeed would seem to be Koller’s own remarks about
equivalence being a constitutive feature of translation and the five
equivalence frameworks he suggests to explain certain features of some
texts and their translations.
This is not the place for a contest in empiricism. If we take existing
translations to be the norm governing any future translation process,
we risk setting the fox to keep the geese, for how could we tell a ‘good’
translation from a ‘bad’ one? In the context of translator training,
evaluation is part and parcel of the teacher’s job, and how can a teacher
ever evaluate a student’s translation if each and every translation as
such is part of the norm? Or is it only a professional translator’s product
that forms the norm? Or only a published translation? And then, who
decides whether or not a translation is to be published, and is every
person whose translations are published a ‘professional translator’?
Therefore, in order to train prospective professional translators, we have
to look for another yardstick to measure translation quality. Functionalist
approaches to translation suggest that it might be helpful to ask whether
or not the product of a translation process achieves the intended
communicative function.
Defining Translation Functions
... 43
TT
TT
T
ranslation as an intentional, interranslation as an intentional, inter
ranslation as an intentional, interranslation as an intentional, inter
ranslation as an intentional, inter
cultural, partly verbalcultural, partly verbal
cultural, partly verbalcultural, partly verbal
cultural, partly verbal
communicative interaction involving a source textcommunicative interaction involving a source text
communicative interaction involving a source textcommunicative interaction involving a source text
communicative interaction involving a source text
Functionalist approaches to translation draw on action theory (cf.
Nord 1996). Action can be defined as an intentional change or transition
from one state of affairs to another (cf. von Wright 1963:28). If there are
two or more agents involved in an action, we may speak of an interaction.
An interaction is referred to as communicative when it is carried out
through signs produced intentionally by one agent, referred to as the
’sender’, directed towards another agent, referred to as the ‘addressee‘
or ‘receiver’, and intended to change the state of mind of the latter.
Communicative interactions take place in situations that are limited in
time and space. This means every situation has historical and cultural
dimensions that condition the agents’ verbal and nonverbal behaviour,
their knowledge and expectations of each other, their appraisal of the
situation, and the standpoint from which they look at the world.
Translators enable communication to take place between members
of different culture communities. They bridge the gap between
situations where differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviour,
expectations, knowledge and perspectives are such that there is not
enough common ground for the sender and receiver to communicate
effectively by themselves.
The translator’s mediatory role does not always involve
translating in any literal way. In fact, translators quite regularly do much
more than translate texts, they sometimes even advise their clients not
to have a particular text translated at all but to use another kind of
communication medium to achieve the purpose they are aiming at. To
account for this difference, we distinguish between ‘translational action’
(the range of what translators actually do) and ‘translation’ (what they
do when rendering texts). In this article, I will refer to ‘translation’ (in
the narrower sense) only.
Texts may consist of verbal and nonverbal signs (illustrations,
tables, text format, etc. in written texts - intonation and pitch, gestures,
44 Christiane Nord
face and body movements in face-to-face communication). The use of
verbal and nonverbal signs in a particular text or text type may be
governed by culture-specific norms and conventions. The translator
may therefore have to change from the verbal to the nonverbal code, or
vice versa, in the course of the translation process.
Translating can thus be regarded as an intentional, intercultural,
partly verbal communicative interaction involving a source text.
A flexible concept of cultureA flexible concept of culture
A flexible concept of cultureA flexible concept of culture
A flexible concept of culture
Göhring (1978: 10) stresses the fact that in intercultural encounters
the individual is free either to conform to the behaviour patterns
accepted in the other culture or to bear the consequences of behaviour
that is contrary to cultural expectations. Culture is a complex system, of
which language is an intrinsic part, especially if culture is defined as a
“totality of knowledge, proficiency and perception” (Snell-Hornby
1988: 40). However, the borderlines between cultural systems or sub-
systems (such as paraculture, diaculture or idioculture, cf. Ammann
1989: 39) are notoriously difficult to define. A culture cannot simply be
equated with a language area. For instance, the linguistic behaviour of
the Portuguese and the Brazilians will be different in some situations
and very similar in others. Or again, Argentinians and Brazilians from
the regions along their common border may differ in language but
have similar value systems. In modern multicultural societies we cannot
even say that a town or a street represents a single homogeneous culture.
The American ethnologist Michael Agar, who works as what he calls
an “intercultural practitioner” between US-Americans and Mexicans
along the border, takes this into consideration when he writes:
Culture is not something people have; it is something that
fills the spaces between them. And culture is not an
exhaustive description of anything; it focuses on differences,
Defining Translation Functions
... 45
differences that can vary from task to task and group to group.
(Agar 1992: 11)
The differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviour causing
culture conflicts or even communication breakdowns between two
communities in contact are called “rich points” (cf. Agar 1991). This is
a pragmatic way of describing the translator’s situation. A translator
does not have to take into account all cultural rich points which may
occur between all members of two linguistic communities; translation
always takes place between two rather well defined sub-groups of the
two language communities involved, such as South Brazilian and North
Argentinian engineers (e.g. in the case of the translation of a technical
text from Portuguese into Spanish) or the readers of a particular São
Paulo daily newspaper and those of a particular US-American
newspaper (e.g. in the case of the translation of a political commentary
on the relations between Brazil and the United States from Portuguese
into English). In these examples, it is neither necessary nor possible to
translate for all Spanish-speaking or all English-speaking readers. In
this respect, the translator’s work is not very different from that of any
person writing about a particular topic in any language.
Intentionality and text functionIntentionality and text function
Intentionality and text functionIntentionality and text function
Intentionality and text function
In translation, intentionality may be associated with the translator
or, more often, with the person who is the ‘initiator’ of the translation
process. Translational intention may or may not be similar to the
intention guiding the original sender or text producer in the production
of the source text, which is an intentional communicative interaction in
itself.
Texts are intended to carry out communicative purposes, which,
in another terminology, are called communicative functions. Since the
best of intentions will not always guarantee success, we will distinguish
the sender’s intention from the function assigned to the text by the
46 Christiane Nord
receiver from their own point of view, which, particularly in intercultural
communication, may be quite different from the one the sender had in
mind. Intention and function may, but need not, be congruent. Texts are
intended to be meaningful to their addressees, and therefore, text
producers (and translators are text producers, too) shape their texts so
as to conform as far as possible to the situational conditions of the
addressees. They usually provide the text with function markers
indicating the intended function, and in normal communication
receivers would be cooperative and use the text for the intended purpose
if they recognize the markers.
Therefore, all a translator (or any other text producer) can do is
provide their texts with the corresponding intention markers and hope
for the receiver to join the game. To be able to do that, the translator
needs as much knowledge as possible about the communicative
purposes the target text is supposed to achieve for the addressees in
their communicative situation. These details are explicitly or implicitly
defined in the translation brief.
The translation brief (Übersetzungsauftrag)The translation brief (Übersetzungsauftrag)
The translation brief (Übersetzungsauftrag)The translation brief (Übersetzungsauftrag)
The translation brief (Übersetzungsauftrag)
Here we have to clarify a translation problem. The German word
Übersetzungsauftrag may be translated literally as either translation
commission or translation assignment. We find both terms used in the
works by (mostly German) functionalist translation scholars writing in
English or translated into English. I have even introduced a third term
myself, translation instructions, “because it highlights the pedagogical
aspect” (Nord 1991: 8, note 3). However, in a recent study Janet Fraser
uses the term “brief” (Fraser 1996: 73), which seems to express very
aptly what is meant by Übersetzungsauftrag. It implicitly compares
the translator with a barrister who has received the basic information
and instructions but is then free (as the responsible expert) to carry out
those instructions as they see fit. I will therefore use the term “translation
Defining Translation Functions
... 47
brief” referring to the definition of the intended purpose of the
translation process.
In professional settings, translators very often do not feel any need
for a detailed specification of the translation function(s) because their
experience tells them that a particular kind of source text provided by a
particular kind of client (perhaps their employer, if they happen to
enjoy the benefits of stable employment) is usually i.e. if not stated
otherwise) expected to be translated for a particular kind of purpose,
including a particular kind (or even specimen) of addressee, medium,
format etc.
Lacking this kind of experience, trainee translators cannot be
expected to interpret a situation that, in the classroom, is not very clear
anyway. Each translation task should thus be accompanied by a brief
that defines the conditions under which the target text should carry out
its particular function.
Starting from the idea that the communicative situation (including
the communicators and their communicative intentions) determines
the verbal and nonverbal features of the text, we may assume that the
description of the situational factors defines the slot into which the text
should fit. This applies to both the source and the target texts. The
situation in which the source text fulfils its functions is, by definition,
different from that of the target text. Simultaneous translation could be
regarded as an exception with regard to the difference in place, time,
motive and purpose of the communication, but even there we have to
consider a certain difference with regard to the culture-bound
knowledge, experience or susceptibility of the respective audiences.
To find the aspects in which the source and the target texts will diverge,
the translator has to compare the source text with the target-text profile
defined in the translation brief.
The translation brief should contain (explicit or implicit)
information about:
the target-text addressee(s),
the prospective time and place of text reception,
48 Christiane Nord
the medium over which the text will be transmitted, and
the motive for the production or reception of the text,
and this information will allow some conjectures as to the
communicative function(s) the text is intended to have for the
prospective receivers.
The intended communicative function of the target text is the
crucial criterion for the translator’s decisions in the translation process.
To make function analysis easier in translator training, I use a rather
simplified model of text functions combined with a functional translation
typology, which will be briefly explained in the following section.
TT
TT
T
ext functions and translation functionsext functions and translation functions
ext functions and translation functionsext functions and translation functions
ext functions and translation functions
The following schema is based on a combination of the models of
language functions elaborated by Bühler (1934) and Jakobson (1960)
and consists of four basic functions with an open list of sub-functions
each.
Referential function: (objective) reference to the objects and
phenomena of the world; sub-functions: informative, metalinguistic,
metatextual, directive, didactic etc.
Expressive function: expression of the sender’s (subjective)
attitude or feelings towards the things and phenomena of the world;
sub-functions: evaluative, emotive, ironical etc.
Appellative function: appeal directed at the receiver’s
sensitivity, previous experience or disposition to act; sub-functions:
illustrative, persuasive, imperative, pedagogical, advertising etc.
Phatic function: establishing / maintaining / ending (social)
contact between sender and receiver; sub-functions: small talk, taking
leave, introductory “peg” for text opening etc.
Basically, these communicative functions may be considered to be
universal or at least, to put it more carefully, transcultural, whereas the
verbal or nonverbal indicators used to mark them are determined by
culture-specific norms, traditions, preferences, etc. Therefore, we may
Defining Translation Functions
... 49
assume that translations would have to bear the markers used in the
target culture in order to be meaningful to the target receivers, unless
the receivers are made aware of the fact that they are reading a
translation and have to re-interpret the function markers themselves.
We may thus distinguish two types of translations: those that are
explicitly marked as texts transferred from another culture (by stating
the name of the translator, the language from which they have been
translated, the source where they were first published etc. and/or by
bearing “foreign” or “strange” textual markers) and those that do not
betray their origin in another language and culture and will thus be
interpreted as target-culture texts by the receivers.
The first type, which I call the documentary translation type, is
first and foremost a metatext, being a target-culture text informing about
a source-culture text or any of its aspects and dimensions (for example,
an interlineal word-for-word translation informs about the lexical and
syntactic structures or the source language as used in the text), and as
such, its communicative function will be realized in an indirect way:
e.g., informing target-culture addressees about a source-culture author
referring to an object of the world (from a source-culture point of view),
or informing target-culture readers about somebody from a source
culture appealing to their addressees’ culture-specific experience of
the world (cf. Juliane House’s “overt translation” type, House 1981).
The second type, which I call the instrumental translation type, is
an object-text in its own right, directed at a target-culture readership for
whom it can fulfil any of the above-mentioned basic functions and
sub-functions like a non-translated text, and modelled according to a
pre-existing text borrowed from a source culture (cf. House’s “covert
translation” type). Instrumental translations may be intended to achieve
the same function as the source text (“equifunctional translation”) or a
function that is different from that of the source text (“heterofunctional
translation”). The fundamental option for either the documentary or
the instrumental translation type then governs any subsequent decision
the translator has to take during the translation process. Therefore, it is
50 Christiane Nord
of vital importance that the translation brief contains some explicit or
implicit clue as to the expected translation type.
Example: Selling apartments to foreign visitors in SpainExample: Selling apartments to foreign visitors in Spain
Example: Selling apartments to foreign visitors in SpainExample: Selling apartments to foreign visitors in Spain
Example: Selling apartments to foreign visitors in Spain
Let’s look at an example. A Spanish estate agent wants to sell a
number of apartments situated in a large building by the seaside in a
small town called Cullera in the South of Spain. They have produced a
folder in Spanish, but somehow the business does not prosper. The
place is full of Germans, Austrians, Swiss, French, Belgian and English
people spending their holidays mostly in rented apartments, and the
agent thinks it would be worthwhile to have the text translated into
German, English and French to address a larger clientele. So they ask a
group of translators who happen to be around to produce a German, an
English and a French translation for separate folders in these languages.
This situation can be formalized as follows:
target addressees: any German-speaking, anglophone or
francophone visitors who pass by the agent’s office or the building site
where the folder is distributed free; they are already in Cullera and
know the place, they seem to like Spain, and they should be sufficiently
well-off to afford to buy an apartment abroad;
place and time of reception: Cullera (Spain), from the start of
the project to the moment all apartments have been sold;
medium: monolingual folder with coloured pictures and short
pieces of text in a given layout which will be the same for all versions;
motive for text production and reception: the wish to establish
contact between the building company and prospective customers;
text functions: phatic (to attract possible customers’ attention),
referential-informative (to inform about the building), appellative-
persuasive (to raise the reader’s interest and eventually ‘seduce’ them
to buy one of the apartments).
This leads to the following translation “brief”: The situation
characterized by the five dimensions listed above calls for a text that
Defining Translation Functions
... 51
attracts the target addressees’ attention (phatic function), provides
information that is comprehensible for them (referential function), and
appeals to their ideas of a perfect place where to spend their holidays in
Spain for many years to come (appellative function). We may assume
that the source text similarly addresses its source-culture audience
(although possible linguistic or stylistic or cultural imperfections of the
source text are really not the translator’s concern in this case). What is
required is, thus, an equifunctional instrumental translation, where the
target text is adapted to the norms and conventions of the target culture
and the needs and expectations of the target audiences.
To find out how the source-text features have to be transformed in
order to meet the requirements of the translation brief, we have to take
a closer look at the source text and at the way the intended text functions
are marked in the Spanish original. We find that the text consists of
three main parts:
part 1 (front and back cover if the leaflet is folded properly)
contains a kind of slogan, “En el lugar más tranquilo de la playa de San
Antonio”, and the name of the building, “Torres de San Antonio”) and
the identification of the sender (Cooperativa de viviendas “El Ferrobus”
+ address), accompanied by an illustration suggesting sun, sea and a
stereotypical Spanish village;
part 2 presents the attractions of the apartment block and the
premises, including two schematic maps, one showing the situation of
the building with regard to the town and the seaside and another one
showing the localization of the projected building on the premises, and
a photograph showing a model of the building;
part 3 gives the prices for the three basic types of apartment,
the conditions of payment and some information concerning tax
reductions and other financial advantages.
A functional analysis of these three parts shows that:
part 1 is mainly phatic: contact is established by offering
information and producing a positive impression on the reader, using
mainly nonverbal means which appeal to the cliché of a prototypical
52 Christiane Nord
Spanish coastal village, thus responding more to the expectations of
foreigners than of Spaniards even in the original;
part 2 is mainly appellative, using the expressive-evaluative
elements praising the positive aspects of the building (el lugar más
tranquilo, emplazamiento inmejorable, soleamiento adecuado,
materiales de primera calidad, etc.) and referential-informative
elements referring to the social aspect (dos piscinas, dos pistas de tenis,
parque infantil, local social, etc.) as an indirect means of appeal;
part 3 is also mainly appellative, since the information given in
this part is supposed to make the object attractive to the reader (I have
deleted the original prices because they would look ridiculous today
after various devaluations of the peseta); we would neither expect nor
find any negative aspects of the building to be mentioned in this kind
of text.
If the target text is supposed to achieve the same functions for the
target audience, we have to consider the following principles:
The referential function relies on correctness and
comprehensibility. If source and target audiences do not share the same
amount of previous knowledge, the translator has to provide additional
information. In our example, English, German or French readers cannot
be expected to be familiar with the Spanish “V.P.O.” (viviendas de
protección oficial) system; therefore the information is of little use for
them as it stands; a target-culture equivalent might be used to explain
the basic idea. On the other hand, the information about tax reductions
does not apply to foreigners unless they have a permanent residence
and workplace in Spain - to avoid misunderstandings, the translator
would have to make this detail explicit in the target version.
The phatic function relies on conventionality. Since the illustrations
used in part 1 are rather target-culture oriented (and could not be
changed anyway), they will not cause any functionality problems.
The appellative function depends on the audience’s cooperation.
If the evaluations presented in the text are not positive enough from a
target-cultural point of view (as, for example, soleamiento adecuado
Defining Translation Functions
... 53
for a German or British audience who goes to Spain precisely in order to
take in as much sun as possible), they may have to be ‘upgraded’ (e.g.,
to “sonnige Südlage” for the German reader); if, on the other hand,
they seem exaggerated to a central European reader (as in el lugar más
tranquilo - what is tranquilo for a Spaniard may be terribly noisy for an
English person), they may have to be ‘downgraded’ or shifted to another
dimension in the target text (e.g., to “a nice and quiet part” or “the most
beautiful part” for the English reader).
Intertextuality as a source of information in the translationIntertextuality as a source of information in the translation
Intertextuality as a source of information in the translationIntertextuality as a source of information in the translation
Intertextuality as a source of information in the translation
processprocess
processprocess
process
To conclude, let me briefly mention another aspect which makes
the translation brief a valuable tool in translator training. The
considerations about culture-specific expectations and value systems
presented above often seem rather far-fetched to the students. On the
one hand, they are not aware of the differences in attitude and
conventions, and on the other, they have never learned to produce texts
like the one used as an example, i.e. they are not familiar with the
linguistic norms and conventions of the text type in question. The two
constraints may be compensated for by using parallel texts as a source
of information or even as a textual model in the translation process.
The translation brief describes, as it were, the situational slot into
which the target text has to fit. If such a type of communicative situation
exists in the target-culture community, there may also be target-
language texts which are used, or have been used, in this kind of
situation. Texts used in similar or identical situations are linked by
similar or identical features, they form a text type or genre, and their
characteristics serve as indicators of the intended function
conventionally linked to a text type. Therefore, the translation brief
helps the students to find these texts, which we usually call parallel
texts if they belong to the same text type, and to model their translations
according to the patterns they find there.
54 Christiane Nord
With regard to the example presented above, a number of German
parallel texts (for example, advertisements published in a daily
newspaper and an estate agent’s documentation on projected apartment
blocks) allowed the students to compose a list of possible functional
equivalents which appeared in the parallel texts in a rather stereotypical
way, as is shown in the following table. Using these modules, they
could not only verify some of the cultural and quite a few terminological
differences but also overcome their own difficulties in producing a text
they had never before been asked to produce.
entrega de llaves Bezugsfertigkeit¨
precios¨ Festpreise
versión duplex Maisonette¨
en el lugar más tranquilo ruhige Umgebung, absolut ruhige
Lage, sehr ruhig
¨emplazamiento inmejorable herrliche Umgebung, einmalige
Lage, Spitzenlage, schönste Lage¨
orientación mediodía sonnige Lage, Südlage¨
(soleamiento adecuado)
arquitectura singular außergewöhnliche Architektur/
Bauweise¨
materiales de primera calidad erstklassige/beste Bauqualität (und
Ausstattung)/... mit jeglichem
Komfort¨¨
ReferencesReferences
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... However, assuming either of these two positions have led translators to deliberations of how to translate, which is conditioned to the judgment of a particular audience. Along these lines, with this annotated translation project, we integrated translation strategies such as Skopos theory (Nord, 1997) that allowed us to generate a more performing translation, evoking the notion that the translated poem is the result of a literary recreation, which is our translational philosophy. ...
... Sin embargo, asumir cualquiera de estas dos posiciones ha llevado a los traductores a deliberar sobre cómo traducir, lo que condiciona el juicio de cada audiencia en particular. De esta forma, con esta traducción comentada, integramos estrategias de traducción, tal como la teoría Skopos (Nord, 1997) que nos permitió crear una traducción funcionalista, evocando así la noción de que el poema traducido es el resultado de una recreación literaria, lo cual es nuestra filosofía traductológica. ...
... The functionalist approach by Nord underlines that to choose one or more functions, the translator should be driven by the translation brief, the target audience, and the function of the translation. In her article, Defining Translation Functions: The Translation Brief as a Guideline for the Trainee Translator, Nord (1997) argues the importance of the translation briefs as guiding tools for translators, either novice or experts, to write high-quality translations that fulfill the client's needs, criteria, and conditions (p. 46). Those guidelines they provide help translators to understand the requirements, context, and purpose of the translation activities they are to work on. ...
Thesis
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A lo largo de la historia, la poesía ha pasado por diferentes procesos de traducción, buscando así una manera de trascender en varias culturas. Como resultado, los teóricos literarios han sugerido diferentes enfoques que van desde una perspectiva muy radical, como la total fidelidad de un poema, hasta un proceso más creativo en el que el traductor es también un escritor. Sin embargo, asumir cualquiera de estas dos posiciones ha llevado a los traductores a deliberar sobre cómo traducir, lo que condiciona el juicio de cada audiencia en particular. De esta forma, con esta traducción comentada, integramos estrategias de traducción, tal como la teoría Skopos (Nord, 1997) que nos permitió crear una traducción funcionalista, evocando así la noción de que el poema traducido es el resultado de una recreación literaria, lo cual es nuestra filosofía traductológica. Además, esta traducción literaria del inglés al español de 70 poemas enmarcados en la categoría de melancolía en función del duelo del libro Whiskey Words & a Shovel III siguió una metodología de cuatro pasos desarrollada en el siguiente orden: documentación, análisis estructural, proceso de traducción y anotación. Como conclusión, traducir poemas de literatura contemporánea implica usar recursos literarios que se ajusten a los fenómenos literarios y socioculturales del mundo contemporáneo, tales como el lenguaje sencillo, la neutralidad de género y la divulgación de la poesía en la era digital.
... The selected MT systems were DeepL and Google Translate, which are MT tools, while the other two systems used, ChatGPT and Google Bard 11 , are Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms that, although capable of generating translations, were not specifically designed for this purpose. In the case of the AI platforms, three versions of the translations were collected: the first version was generated from a simple and direct prompt; the second from a slightly more GNL-specific prompt; and the third prompt was based on the concept of the "translation-brief" (Nord 1997). ...
... 10 The full dataset is available at: https://github.com/LF-DCL/Gender_Neutral_Translation_Case_Study. a set of instructions outlining the purpose, target audience, and other specific requirements of the translation) (Nord 1997(Nord , 2018Pym 1993;Reiss & Vermeer 2014). ...
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There is a growing demand for gender-neutral writing in translation tasks motivated by the need for inclusion, neutrality or economic factors. Studies suggest that current Machine Translation (MT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems tend to mirror the source text's (and real-world) gender bias or default generic masculine. It is important to understand whether, with documents in a gender-neutral style, the MT and AI tools provide better gender-neutral translations by resorting to standard and established grammatical solutions. Additionally, the effectiveness of AI systems, with customised prompts, in surpassing MT limitations regarding gender-neutral translation is also analysed.
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Health texts are a type of text where non-optimal translation can have serious consequences. In the eHealth/mHealth case study presented here, we explore how different categories of translational agents perceive risk and manage it in the process of translating texts from a Norwegian health app into English. Based on the notion of risk in translation (e.g., Pym 2005 ) and conceptual analysis, we developed a model — The Risk Scenario — which we used to analyze interview, observational, and think-aloud data gathered during the translation process. We found that while the LSP and translator/quality checker in our study expressed the most concern over the risk of non-optimal target texts, the author and client were more focused on the risk of harming the health of end-users. Such differences likely arise from the proximal versus distal positioning (see Gile 2012 ) of different agents in relation to the act of translation. Additionally, we discovered that the type of text found in this kind of app — oral and informal — does not effectively communicate its risks, reaffirming the need for detailed translation briefs and suggesting that risk should be a compulsory category for source texts in high-risk domains.
Chapter
The main objective of this study is to contribute to research on transcreation in tourism discourse by reporting on a simulated master’s-level experiment with the aim of providing transcreators with a model to incorporate transversal skills or elements of Emotional Intelligence theory and practice into training. To achieve this goal, this study discusses a framework, that is, the Logical Levels model, to model the behaviour of transcreators. Transcreators are indeed involved in a network of socio-cultural and professional activities, which arguably require a more collaborative view of society and a creative, conflict-resolving role in translation work. This has significant implications for the skills required to first deal with the rapid fragmentation of market demand and then to interact with other active parties involved in transcreation processes with the ultimate aim of accommodating the recipients’ needs. The decision to engage in transcreation in tourism discourse is primarily due to the ever-increasing demand for sincere, culturally sensitive communication with foreign visitors who prefer to interact with brands that address them in their native language. Embracing a neuro-linguistic programming standpoint, the analysis will show a correlation between a more pro-active behaviour and creative reformulations in the tourism industry.
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Cross-cultural validation of self-reported measurement instruments for research is a long and complex process, which involves specific risks of bias that could affect the research process and results. Furthermore, it requires researchers to have a wide range of technical knowledge about the translation, adaptation and pre-test aspects, their purposes and options, about the different psychometric properties, and the required evidence for their assessment and knowledge about the quantitative data processing and analysis using statistical software. This article aimed: 1) identify all guidelines and recommendations for translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation within the healthcare sciences; 2) describe the methodological approaches established in these guidelines for conducting translation, adaptation, and cross-cultural validation; and 3) provide a practical guideline featuring various methodological options for novice researchers involved in translating, adapting, and validating measurement instruments. Forty-two guidelines on translation, adaptation, or cross-cultural validation of measurement instruments were obtained from “CINAHL with Full Text” (via EBSCO) and “MEDLINE with Full Text”. A content analysis was conducted to identify the similarities and differences in the methodological approaches recommended. Bases on these similarities and differences, we proposed an eight-step guideline that includes: a) forward translation; 2) synthesis of translations; 3) back translation; 4) harmonization; 5) pre-testing; 6) field testing; 7) psychometric validation, and 8) analysis of psychometric properties. It is a practical guideline because it provides extensive and comprehensive information on the methodological approaches available to researchers. This is the first methodological literature review carried out in the healthcare sciences regarding the methodological approaches recommended by existing guidelines.
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The present study examines training of Russian language translators in the 1980s. The main focus is on the social and ideological context of the lively bilateral trade with the Soviet Union due to which demand for translators with a command of Russian was high in Finland. The material consists of exercises used by the author of this article in teaching Russian–Finnish translation at Savonlinna School of Translation Studies. The analysis concentrates on describing what kind of source texts and commissions were typical in translation exercises. The results of the analysis suggest that the most common type of text used in translation assignments was a media text published in a newspaper or a periodical. Media texts were perhaps not ideal from the point of view of authentic translation tasks, but teachers compensated for this by imitating real-life commissions that were linked to bilateral trade or friendship activities between Finland and the Soviet Union.
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Bu kitap bölümünde çoklu zeka kuramı aracılığıyla Fransızca yabancı dil sınıflarında deyimlerin nasıl öğretilebileceğinin gösterilmesi amaçlanmıştır. This book chapter was aimed to demonstrated how the idioms can be taught in French as a foreign language classes through the theory of multiple intelligences.
Conference Paper
In this article we propose a new perspective of the concept of localisation that may be envisaged as a stage in the process of translating musicology texts. While most scholars have approached the concept and employed the term within the GILT paradigm [2] [3] [10], we believe this new perspective of localisation does not conflict with or diminish its current status. On the contrary, a potential semantic broadening may even help to distinguish it from other terms such as �adaptation� or �translation� [2] [8]. Thus, we view localisation as a practical stage in the process of translation with Nord�s [7] tripartite model applied to musicology texts, whereby the translation of musicology texts is seen as a complex process that begins with the translation brief (cf. [5] [6]) and ends with the production of (potentially multiple) target texts that fit both a �locale� and a skopos [11] [12]. By analogy with Mazur�s [2] view, localisation may be performed not only at the level of cultural norms and conventions, but also at the linguistic and even the technical levels. If the translator disregards this stage, the resulting target text will very likely not fulfil its purpose [11] [12], which is why we view it as an obligatory step in the process of translating musicology texts.
Article
: Regardless of the approach one uses in the study of translating and translations, it remains necessary to delimit the legitimate field of concern. I.e. translations must be identified and described sui generis as the results of a text-processing activity. From the linguistic and text-theoretical perspective this objective is fulfilled by the concept of equivalence; a translation is defined as a secondary text that stands in an equivalence relation to a primary text. The range of the equivalence-oriented approach and the possibilities it offers for systematic description and explanation of translational phenomena are, however, limited. Its problems and limitations become apparent not only in the context of historical translation research, but also whenever interest focusses upon the text-productive — i.e. ultimately creative — aspect of translation, as opposed to its reproductive aspect, i.e. the linguistic-textual relationships between languages and texts as these are deduced from regularities. Résumé: Toute démarche traductologique suppose acquise la délimitation du champ d'observation approprié: il convient d'identifier et d'analyser des traductions en tant que telles, comme les résultats d'un acte de production textuelle. A cette visée correspond, du point de vue linguistique et textuel, le concept d'équivalence: une traduction est un texte secondaire qui est en relation d'équivalence avec un texte primaire. Mais la démarche fondée sur le concept d'équivalence a ses limites. Elles sont manifestes sur le plan historique, mais également lorsqu'on insiste sur les aspects productifs et créateurs de la traduction, en les distinguant de ses propriétés reproductrices, les relations linguistico-textuelles entre les langues et les textes, qui sont engendrées par des régularités.
The Biculture in Bilingual
M. (1991) "The Biculture in Bilingual." In: Language in Society 20, 167-181.
The Translator Investigated
FRASER, J. (1996) "The Translator Investigated." In: The Translator 2:1, 65-79.
Interkulturelle Kommunikation: Die Überwindung der Trennung von Fremdsprachen-und Landeskundeunterricht durch einen integrierten Fremdverhaltensunterricht
GÖHRING, H. (1978) "Interkulturelle Kommunikation: Die Überwindung der Trennung von Fremdsprachen-und Landeskundeunterricht durch einen integrierten Fremdverhaltensunterricht." In: Kongreßberichte der 8. Jahrestagung der GAL, vol. IV.-Stuttgart: Hochschulverlag, 9-14.
Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie
VERMEER, H. J. (1978) "Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie." In: Lebende Sprachen 23, 99-102. Repr. in Vermeer, H. J. (1983) Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie, Heidelberg, 48-88.