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SECTION C
Exploration
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Unit C1
What is translation?
Using the terms of Roman Jakobson (see Text B1.1), we can say that this book focuses on interlingual and intersemiotic translation. However, the interdisciplinarity of Translation Studies and the crossover with techniques from other disciplines challenges the assertion of James Holmes (Text B1.2) of a separate identity for the discipline.
Task C1.1
Several definitions of translation were given in Sections A and B of Unit 1 but it is also true that translation is an expanding phenomenon.
Look back at these definitions and establish the common denominators between them.
Examine definitions in handbooks of Translation Studies to find elements that have not been covered by the definitions so far.
Look at examples of actual translations in your own culture: what is the difference between ‘translation’, ‘
adaptation’, ‘
version’, etc.?
Task C1.2
Holmes’s ‘Name and Nature of Translation Studies’ paper was originally delivered at an Applied Linguistics Conference. Since then, things have moved on and translation is of interest to a larger number of different research groupings.
Refer to online resources located on websites such as the European Society for Translation Studies, the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies, and the Routledge Translation Portal, and look at forthcoming conferences related to translation.
Note the disciplines under which they are categorized or from which they accept papers.
Try and explain any variation that you discover.
Is a different term to Translation Studies used in other cultures or contexts?
Give examples of intersemiotic translation.
Task C1.3
Figure A1.1, p. 8, Section A described the links between Translation Studies and other disciplines.
Look at translation programmes and degrees offered in your own country.
What theoretical and practical aspects do they cover?
How far do these links correspond to what is set out in
Figure A1.1? Is there anything which could be added?
Task C1.4
The interdisciplinary links discussed in Section A included an allusion to the visual image in film studies and multi-media. However, it is true that much work on written translation has followed the traditional path of focusing on the written text to the exclusion of the visual image that accompanies it. Yet there is no real reason for this exclusion especially now that the digital media are the site of much translation. The task below is an example of translation research on new media:
Find a website or a printed advert which is available in your language pair.
Look at the way the image and text interact in the ST and compare this with the TT.
Are there any noticeable changes or inconsistencies between this interaction in the two texts? What role does the image seem to play? Does the text seem to be affected by space constraints (e.g. to fit into a specific box size)?
Look at further websites or advertisements to see how far these preliminary findings are supported.
Holmes’s paper refers to many key aspects of translation. It talks of translation as:
a
process – what happens in the act of translating the ST
a
product – analysis of the TT
a
function – how the TT operates in a particular context.
These are useful distinctions, even for a text, such as Example C1.1 below, which would sometimes be dismissed as simply deficient.
Task C1.5
The following text, Example C1.1, is to be found on a shoe-cleaning machine for use by passengers at a major international airport. In many ways, the English TT is typical of the often-quoted translation howlers from hotels or restaurants.
What factors in the translation process might have contributed to its idiosyncrasies?
What function do you think it was supposed to have in the TL in the context of the airport?
Do you think it successfully fulfils that function? (Note that, in the airport, there were three illustrations above it corresponding to the different stages of the operation.)
In what ways can it be called a ‘translation’?
Example C1.1
For a good service of the máquina please read the instrucciones.
1. To clean your shoe, on the bottom side of the brush hold yourself in the bar of the maquine.
2. Put some shoe crème and put your shoe on the brush passing the top of your shoe, just a few drops of cream is enough.
3. Shine your shoe using the brush of the color of your shoe that you will find outside this maquine.
Please fallow these instrucciones and you will have an excelente polish of your shoe.
Task C1.6
As we saw in Section A, the postulated universals of translation might encompass reduced ambiguity (and greater explicitation) in translation, as well as Toury’s laws of increased standardization in the TT and of interference from ST to TT.
Example C1.2 below is an extract of a prepared speech made by Koïchiro Matsuura, the then Director-General of UNESCO, in April 2002, concerning
the situation in the Middle East. Examine the English TT,
Example C1.2b, looking closely for the kind of
universals mentioned above.
Are there any different features of this text which confirm or counter the hypotheses of
universals?
The replicability of research, and the testing of...
