{"title":"Review of Tesseur (2023): Translation as Social Justice: Translation Policies and Practices in Non-Governmental Organizations","authors":"M. Todorova","doi":"10.1075/babel.00320.tod","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00320.tod","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72637601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although much recent work in translation studies has focused on translators, the research conducted by translators remains understudied. This study explores translators’ research and its impact on their translations and on translational trust. Taking Jeffrey C. Kinkley – an American translator, historian, and sinologist – as an illustrative case study, this paper investigates Kinkley’s research work, including interviews with the original author, fieldwork-based efforts to verify objects described in the text, research on historical documentation and previous academic studies, and more, resembling the research work of evidential scholarship and ethnographic studies. Kinkley’s research impacts his translations, characterized by inclusive text selection, thick translation strategies, literary and cultural fidelity, and new knowledge creation. A translator’s research provides a solid foundation for accurate and adequate translations, increased visibility, and interactive and dynamic networking among various agents in the translation field, which plays a pivotal role in nurturing translational trust. This investigation into Kinkley’s research work contributes to an in-depth understanding of and objective comments on both translation and translator.
尽管近年来的翻译研究大多集中在译者身上,但对译者的研究仍然不足。本研究探讨了译者的研究及其对翻译和翻译信任的影响。本文以美国翻译家、历史学家、汉学家金克利(Jeffrey C. Kinkley)为例,考察了金克利的研究工作,包括对原作者的访谈、对文本中所描述对象的实地考察、对历史文献和以往学术研究的研究等,类似于证据学术和民族志研究的研究工作。金克利的研究影响了他的翻译,其特点是包容的文本选择,厚实的翻译策略,文学和文化的忠实,以及新的知识创造。译者的研究为准确、充分的翻译提供了坚实的基础,提高了翻译领域的知名度,并在翻译领域的各个代理之间建立了互动和动态的网络,这对培养翻译信任起着关键作用。对金克利的研究工作进行考察,有助于对翻译和译者进行深入的认识和客观的评价。
{"title":"The pivotal role of translators’ research in literary translation","authors":"Xu Minhui","doi":"10.1075/babel.00316.xu","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00316.xu","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although much recent work in translation studies has focused on translators, the research conducted by translators\u0000 remains understudied. This study explores translators’ research and its impact on their translations and on translational trust.\u0000 Taking Jeffrey C. Kinkley – an American translator, historian, and sinologist – as an illustrative case study, this paper\u0000 investigates Kinkley’s research work, including interviews with the original author, fieldwork-based efforts to verify objects\u0000 described in the text, research on historical documentation and previous academic studies, and more, resembling the research work\u0000 of evidential scholarship and ethnographic studies. Kinkley’s research impacts his translations, characterized by inclusive text\u0000 selection, thick translation strategies, literary and cultural fidelity, and new knowledge creation. A translator’s research\u0000 provides a solid foundation for accurate and adequate translations, increased visibility, and interactive and dynamic networking\u0000 among various agents in the translation field, which plays a pivotal role in nurturing translational trust. This investigation\u0000 into Kinkley’s research work contributes to an in-depth understanding of and objective comments on both translation and translator.","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89575496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Cortés & Monzó-Nebot (2021): Translating Asymmetry-Rewriting Power","authors":"Yue Jinquan","doi":"10.1075/babel.00313.yu","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00313.yu","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74633390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Takeda (2021): Interpreters and War Crimes","authors":"Han Lili","doi":"10.1075/babel.00312.han","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00312.han","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81532673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chinese calligraphy, which distinctively represents traditional Chinese culture, contains many culture-specific aesthetic terms that pose a translation challenge requiring creative cross-cultural strategies. This study presents several English translations for four key Chinese aesthetic terms on calligraphy, namely shi 勢 (roughly translated as “vital force” or “energy”), yun 韻 (once translated as “rhythmic life” or “life movement”), fei bai 飛白 (“flying white” or “hollow strokes”) and jibai-danghei 計白當黑 (literally: treating white areas like black ink). It examines their effectiveness in facilitating cross-cultural understanding and maximizing cultural authenticity. This article points out that most of these terms have been adequately contextualized in English over the past century, even though some are rendered in English using terms borrowed from Western art history. This shows how cultural translation, the theoretical basis of this study, comes into play when dealing with Chinese aesthetic terms in calligraphy.
{"title":"English translation of Chinese calligraphic aesthetics","authors":"G. Song","doi":"10.1075/babel.00305.son","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00305.son","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Chinese calligraphy, which distinctively represents traditional Chinese culture, contains many culture-specific\u0000 aesthetic terms that pose a translation challenge requiring creative cross-cultural strategies. This study presents several\u0000 English translations for four key Chinese aesthetic terms on calligraphy, namely shi 勢 (roughly translated as “vital force” or “energy”),\u0000 yun 韻 (once translated as\u0000 “rhythmic life” or “life movement”), fei bai 飛白 (“flying white” or “hollow strokes”) and jibai-danghei 計白當黑 (literally: treating white areas like black ink). It examines\u0000 their effectiveness in facilitating cross-cultural understanding and maximizing cultural authenticity. This article points out\u0000 that most of these terms have been adequately contextualized in English over the past century, even though some are rendered in\u0000 English using terms borrowed from Western art history. This shows how cultural translation, the theoretical basis of this study,\u0000 comes into play when dealing with Chinese aesthetic terms in calligraphy.","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87075723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The collaboration between the visual and textual narrative in comics, richly loaded with cultural codes and background, leads to challenges in translation. Cultural transference in comics is inevitably obstructed and distorted. Even readers who understand both the source and target language may need help comprehending the entire narrative, not to mention monolingual readers. In an international city like Hong Kong, where cultures coexist independently yet interrelatedly, the incomprehensiveness of the translated version of Old Master Q Chinese Idioms LOL (2012) is instantly recognized by bilingual Chinese-English readers. A problematic transposition of semiotic and cultural knowledge and a disrupted interplay between the textual and visual narratives causes incomprehension. The translation of this comic series becomes even more challenging to achieve the clear intent of edutainment. This article will argue that translated comics will appear deficient to monolingual and bilingual readers even if they are equipped with the semiotic knowledge of the source and target language. The translation of multimodal texts is considerably constrained by a chain effect triggered by posting changes to any element in comics – a syncretic semiotic environment.
{"title":"A deficient presence","authors":"M. Chan","doi":"10.1075/babel.00308.cha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00308.cha","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The collaboration between the visual and textual narrative in comics, richly loaded with cultural codes and background, leads to challenges in translation. Cultural transference in comics is inevitably obstructed and distorted. Even readers who understand both the source and target language may need help comprehending the entire narrative, not to mention monolingual readers. In an international city like Hong Kong, where cultures coexist independently yet interrelatedly, the incomprehensiveness of the translated version of Old Master Q Chinese Idioms LOL (2012) is instantly recognized by bilingual Chinese-English readers. A problematic transposition of semiotic and cultural knowledge and a disrupted interplay between the textual and visual narratives causes incomprehension. The translation of this comic series becomes even more challenging to achieve the clear intent of edutainment. This article will argue that translated comics will appear deficient to monolingual and bilingual readers even if they are equipped with the semiotic knowledge of the source and target language. The translation of multimodal texts is considerably constrained by a chain effect triggered by posting changes to any element in comics – a syncretic semiotic environment.","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"766 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77523446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Federici & Santaemilia (2022): New Perspectives on Gender and Translation: New Voices for Transnational Dialogues","authors":"Chunli Shen","doi":"10.1075/babel.00309.chu","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00309.chu","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82144720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Lee & Wang (2022): Translation and Social Media Communication in the Age of the Pandemic","authors":"Xichen Sun","doi":"10.1075/babel.00302.sun","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00302.sun","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74579529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Translation proper is rarely the sole activity that translators undertake in today’s translation market. Translators regularly function as revisers or post-editors, requiring them to check human or machine translations to make or recommend changes to improve translation quality. Various construct and performance models of and studies into translation competence (TC), translation revision competence (TRC), and post-editing competence (PEC) exist. However, a fundamental question remains unanswered to date: how similar or different TC, TRC, and PEC are. Using indirect translations (L1 Dutch, L2 French), we collected and analyzed translation, translation revision (TR), and post-editing (PE) data from 11 graduate translation trainees. Our exploratory study shows that TRC and PEC appear to have different competences, with trainees performing better for TR than PE. However, TRC and PEC do appear to have a common core, which does not differ significantly across tasks: problem detection.
{"title":"Comparing L2 translation, translation revision, and post-editing competences in translation trainees","authors":"I. Robert, I. Schrijver, J. Ureel","doi":"10.1075/babel.00307.rob","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00307.rob","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Translation proper is rarely the sole activity that translators undertake in today’s translation market. Translators regularly function as revisers or post-editors, requiring them to check human or machine translations to make or recommend changes to improve translation quality. Various construct and performance models of and studies into translation competence (TC), translation revision competence (TRC), and post-editing competence (PEC) exist. However, a fundamental question remains unanswered to date: how similar or different TC, TRC, and PEC are. Using indirect translations (L1 Dutch, L2 French), we collected and analyzed translation, translation revision (TR), and post-editing (PE) data from 11 graduate translation trainees. Our exploratory study shows that TRC and PEC appear to have different competences, with trainees performing better for TR than PE. However, TRC and PEC do appear to have a common core, which does not differ significantly across tasks: problem detection.","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"124 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79792399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present paper discusses the translation of the maqāmāt (i.e., assemblies) from Arabic into English. The focus is on two main issues: the translation of rhyming prose into English and the problem of archaizing the language when translating old literary texts, especially Arabic ones. The discussion of these two topics draws on different views, especially Catford’s, Newmark’s, and Pym’s, and examples translated by the author and compared to Prendergast’s translation ([1915] 2015), the only rendition available. This discussion also touches upon the dichotomy of foreignization versus domestication, as explicated by Venuti (1997). The paper concludes that translating expressive texts is quite an undertaking, particularly if they are contingent on rhyming prose and archaisms as their basic features. Another important conclusion is that the translator should keep an eye on the temporal distance between the two texts (i.e., the source text and the target text). Archaisms are therefore proposed to sprinkle the translated text with that perceived aspect of time. However, this does not mean that the target text will appear incomprehensible, for archaizing should be confined to the lexical level and some syntactic constructions which characterize literary prose.
{"title":"Rhyming prose and archaizing","authors":"A. M. El-Zawawy","doi":"10.1075/babel.00306.elz","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00306.elz","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The present paper discusses the translation of the maqāmāt (i.e., assemblies) from Arabic into\u0000 English. The focus is on two main issues: the translation of rhyming prose into English and the problem of archaizing the language\u0000 when translating old literary texts, especially Arabic ones. The discussion of these two topics draws on different views,\u0000 especially Catford’s, Newmark’s, and Pym’s, and examples translated by the author and compared to Prendergast’s translation ([1915] 2015), the only rendition available. This discussion also touches upon the\u0000 dichotomy of foreignization versus domestication, as explicated by Venuti (1997). The paper concludes that translating expressive\u0000 texts is quite an undertaking, particularly if they are contingent on rhyming prose and archaisms as their basic features. Another\u0000 important conclusion is that the translator should keep an eye on the temporal distance between the two texts (i.e., the source\u0000 text and the target text). Archaisms are therefore proposed to sprinkle the translated text with that perceived aspect of time.\u0000 However, this does not mean that the target text will appear incomprehensible, for archaizing should be confined to the lexical\u0000 level and some syntactic constructions which characterize literary prose.","PeriodicalId":44441,"journal":{"name":"Babel-Revue Internationale De La Traduction-International Journal of Translation","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87935119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}