Translation is in motion. Technological developments, digitalisation and globalisation are among the many factors affecting and changing translation and, with it, translation studies. Moving ...Boundaries in Translation Studies offers a bird’s-eye view of recent developments and discusses their implications for the boundaries of the discipline. With 15 chapters written by leading translation scholars from around the world, the book analyses new translation phenomena, new practices and tools, new forms of organisation, new concepts and names as well as new scholarly approaches and methods. This is key reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students of translation and interpreting studies.
From controversy to complexity Dam, Helle V.
Interpreting : international journal of research and practice in interpreting,
08/2021, Letnik:
23, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract
A replication of previous research, this study sets out to re-examine language choice in note-taking for
consecutive conference interpreting – a topic that is widely believed to be subject ...to conflicting evidence. Extending the
existing database considerably, the study draws on data from seven different consecutive interpreting tasks involving five
different languages and both interpreting directions (B into A and A into B) performed by ten participants with seven different
language combinations. Interpreters’ notes from these performances served as the main data of the study, which was complemented by
questionnaire data to form a mixed-methods design. Analyses of the interpreters’ notes identified the A language as by far the
strongest determinant of language choice, above and beyond other language categories; this confirmed the results of the replicated
research. The questionnaire data, however, did not mirror the patterns found in the interpreting data consistently, suggesting a
complex interplay of behavior and norms. The article concludes with a discussion of these and previous findings, arguing for the
topic of language choice in note-taking to be reframed as one of complexity rather than contradiction.
This article reports on an investigation which forms part of a comprehensive empirical project aimed at investigating the status of professional translators and interpreters in a variety of contexts. ...The purpose of the research reported on here was to investigate the differences in terms of occupational status between the three groups of professional business translators which we were able to identify in relatively large numbers on the Danish translation market: company, agency and freelance translators. The method involves data from questionnaires completed by a total of 244 translators belonging to one of the three groups. The translators' perceptions of their occupational status were examined and compared through their responses to questions evolving around four parameters of occupational prestige: (1) salary/income, (2) education/expertise, (3) visibility, and (4) power/influence. Our hypothesis was that company translators would come out at the top of the translator hierarchy, closely followed by agency translators, whereas freelancers would position themselves at the bottom. Although our findings largely confirm the hypothesis and lead to the identification of a number of differences between the three groups of translators in terms of occupational status, the analyses did in fact allow US to identify more similarities than differences. The analyses and results are discussed in detail, and avenues for further research are suggested. Adapted from the source document
This article reports on a study which is part of an ongoing project, investigating occupational status within the translation profession by focusing on professional translators and interpreters of ...different kinds and in different contexts. The study is specifically concerned with the job status of the category generally regarded as the
stars
of the profession, i.e. conference interpreters. It investigates the self-perceived occupational status of a group of Danish staff interpreters at the European Union, comparing it to that of Danish staff translators in the same organization. The research is based on data from an online survey, completed by 86 respondents (23 interpreters and 63 translators). The study hypothesis was that the conference interpreters would position themselves at the very top of the status continuum for the translation profession as a whole, and that the translators would situate themselves at a lower level — though not at the very bottom, considering their profile as staff translators in a prestigious international context. This hypothesis was only partially borne out by the research findings.
Knowledge Systems and Translation Helle V. Dam, Jan Engberg, Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast / Helle V. Dam, Jan Engberg, Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast
2011, 2005, 2005-01-01, Letnik:
7
eBook
It is generally agreed that knowledge plays an important role in translation and interpreting and that it should therefore be of central concern to translation and interpreting studies. However, ...there is no general agreement about what is actually meant by the term 'knowledge' in this context, nor about in exactly what ways it is relevant. Also, present-day translation and interpreting studies offer only a limited amount of research specifically dedicated to knowledge systematization and other knowledge-related issues. This book is one of the first to systematically and exclusively address the question of knowledge in translation and interpreting. It is a collection of papers by leading scholars both from the field of translation and interpreting and from adjacent fields where knowledge also plays an important role, such as linguistics and computer science. The experts present a wide variety of conceptions of knowledge and a number of different approaches to the study of knowledge in translation and interpreting: some of them draw on concepts such as scenes and frames, mental spaces and semantic networks, some discuss knowledge systems from an ontological point of view, and some present more general concepts of knowledge in translation and interpreting. Along the same lines, some of the contributors deal mainly with theoretical and conceptual aspects, others focus on methodological issues, and again others report on empirical studies. What brings them together, however, is their common focus on the interface between knowledge and translation/interpreting, and their main achievement is that, by joining forces, they manage to present to their readers a state-of-the-art report which offers both a clearer delimitation of the concept of knowledge and a better understanding of its role in translation and interpreting.
This article focuses on the occupational status of translators in international organizations. It reports on an empirical study on the job status of Danish staff translators working in the European ...Union as compared to that of Danish staff translators working in the national market. The study is based on data from questionnaires completed by 63 EU translators and 113 national-market translators, i.e., a total of 176 respondents. The translators’ perceptions of their occupational status were studied and compared through their responses to questions revolving around four parameters of occupational prestige: (1) remuneration, (2) education and expertise, (3) power and influence, and (4) visibility. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that the EU translators would enjoy a higher status than the national-market translators — a hypothesis which the study failed to confirm. In the article, the analyses and findings of the study are discussed, along with the possible reasons for the lack of alignment between the hypothesis and the results.
This article reports on an empirical study on short-term memory in sight translation. The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that sight translation requires the use of short-term memory ...during target-text production, as suggested by previous research. The hypothesis was tested on the basis of an experiment involving sight translation from Spanish into Danish and subsequent interviews with the translators. The data – the Spanish source text, seven sight translations into Danish, and the post-interviews – were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods, and the results of the study confirmed the hypothesis. In fact, the (quantitative) analyses of the sight-translated texts indicated that the subjects needed their short-term memory extensively during target-text production. However, the (qualitative) analyses of the interviews showed that the subjects had little awareness of this need.
The present article is part of a larger project which investigates the occupational status of professional translators. The studies conducted so far within the framework of the project have been ...based on questionnaires and mainly been of a quantitative nature. The present article reports on a qualitative analysis of the wealth of comments which the translators who participated in the questionnaire studies wrote in response to an open invitation to comment on anything in relation to the study and its subject. In order to structure the translators’ comments, we have relied on Algirdas-Julien Greimas’ actantial model. Themes identified as important facilitators of or barriers to status included translator training, recognition of translators’ expertise, authorization, level of professionalization and income.
The consensus amongst translators and translation scholars regarding translator status is that it is decidedly low. But is translator status as low as often claimed, and how do we measure status? Is ...it only a question of salary? This article explores the concept of status and reports on the first step of a comprehensive empirical project aimed at investigating the status of professional translators in various contexts. The first study focused on here involved a group of translators working for 13 major Danish companies considered to be at the high end of the translator-status continuum, namely full-time Danish staff translators with MA qualifications in translation. The concept of status and how to define it were considered in relation to four parameters of occupational status: (i) salary; (ii) education/expertise; (iii) visibility/fame; and (iv) power/influence. The analysis, based on written questionnaires, charts the status of these translators as perceived by themselves and their fellow employees. On the basis of the findings, the authors suggest avenues and approaches for further research in this area.
This article reports on an empirical study on translation revision. With the aim of investigating the possible link between revision procedure and quality, the research correlates an indicator of ...quality, error detection, with revision procedure. Error detection and revision procedure were studied drawing on a convergent parallel mixed-methods research design involving three different sources of data. Nine subjects performed a revision task and thus produced text data; their activities on the computer screen were captured and saved as video fi les; and retrospective interviews were conducted with the revisers upon completion of the task. Results show that the highest error detection scores were linked with a variety of revision procedures, but with one common denominator: the target text was consistently the point of departure. Revisers with high error detection scores thus engaged in various different revision procedures, but their focus of attention in the initial operations was the translation rather than the source text in all cases. Conversely, the revisers whose initial attention was directed towards the source text received the lowest error detection scores in the revision task.
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