Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting


Book Description

Translation Studies has recently been searching for connections with Cultural Studies and Sociology. This volume brings together a range of ways in which the disciplines can be related, particularly with respect to research methodologies. The key aspects covered are the agents behind translation, the social histories revealed by translations, the perceived roles and values of translators in social contexts, the hidden power relations structuring publication contexts, and the need to review basic concepts of the way social and cultural systems work. Special importance is placed on Community Interpreting as a field of social complexity, the lessons of which can be applied in many other areas. The volume studies translators and interpreters working in a wide range of contexts, ranging from censorship in East Germany to English translations in Gujarat. Major contributions are made by Agnès Whitfield, Daniel Gagnon, Franz Pöchhacker, Michaela Wolf, Pekka Kujamäki and Rita Kothari, with an extensive introduction on methodology by Anthony Pym.




Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies


Book Description

To go “beyond” the work of a leading intellectual is rarely an unambiguous tribute. However, when Gideon Toury founded Descriptive Translation Studies as a research-based discipline, he laid down precisely that intellectual challenge: not just to describe translation, but to explain it through reference to wider relations. That call offers at once a common base, an open and multidirectional ambition, and many good reasons for unambiguous tribute. The authors brought together in this volume include key players in Translation Studies who have responded to Toury's challenge in one way or another. Their diverse contributions address issues such as the sociology of translators, contemporary changes in intercultural relations, the fundamental problem of defining translations, the nature of explanation, and case studies including pseudotranslation in Renaissance Italy, Sherlock Holmes in Turkey, and the coffee-and-sugar economy in Brazil. All acknowledge Translation Studies as a research-based space for conceptual coherence and creativity; all seek to explain as well as describe. In this sense, we believe that Toury's call has been answered beyond expectations.




The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies


Book Description

Increasing attention has been paid to the agency of translators and interpreters, as well as to the social factors that permeate acts of translation and interpreting. In addition, agency and social factors are discussed in more interdisciplinary terms. Currently the focus is not only on translators or interpreters – i.e., the exploration of their inter/intra-social agency and identity construction (or on their activities and the consequences thereof), but also on other phenomena, such as the displacement of texts and people and issues of access and linguicism. The displacement of texts (whether written or oral) across time and space, as well as the geographic displacement of people, has encouraged researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies to consider issues related to translation and interpreting through the lens of the Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics, and Historiography. Researchers have employed a myriad of theoretical and methodological lenses borrowed from other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Therefore, the interdisciplinarity of Translation and Interpreting Studies is more evident now than ever before. This volume, originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (issue 7:2, 2012), is a perfect example of such interdisciplinarity, reflecting the shift that has occurred in Translation and Interpreting Studies around the world over the last 30 years.




Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting


Book Description

This edited thematic collection features latest developments of discourse analysis in translation and interpreting studies. It investigates the process of how cultural and ideological intervention is conducted in translation and interpreting using a wide array of discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistic approaches and drawing on empirical data from the Chinese context. The book is divided into four main sections: I. uncovering positioning and ideology in interpreting and translation, II. linking linguistic approach with socio-cultural interpretation, III. discourse analysis into news translation and IV. analysis of multimodal and intersemiotic discourse in translation. The different approaches to discourse analysis provide a much-needed contribution to the field of translation and interpreting studies. This combination of discourse analysis and corpus analysis demonstrates the interconnectedness of these fields and offers a rich source of conceptual and methodological tools. This book will appeal to scholars and research students in translation and interpreting studies, cross-linguistic discourse analysis and Chinese studies.




The Routledge Handbook of Sign Language Translation and Interpreting


Book Description

This Handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of sign language translation and interpretation from around the globe and looks ahead to future directions of research. Divided into eight parts, the book covers foundational skills, the working context of both the sign language translator and interpreter, their education, the sociological context, work settings, diverse service users, and a regional review of developments. The chapters are authored by a range of contributors, both deaf and hearing, from the Global North and South, diverse in ethnicity, language background, and academic discipline. Topics include the history of the profession, the provision of translation and interpreting in different domains and to different populations, the politics of provision, and the state of play of sign language translation and interpreting professions across the globe. Edited and authored by established and new voices in the field, this is the essential guide for advanced students and researchers of translation and interpretation studies and sign language.




Constructing a Sociology of Translation


Book Description

The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.




Be(com)ing a Conference Interpreter


Book Description

This study offers a novel view of Conference Interpreting by looking at EU interpreters as a professional community of practice. In particular, Duflou’s work focuses on the nature of the competence conference interpreters working for the European Parliament and the European Commission need to acquire in order to cope with their professional tasks. Making use of observation as a member of the community, in-depth interviews and institutional documents, she explores the link between the specificity of the EU setting and the knowledge and skills required. Her analysis of the learning experiences of newcomers in the professional community shows that EU interpreters’ competence is to a large extent context-dependent and acquired through situated learning. In addition, it highlights the various factors which have an impact on this learning process. Using the way Dutch booth EU interpreters share the workload in the booth as a case, Duflou demonstrates the importance of mastering collaborative and embodied skills for EU interpreters. She thereby challenges the idea of interpreting competence from an individual, cognitive accomplishment and redefines it as the ability to apply the practical and setting-determined know-how required to function as a full member of the professional community.




Teaching Translation and Interpreting 2


Book Description

Selected papers from this second conference on Translator and Interpreter Training. With contributions from five continents, the articles deal with global challenges, taking into account the role of the translator in societies knit together by one tongue and those in which languages are the repostitories of national cultures, such as India. The main merit of this volume is that it shows how translator training is tackled in the main translator training courses around the world, what requirements are made on the students and what solutions are given. The various approaches provide a wealth of translator training ideas.Complementing the first volume of papers from the "Language International" conference, this second volume deals with a wide variety of aspects in this interdisciplinary field of study: dubbing, subtitling, simultaneous/consecutive interpreting, court interpreter training, linguistic features, cognitive aspects, cultural aspects, terminology and specialisation, computeraided translation in practice, translation procedures at the European Commission, etc.




Situated Learning in Translator and Interpreter Training


Book Description

Situated Learning is generally understood as a context-dependent approach to translator and interpreter training under which learners are exposed to real-life and/or highly simulated collaborative work environments and tasks, both inside and outside the classroom. Ultimately, Situated Learning seeks to enhance learners’ capacity to think and act like professionals. This book sets out to gauge the extent to which different factors influence the implementation of Situated Learning models in various teaching and learning contexts. It presents an understanding of Situated Learning that goes beyond previous interpretations of this notion, traditionally dominated by the discussion of pedagogical practices in authentic, i.e. real-world, or semi-authentic professional settings. This wider remit of Situated Learning encompasses previously underrepresented contextual factors pertaining to translation traditions, historical trends, community beliefs and customs, socio-economic constraints, market conditions, institutional practices, budgetary issues, or resource availability. The pedagogical considerations of these key aspects make this book particularly useful for both novice and seasoned teachers of translation and interpreting with an interest in informed practical advice on how to implement the principles of Situated Learning in collaborative teaching and learning environments that seek to promote translators’ and/or interpreters’ professional competence. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer.




De-/re-contextualizing Conference Interpreting


Book Description

This groundbreaking study explores Simultaneous Conference Interpreting (SI) by focusing on interpreters as professionals working in socio-cultural contexts and on the interdependency between these contexts and actual SI behavior. While previous research on SI has been dominated by cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches, Diriker s work explores SI in relation to the broader and more immediate socio-cultural contexts by investigating the representation of the profession(al) in the meta-discourse and by exploring the presence of interpreters and the nature of the interpreted utterance at an actual conference. Making use of participant observations, interviews and analysis of conference transcripts, Diriker challenges some of the widely held assumptions about SI. She suggests that the interpreter s delivery represents not only the speaker but a multiplicity of speaker-positions, and that this multiplicity may well be a source of tension or vulnerability, as well as strength, for interpreters. Her analysis also highlights how interpreters negotiate meaning in SI, and underscores the need for more concerted efforts to explore SI in authentic contexts.