Translation as Text


Book Description

The basic tenet here is that we do not translate words, but texts, and that these competing models can be integrated into a more global theory of translation by viewing the translation process as a primarily textual process. The authors examine in detail the characteristics that make a good translation a text, focusing particularly on the empirical relationship between the theory of translation and it's practice.




Text Analysis in Translation


Book Description

Text Analysis in Translation has become a classic in Translation Studies. Based on a functional approach to translation and endebted to pragmatic text linguistics, it suggests a model for translation-oriented source-text analysis applicable to all text types and genres independent of the language and culture pairs involved. Part 1 of the study presents the theoretical framework on which the model is based, and surveys the various concepts of translation theory and text linguistics. Part 2 describes the role and scope of source-text analysis in the translation process and explains why the model is relevant to translation. Part 3 presents a detailed study of the extratextual and intratextual factors and their interaction in the text, using numerous examples from all areas of professional translation. Part 4 discusses the applications of the model to translator training, placing particular emphasis on the selection of material for translation classes, grading the difficulty of translation tasks, and translation quality assessment. The book concludes with the practical analysis of a number of texts and their translations, taking into account various text types and several languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch).




Translating Texts


Book Description

Clear and accessible, this textbook provides a step-by-step guide to textual analysis for beginning translators and translation students. Covering a variety of text types, including business letters, recipes, and museum guides in six languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish), this book presents authentic, research-based materials to support translation among any of these languages. Translating Texts will provide beginning translators with greater text awareness, a critical skill for professional translators. Including discussions of the key theoretical texts underlying this text-centred approach to translation and sample rubrics for (self) assessment, this coursebook also provides easy instructions for creating additional corpora for other text types and in other languages. Ideal for both language-neutral and language-specific classroom settings, this is an essential text for undergraduate and graduate-level programs in modern languages and translation. Additional resources are available on the Routledge Translation Studies Portal: http://routledgetranslationstudiesportal.com




Textual and Contextual Voices of Translation


Book Description

The notion of voice has been used in a number of ways within Translation Studies. Against the backdrop of these different uses, this book looks at the voices of translators, authors, publishers, editors and readers both in the translations themselves and in the texts that surround these translations. The various authors go on a hunt for translational agents’ voice imprints in a variety of textual and contextual material, such as literary and non-literary translations, book reviews, newspaper articles, academic texts and e-mails. While all stick to the principle of studying text and context together, the different contributions also demonstrate how specific textual and contextual circumstances require adapted methodological solutions, ending up in a collection that takes steps in a joint direction but that is at the same time complex and pluralistic. The book is intended for scholars and students of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and other disciplines within Language and Literature.




Text Typology and Translation


Book Description

This book breaks new ground in translation theory and practice. The central question is: In what ways are translations affected by text types? The two main areas of investigation are: A. What are the advantages of focusing on text types when trying to understand the process of translation? How do translators tackle different text types in their daily practice? B. To what extent and in what areas are text types identical across languages and cultures? What similarities and dissimilarities can be observed in text types of original and translated texts?Part I deals with methodological aspects and offers a typology of translations both as product and as process. Part II is devoted to domain-specific texts in a cross-cultural perspective, while Part III is concerned with terminology and lexicon as well as the constraints of mode and medium involving dubbing and subtitling as translation methods. Sonnets, sagas, fairy tales, novels and feature films, sermons, political speeches, international treaties, instruction leaflets, business letters, academic lectures, academic articles, medical research articles, technical brochures and legal documents are but some of the texts under investigation. In sum, this volume provides a theoretical overview of major problems and possibilities as well as investigations into a variety of text types with practical suggestions that deserve to be weighted by anyone considering the relation between text typology and translation. The volume is indispensable for the translator in his/her efforts to become a “competent text-aware professional”.




Textual Translation and Live Translation


Book Description

After the many interdisciplinary perspectives on nonverbal communication offered by the author in his previous seven John Benjamins books, which have generated a wide range of scholarly applications, the present monograph is dominated by a very broad concept of translation. This treatment of translation includes theater and cinema (enriching our intellectual-sensorial experience of both 'reading act' and 'viewing act') and offers among other topics: sensorial-intellectual-emotional pre- and post-reading interactions with books; mute or audible 'oralization' of texts; the translator's linguistic and nonverbal-cultural fluency and implicit textual paralanguage and kinesics; translating functions of pictorial illustrations; the blind's text and film perception; the foreign reader's cultural background and circumstances; theater and cinema spectators' total sensory-intellectual experience of plays and films beyond staging or projection; the multiple interrelationships between cinema and theater performers, spectators and their environments, of special interest to all those involved in the theater; and the translator's challenging textual perception of sounds and movements. Over 800 literary quotations, and two virtually exhaustive English inventories of sound- and movement-denoting words with many examples, offer serious students of translation, language or literature a rich reference and drill source.




Key Cultural Texts in Translation


Book Description

In the context of increased movement across borders, this book examines how key cultural texts and concepts are transferred between nations and languages as well as across different media. The texts examined in this book are considered fundamental to their source culture and can also take on a particular relevance to other (target) cultures. The chapters investigate cultural transfers and differences realised through translation and reflect critically upon the implications of these with regard to matters of cultural identity. The book offers an important contribution to cultural approaches in translation studies, with ramifications across different disciplines, including literary studies, history, philosophy, and gender studies. The chapters offer a range of cultural and methodological frameworks and are written by scholars from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds, Western and Eastern.




The Moving Text


Book Description

For the discourse of localization, translation is often "just a language problem". For translation theorists, localization introduces fancy words but nothing essentially new. Both views are probably right, but only to an extent. This book sets up a dialogue across those differences. Is there anything that translation theory can gain from localization? Can localization theory learn anything from the history and complexity of translation? To address those questions, both terms are placed within a more general frame, that of text transfer. Texts are distributed in time and space; localization and translation respond differently to those movements; their relative virtues are thus brought out on common ground. Anthony Pym here reviews not only key problems in translation theory, but also critical concepts such as cultural resistance, variable transaction costs, segmentation of the labour market, and the dehumanization of technical discourse. The book closes with a plea for the humanizing virtues of translation, over and above the efficiencies of localization.




Translating the Perception of Text


Book Description

Translation often proceeds as if languages already existed, as if the task of the translator were to make an appropriate selection from available resources. Clive Scott challenges this tacit assumption. If the translator is to do justice to himself/herself as a reader, if the translator is to become the creative writer of his/her reading, then the language of translation must be equal to the translators perceptual experience of, and bodily responses to, source texts. Each renewal of perceptual and physiological contact with a text involves a renewal of the ways we think language and use our expressive faculties (listening, speaking, writing). Phenomenology and particularly the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty underpins this new approach to translation. The task of the translator is tirelessly to develop new translational languages, ever to move beyond the bilingual into the multilingual, and always to remember that language is as much an active instrument of perception as an object of perception. Clive Scott is Professor Emeritus of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the British Academy.




Annotated Texts for Translation


Book Description

This text presents a functionalist approach to translation as a framework for dealing with recurring translation problems in a number of genres. On the basis of illustrative sample texts, the decisions taken in the production of the target texts are commented on in view of the specified translation assignments.