Is the study of a source and target text sufficient to account for the complex process involved with translating?
Or is translating something more, that starts (1) when a text is read and represented in ones mind, then (2) translated, then (3) corrected many times, then (4) re-written in another language and culture and finally (5) read by someone (closing the loop)?
Is the translating process a skill in itself that can be taught as such, or is it rather the sum of many different others?
This is what I am investigating at the moment through the use of a specialised TAP software called Translog.
Filed under: Linguistics, Translation
Il giorno in cui Balodis morì mi trovavo a Londra, in una stanza d’albergo. La radio diede solo la notizia, qualche frase e nulla di più. Ma la mattina dopo mi precipitai giù per strada e feci incetta di tutto quello che trovai in edicola. Rimasi lì a lungo, con i fogli che svolazzavano nel vento, assorta a scandirne il senso. I titoli erano quasi tutti uguali: “Muore Regista Sovietico”. Forse l’agenzia di stampa era la stessa, tanto che mi misi a leggerli nuovamente cercando di individuare ogni piccola aggiunta, ogni nota di differenza.
“Il regista sovietico, Pteris Balodis, è spirato ieri a Mosca dopo un intervento al cuore all’età di 46 anni. Nato in Lettonia, Balodis è conosciuto per tre film sulla vita contadina lettone prima della Rivoluzione Russa. La sua opera maggiore, ‘La Storia dell’anno 1912 nel Villaggio di Elza Darzins’, ha ricevuto numerosi premi internazionali. Prima di morire stava lavorando ad un film ambientato in Ucraina”.
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Filed under: Linguistics, Translation
March 14, 2009 • 11:42 am
It goes without saying that academic referencing is paramount in helping a reader identify important resources that would otherwise remain unexplored. Yet it may sometimes be employed deceitfully to substantiate weak or irrelevant points and perhaps show deference to some specific milieus, often the ones to which the author belongs.
The interesting article linked below focuses on the interpreting field, although it probably could be extended to others.
The author? Daniel Gile (who else?)
Use and Misuse of Literature in Interpreting Research
Filed under: Interpretation, Linguistics, Translation
The following is a beautiful review of a touching picturebook by John Burningham that deals with life, love and death.
Granpa has been recognised as ‘the supreme example of a postmodern picturebook’, one that Victor Watson found evokes ‘an unusually complex and attentive response’ in young readers. It offers none of the supports an inexperienced reader could seize on: instead we find repetitions and refrains, pantomimic action, jokes and surprises, and phonic word patterning. (…)
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Filed under: Linguistics, Translation
Mnemonic systems such as the one developed by Cicero centuries ago would come in very handy to consecutive interpreters when traditional note-taking is not feasible. In interpreting for the media, for example, spontaneity is appreciated and scribbling is generally considered inappropriate.
A more modern approach would involve the use of a digital voice recorder, as already discussed in this same Blog and previously in some SCIC Newsletters (see Simultaneous/Consecutive Mode).
One of the oldest mnemonic systems is the method of loci [LOW-sye]. A “locus” is a location, “loci” is the plural. The Method of Loci uses locations of a familiar place (imagined in memory) as a framework for memory retrieval.
To use the method of loci, you associate items you wish to remember later with locations of a familiar room, building, or street. Then, to retrieve the information, you mentally “stroll down memory lane” and visualize the same locations. If the method works, the information you stored in various locations will come back with the memory of the location. To be effective, one must usually visualize an object “doing something” or interacting in some way with the objects at a particular location.
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Filed under: Interpretation , Cicero, consecutive interpreting, Loci, Mnemonic system
Following some very constructive feedback from colleagues I am planning a major overhaul in the structure of the course. Other comments are more than welcomed!
>> Multimedia Interpreting Course
Be sure you have a headset plugged in, as you will hear the original speaker in the RIGHT ear and the interpreter in the LEFT one.
Filed under: Interpretation , alessio iacovoni, Interpreting, Multimedia Interpreting Course, simultaneous
An optimal segmentation of the source message is by far a simultaneous interpreter’s most important resource to avert the risk of falling behind a fast speaker, of missing some important information or overloading short term memory.
While this may not come as a novelty, few interpreters will be aware that they can learn to master this technique through an apparently unrelated discipline: subtitling.
Here is a brief excerpt from a very informative article that I recently came across in the Translation Journal.
Segmentation at the highest nodes: Subtitled text should appear segmented at the highest syntactic nodes possible. This means that each subtitle flash should ideally contain one complete sentence. In cases where the sentence cannot fit in a single-line subtitle and has to continue over a second line or even over a new subtitle flash, the segmentation on each of the lines should be arranged to coincide with the highest syntactic node possible. For example, before we segment the phrase:
“The destruction of the city was inevitable.” (44 characters),
we first have to think of its syntactic tree as follows:
A segmentation on the fifth node (N5) would create the two-line subtitle
“The destruction of the
city was inevitable.”
A segmentation on the second node (N2) would create the two-line subtitle
“The destruction of the city
was inevitable.”
Out of the two segmentations, it is the second that flows as more readable. This occurs because the higher the node, the greater the grouping of the semantic load and the more complete the piece of information presented to the brain. When we segment a sentence, we force the brain to pause its linguistic processing for a while, until the eyes trace the next piece of linguistic information. In cases where segmentation is inevitable, therefore, we should try to force this pause on the brain at a point where the semantic load has already managed to convey a satisfactorily complete piece of information.
(From A Proposed Set of Subtitling Standards in Europe , by Fotios Karamitroglou)
Filed under: Interpretation , Fotios Karamitroglou, Interpreting, segmentation, simultaneous, subtitling
February 18, 2009 • 8:49 pm
A directive put to vote in March seeks to extend copyright protection from the present 50 years to 95, following demands from the industry and performing artists.
(From EuroparlTV)
Filed under: Translation , Copyrights
February 10, 2009 • 4:58 pm
A very interesting post that opens with a (dissenting) opinion of two U.S. Court of Appeal’s Judges, attempts to go beyond the dictionary definition of what a Dead Language is by asking its participants: is Latin a Dead Language?
Here is an amusing article by the BBC that reports on the publication of the latest edition of the Vatican’s Latin dictionary called Lexicon Recentis Latinitas (Recent Latin Lexicon), an abridged Italian-Latin version being available online. You will find it interesting to learn that the FBI is the “officium foederatum vestigatorium” and that the video-phone is called “telephonium albo televisifico coniunctum”.
And finally here is a quote from Wikipedia that makes a distinction between Extinct Languages and Dead Languages:
By contrast to an extinct language which no longer has any speakers, a dead language may remain in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan, Ge’ez and Latin are among the many dead languages used as sacred languages. (Wikipedia)
Filed under: Linguistics , dead language, latin, Roman Catholic Church, www.vatican.va
Here are links to some brief essays I have produced during my stay in the UK:
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