Multimedia Interpreting Course

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 (online), (offline)

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

Investigating the process of translating with Think Aloud Protocols

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

Use and Misuse of Referencing in the Academia

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

Translating for children: the child outside and the one deep within

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. (…)

Filed under: Linguistics, Translation

Cicero’s “Loci” mnemonic system in consecutive interpreting

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.

Filed under: Interpretation , Cicero, consecutive interpreting, Loci, Mnemonic system

The secret behind simultaneous interpreting: segmentation of the source message

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

Parliamentarians set to adopt 95-year copyright terms

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

Breathing Life Into a “Dead Language”

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

“Stride la Vampa” from Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Aligned source and target text here.

Click on the sidebar on the right to view a video of Stride la Vampa subtitled and translated by Alessio Iacovoni

Stride la Vampa (Translation by Alessio Iacovoni)

(Azucena sings: the Gypsies gather around her)

Fizzles the fire! – the crowd unyielding
to that pyre – happily races;
Shouts of joy – reverberate:
Escorted in chains – a woman approaches!
Sinister glare – on ghastly faces
The gloomy fire – soars high in the air!
Fizzles the flame! – and comes the victim
Scantily black-dressed – in pain
Fierce cries – of death rise;
By echo repeated – in towns far away!
Sinister glare – on ghastly faces
The gloomy fire – soars high in the air!

Gypsies

Sad is your song!

Azucena

And sad is the dismal story from which it was inspired!

(She turns her head towards Manrico and murmurs softly)

Avenge me… Avenge me!

Filed under: Translation , Antonio García Gutiérrez, Azucena, El Trobador, Giuseppe Verdi, Il trovatore, Salvatore Cammarano, Stride la Vampa, Viorica Cortez

Translation by omission

Omission means dropping a word or words from the SLT while translating. This procedure can be the outcome of the cultural clashes that exist between the SL and the TL. In fact, it is in subtitling translations where omission attains its peak in use. The translator omits words that do not have equivalents in the TT, or that may raise the hostility of the receptor. For example, Arab translators usually omit English taboo words such as ‘fuck off’ and ‘shit’, while translating films into Arabic, just for the sake of respecting the Arab receptors, who may not tolerate the use of these words because of their culture. The process is also resorted to when translating from Moroccan Arabic into English:

SL: /3annaq SaHbo wmšaw bžuž lyid flyid/.

TL: He held his boy friend tightly and went together.

Here, we notice that the translator omits the Arabic words /lyid flyid/, ‘hand in hand’, since this act may mislead English receptors into believing that the “boy-friends” are homosexuals.

(From Translation Procedures, by Marouane Zakhir, University of Soultan Moulay Slimane, Morocco)

Similar procedures, with slightly different names,  are very clearly illustrated in the Comparative Stylistics of French and English, by Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet.

This book was first published in 1958, so some scholars may dismiss it as outdated. Far from it! The incredible language insight of its two authors and the thriving bilingual context (Canada) within which their theories were developed, have made it  an all-time classic, a must-have on any translator’s bookshelf.

Here is a compendium of translation procedures proposed by these two authors and by Delisle, Newmark and Catford (compiled by the author of the Blog Mis Trabajos de Traducción, Accessed 11 February 2009).

Filed under: Translation , Comparative Stylistics of French and English, Delisle, Jean Darbelnet, Jean-Paul Vinay, Marouane Zakhir, Newmark, Omission, Translation Procedures