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
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 3, 2009 • 9:44 pm
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!
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Filed under: Translation , Antonio García Gutiérrez, Azucena, El Trobador, Giuseppe Verdi, Il trovatore, Salvatore Cammarano, Stride la Vampa, Viorica Cortez
February 1, 2009 • 9:01 pm
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
January 29, 2009 • 2:36 am
In the article below, Umberto Eco writes of an amusing hoax that circulated in Italy some years ago, concerning a humorous (but fake) instruction leaflet on computer pointing devices (mice), that had been allegedly translated with some automated tool. The hoax was reported as genuine by the Italian press, which took it as an example of the pitfalls of machine translation.
(…) «Se il vostro topo ha difficoltà a funzionare correttamente, o funziona a scatti, è possibile che esso abbia bisogno di una palla di ricambio. A causa della delicata natura della procedura di sostituzione delle palle, è sempre consigliabile che essa sia eseguita da personale esperto. Prima di procedere, determinate di che tipo di palle ha bisogno il vostro topo. Per fare ciò basta esaminare la sua parte inferiore. Le palle dei topi americani sono normalmente più grandi e più dure di quelle dei topi d’oltreoceano… La protezione delle palle dei topi d’oltreoceano può essere semplicemente fatta saltare via con un fermaglino, mentre sulla protezione delle palle dei topi americani deve essere prima esercitata una torsione in senso orario o antiorario… Si raccomanda al personale di portare costantemente con sé un paio di palle di riserva, così da garantire sempre la massima soddisfazione ai clienti».
Molto divertente, come si vede, e bene inventata. Salvo che questa istruzione, attribuita alla Ibm, è certamente falsa.
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Filed under: Translation , CAT, traduzione assistita
Here are links to some brief essays I have produced during my stay in the UK:
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