Servais Akpaca

The aim of this paper is to discuss four aspects of translation and interpreting teaching, namely the pedagogical approach (i.e., objectivism vs. constructivism), translation ability and interpreter performance as well as translation and interpreting theory and practical classroom activities. The methodology is mostly descriptive and constructive in the sense that the paper “constructs” translation ability and interpreter performance and describes relevant teaching approaches to be adopted. One of the findings of the paper is that translation and interpreting teaching should either validate or change traditional pedagogical methods by new and more effective ones. Another finding of the paper is that translation and interpreting teaching should indicate clear-cut learning objectives, design adequate curricular materials and shed light on professional ethics and policies.

Le mouvement syndical, en Afrique, fut initie par des ouvriers qui luttaient pour de meilleures conditions de travail et de vie. Au debut, leurs luttes etaient dirigees contre les entreprises capitalistes europeennes qui exploitaient les richesses naturelles des territoires occupes et qui imposaient des conditions de travail difficiles aux peuples colonises. Le travail force, le portage et l’impot de capitation etaient quelques-unes des caracteristiques des pratiques des entreprises europeennes. Malgre les legislations adoptees dans les metropoles europeennes a partir de 1922 pour reglementer la mise au travail force des Africains, les ouvriers participaient aux cotes des partis politiques africains a la lutte pour la decolonisation et l’independance des pays africains apres la deuxieme Guerre mondiale. Cependant, les relations entre les partis politiques et les organisations syndicales ont, par la suite, change, car les partis ont reussi a infeoder le mouvement syndical dans la plupart des pays. Quelques decennies plus tard, a la faveur du renouveau democratique qui s’amorca dans les annees 1990, le mouvement syndical parvint a se liberer de la tutelle politique et a s’affirmer a nouveau comme une organisation libre des travailleurs. La problematique de ce travail est de montrer qu’apres plusieurs decennies de vicissitudes, le syndicalisme (africain) a reussi a s’imposer, qu’il a desormais sa propre terminologie et que l’enonciation de son discours dans l’une ou l’autre langue pose des problemes d’ordre syntaxique. La richesse des termes du mouvement syndical est exploree dans la traduction de ‘’The Life and Times of an African Trade Unionist’’. Pour mener a bien cette exploration, une connaissance intime des aspects linguistiques de l’ouvrage est d’abord necessaire, et c’est cette quete qui structure la presente these. Le chapitre 1 est une introduction a l’histoire du mouvement syndical en Afrique. Les chapitres 2 et 3 presentent et analysent les systemes temporels des deux langues (l’anglais et le francais), les realites aspectuelles et les modalites d’enonciation. Le chapitre 4 etudie les transformations syntaxiques qui s’operent lors du passage d’une langue a l’autre. Enfin, les chapitres 5 et 6 etudient respectivement les problemes de semantique lexicale et le lexique du domaine syndical.

Le mouvement syndical, en Afrique, fut initie par des ouvriers qui luttaient pour de meilleures conditions de travail et de vie. Au debut, leurs luttes etaient dirigees contre les entreprises capitalistes europeennes qui exploitaient les richesses naturelles des territoires occupes et qui imposaient des conditions de travail difficiles aux peuples colonises. Le travail force, le portage et l’impot de capitation etaient quelques-unes des caracteristiques des pratiques des entreprises europeennes. Malgre les legislations adoptees dans les metropoles europeennes a partir de 1922 pour reglementer la mise au travail force des Africains, les ouvriers participaient aux cotes des partis politiques africains a la lutte pour la decolonisation et l’independance des pays africains apres la deuxieme Guerre mondiale. Cependant, les relations entre les partis politiques et les organisations syndicales ont, par la suite, change, car les partis ont reussi a infeoder le mouvement syndical dans la plu...

This study builds on the interpersonal meaning strand of the Systemic Functional Linguistics to highlight the suasive power of human language. In itemizing Lamang‘s electioneering campaign speech via such toolkits as mood, modality and personal pronouns, this paper employs a qualitative technique. It finds that the avalanche of mood types used by Lamang is made up of declarative clauses, which are echoed to convey information and convince the audience with positive facts. As to modal verbal operators, they are used to evince the speaker‘s adamant determination, and his unflinching commitment to move the whole country forward out of the dark ages and also build up his authority and selfishness. The prominent application of personal pronouns namely: ―we‖ and ―you‖ – ―we‖ patterns, is meant to create an intimate dialogic style which can shorten the distance between the speaker and the audience, weaken the power and maintain a reliant and equal relationship between them. This greatly he...

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of the multicultural dimension of English on the translation of academic diplomas issued at secondary school level in French-speaking countries. Translators have difficulty in finding the equivalents of the diplomas in English (the target language). The methodology of the paper is both descriptive and comparative. On the one hand, the polycentric nature of the English language is described and its implications for translation are underlined. On the other hand, a comparative approach is used in comparing the diplomas from both linguistic communities. The findings of the paper revealed that translating from the source language (French) into English is both a linguistic and, particularly, a cultural transaction. There are three circles of English in the world, making the search for equivalents particularly complex. Translation under these conditions needs to adopt a functional approach by taking into account the realities of the target lan...

Summary – This paper analyses the notion of aspect in the translation of a brief economic report publicised by a labour organisation called ITUC-Africa. Indeed, aspect plays an  important role in translation. For example, it dictates the choice of tense(s) in the target language. In other words,the choice of a tense in a target language depends on the aspect described by the verb in the source language. Several examples are given to illustrate this finding. The paper also notes that aspect is not simply a grammatical notion because in Slavic languages like Russian, it is marked by mere prefixes. In addition, aspect involves not only the verb but also the action described by it. Action plays an important role in the study of aspect. Aspect structures the action described by the verb in phases. Indeed, the paper gives several examples of phases including the inceptive phase, the progressive phase, the phase of completion, the durative phase. Furthermore, aspect is presented as a categ...

Summary - Translation is the transfer of meaning from a source language to a target language. Thistransfer is done through sentences. Sentence meaning is conveyed through words, tenses, aspects andmodals. This paper focuses on tenses, aspects and modals as elements of sentence semantics. The choiceof these elements in the target language is complex most of the time because there is no perfect fitbetween them in two languages.Resume - La traduction est le transfert de sens d’une langue source a une langue cible. Ce transfert se faita travers des phrases. Le sens d’une phrase est vehicule par les mots, le temps, l’aspect et la modalite. Cetarticle met l’accent sur le temps, l’aspect et la modalite en tant qu’elements constitutifs de la semantiquede la phrase. Le choix de ces elements dans la langue cible est complexe la plupart du temps parce qu’iln’y a pas de correspondance parfaite entre eux dans deux langues differentes.

The aim of this paper is to make an inventory of the problems that translators encounter when they translate the documents issued by a specific African human rights court. More specifically translating at the ACHPR requires the knowledge of legal language and familiarity with a particular type of legal texts as well as competence in human rights conventions and charters and general translation skills. In an attempt to address these issues, this paper adopts a threefold approach, namely a historical approach recalling some legal systems and traditions upheld by courts, a theoretical approach throwing light on some key concepts and a lexical approach that makes it possible to extract legal terms from texts issued by the court and match them with their equivalents in the target language. The result of this research work is that legal translation is a specialised area due to the legal terms and systems involved in it. Unlike other specialised areas where the link between the signifier a...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the contribution of semantic categories to translation. To this end, the paper uses both a theoretical and a descriptive approach. Indeed, the theories relating to the terms category and semantic categories are presented. Then, the functions of semantic categories are described in translated sentences. Finally, the paper has found that the kernels of English sentences together with the transformations that can be derived from every clause or phrase are key aspects of sentence comprehension and stylistic differences. Equally important is the finding that translation becomes easier and more technical when the functions of semantic categories are applied in sentence construction.