Translation Teaching

Abstract: Translating legal texts attracts more and more attention in the field of translation, whether in the practice of the profession or at the theoretical level. This growing interest arises from the importance of the text being a document containing articles of law to govern the relationships between parties –individuals, companies or states, by conferring rights and imposing obligations. Due to the importance of these articles, together with the legal concepts they convey, they need to be stated in the texts with the maximum degree of clarity, avoiding any ambiguity that may lead to miscomprehension or give rise to different interpretations. For this reason, the legal texts are usually drafted in a specific manner by law professionals, who use fixed formulaic expressions which have been tried and tested over the years by their predecessors, and found suitable for directly conveying the desired technical concepts. These forms and expressions, almost only known to the professionals who receive them as part of their training, or copy them from law books, have developed into a highly technical language, characterized by its rigidly fixed formulae, or pre-fabricated routines, whose form has become part and parcel of their technical content. The legal text has thus acquired unique features which, in turn, bear heavily on its translation, defining the methods and techniques to be employed, and adding to the types of knowledge and skills required for the two steps of the process: comprehension of the source text and drafting of the target text. The first step requires deeper and more specific knowledge of the source language and its formal written varieties, to which adds the skill of properly analyzing the text to uncover its meaning from within a highly complicated structure, with lengthy sentences and rare forms which stand as remote as possible from ordinary parlance. For the second step, full command of the target language and its formal style is required and supposed to be complemented by the ability to meticulously search in parallel texts for the appropriate target language prefabricated routines, normally used by experts in each type of legal texts.

From time immemorial, translation has always been described as an exercise of intercultural communication. Undoubtedly, this exercise requires more and more training of translators to fulfill different translation tasks as effectively and efficiently as possible. Translator training has thus received undivided
attention in training institutions all over the world. Drawing on findings of previous research, this article argues that sight translation remains an optimal invariable tool for interpreter training; yet it fails to exert any influence and presence in such training. The article further addresses theoretical and teaching methodological issues, and offers insights into an eminently
pedagogical problem gained from an analysis of genuine output of two MA translation students who sat for the comprehensive exam at Al-Quds University for the scholastic year 2013–2014. The article shows serious problems in the translation task assigned to the students and, based on the analysis of their translations, it proposes pedagogical tools that may hopefully
help to overcome sight translation intricacies.

Task-based Teaching in Translation: Departure from
Equivalence-based Approach

Reza Rezvani
Yasouj University, Iran
rezvanireza@gmail.com
Rouhollah Askari Bigdeli
Yasouj University, Iran
raskari90@gmail.com

Abstract
The perpetuation of traditional equivalence-based approaches to teach translation can be still much felt today. Responding to this formidable problem, translation teaching has fairly recently taken the welcome step of utilizing more recent methodologies from the neighboring subfields of Applied Linguistics. This study aimed to investigate whether the integration of task-based teaching with translation teaching may contribute to translation task motivation and quality. To this end, the differential impact of two translation tasks, say, the principled and the traditional tasks on translation quality and task motivation of ninety Iranian undergraduate students was investigated. The results of the study revealed that the subjects achieved significantly higher translation quality and task motivation in the principled task (p < .05) than those in the traditional task. The study suggests that task-based teaching might be an appropriate methodology for teaching translation in that it can maintain students’ task motivation and promote their translation quality.

Keywords. Translation teaching, Equivalence-based approach, Task-based teaching, Translation quality, Task motivation

Il presente lavoro intende riprendere e approfondire un’ipotesi di studio formulata nel mio precedente articolo dal titolo “Tecnologie e fattore umano: prospettive sulla qualità della traduzione nell’industria Apparel” (Romeo, 2020). Attraverso un esperimento pilota condotto su un gruppo di studenti universitari iscritti al terzo anno del CdS in Mediazione Linguistica, chiamati a tradurre o posteditare due testi semi-specialistici tratti da un corpus relativo all’ambito di specialità del settore moda e confezionamento, in questa sede saranno proposti e analizzati approcci diversi alla traduzione, nel tentativo di confrontarne l’efficacia in termini di (i) qualità del testo di arrivo e (ii) produttività del processo traduttivo, tenuto conto altresì degli (iii) spunti operativi più rilevanti che i risultati emersi potranno offrire non solo per la pratica professionale, ma anche per la didattica avanzata della traduzione passiva inglese.

From time immemorial, translation has always been described as an exercise of intercultural communication. Undoubtedly, this exercise requires more and more training of translators to fulfill different translation tasks as effectively and efficiently as possible. Translator training has thus received undivided attention in training institutions all over the world. Drawing on findings of previous research, this article argues that sight translation remains an optimal invariable tool for interpreter training; yet it fails to exert any influence and presence in such training. The article further addresses theoretical and teaching methodological issues, and offers insights into an eminently pedagogical problem gained from an analysis of genuine output of two MA translation students who sat for the comprehensive exam at Al-Quds University for the scholastic year 2013-2014. The article shows serious problems in the translation task assigned to the students and, based on the analysis of th...

The curriculum of a post-graduate course at the Adam Mickiewicz University has been prepared after an analysis of translation problems occurring in EU legal translations into Polish. An introduction to civil law, commercial law, civil procedure, penal law and penal procedure has been included in the curriculum. A Polish language course has also been introduced as the analysis also revealed that many errors result from insufficient knowledge of the mother tongue. The course includes legal translation strategies and methodology, and also solutions for the most frequently occurring grammatical, stylistic and punctuation problems. Students are acquainted with the rules recommended by the Sworn Translators' Code and the macrostructure of legal texts formulated in Polish and foreign languages and also non-legal texts translated for courts, the public prosecution service and the police. The presentation is intended to show methods applied by legal translation teachers of various pairs of languages to overcome the main translation problems with special emphasis placed on avoiding fatal errors.

The author addresses the issue of the publishing market in Poland, where after 2000 more and more publications on Russian language in business communication began to appear. However, there were still no publications dedicated to developing translation competence. The author wonders whether publications teaching business communication in Russian can be useful to some extent in developing translator's competence. She analyses one of such publications from this perspective.

In this article, new translators' profiles are discussed based on the development of two competences in an undergraduate program: the extralinguistic competence, and the instrumental and professional competence, e.g., specialized knowledge, the knowledge and use of modern technologies, and the knowledge of the market. This article focuses on the importance of developing these two subcompetences in translation programs in order to produce competitive professional translators, and it proposes a set of recommended activities for the development of each subcompetence. Likewise, the advantages and disadvantages of these activities are discussed as well as the changes and implications for translation teaching.

The curriculum of a post-graduate course at the Adam Mickiewicz University has been prepared after an analysis of translation problems occurring in EU legal translations into Polish. An introduction to civil law, commercial law, civil procedure, penal law and penal procedure has been included in the curriculum. A Polish language course has also been introduced as the analysis also revealed that many errors result from insufficient knowledge of the mother tongue. The course includes legal translation strategies and methodology, and also solutions for the most frequently occurring grammatical, stylistic and punctuation problems. Students are acquainted with the rules recommended by the Sworn Translators&#39; Code and the macrostructure of legal texts formulated in Polish and foreign languages and also non-legal texts translated for courts, the public prosecution service and the police. The presentation is intended to show methods applied by legal translation teachers of various pairs ...

This paper addresses the issue of combining existing tools and resources to customise dictionaries used for machine translation (MT) with a view to providing technical translators with an effective time-saving tool. It is based on the hypothesis that customising MT systems can be achieved using unsophisticated tools, so that the system can produce output of sufficient quality for post-translation proofreading. Concrete examples are given to create a specialised dictionary in the specialised domain of computer science, more precisely, for translating the Linux HOTOs from English into French, and usin an aligned parallel corpus of English and French HOWTOs.

The objective of this study is to prove that the basic philosophy teaching on an academic level is compulsory in translation and interpretation departments by taking into account the challenges encountered in the translation of philosophical texts and besides the ways to solving them. At the end of their training, students in translation and interpretation departments cannot be expected to translate or interpret every sort of texts owing to the fact that the translation of every text requires specialized knowledge in different fields. Considering that the undergraduate may not gain an opportunity to be specialized at every field, it is sometimes impossible for him or her to understand the source text wholly and translate it to the target culture. As a natural consequence of what he/she has learnt during his/her training, the translator may compensate his/her lack of knowledge in ordinary texts with finding suitable equivalents in each culture. In other words, the translator can further develop his/her skills in the translation of ordinary texts after she/he has graduated from the department. However, in the translation of text types such philosophical ones encompassing an important part of a culture, both internalization and questioning are required other than finding accurate equivalents in source and target texts. This can only be achieved if students take the basic philosophy education. The fact that each course in translation and interpretation departments is offered by a different field specialist and the philosophy is regarded as an area of specialization make easily understanding of translation challenges encountered particularly in the translation of philosophical texts possible.

Information technology is a significant challenge for teachers involved in training translators, the prototype of teleworking professions. This article presents an approach that integrates technology into the day-to-day teaching of a range of disciplines. The University of Granada, Spain, offers a four-year first-degree program in Translation and Interpreting. The innovative, collaborative learning project we describe is an online simulation of work in a translation agency. We believe it enhances the quality of translator training within the university context.

Information technology is a significant challenge for teachers involved in training translators, the prototype of teleworking professions. This article presents an approach that integrates technology into the day-to-day teaching of a range of disciplines. The University of Granada, Spain, offers a four-year first-degree program in Translation and Interpreting. The innovative, collaborative learning project we describe is an online simulation of work in a translation agency. We believe it enhances the quality of translator training within the university context.

In this article, new translators&#39; profiles are discussed based on the development of two competences in an undergraduate program: the extralinguistic competence, and the instrumental and professional competence, e.g., specialized knowledge, the knowledge and use of modern technologies, and the knowledge of the market. This article focuses on the importance of developing these two subcompetences in translation programs in order to produce competitive professional translators, and it proposes a set of recommended activities for the development of each subcompetence. Likewise, the advantages and disadvantages of these activities are discussed as well as the changes and implications for translation teaching.

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una visión panorámica de la investigación en el binomio nuevas tecnologías-enseñanza de la traducción. El punto de vista que adoptaremos tendrá como eje y motivo principal tanto las líneas de investigación ac-tuales y potenciales sobre el uso de las TIC 2 para la enseñanza de la traducción como el papel de dichos modos de investigación en una formación tecnológica y humanística para los traductores. Según veremos, la traducción se ha hecho con un lugar relativamente importante en nuestra sociedad, así en el plano teórico como en el práctico, siendo uno de los síntomas y, a la vez, una de las causas más importantes de ello el auge y la consoli-dación de su investigación y de su enseñanza. Menos claro, sin embargo, resulta la manera en la que la tecnología influye en dicha sintomatología y causalidad, y las conforma en mayor o menor medida. Aunque el empleo de las TIC para la enseñanza y la profesión, por un lado, y la utilidad investigadora de aquéllas para la traducción, por el otro, son dos parcelas tratadas frecuentemente de forma separada —dada su amplitud—, resulta revelador explorar las presuposiciones y las intenciones subya-centes a ambos aspectos, de cuyas divergencias se puede aprender tanto, en nuestra opinión, como de sus puntos en común. Nuestro breve panorama, por lo tanto, tratará de situarse en las intersecciones discursivas entre estos elementos. En primer lugar ofreceremos un breve resumen del estado de la cuestión de la investigación traductológica desde una perspectiva académica y disciplinar, lo que nos dará una idea de cuáles son las virtudes y defectos común y/o históricamente señalados de la misma y qué se espera actualmente de ella. Inmediatamente después analizaremos el lugar que las nuevas tecnologías y la didáctica de la traducción han venido a ocupar en dicho panorama, para adentrarnos posteriormente en las distintas formas de combinar todos estos componentes (tecnología, investigación, formación de traductores) de un modo que creemos útil tanto para los estudiosos como, sobre todo, para quienes participen como docentes o discentes en la enseñanza de la tra-ducción y de las TIC para la traducción. En nuestras conclusiones, haremos balance de las cuestiones tratadas y propondremos una mayor apertura de las líneas investigadoras sobre tecnología y traducción.

Information technology is a significant challenge for teachers involved in training translators, the prototype of teleworking professions. This article presents an approach that integrates technology into the day-to-day teaching of a range of disciplines. The University of Granada, Spain, offers a four-year first-degree program in Translation and Interpreting. The innovative, collaborative learning project we describe is an online simulation of work in a translation agency. We believe it enhances the quality of translator training within the university context.

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una visión panorámica de la investigación en el binomio nuevas tecnologías-enseñanza de la traducción. El punto de vista que adoptaremos tendrá como eje y motivo principal tanto las líneas de investigación ac-tuales y potenciales sobre el uso de las TIC 2 para la enseñanza de la traducción como el papel de dichos modos de investigación en una formación tecnológica y humanística para los traductores. Según veremos, la traducción se ha hecho con un lugar relativamente importante en nuestra sociedad, así en el plano teórico como en el práctico, siendo uno de los síntomas y, a la vez, una de las causas más importantes de ello el auge y la consoli-dación de su investigación y de su enseñanza. Menos claro, sin embargo, resulta la manera en la que la tecnología influye en dicha sintomatología y causalidad, y las conforma en mayor o menor medida. Aunque el empleo de las TIC para la enseñanza y la profesión, por un lado, y la utilidad investigadora de ...

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una visión panorámica de la investigación en el binomio nuevas tecnologías-enseñanza de la traducción. El punto de vista que adoptaremos tendrá como eje y motivo principal tanto las líneas de investigación ac-tuales y potenciales sobre el uso de las TIC 2 para la enseñanza de la traducción como el papel de dichos modos de investigación en una formación tecnológica y humanística para los traductores. Según veremos, la traducción se ha hecho con un lugar relativamente importante en nuestra sociedad, así en el plano teórico como en el práctico, siendo uno de los síntomas y, a la vez, una de las causas más importantes de ello el auge y la consoli-dación de su investigación y de su enseñanza. Menos claro, sin embargo, resulta la manera en la que la tecnología influye en dicha sintomatología y causalidad, y las conforma en mayor o menor medida. Aunque el empleo de las TIC para la enseñanza y la profesión, por un lado, y la utilidad investigadora de ...

Review of the book Deutsche Fachsprachen. Ein Lehrbuch by prof. Vladimir Karabalic, aimed to be a textbook for the students of Germanistics and Translation studies in Croatia, the first of the kind relating to languages for specific purposes.