<p>This dissertation investigates translation strategies and translation principles in technical translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland and 4 translation students and 6 professional translators from Sweden were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German and from French into Swedish, respectively. The focus of the analysis was on the strategies that could be observed by comparing the translation products with the source text; and on the principles underlying these strategies as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of the translation processes. In order to evaluate the extent to which the translation products complied with the fictitious translation brief given to the participants, 2 reviewers per language pair proofread the translation products. The analysis also included contrastive analyses of certain linguistic features of technical texts in French-German and French-Swedish. The results show that experience of translation does play a role in the choice of translation strategy. It is, however, an even more important factor with respect to knowing and applying translation principles in the translation process. Also, students more often display uncertainty regarding translation principles, and conflict between the principles verbalised and those actually followed. Language-pair specific differences were mostly found in connection with translation strategies. Comments about future directions include the need for clearer definitions and more systematic manipulations of the variables involved in translation, and the potential interest in investigating the principles governing how translations are revised through the use of think-aloud protocols.</p>

<p>This dissertation has three goals : to establish an inventory of translation strategies applicable to the translation of metaphor, to investigate how the application of these strategies affects the balance in metaphorical quality between source text and target text, and, finally, to determine whether this balance is a useful indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole, towards either <i>adequacy</i> or <i>acceptability</i>.</p><p>To carry out this research the author has established a corpus comprising 250 metaphors from the novel <i>La goutte d’or</i> by Michel Tournier and its Swedish translation, <i>Gulddroppen</i> by C.G. Bjurström. Based on the criteria <i>thematical and contextual connection</i> 158 metaphors from this corpus have been selected for analysis.The strategy used in the translation of each metaphor has been established. The degree of balance in metaphorical quality between the two texts has then been determined and its significance as an indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole has been discussed.</p><p>The underlying theory and methodology of the study are those of Gideon Toury as outlined in his book <i>Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond</i>. The study is thus essentially descriptive in nature.</p><p>The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part gives a survey of well known research within the fields of metaphor theory and translation theory. Various theories concerning the requested equality between a text and its translation are presented, as well as inventories of translation strategies established by a number of researchers. The second part contains the analysis of the selected metaphors and establishes a set of strategies for this purpose.</p>

The present dissertation investigates literary translation from a cultural perspective by comparing the translation of culture-specific words and concepts in five different translations of the novel Ein weites Feld by Günter Grass. The translations were chosen to represent three ‘small’ (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) and two ‘large’ (American English, French) languages and cultures, in order to find out whether these categories are characterized by different ‘foreignizing’ or ‘domesticating’ translation methods. The main purpose of the study is to present an empirical and descriptive analysis of the concrete difficulties and possibilities connected with the process of transferring culturespecific words and concepts taken from the geographical, historical, literary and everyday context of the original work. A further aim of the study is to undertake a comparison of theory and practice of translation with regard to culture and culturespecific words. The methodological framework is taken from the historically oriented ‘Transfer’ method of the Göttingen literary translation school, where deviations from original literary texts are not seen as ‘mistakes’ in the traditional linguistic sense but as differences caused by various historical and individual factors. Above all, this study aims to focus on the translations themselves, to investigate what different solutions to cultural translation problems can tell us about the meeting between the ‘Foreign’ and the world of the translators and their prospective readership. The study’s analyses demonstrate that culture-specific words and concepts in this material are translated in a broad variety of ways, which often differ from translation to translation and therefore cannot be classified into predictable categories of translation 'strategies’. A certain pattern could be detected as far as the translation of geographical place-names and similar concepts were concerned, where the Scandinavian translators tend to preserve the original words and concepts to a greater extent than the other translators. As a contrast, the American and French translators have preserved a large number of words connected to the ‘Third Reich’ in the original form, which raises questions about the way strategies of preserving the ‘Foreign’ in translations are connected with the picture of other cultures. However, the most conspicuous result of the investigation could be found within the category of the ‘pragmatic’ decisions (Chesterman), which differ considerably in all translations as far as explanations of culture-specific phenomena within the text itself are concerned. Thus five literary translations make five different variations of the same novel. The heterogeneous translation solutions further show that the theoretical approaches within translation theory are of only limited use for describing existing literary translations in an adequate way.

This dissertation has three goals : to establish an inventory of translation strategies applicable to the translation of metaphor, to investigate how the application of these strategies affects the balance in metaphorical quality between source text and target text, and, finally, to determine whether this balance is a useful indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole, towards either adequacy or acceptability. To carry out this research the author has established a corpus comprising 250 metaphors from the novel La goutte d’or by Michel Tournier and its Swedish translation, Gulddroppen by C.G. Bjurström. Based on the criteria thematical and contextual connection 158 metaphors from this corpus have been selected for analysis.The strategy used in the translation of each metaphor has been established. The degree of balance in metaphorical quality between the two texts has then been determined and its significance as an indicator of the direction of the translation as a whole has been discussed. The underlying theory and methodology of the study are those of Gideon Toury as outlined in his book Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. The study is thus essentially descriptive in nature. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part gives a survey of well known research within the fields of metaphor theory and translation theory. Various theories concerning the requested equality between a text and its translation are presented, as well as inventories of translation strategies established by a number of researchers. The second part contains the analysis of the selected metaphors and establishes a set of strategies for this purpose.

This dissertation investigates translation strategies and translation principles in technical translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland and 4 translation students and 6 professional translators from Sweden were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German and from French into Swedish, respectively. The focus of the analysis was on the strategies that could be observed by comparing the translation products with the source text; and on the principles underlying these strategies as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of the translation processes. In order to evaluate the extent to which the translation products complied with the fictitious translation brief given to the participants, 2 reviewers per language pair proofread the translation products. The analysis also included contrastive analyses of certain linguistic features of technical texts in French-German and French-Swedish. The results show that experience of translation does play a role in the choice of translation strategy. It is, however, an even more important factor with respect to knowing and applying translation principles in the translation process. Also, students more often display uncertainty regarding translation principles, and conflict between the principles verbalised and those actually followed. Language-pair specific differences were mostly found in connection with translation strategies. Comments about future directions include the need for clearer definitions and more systematic manipulations of the variables involved in translation, and the potential interest in investigating the principles governing how translations are revised through the use of think-aloud protocols.

The paper analyzes the translation of discourse markers from English into Lithuanian. Discourse markers are words or word combinations, who contribute little to the propositional meaning of an utterance but serve a variety of important conversational functions guiding interlocutors towards the intended interpretation of an utterance. The aim of the research is to prove the polyfunctional nature of discourse markers and the significance of rendering their meanings in translation from English into Lithuanian. The paper reviews the basic theoretical orientations within which discourse markers are analyzed and presents the list of defining and non-defining properties of discourse markers. Correct interpretation of discourse markers depend on the conversational function they serve in a particular situation rather than on lexical meaning of an item, therefore the functions of the discourse markers selected for the analysis (you know, I mean, well, okay, so, like, now) are reviewed as well. The empirical part is based on the analysis of the translation of discourse markers in two novels: John Irving’s 'A Widow for One Year' and Melvin Burgess’ 'Doing it'. / Darbe nagrinėjamas diskurso žymeklių vertimas iš anglų į lietuvių kalbą. Diskurso žymekliai - tai žodžiai ar žodžių junginiai, kurių leksinė reikšmė turi mažai įtakos sakinio prasmei, bet kurie atlieka daug svarbių funkcijų, padedančių pašnekovui teisingai interpretuoti pasakymą. Darbo tikslas – įrodyti diskurso žymeklių daugiafunkcinę prigimtį ir tų funkcijų perteikimo svarbą verčiant iš anglų į lietuvių kalbą. Darbe apžvelgiamos svarbiausios teorinės kryptys, kuriomis remiantis analizuojami diskurso žymekliai, ir pristatomi jų skiriamieji bei jiems būdingi bruožai. Kadangi teisinga diskurso žymeklių interpretacija priklauso ne nuo leksinės lingvistinio vieneto reikšmės, bet nuo jo atliekamos funkcijos, darbe taip pat aprašomos analizei pasirinktų žymeklių (you know, I mean, well, okay, so, like, now) funkcijos. Empirinė dalis pagrįsta diskurso žymeklių vertimu dvejuose romanuose: John Irving "A Widow for One Year" ir Melvin Burgess "Doing it".

On the assumption that the translation strategies used to translate American fast-food advertisements into Arabic cause the Arabic translations to be culturally bound to their originals, the aim of the present study is to identify such translation strategies. The study was conducted with the aid of questionnaires as a primary research method to obtain data which are then complemented by means of textual analyses of the corpus. The findings reveal that the main translation strategies used to translate phrases in fast-food advertisements from English into Arabic are borrowing and transliteration. The overall finding is that inadequate translations of culture-specific concepts, phrases, logos and terms produce target texts which are bound to the source texts. This causes the translations to be rejected by the target culture. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

Bc. Adéla Provazníková Strategies of literary translation during the Nahḍa Abstract: The thesis deals with the topic of literary translation in the Arab world during the Nahḍa. It falls within the framework of descriptive translation studies and is based methodologically on Gideon Toury's model (1995), which determines its structure and goals. Following a brief historical and literary context the thesis systematically describes attitudes towards translation in given period and finds that translational terminology and requirements were changing during the 19th century and only yet stabilizing. The core of this thesis lies in the textual analysis of two novels and three short stories, which reveal individual translational strategies. It shows that Arab translators in the colonial context dealt with the source text in a creative manner and accommodated translated texts to the cultural and historical particularities of a contemporary Arab reader. Keywords: translation strategies, modern Arabic literature, Nahḍa, paraliterature, Adib Ishaq, Labiba Hashim, cultural encounter

Cette thèse analyse les stratégies de traduction et l’acquisition de connaissances à partir d’entretiens et de questionnaires envoyés à des traducteurs techniques indépendants. L’objectif est de voir si les stratégies de traduction sont influencées par des facteurs que le traducteur peut plus ou moins maîtriser et si l’expérience, la formation en traduction et-ou dans un domaine et, les langues de travail jouent aussi un rôle. Il apparaît que la pression du temps influence la décision d’accepter ou de refuser une traduction et que sous cette pression, le traducteur ne consulte pas les mêmes documents, acquiert moins de connaissances et, passe moins de temps à l’archivage. Le manque de sources pose des problèmes aux traducteurs de langues peu répandues. La création terminologique, l’analyse du texte, l’aide de la source humaine et l’archivage des informations sont plus systématiques pour ces traducteurs que pour ceux de langues répandues. Le traducteur spécialisé attache moins d’importance à la technicité du texte de départ que celui sans spécialisation, achète plus de documents et évalue plus facilement le temps qu’il consacrera à la recherche documentaire. Les « jeunes » traducteurs voient un lien fort entre la technicité du texte et sa difficulté, préfèrent utiliser des sources donnant des réponses immédiates aux problèmes, consultent et achètent moins de sources sur support papier que les traducteurs expérimentés. Internet a marginalisé l’utilisation et les achats de sources sur support papier mais ne permet pas forcément de se spécialiser. Avec Internet, le client accorde des délais plus courts et les traducteurs acceptent de traduire des textes plus techniques. / This thesis analyzes translation strategies and knowledge acquisition. It is based on interviews and questionnaires from a sample of freelance technical translators. The purpose is to investigate if translation strategies are influenced by factors translators can handle more or less, such as experience, training and working languages. It appears that time pressure has an influence on the decision to accept or refuse a translation. When under pressure, translators do not use the same documents, get less knowledge and spend less time storing information. The lack of documents is problematic for translators whose languages are rarely spoken and read in their working environment. They create more terms in the target language and analyze the source text more in-depth than translators of widespread languages ; they also get help from the human source and store information more often than translators of widespread languages. Specialized translators give more importance to the technicity of the source text than non-specialized translators ; they buy more documents and are more able to assess the time they will take to do documentary research. “Young” translators think there is a strong link between the technicity of the source text and its level of difficulty. They also prefer to directly use documents matching what they look for, use and buy less paper documents than experienced translators. Translators use and buy less paper documents, and accept to translate more technical texts than during the pre-Internet period. Clients also give them shorter deadlines than before.

Denna uppsats ämnar göra ett nedslag i svensk teateröversättning för den svenska teaterscenen. Teateröversättning är ett relativt outforskat forskningsfält generellt, men i synnerhet råder det en avsaknad av studier som fokuserar på svenska teateröversättningar. I detta syfte har undersökningen valt att analysera William Shakespeares, Hamlet, genom att analysera ett urval av svenska Hamletuppsättningar och tillhörande metatexter återskapas de strategier och normer som översättaren inkorporerar vid nyöversättning från den engelska källtexten till den svenska måltexten. Tre spelversioner av Hamlet från produktioner i Dramatens regi åren 1974 i översättning av Allan Bergstrand, 1986 i översättning av Britt G. Hallqvist och 2008 i översättning av Ulf Peter Hallberg utgör studiens material. Vidare har en variabelanalys genomförts där variablerna strykning, textindelning, pronominalbruk och bildspråk analyserats, både på makrotextuell nivå och mikrotextuell nivå. Resultatet visar att spelversionerna skiljer sig något åt när det kommer till strategier och textuella normer. Hamlet från 1974 tenderar att vara mer adekvansinriktad medan Hamlet från 1986 och 2008 tenderar att vara mer acceptansinriktade. Studien fann även att ingen av de undersökta spelversionerna lever upp till rådande normer när det kommer till mottagande. / This thesis seeks to touch upon Swedish theatre translations produced for the Swedish stage. Theatre translation is generally an relatively unchartered field, but there is particularly a lack of studies focused on Swedish theatre translation. For this reason this thesis has chosen to analyse William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. By analysing a selection of Hamlet productions and corresponding metatexts this thesis recreates strategies and norms incorporated in a retranslation of the English source text into a Swedish target text.Three stage versions of Hamlet, all productions of Dramaten from the years 1974, translated by Allan Bergstrand, 1986, translated by Britt G. Hallqvist, and 2008, translated by Ulf Peter Hallberg, were selected for this purpose. In addition, the following variables where investigated: reduction, textual structure, pronouns and imagery. This analysis was conducted both on a macro texual level and a micro textual level. The study shows that the stage version of Hamlet 1974 tends to be more adequate while the stage versions from 1986 and 2008 tend to be more acceptable when it comes to strategies. The thesis also found that none of the investigated stage versions fulfilled the expectancy norms of the audience.