Report (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. M.S. 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 102). Also available via the Internet.

This study explores identity construction of ethnic minority (EM) language interpreters working for the Judiciary and law enforcement bodies in Hong Kong. It also examines how an act of incorporating cultural differences into interpreting emerges as an immanent aspect of EM identity. Interpreters' background and their close affiliation with a respective language and culture enables them to identify cultural differences in interpreting, thus such detection and potential mitigation through drawing attention and clarification, reinforces their EM identity in interpreting practice. Cultural mediation however, is determined by a number of elements intertwined within the field of practice: hierarchical positioning of interlocutors, existing system and interpreters' codes of practice, service providers' and interpreters' perception and attitudes, as well as interpreting competence and education. Therefore, identity construction of EM interpreters and their approaches towards cultural differences both remain a product of an on-going interaction between the mainstream legal system and existing mechanism in interpreting services on the one hand, and interpreters' insight on the other. Along the process of interpreting, interpreters' identities are constructed and reconstructed through negotiations between how they are perceived by others in terms of policies and daily practice, and how they see themselves as interpreters. While the study focuses on identities and cultural mitigation in interpreting, it provides the basis for identifying issues in interpreting in EM languages and further professionalising the interpreting services.

Master of Science

Given recent calls for university composition policies that are informed by the actual practices and populations of students at a given institution (Tardy, 2011), this study investigated student and instructor perceptions and attitudes toward using online translators (e.g., Google Translate or Babelfish) for composition assignments. The study analyzed interview data from four international students and three English composition instructors to understand how the use of online translators was explained, justified, and contextualized by these two groups. This study revealed that although both students and instructors believed that online translators afforded an opportunity for language learning, the participants still aligned with dominant ideologies of plagiarism and were wary of the use of these services. In conclusion to the study, recommendations were made for instructors to moderate more in-class discussions about the use of technology during the writing process and to define the appropriate and inappropriate uses of such technology more clearly.

No description available.

1842年，香港岛被割让给英国。翌年发布的《香港宪章》（the Hong Kong Charter）和《致璞鼎查训令》（Instructions to Sir Henry Pottinger）标志着香港正式成为英属殖民地，英国对香港的殖民统治自此正式开始。毫无疑问，在英国官员为主的殖民政府和华人为主的被管治群体之间存在着巨大的语言鸿沟，这是殖民管治所面对和必须有效解決的问题。港英殖民政府内除有一批颇受重视、监管翻译工作的欧洲译者外，尚有不少华人译员。他们主要负责重要性较低的日常翻译工作，弥补欧洲译者人数不足的问题。然而长久以来，学界几乎完全沒有关注早期港英殖民政府內的华人译员群体，致使他们的工作和贡献一直沒有得到认识和认同。这可以说是香港殖民史以及香港翻译史上一个较严重的空白。 / 本文爬梳大量原始史料，分析这一群体从接受英语教育，到政府任职及进一步发展的人生轨迹以及此间的活动，揭示他们作为翻译史现象的复杂性：一方面，他们身处殖民社会，既是统治政府的执行人员，但又同时是被殖民者；另一方面，作为译者，他们处于中英两种语言及文化的交接点，面临不同语言和文化的冲突和抉择。正是这种复杂的境地，使得他们身份的不确定性和双重性充分突显出來。本文通过对于华人译员这种复杂性的分析，除让我们更好地理解这一特殊群体的面貌外，也希望能进一步展示译者研究的丰富性和可能性，期望能为长期被忽略的译者研究作贡献。 / The Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842. One year later, the Hong Kong Charter and the later Instructions to Sir Henry Pottinger were promulgated to establish the Hong Kong Island and its dependencies as a separate Crown Colony, beginning the British colonial rule over this former Chinese territory. Without doubt, there existed a huge language barrier between the British officials and the residents, who were overwhelmingly made up of the Chinese nationals. Communication had been a pressing and difficult problem faced by the Colonial Hong Kong Government. / In the Colonial Hong Kong Government, there were some European interpreters who were in senior positions to take charge of interpretation/translation supervision. They enjoyed superior status. On the other hand, some native Chinese also acted as interpreters/translators. They were subordinate to and assisted the European interpreters/translators in the government, undertaking relatively less important and sensitive interpretation/translation tasks. Little attention has been paid to the study of the native Chinese interpreters/translators in the early Colonial Hong Kong Government, resulting in a lack of understanding of their work and contributions in the translation history of colonial Hong Kong. / This dissertation studies the native Chinese interpreters as a special group in the early Colonial Hong Kong Government. By digging into first-hand historical materials, it analyzes the education background, the career paths, the achievements as well as the predicaments of this very special group of civil servants. It reveals the complexity of these interpreters as a phenomenon in the history of translation, that on the one hand, they were part of the ruling machinery of the colonial government, and on the other, they were native Chinese like the rest of the Hong Kong residents. As interpreters/translators, they were caught between two languages, two cultures, and two peoples. It is the purpose of the present dissertation to study and reveal this complexity, in the hope to provide a deeper understanding of this peculiar group of people at a peculiar stage of Hong Kong translation history. It is also hoped that it would provide some insights in the methodology of interpreters/translators studies. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 陳雅晴. / Parallel title from English abstract. / Thesis (M.Phil.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-258). / Abstracts also in English. / Chen Yaqing.

Abstract This research employs a mixed-methods design combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to carry out a thorough investigation into the relationship between the translator’s visibility and their job-related happiness. In the quantitative phase, analysis is based on 193 Chinese translators in the greater China region, which comprises Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Macao. This study has found that, in our sample, visibility is rewarding in terms of social exchanges and learning experience, but not in terms of pay and prestige. Further, we have confirmed that the more visible translators are happier. In the qualitative phase, three case studies explore the relationship between the translator’s visibility and their job-related happiness. We have found that visibility not only nurtures the translator but also benefits the client, since translators feel that they can better receive their clients’ feedback and that the translators are working in a way that their clients appreciate.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Working with Arab students pursuing a degree in English Language and Translation at the Taiz University, Republic of Yemen, has brought to the researcher‟s attention a number of errors or problems encountered in Arabic to English translation. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered by student translators (STs), novice translators (NTs) as well as more experienced translators (Ts) while translating from Arabic into English. The study starts with the assumption that Arabic and English belong to different families of languages and thus there is rarely a word-for-word equivalence in both languages. The present study is cross-sectional in nature. It is based on empirical data collected from several categories of translators. In other words, the data was collected from fourth-year students in the department of English and Translation in the Faculty of Arts, Taiz University, as well as five NTs who have previously graduated from this department and are currently working in a number of accredited translation offices in Taiz. The study also investigates the challenges faced by Ts. For this purpose, a novel, a tourist brochure, an editorial, and three academic abstracts all translated by established publishing houses and translation centres in and outside Yemen are examined. These texts are analyzed to determine to what extent the problems faced by STs and NTs reoccur in published translations produced by Ts. For its conceptual framework, the study adopts an eclectic approach that does not stick rigidly to a particular paradigm but rather draws upon multiple linguistic and translation theories. However, it is mainly based on Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and the problems have been classified along his taxonomy of meaning metafunctions into ideational, interpersonal and textual. Extra-textual problems are also analyzed. Several SFG-based translation models such as Hatim and Mason‟s (1990) sociometic model, House‟s (1977, 1997) translation quality assessment model, Hervey et al. (1992) register analysis model and Baker‟s (1990) equivalence model are also employed in the study to help the researcher examine the problems encountered in Arabic-English translation within those four categories. In addition, Nord‟s functional model to translation which is based on Skopos theory is also taken into consideration although to a minimum extent. In addition to the analysis of translations produced by various categories of translators, the study uses several triangulation research tools such as questionnaire, Thinking Aloud Protocols (TAPs), retrospective interviews, and classroom observation. These tools are employed to assist the researcher to identify the possible causes for the problems the STs, NTs, and Ts experience from the perspective of the participants themselves. The current translation programme at Taiz University is also analyzed to determine to what extent it contributes to the poor performance of the student translators and would-be translators. The study concludes that STs, NTs and even Ts encounter several problems at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels. They also encounter problems at the extra-textual stratum. The study attributes these problems to structural and cultural differences between the two languages, the reliance on the dictionary rather than the meaning in use of lexical items, the differences in the cohesion and coherence systems of Arabic and English, the negligence of the role of context in translation as well as unfamiliarity with text-typologies and genre conventions. In other words, participants follow a bottom-up approach in translation and come close to the source text translating it literally. This approach is very damaging because it ignores the fact that the three metafunctions might be realized differently in the two languages. Furthermore, the study concludes that the manner in which translation is taught at Taiz University as well as the syllabus contribute mainly to the lack of translation competence of the student translators and would-be translators. The programme is inadequate and it needs urgent review and improvements. The present syllabus does not keep abreast with the latest theoretical and practical developments in the discipline of translation as well as neighbouring disciplines such as contrastive linguistics, text-analysis, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and the like. As for methodology, the study concludes that it is the transmissionist (teacher-centred) teaching approach rather than the transformational (learner-centred) which is commonly used in teaching translation. As a result, the read-and-translate approach dominates the scene and no tasks, activities, or projects are given to the STs. The study provides some recommendations, which if implemented, can be useful in enabling Yemeni and Arab universities to improve the competence among student translators in order to improve translation teaching at academic level. A major contribution of this study is the description and classification of translation problems in Arabic-English translation on the basis of meaning systems. Unlike traditional descriptive error analysis, which is widely used to analyze the translation product, SFG-based text analysis provides a systematic description of translation problems which allows a precise articulation of the nature of problems that would otherwise be explained simply as translations which “sound unnatural or awkward” (Kim 2008; Yallop 1999). As far as the researcher knows, no study in the Arab world has yet tackled translation problems from this perspective. Other studies have tackled deviated forms produced by students or translators using an error analysis technique rather than a holistic approach based on solid theoretical knowledge. In other words, while most other studies focused on specific „errors‟ and error analysis and ended at that, the present study does not only looks at „errors‟ as „difference‟ (from contrastive analysis) but rather from several perspectives. It is also more comprehensive by triangulating several sources of data and pooling them together for a more informed understanding.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents the description of a new XML-based data display language called Data Display Markup Language (DDML) that can be used as an interlingua for different data display configuration formats. Translation of data display configuration between various vendor- formats can be accomplished by translating in and out of DDML. The DDML can also be used as a vendor-neutral format for archiving and retrieving display configurations in a test and evaluation (T&E) configuration repository.

A software solution was developed for remote data acquisition applications, i.e., applications where line power is unavailable. The solution was developed in response to a lack of suitable software for environmental measurements using battery powered computers. The software solution is in the form of a program translator that creates programs dedicated to specific remote data acquisition applications from a dialect governed by specific rules. A methodology is presented for defining real-time measurement applications based upon three time components: a scanning interval, an average period, and an averaging interval. The software solution is termed ADAPT, an acronym for 'All-purpose Data Acquisition Program Translator'. ADAPT was written for a Hewlett-Packard hand-held computer, the HP-71, and a Hewlett-Packard data acquisition system, the HP-3421A. The methodology and algorithms may be applied to other computer and data acquisition systems.