In South Africa there is no legislation defining the role of court interpreters. This has resulted in legal officials (magistrates and judges) forming their own opinions as to what the role of court interpreters is. As such court interpreters find themselves performing tasks that are outside their scope of duties, for example acting as magistrates, in turn compromising their own tasks in the process. The aim of this study therefore is to determine the degree to which the lack of a definition of the role of court interpreters affects the quality of court interpreting. In the study, the researcher was guided by the Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) approach. The research procedures that were followed in the study combined the top-down and bottom-up approaches. In the top-down approach, two legislations, namely, “The Magistrates’ Court Act 44 of 1944 (as amended)” and “The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 93 of 1996 (as amended)”, were examined in order to determine whether the role of court interpreters is defined and, if so, to what extent. In the bottom-up approach, examples of court proceedings were studied in order to determine specific roles that are played by court interpreters during trials. Extracts from transcripts of mechanically-recorded court proceedings were also analysed to establish whether magistrates made any references to the role of court interpreters in these trials. It is hoped that this study will shed more light on the role of court interpreters which could lead to better quality interpreting. / Linguistics / M.A. (Linguistics (Translation studies))

The thesis focuses on multilingual communication in healthcare centres in Prague. One of its main objectives is to compare and contrast the situation in the public- and the private sector. The theoretical part of the thesis presents interpreting in healthcare settings as one of the most important and most frequent types of community interpreting. The authors focus mainly on the current state of research in diverse world regions, and subsequently analyse the specific aspects of interpreting situations in the setting in question. An integral constituent of the theoretical part of the thesis is a global overview of the current situation in terms of quantity of foreign patients in Prague hospitals, including selected relevant demographic data. In conclusion of the theoretical part, the authors briefly elaborate on the phenomenon of medical tourism. The empirical part of the thesis is based on a questionnaire survey carried out among hospital employees in Prague, the aim of which was to analyse the current situation in terms of communication with foreign country nationals and to compare and contrast the public- and the private sector in this respect. The main focus of the research is to find out how the respondents perceive the situation and whether they are satisfied with it and to what extent this is...

This thesis addresses the issue of the subjective perception of the speaker's speed during simultaneous interpretation. The theoretical grounding of the thesis is based on Karla Déjean Le Féal's doctoral thesis (1978), which first introduced the notion of subjective speed, whereby two speeches of equal objective speed (as measured in syllables/min.) are perceived as having different speeds. The conclusions of Déjean Le Féal's thesis demonstrate that interpreters usually experience a faster subjective speed when interpreting speeches which were prewritten and then read aloud by the speaker. Impromptu speeches are usually perceived as being slower than read speeches. Aside from the above-mentioned theory of subjective speed, the theoretical section of this thesis analyzes various approaches to measuring speech speed, the relation between objective speed and simultaneous interpreting, the determinants of speech speed and prosodic features influencing the subjective perception of speed. The empirical section of this thesis consists of an experiment which aims to verify Déjean Le Féal's conclusions using French-Czech material. The methodology of the experiment partially replicates the method used by Aneta Mandysová in her master's thesis (2011), which is focused on German-Czech material. The method used...

This paper concentrates on the discussion of the relationship between 1930s Chinese modern writer Shi Zhecun and "translated modernity." The basic assumption behind this paper is that the work of fiction by Shi Zhecun is a kind of translingual practice, which is inextricably bound up with translation. It is through such a broad sense of translational activity that Shi Zhecun began his pursuit of modernity and finally obtained a kind of modernity different from the Western, the translated modernity. Looking from the perspective of translingual practice, the fictional work by Shi Zhecun is never an isolated mental work, but the consequence of cultural exchange and vigorous bombardment between Chinese and Western literature. On one hand, his fiction fails to stand outside of the progress of modernity in China, while his work is also deeply embedded in the network of Western literature on the other hand. By mean of a series of mimicry, appropriation and rewriting, he translates text from various times, spaces and media into his own work. In the fiction by Shi Zhecun, we may see the process of how foreign literature and other cultural factors rise, circulate and eventually gain legitimacy in the 1930s China. At the same time, we can also know of how they have changed the observation and conception of modern Chinese writers towards literature and the outer world. Therefore, not only does fiction by Shi Zhecun comprise the modernity experience of Shanghai, a metropolitan city in the 1930s, to synchronize with the world, but they also record responses and changes of modern Chinese fiction in the face of the progress of modernism. / This paper is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which briefly introduces the background of investigation of Shi Zhecun's fiction and expounds the theoretical framework of "translated modernity". Chapter two to six are the core part of this paper. By introducing related literary and cultural theories, they serve to probe into fiction by Shi Zhecun. Chapter two draws an outline of historical materials and observes the frequent mimicry and rewriting phenomena on his early work with regard to his fictional work and translational activities, in order to grasp how he transplants forms and techniques from the Western fiction into the Chinese situation. Chapter three deepens discussion on the previous chapter and examines how Shi Zhecun employs western psychoanalytic method and narrative mechanism in his "old stories retold" to construct the interiority unique to modern fiction. Chapter four intervenes from the viewpoint of technologized visuality to analyze the relationship between psychoanalytic fiction by Shi Zhecun and modern visual text. Through the discussion of mode of space in fiction, chapter five looks at how Shi Zhecun's fiction transform modern urban space into fictional text, producing a range of thoughts concerned with modernity. Chapter six, by reconstructing his literal tradition, interprets the traditional elements found in his fiction and analyzes with different aspects his re-creation of Chinese traditional literature. Chapter seven is the conclusion, which attempts to consolidate what has been discussed before in this text, in order to contemplate the important significance of modernity in China brought about by Shi Zhecun's fiction. / Translation, since the Late Qing Dynasty, has been exhibiting great influence on China's road towards modernity. Scholars Lydia Liu and David Wang present "translated modernity" as a way to delve into the relationship between translation, Chinese Late Qing fiction and May Fourth literature. From Late Qing to May Fourth, translation has been highly influential on the period when old literature was superseded by new one. Thus, when radical anti-traditionalism wanes, would translation, among the relatively mature 30s literature, have a new significance? / 郭詩詠. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 220-233). / Adviser: Hang Fung Hoyan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0575. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 220-233). / Guo Shiyong.

The study focused on the translation and interpretation of cultural concepts from Xitsonga into English. The main aim of the study was to formulate strategies and methods as well as techniques of translating cultural concepts from Xitsonga into English with the view towards bridging the gap between the two cultures. The study used a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches. It examined the research problem by selecting respondents who deal with translation issues on a day-to-day basis and also observed how cultural concepts are presented in the bilingual dictionaries. This was done by comparing three languages i.e. Xitsonga, Northern-Sotho and Tshivenda. The researcher had to identify the afore-mentioned cultural concepts and to find if they were properly described or translated into English. The observation focused on the translation of both Xitsonga, Northern-Sotho and Tshivenda cultural fixed expressions which were given to translation studies students to translate into English. The aim was to find if they are able to give proper explanations or translation to the given expressions. Quantitatively, 24 out of the 30 questionnaires that were sent out to respondents, were returned to the researcher for presentation, analysis and interpretation. The study found that translating cultural concepts is very challenging. These challenges are presented by lack of equivalence and not recognising the cultural concepts in the source text. The study however found that employing the right strategies, methods and techniques can assist in bridging the gap between the languages and cultures. The translator also needs to have an in-depth knowledge of the two cultures: Xitsonga and English. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

Language rights in South Africa are entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa (Chapter 1, Section 6, Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). However, the concomitant infrastructure and organisational realities make this policy difficult to implement, especially in law courts (Kaschula and Ralarala 2004). Creating effective communicative environments has historically been constrained by lack of effective training of legal practitioners and by the lack of capacity for building translation structures. With the advancement of technology, potential solutions are becoming more apparent and it is incumbent upon the academic community to embark on a rigorous investigation into possible solutions and how these Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions could be applied to the execution of justice in South African law courts. This article aims to open the discourse of possible solutions, via assessments of computer based translation solutions, ICT context simulations and other potential opportunities. The authors hope to initiate the interest of other language and legal practitioners to explore how the new technological capabilities could be harnessed to support the entrenchment of language rights in our law courts.

This study compares simultaneously interpreted German speech to non-interpreted German discourse in order to determine whether interpreted language is characterised by any of the laws that have been found to feature in translated text, i.e. the law of growing standardisation and the law of interference. It is hypothesised that interpreters typically exaggerate German communicative norms, thereby producing manifestations of growing standardisation. In order to test this hypothesis, comparative and parallel analyses are carried out using corpora of interpreted and non-interpreted discourse. During the comparative phase, two types of interpreted German speech are each compared to non-interpreted language and to each other in order to determine how interpreted speech differs from non-interpreted discourse. During the parallel analysis, the interpreted German segments are compared to their source language counterparts with the aim of determining the reasons for the production of the patterns discovered during the first phase. The results indicate that interpreters do not produce patterns similar to those that characterise translated text: neither the law of growing standardisation nor the law of interference is manifest in the data. Instead, a different feature, namely an increased degree of generalisation, is discovered in the interpreters‟ output. This feature appears to be the result of the use of strategies that enable interpreters to deal with time, memory and linearity constraints inherent in SI. It can hence be confirmed that interpreted German differs from non-interpreted German discourse in certain respects. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

In South Africa there is no legislation defining the role of court interpreters. This has resulted in legal officials (magistrates and judges) forming their own opinions as to what the role of court interpreters is. As such court interpreters find themselves performing tasks that are outside their scope of duties, for example acting as magistrates, in turn compromising their own tasks in the process. The aim of this study therefore is to determine the degree to which the lack of a definition of the role of court interpreters affects the quality of court interpreting. In the study, the researcher was guided by the Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) approach. The research procedures that were followed in the study combined the top-down and bottom-up approaches. In the top-down approach, two legislations, namely, “The Magistrates’ Court Act 44 of 1944 (as amended)” and “The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 93 of 1996 (as amended)”, were examined in order to determine whether the role of court interpreters is defined and, if so, to what extent. In the bottom-up approach, examples of court proceedings were studied in order to determine specific roles that are played by court interpreters during trials. Extracts from transcripts of mechanically-recorded court proceedings were also analysed to establish whether magistrates made any references to the role of court interpreters in these trials. It is hoped that this study will shed more light on the role of court interpreters which could lead to better quality interpreting. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics (Translation studies))

The thesis deals with the comparison of interpreting at international criminal tribunals in the past and present. This is a comparison outlined by the Nuremberg Trials and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. First, the case study focuses on the characteristics of conference interpreting in the Nuremberg trials, followed by the characteristics of interpreting in the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The thesis provides a historical overview, characteristics of interpreting, defines the role and position of an interpreter in the past and now and focuses on possible changes in interpreting supported by the development of the society. Not only the existing documents and published sources are used, but a questionnaire survey is conducted with professional interpreters, who worked at the tribunal in The Hague.

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