Research within translation characterises cultural references as being problematic for translators, meaning they must choose between different translation strategies as to how to transfer these references into the translated text. These strategies are often described in general terms according to how closely oriented they are to the target-culture or source-culture, known as domestication or foreignisation. Translation of literature into English is minimal in world terms and there is seemingly a lack of statistically comparable data concerning the translation of cultural references. This study investigates and compares translation strategies of words denoting cultural references in two translations of the 1998 Swedish Nordic Noir novel Sprängaren by Liza Marklund. The methodology in the study is based on descriptive translation studies, and a categorisation model for types of cultural references is used, as well as an adapted taxonomy model for evaluating translation strategies. Issues addressed are: what types of strategies are used; whether strategies change between translations; how the second translation stands in relation to the retranslation hypothesis and whether any general translation norms are apparent. Results show that a wide variety of translation strategies are used for different types of cultural references, with subtle differences in strategies used in each translation. However, both translations appear to be more domestication-oriented with little overall movement towards to the source culture, as the retranslation hypothesis suggests.

This study offers a partial reduplication of a 2006 study by Williams, which focused primarily on the analysis of the quality of translation produced by online software, namely Yahoo!® Babelfish, Freetranslation.com, and Google Translate. Since the data for the study by Williams were collected in 2004 and the data for present study in 2012, this gives a lapse of eight years for a diachronic analysis of the differences in quality of the translations provided by these online services. At the time of the 2006 study by Williams, all three services used a rule-based translation system, but, in October 2007, however, Google Translate switched to a system that is entirely statistical in nature. Thus, the present study is also able to examine the differences in quality between contemporary statistical and rule-based approaches to machine translation.

Nata a PavlovićDireccionalidad en procesos de traducción colaborativa Un estudio de traductores noviciosResumenLa traducción hacia la segunda lengua (traducción L2) es una realidad en muchos ámbitos alrededor del mundo, en especial - aunque no exclusivamente - en aquellas culturas que utilizan una "lengua de difusión limitada". Incluso a los traductores cuyo idioma materno es una de las lenguas "mayores" se les está exigiendo cada vez con mayor frecuencia el trabajar a partir de su primera lengua (L1) hacia el inglés, el idioma que predomina en el mundo globalizante. Esto hace que la traducción L2 constituya una cuestión de creciente importancia para el profesional, convirtiendo asimismo la investigación sobre la traducción hacia la segunda lengua en un tema de mayor relevancia en la Traductología. El propósito del presente estudio era comparar los procesos de traducción L1 y L2 realizados por traductores novicios, con el fin de aislar las características que difieran en forma significativa según la dirección, con el propósito de desarrollar la enseñanza de la traducción. Con este objetivo en mente, el estudio pretende probar la siguiente hipótesis general: "Las traducciones L1 y L2 muestran algunas diferencias que pudieran ser atribuidas a la dirección de la traducción". En forma más específica, se ha planteado la hipótesis de que las traducciones L1 y L2 difieren no sólo en los productos, sino también en algunos aspectos importantes de los procesos de traducción. Por ello se han seleccionado las siguientes características como potencialmente significativas:· La cantidad y el tipo de problemas a los que se van a enfrentar los sujetos;· Las soluciones que van a considerar;· Las maneras en que van a evaluar las soluciones y tomar las decisiones finales;· Los recursos que van a consultar;· Las acciones/interacciones que van a llevar a cabo;· Los argumentos que van a utilizar para tomar decisiones;· La calidad de sus productos finales.El estudio fue concebido como un conjunto de experimentos que involucraban a traductores novicios - estudiantes universitarios que acababan de presentar su examen final de traducción. Todos los sujetos tenían el croata como primera lengua (L1) y habían estudiado inglés como segunda lengua previamente durante 12 años por lo menos. Se utilizaron para los experimentos dos textos de origen comparables de lenguaje general, uno en inglés y el otro en croata.El método para la recolección de los datos utilizados en los experimentos fue el "protocolo de traducción colaborativa", un tipo de informe verbal obtenido de las sesiones de traducción colaborativa (grupal). Las sesiones de traducción fueron grabadas con cámara de vídeo digital y posteriormente transcritas, mientras que para complementar los datos obtenidos de las sesiones de traducción, se utilizaron cuestionarios previos y posteriores a los experimentos. Para procesar los datos se utilizaron tanto el análisis cuantitativo como el cualitativo.Se pueden resumir los resultados de este estudio de la siguiente manera:· En las traducciones L1 y L2 de textos específicos de tipo general de dificultad comparable, se encontró que los traductores novicios se enfrentaban a cantidades y tipos de problemas similares en ambas direcciones de traducción.· La "fluidez" en la traducción L1 era mayor que en la L2, es decir, los traductores novicios se apoyaban más en recursos internos en el caso de la traducción L1 que en la traducción L2.· Los traductores novicios lograban productos de mejor calidad en sus traducciones hacia L1 que hacia L2.· El monitoreo del producto era más estricto en las traducciones hacia L1 que en las traducciones hacia L2.· La construcción del significado del texto de partida desempeña un papel importante en ambas direcciones de traducción.· Los traductores novicios preferían una cierta combinación de acciones/interacciones característica de su estilo de trabajo, sin importar la dirección de traducción.Se espera poder aplicar los resultados en la formación en traducción, en especial en aquellos ámbitos donde la traducción L2 se enseña a nivel universitario. Asimismo se espera que este estudio sea de utilidad para futura investigación sobre la direccionalidad, sobre la traducción colaborativa y - en forma más general - sobre los procesos de traducción.AbstractTranslation into the second language (L2 translation) is a reality in many settingsaround the world, especially - but not exclusively - in those cultures that use a"language of limited diffusion". Even translators whose mother tongue is one of the"major" languages are more and more frequently required to work out of their firstlanguage (L1) into English, the dominant language of the globalizing world. This makesL2 translation an increasingly important issue for the practitioner, and research on L2translation a very relevant topic for Translation Studies.In the past, prescriptive approaches to translation denounced the practice of L2translation as unprofessional or even impossible. As a result, L2 translation was untilrecently largely neglected both in translation theories and in research. Over the past tento fifteen years, however, the number of studies dealing with L2 translation has been onthe increase, with translation into the non-mother tongue even becoming the main topicof forums and conferences, and their subsequent publications (e.g. Kelly et al. 2003;Grosman et al 2000).The aim of this study is to compare L1 and L2 translation processes by novicetranslators, in order to isolate the features that differ significantly according to direction,with a view to improving translation teaching. To this end, the study sets out to test thefollowing general hypothesis: "L1 and L2 translation display some differences that canbe attributed to direction of translation". More specifically, it is hypothesized that L1and L2 translation differ not only in products, but also in some important aspects oftranslation processes. The following features are therefore selected as likely to berelevant:The number and type of problems the subjects encounter;The solutions they consider;The ways in which they assess the solutions and make final decisions;The resources they consult; The actions/interactions they take; The arguments they use in making decisions; The quality of their final products.The study is set up as a set of experiments involving novice translators -university students who have just passed their final translation exam. All the subjectshave Croatian as their first language L1, and have been learning English as their secondlanguage for at least 12 years. Two comparable general- language source texts, one inEnglish and the other in Croatian, are used in the experiments.The method of data collection used in the experiments is the "collaborativetranslation protocol," a type of verbal report obtained from collaborative (group)translation sessions. Four groups of three subjects are asked to translate the two texts,one into their L1 (L1 translation task) and the other into their L2 (L2 translation task).Collaborative translation (cf. Kiraly 2000a), albeit not typical of professional translationpractice, is nevertheless used in educational settings, and has been part of the subjects'translation training. The translation sessions are recorded by a digital video camera, andtranscribed. Pre- and post-experiment questionnaires complement the data from thetranslation sessions. Control experiments aimed at comparing collaborative andindividual translation are carried out with comparable subjects and involve choicenetwork analysis (cf. Campbell 2001) and integrated problem and decision reports (cf.Gile 2004).Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are used to process the data. Thefindings are expected to be applicable in translation training, especially in settingswhere L2 translation is taught at university level.

The thesis deals with the way student groups translate when simulating interactions between translators and clients, using risk management concepts as tools for describing their decisions. The research aims are: 1) to explore how the use of peer-group interaction in a simulated setting affects students’ ways of managing risk while translating, and 2) to study whether translators have any identifiable pattern of behavior of risk management and effort distribution. A two-cycle experiment involving two roles, the translator and the simulated client, was carried out with a class of translation students to test the effects of the main variable of peer-group interaction. Performance data were collected with screen recordings and think-aloud protocols. Additional data are collected through pre-and-post-experiment questionnaires and interviews with student subjects. The research analyzes of the translators’ rendition processes, codes the problems they face, observe the translation procedures they consider and finally adopt, and looks into the justifications for their procedures, in order to interpret their risk management. / La presente investigación analiza cómo los estudiantes de traducción gestionan el riesgo mientras traducen en un entorno simulado en el que se representa la relación traductor-cliente. Los objetivos de la investigación son: 1) analizar cómo la interacción de grupo de pares en un entorno simulado altera la forma en que los estudiantes gestionan el riesgo durante la traducción, y 2) averiguar si los traductores individuales tienen un patrón de comportamiento identificable en lo que respecta a la gestión de riesgo y a la distribución del esfuerzo. Se realizó un experimento de dos ciclos que incluyó dos roles (el traductor y el cliente simulado) con un grupo de estudiantes de traducción para evaluar los efectos de la interacción en un grupo de pares. Se recolectaron datos adicionales por medio de cuestionarios previos y posteriores al experimento, así como también por medio de entrevistas con los sujetos. Con el fin de interpretar su gestión del riesgo, la investigación analiza los procesos de traducción de los traductores, clasifica los problemas que enfrentaron, considera los procedimientos de traducción que tuvieron en cuenta y los que, finalmente, decidieron usar, y busca la razón por la que usaron dichos procedimientos.

This comparative analysis of four different German-language versions of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) shows the correlation between political and socio-cultural circumstances, as well as ideological differences, and translations of the novel. The first German translation was created by Herberth E. Herlitschka in 1932, entitled Welt – Wohin? Two further versions of it were released in 1950 and 1981. In 1978, the East German publisher Das Neue Berlin published a new translation created by Eva Walch, entitled Schöne neue Welt. My thesis focuses on the first translations by both Herlitschka and Walch, but takes into account the others as well. The methodological basis is Heidemarie Salevsky’s tripartite model. With its focus on author and work, commissioning institution and translator, it was developed as a tool to determine the factors influencing the process of literary translation. Within this framework, the translations are contextualized within the cultural and political circumstances of the Weimar and German Democratic Republics, including an historical overview of the two main publishers, Insel and Das Neue Berlin. With reference to letters between Herlitschka and his publisher Anton Kippenberg at the Insel Verlag, secured from the Goethe und Schiller Archiv (Stiftung Weimarer Klassik), titles and subtitles as paratextual elements of the Herlitschka versions are examined. An overview of Lawrence Venuti’s and Hans Vermeer’s approaches to the notions of domesticating and foreignizing provides further theoretical tools to assess the translations. Venuti rejects the technique of domesticating translation as, in his opinion, it constitutes an act of violence against the source language, which is contrast with Vermeer’s perspective, according to which the alternatives are equivalent. In Vermeer’s opinion, both the domesticating as well as the foreignizing translation do not destroy the source culture. Another fundamental theoretical principle is Otto Kade’s claim that the affiliation of a translator to a certain social system and identification with a certain ideology are evident in his or her work. The thesis includes a study of the afterwords in the East German versions, which display an intent to create distance between the society of the novel and that of the translator. These paratexts function as a tool for censorship and at the same time as a means to circumvent it. Chapters 1-4 and 16 is selected for intensive analysis. It becomes obvious that the different socio-political situations influence the outcome of the translations. One of the most striking differences between them, Herlitschka’s translocation of the original setting, is identified as a parodistic device. An analysis of the themes of gender, race and sexuality further answers what kinds of factors influenced the process of literary translation, what kinds of modifications appear and what causes them. Herlitschka’s work displays a tendency to intensify traces of misogyny and racism, and to tone down descriptions of sexuality, phenomena which could not be found in Walch’s text. The conclusion links to Margaret Atwood’s introduction to the most recent Canadian edition of Brave New World and identifies the examination of the two key German translations of the novel as an extension of her argument, pointing to the novel’s relevance for contemporary times, transcending geographical and linguistic borders to include readers in all modern societies and cultures.

This comparative analysis of four different German-language versions of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) shows the correlation between political and socio-cultural circumstances, as well as ideological differences, and translations of the novel. The first German translation was created by Herberth E. Herlitschka in 1932, entitled Welt – Wohin? Two further versions of it were released in 1950 and 1981. In 1978, the East German publisher Das Neue Berlin published a new translation created by Eva Walch, entitled Schöne neue Welt. My thesis focuses on the first translations by both Herlitschka and Walch, but takes into account the others as well. The methodological basis is Heidemarie Salevsky’s tripartite model. With its focus on author and work, commissioning institution and translator, it was developed as a tool to determine the factors influencing the process of literary translation. Within this framework, the translations are contextualized within the cultural and political circumstances of the Weimar and German Democratic Republics, including an historical overview of the two main publishers, Insel and Das Neue Berlin. With reference to letters between Herlitschka and his publisher Anton Kippenberg at the Insel Verlag, secured from the Goethe und Schiller Archiv (Stiftung Weimarer Klassik), titles and subtitles as paratextual elements of the Herlitschka versions are examined. An overview of Lawrence Venuti’s and Hans Vermeer’s approaches to the notions of domesticating and foreignizing provides further theoretical tools to assess the translations. Venuti rejects the technique of domesticating translation as, in his opinion, it constitutes an act of violence against the source language, which is contrast with Vermeer’s perspective, according to which the alternatives are equivalent. In Vermeer’s opinion, both the domesticating as well as the foreignizing translation do not destroy the source culture. Another fundamental theoretical principle is Otto Kade’s claim that the affiliation of a translator to a certain social system and identification with a certain ideology are evident in his or her work. The thesis includes a study of the afterwords in the East German versions, which display an intent to create distance between the society of the novel and that of the translator. These paratexts function as a tool for censorship and at the same time as a means to circumvent it. Chapters 1-4 and 16 is selected for intensive analysis. It becomes obvious that the different socio-political situations influence the outcome of the translations. One of the most striking differences between them, Herlitschka’s translocation of the original setting, is identified as a parodistic device. An analysis of the themes of gender, race and sexuality further answers what kinds of factors influenced the process of literary translation, what kinds of modifications appear and what causes them. Herlitschka’s work displays a tendency to intensify traces of misogyny and racism, and to tone down descriptions of sexuality, phenomena which could not be found in Walch’s text. The conclusion links to Margaret Atwood’s introduction to the most recent Canadian edition of Brave New World and identifies the examination of the two key German translations of the novel as an extension of her argument, pointing to the novel’s relevance for contemporary times, transcending geographical and linguistic borders to include readers in all modern societies and cultures.

In this thesis I outline my theory of translation as an interpretive tool. I undertake an analysis of the concepts of heteroglossia, hybridity, and positionality, as conceived of by Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi K. Bhabha, and Linda Alcoff, respectively. These ideas function similarly: heteroglossic forces are constantly being brought to bear upon languages, the hybrid nature of culture is continually being rearticulated, and the positionality of the interpreter is always subject to change. I establish a theory that allows for translation to remain open, a theory that sees all incarnations of a text (the source and all of its translations) as being perpetually discursive, rather than fixing upon one version as the definitive or “correct” rendering. Translations occupy a fluctuating, unstable, and therefore creative location; they provide an ever-shifting temporal and spatial perspective. I translate excerpts from texts written by the Afro-German poet May Ayim and the Turkish German author Emine Sevgi Özdamar from German into English. This brings my theory into application and demonstrates both the fluidity of translation and the depth of interpretation to be found within this process. / Graduate / 0311 / 0679

Šiame darbe nagrinėjami subtitravimo kaip audiovizualaus vertimo metodo ypatumai. Darbo tikslas yra ištyrinėti dokumentinio filmo “Super Didelis Aš” (2004) kalbos ir materialisios kultūros perteikimą per subtitruotą filmo vertimą siekiant nustatyti vertimo procese vartojamas transformacijas ir klaidas. Teorinėje straipsnio dalyje apžvelgiami subtitravimo ypatumai, kultūrinio vertimo samprata, bei specifiniai materialiosios kultūros (maisto) aspektai. Emipirinėje darbo dalyje aprašoma tyrimo eiga ir metodai. Filmo vertimo analizė parodė jog dėl Anglų ir Lietuvių kalbų skirtumo, bei subtitravimo kaip audiovizualaus vertimo metodo ypatumai, apsprendė vertimo transformacijų vartoseną. / The aim of the thesis is to investigate the transference of language and material culture of the documentary film “Super Size Me” (2004) through the audiovisual translation method of subtitling in order to identify translation transformations used in the process of translation. Theoretical part of the work concentrates on the peculiarities of subtitling method, explores the notion of cultural translation and specific aspects of material culture, food culture in particular. The process of the research and methods are described in the empirical part of the work. The analysis of the film translation revealed, that the usage of the translation transformations was determined by the differences between English and Lithuanian languages as well as by the peculiarities of the subtitled text.

Research based on translation expertise, which is also sometimes referred to as translation competence, has been a growing area of investigation in translation studies. These studies have not only focused on how translation expertise may be conceptualised and defined, but also on how this expertise is acquired and developed by translators. One of the key observations that arise from an overview of current research in the field of translation expertise is the prevalence of process-oriented methodologies in the field, with product-oriented methodologies used comparatively infrequently. This study is based on the assumption that product-oriented methodologies, and specifically the corpus-based approach, may provide new insights into translation expertise. The study therefore sets out to address the lack of comprehensive and systematic corpus-based analyses of translation expertise. One of the foremost concerns of corpus-based translation studies has been the investigation of what is known as the features of translated language which are often categorised as: explicitation, simplification, normalisation and levelling-out. The main objective of this study is to investigate the hypothesis that the features of translated language can be taken as an index of translation expertise. The hypothesis is founded on the premise that if the features of translated language are considered to be the textual traces of translation strategies, then the different translation strategies associated with different levels of translation expertise will be reflected in different frequencies and distributions of these features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. The study therefore aimed to determine if there are significant differences in the frequency and distribution of the features of translated language in the work of experienced and inexperienced translators. As background to this main research question, the study also investigated a secondary hypothesis in which translated language demonstrates unique features that are the consequence of various aspects of the translation process. A custom-built comparable English corpus was used for the study, comprising three subcorpora: translations by experienced translators, translations by inexperienced translators, and non-translations. A selection of linguistic operationalization’s was chosen for each of the four features of translated language. The differences in the frequency and distribution of these linguistic operationalization’s in the three sub corpora were analysed by means of parametric or non-parametric ANOVA. The findings of the study provide some support for both hypotheses. In terms of the translation expertise hypothesis, some of the features of translated language demonstrate significantly different frequencies in the work of experienced translators compared to the work of inexperienced translators. It was found that experienced translators are less explicit in terms of: formal completeness, simplify less frequently because they use a more varied vocabulary, use longer sentences and have a lower readability index score on their translations, and use contractions more frequently, which signals that they normalise less than inexperienced translators. However, experienced translators also use neologisms and loanwords less frequently than inexperienced translators, which is suggestive of normalisation occurring more often in the work of experienced translators when it comes to lexical creativity. These linguistic differences are taken as indicative of the different translation strategies used by the two groups of translators. It is believed that the differences are primarily caused by variations in experienced and inexperienced translators‟ sensitivity to translation norms, their awareness of written language conventions, their language competence (which involves syntactic, morphological and vocabulary knowledge), and their sensitivity to register. Furthermore, it was also found that there are indeed significant differences between translated and non-translated language, which also provides support for the second hypothesis investigated in this study. Translators explicitate more frequently than non-translators in terms of formal completeness, tend to have a less extensive vocabulary, tend to raise the overall formality of their translations, and produce texts that are less creative and more conformist than non-translators‟ texts. However, statistical support is lacking for the hypothesis that translators explicitate more at the propositional level than original text producers do, as well as for the hypothesis that translators are inclined to use a more neutral middle register. / MA (Language Practice), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

In translation studies, the short story cycle has been largely overlooked as an object of study in prose translation. This thesis serves as a case study on the practice of translating the short story cycle, using my translation of Suzanne Myre’s 2007 short story collection Mises à mort as a paradigm. The thesis comprises four sections: the first is devoted to a discussion of the short story cycle, a modernist form of the short story collection. It is a hybrid subgenre, balancing elements of both the traditional short story collection, characterized by heterogeneity, and the novel, characterized by homogeneity. In this first section, I examine a few definitions of the cycle, then I discuss the subgenre according to a four-part criteria established by Gerald Lynch: ‘character,’ ‘place,’ ‘theme’ and ‘style or tone.’ In the second section, I provide an analysis of Mises à mort within the framework of short story cycle criteria; an examination of the characters, setting, overarching themes and stylistic parallels serves to demonstrate how and why I ultimately interpreted the collection as a short story cycle. The third section is my complete translation of the work. In the fourth and final section, I discuss what implications my interpretation of Mises à mort as a cycle had for my translation thereof, and what unique challenges it presented. I compare my first draft, produced in the mindset that I was translating a traditional collection, to my final draft, revised to accommodate the cohesiveness of the work. This thesis serves to demonstrate how a translator can accommodate for the dual nature of the short story cycle, simultaneously maintaining the discreteness and interconnectedness of the stories.