Idiom Translation Quality Assessment on “Landline” Novel by Rainbow Rowell

This study aimed at assessing the quality of idiom translation in a novel entitled “Landline” by Rainbow Rowell. By referring to Nababan’s Translation Quality Assessment model (2012), this study assessed the idioms’ translation according to the degree of accuracy, acceptability, and readability. The data analyzed in this study include the idioms and Indonesian translations, as well as the assessment result made by three expert assessors. Those idioms were identified and grouped based on the classification adapted from Palmer (1981). There are 37 idioms found, which consist of 2 idioms that can undergo syntactic changes, 10 idioms with syntactic limitation, 10 frozen idioms, 5 partial idioms, and 10 phrasal verbs. The findings show that the Indonesian translation of those idioms generally has a high-quality level, especially those which were translated into equivalent idioms in the target language. Paraphrasing also plays a major role as a translation strategy used by the translator. However, this strategy may sometimes lead to distortion of the original message in the target language

Chapter Bibliography

authored support system; contextual machine translation; controlled document authoring; controlled language; document structure; terminology management; translation technology; usability evaluatio

An Analysis of the Persian Translation of the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Based on Juliane House’s (1997) Quality Assessment Model of Translation

As quality is one of the most important aspects of translation studies, the researchers aim at analyzing the quality of the Persian translation of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which is one of the best-selling novels in the world based on House’s (1997) model of translation quality assessment. As it was time-consuming to apply this model to the whole book, twenty sections out of forty-five sections of the English version were selected randomly. In this qualitative-descriptive research, both source text and target text were compared in tables regarding quality. The study revealed that the translator had translated the text overtly, confirming House’s idea, who noted that literary texts should be translated overtly. However, the cultural filter was applied to some parts of the text that were not acceptable in the target culture. Therefore, covert translation was acceptable in some parts. According to the analysis based on House’s model, the Persian translation was almost of good quality. The register, as well as the related sub-branches, was observed well in most parts of the target text. The text, in respect of textual means, was also cohesive and coherent; however, the lexical choice in some parts needed improvement. The researchers also found out that some part of the source text information was not transferred to the target text without any particular reasons. Thus, it was illustrated that although House’s translation quality assessment model is the best translation quality assessment model among other models, it needs improvement. House’s model was not able to analyze the text in respect of information transfer. Therefore, this could be a weak point in House’s model. In short, the translated text was not of high quality as it needs improvement in respect of information transfer and lexical choice

Simultaneous Interpreting from German into Italian: the Importance of Preparation on a Selection of Cultural Items

According to the AIIC, the forwarding of preparation material to interpreters prior to simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a contractual term, as it enables interpreters to fully harness their expertise and provide a better service. Yet, despite being largely acknowledged as a fundamental support tool and a helpful resource by professional interpreters and students alike, preparation has been the subject of a limited number of experimental studies. This study aims to examine the importance of preparation for the SI of speeches including a number of cultural items, in order to both underline the importance of previous knowledge for achieving a higher level of proficiency in SI and to raise awareness in speakers and event managers about the need to provide interpreters with all the relevant documents

“What’s in her names?” Exploring Strategies on the Translation of Personal Names in Angela Carter’s Literary Works; Symbolism and Hermeneutics in the Polysystem of Translation

The translation of personal literary names is a challenging task in the framework of the Greek translations of works by Angela Carter. This essay focuses on the novel Heroes and Villains (Ήρωες και Κακοί, tr. Sarafianos G., 1996) where the amount of information through symbolism, which is carried by main names used as vital elements of the Source Language Text (SL text), does not abide to inappropriate translation choices; inappropriate choices would mean that equivalence (in all its forms but first and foremost functional equivalence) is affected in the Target Language Text, consequently affecting the perception of  the TL reader.Within the frame of the Polysystem Theory (Even-Zohar 1990), the essay tries to suggest possible choices and solutions which were not favored by the Greek translator, after an analysis of the translation units examined through the prism of Hermeneutics.The essay is a revised version of part of the writer’s PhD thesis under the title “A Translatological Analysis of Four Translations of Works by Angela Carter in Greek”, (Sofianou, 2009) from the Dpt. Of Translation and Intercultural Studies, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, AUTH.Η μετάφραση των ονομάτων παρουσιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον στα μεταφράσματα έργων της Α. Κάρτερ. Η παρούσα μελέτη ασχολείται με το έργο Heroes and Villains (Ήρωες και Κακοί, μετ. Σαραφιανός Γ., 1996)  όπου ο πλούτος της πληροφορίας μέσω του συμβολισμού που φέρουν τα ονόματα από τη χρήση τους ως αναπόσπαστα και ζωτικά στοιχεία του κειμένου-πηγή, δεν αφήνει περιθώριο ακατάλληλων μεταφραστικών επιλογών, καθώς επηρεάζεται καταλυτικά η λειτουργική ισοδυναμία του κειμένου στη γλώσσα-στόχο και η αντίληψη του κειμένου από τον τελικό αποδέκτη που δεν είναι άλλος από τον αναγνώστη της γλώσσας-στόχου.Στο πλαίσιο της Πολυσυστηματικής Θεωρίας (Even-Zohar 1990), επιχειρούνται να δοθούν επιλογές και λύσεις που δεν προτιμήθηκαν από τον έλληνα μεταφραστή ως μεταφραστικές στρατηγικές, αφού πρώτα αναλυθούν οι μεταφραστικές μονάδες μέσα από το πρίσμα της ερμηνευτικής.Η δημοσίευση αυτή βασίστηκε και είναι εμπλουτισμένη μορφή τμήματος της διδακτορικής διατριβής της συγγραφέως με θέμα “A Translatological Analysis of Four Translations of Works by Angela Carter in Greek”, (Σοφιανού, 2009) στον Τομέα Μετάφρασης και Διαπολιτισμικών Σπουδών του Τμήματος Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής Α.Π.Θ

Prosody in Simultaneous Interpretation: a Case Study for the German- Italian Language Pair

Prosody in simultaneous interpretation (SI) is a recent research field receiving increasing attention but still insufficiently explored for certain language pairs. The present contribution discusses the prosodic features of interpreted texts as such and in relation to the source text (ST) for the German-Italian language pair. The target texts (TTs) of six professional interpreters were transcribed and analysed according to the following analysis criteria: speech rate, pauses (filled and unfilled and their position in the text) and syllable lengthening, intonation and prominence. The objective of the study was to analyse the prosody of professional interpreters through the perceptual method, assessing the features of prosody as observed in interpreting practitioners. Since the ST is an example of impromptu speech, the study also aimed at understanding the role played by spontaneous speech in the interpreting process. The results concerning interpreters’ speech rate and intonation confirmed consolidated theories in SI, whereas categories such as pauses, stress on words and the sub-category of syllable lengthening raised new points, showing that some specific behaviour is intentionally produced by interpreters to deal with difficult portions of text through the use of prosodic features

Comparative Evaluation of Translation Memory (TM) and Machine Translation (MT) Systems in Translation between Arabic and English

In general, advances in translation technology tools have enhanced translation quality significantly. Unfortunately, however, it seems that this is not the case for all language pairs. A concern arises when the users of translation tools want to work between different language families such as Arabic and English. The main problems facing ArabicEnglish translation tools lie in Arabic’s characteristic free word order, richness of word inflection – including orthographic ambiguity – and optionality of diacritics, in addition to a lack of data resources. The aim of this study is to compare the performance of translation memory (TM) and machine translation (MT) systems in translating between Arabic and English.The research evaluates the two systems based on specific criteria relating to needs and expected results. The first part of the thesis evaluates the performance of a set of well-known TM systems when retrieving a segment of text that includes an Arabic linguistic feature. As it is widely known that TM matching metrics are based solely on the use of edit distance string measurements, it was expected that the aforementioned issues would lead to a low match percentage. The second part of the thesis evaluates multiple MT systems that use the mainstream neural machine translation (NMT) approach to translation quality. Due to a lack of training data resources and its rich morphology, it was anticipated that Arabic features would reduce the translation quality of this corpus-based approach. The systems’ output was evaluated using both automatic evaluation metrics including BLEU and hLEPOR, and TAUS human quality ranking criteria for adequacy and fluency.The study employed a black-box testing methodology to experimentally examine the TM systems through a test suite instrument and also to translate Arabic English sentences to collect the MT systems’ output. A translation threshold was used to evaluate the fuzzy matches of TM systems, while an online survey was used to collect participants’ responses to the quality of MT system’s output. The experiments’ input of both systems was extracted from ArabicEnglish corpora, which was examined by means of quantitative data analysis. The results show that, when retrieving translations, the current TM matching metrics are unable to recognise Arabic features and score them appropriately. In terms of automatic translation, MT produced good results for adequacy, especially when translating from Arabic to English, but the systems’ output appeared to need post-editing for fluency. Moreover, when retrievingfrom Arabic, it was found that short sentences were handled much better by MT than by TM. The findings may be given as recommendations to software developers

Postediting machine translation output and its revision: subject-matter experts versus professional translators

El presente estudio compara la post-edición de textos técnicos de ingenieros y traductores profesionales en términos de velocidad, documentación y cambios. También se compara la calidad de los textos post-editados. Además, se explora cuál de los siguientes flujos de trabajo es más rápido y produce resultados de mayor calidad: la post-edición de los resultados de Traducción Automática hecha por los ingenieros y la revisada por traductores profesionales, o viceversa. Los resultados sugieren que la experiencia y conocimientos en la materia son los principales factores que determinan la calidad de la post-edición. Cuando se penalizan los errores recurrentes, la post-edición de textos técnicos realizada por los ingenieros es significativamente de mayor calidad que la de los traductores. La velocidad de revisión de traductores e ingenieros no difirió significativamente. En textos técnicos, la mejora de la calidad que conlleva que el ingeniero revise la post-edición del traductor es mayor que en cuando el trabajo se organiza al revés. Además, la calidad de los textos post-editados y sus versiones revisadas (ya sea realizada por traductores profesionales o ingenieros) cambia significativamente según se penalicen o no los errores recurrentes.El present estudi compara la post-edició de textos tècnics d'enginyers i traductors professionals en termes de velocitat, documentació i canvis. També es compara la qualitat dels textos post-editats. A més, s'explora quin dels següents fluxos de treball és més ràpid i produeix resultats de major qualitat: la post-edició dels resultats de Traducció Automàtica feta pels enginyers i la revisada per traductors professionals, o viceversa. Els resultats suggereixen que l'experiència i coneixements en la matèria són els principals factors que determinen la qualitat de la post-edició. Quan es penalitzen els errors recurrents, la post-edició de textos tècnics realitzada pels enginyers és significativament de major qualitat que la dels traductors. La velocitat de revisió de traductors i enginyers no va diferir significativament. En textos tècnics, la millora de la qualitat que comporta que l'enginyer revisi la post-edició del traductor és major que en quan el treball s'organitza a l'inrevés. A més, la qualitat dels textos post-editats i les seves versions revisades (ja sigui realitzada per traductors professionals o enginyers) canvia significativament segons es penalitzin o no els errors recurrents.The present research compares engineers’ and professional translators’ postediting a technical text in terms of speed, documentation and changes. It also compares the postedited texts with regard to quality. Further, we explore which of the following workflows is faster and produces outputs of higher quality: Postediting MT output by engineers and revising the postedited text by professional translators, or vice-versa. The findings suggest that expertise and experience in the subject-matter are the main factors determining postediting quality. When the recurrent errors are penalized, the engineers’ postediting of technical texts is of significantly higher quality than the translators’. The translators’ and the engineers’ postediting and revision speed did not differ significantly. For technical texts, the quality improvement brought about by engineer-revision of translator-postediting is higher than vice-versa. Further, the quality of the postedited texts and their revised versions (either performed by professional translators or engineers) changes significantly as a result of penalizing and unpenalizing recurrent errors

Interpreter-Assisted Investigative Interviews: Needs, Challenges and Quality

This thesis researches the yet to be fully explored dynamic of interpretation services needs and interpretation service optimisation (i.e., interview and interpretation quality assurance). The research began with an exploratory analysis of factors affecting interpreter-assisted investigative interviews and then took a subtle experimental swipe at factors affecting intelligibility and informativeness of translation. Recognition of the importance of the context in which interpretation currently takes place led to the addition of a wider range of approaches. This informed a broad review of relevant literature. The empirical work is presented as follows. First, is a Study Space Analysis (SSA) of policy-relevant research, which provides a base for determining the adequacy and depth of the existing body of knowledge. The results show that interpretation service needs and planning appear mildly or infrequently researched, and there exists little or no studies investigating police diversity effects on interpretation service needs. Also, studies investigating cognitive load, language and gender effects on interpreting accuracy are sparse. Finally, this study shows that the literature focuses on interpretation as a service for offenders rather than for victims and witnesses. The implications of this for social harmony are discussed. The second study concerns the optics of a police service that does not resemble the population policed. In a convenience sample of 104 ethnic minority individuals, the descriptive and thematic analysis indicates that police diversity tends to improve trust and impact the need for interpretation service. These findings bring to the fore the benign potency of language education. The third study explores the opinions of 66 International Law Enforcement Agency (ILEA) investigators and 40 interpreters on factors affecting investigative interviews involving the assistance of interpreters. Using descriptive and thematic analysis, it was shown that investigators plan only occasionally with interpreters. The seldom planning practise is found to occur because of investigator’s role perception of interpreters and individualistic culture of investigators. Additionally, interpreter presence is observed to impact rapport building, and the effect of interruption is manageable with the right skills and experience combination. The fourth study uses a complex design to determine factors relevant to the intelligibility and informativeness of translations of witness accounts of a sample of audio depictions of non-violent offences. The study employed 240 aggregated ratings from 4 volunteer assessors of 60 textual interpretation of 15mins, 10mins and 5mins witness accounts using Tiselius (2009) 6-points Intelligibility and informativeness scale. Log-linear analysis revealed a surprising lack of consensus of assessments of intelligibility and informativeness across assessors, but judgements of informativeness relative to intelligibility within individual assessors appear coherent and consistent. Length of audio was not associated with intelligibility or informativeness. A small exploratory follow up to the study investigated what seemed to make translations unintelligible. The next study mapped the opinions of a sample of 51 expert interpreters with a range of experience about the perception of their work and its challenges. This shows consistency with existing literature and studies investigated in the thesis except for opinions on the role of police diversity which is found to increase trust and interpretation service needs