Albaglobal

Speaking in (Many) Tongues Can Be Profitable

By JOSEPH P. FRIED
Published: April 30, 2006
WANTED, and in many instances urgently needed: translators and interpreters of numerous languages into English. Opportunities especially good in New York and other cities with large and highly varied immigrant populations. And in government agencies where certain Middle Eastern and Asian languages have surged in priority in the post 9/11 world.

IN TRANSLATION Ethel Ugbebor gave up chemistry when her first jobs as an interpreter of Nigerian languages proved more profitable. She now owns a translating company.

Personality-Oriented Principles in Teaching Languages

hese days the educational system of Russia is undergoing intensive and crucial modernization. The structure and the basic functions of the higher educational system, mainly represented by our universities and, to a lesser degree, institutes and academies, are supposed to be dramatically altered in the nearest future. One of the changes manifests itself as a fast shift to a bi-level teaching system similar to what they mostly have in Western Europe today. Another change is formulated as a module-structured educational process and a credit system of assessment within the framework of the so-called Bologna process. All this has placed our establishments of higher education into such conditions that demand uniformity of the reforms, irrespective of the location and profile of the specific university in the vast territory of Russia.

Derecho y traductología en la formación del traductor jurídico

una propuesta para el uso de herramientas de formación virtual

a traductología es una disciplina de síntesis que recoge aportaciones de muchos campos del saber tanto en lo que se refiere a modelos conceptuales como a metodologías de investigación. En la práctica de la traducción y la interpretación sucede lo mismo. El profesional requiere, para ejercer, conocimientos de diversos campos y disciplinas. Cuando hablamos de traducción jurídica, traducción económica, traducción científica, traducción literaria, etc. hablamos de traducciones que se enmarcan en el campo del derecho, de la economía, de la ciencia, de la literatura, etc. Tratar, en cualquier grado, los textos de estos campos requiere unos conocimientos especializados. El profesional de la mediación no puede en modo alguno separarse de esta exigencia. La responsabilidad del traductor al enfrentarse a un texto debe llevarlo a una comprensión excelente de lo que traduce para poder transmitirlo a una nueva audiencia. En el caso del traductor del derecho, la transmisión de información se produce entre dos sistemas jurídicos diferentes, y estos sistemas a veces incluso proceden de dos familias jurídicas diferentes, donde las coincidencias entre modos de organizar la experiencia humana, conflictos y posibles soluciones son mínimas. Éste es precisamente el caso de la traducción entre el inglés y el catalán o el español. La tradición civilista del derecho continental ha dado lugar a un ordenamiento con diferencias muy notables respeto de los sistemas de tradición anglosajona. Estas divergencias incrementan y diversifican las necesidades del traductor en relación con los conocimientos que conforman su competencia temática.

Essential Activities in Translator-Interpreter Training

Abstract

The extremely fast pace of life, business and communications in our present world demands, more than ever before, the training of professionals in the field of translation and interpretation who are capable of successfully tackling a true mosaic of challenges in their linguistic and cultural endeavors, both in the field of written translation and in the field of interpreting or oral translation. It is not enough anymore to train a specialist by translating literary excerpts or hardly useful, outdated texts. It is of the essence to train specialists who can accurately translate and interpret in the fields of science and technology, health care, business, immigration, courts, media and other areas of great demand in today's fast-paced world. This article strives to illustrate what can be done in this respect, especially when it comes to training exercises and the creation of new translation-interpretation texts.

Documentación para la localización de software

Introducción

a localización de software se puede considerar una especialidad más en traducción, aunque es muy distinta de otras especialidades, más que por su contenido, por su forma, ya que al traducir software no se trabaja con un texto limpio, sino con un texto insertado en un código que el traductor debe poder reconocer y aislar. Así pues, las competencias de un profesional de la localización de software difieren de las de traductores especializados en otros ámbitos. Sucede lo mismo con la documentación aplicada a la localización: las fuentes y los métodos de consulta utilizados también son distintos, como veremos a continuación.

Football Is Coming Home to Die-Hard Translators

Football (soccer) has been part of my life since my early years. My father is a former player and coach who has devoted his life to the study of football. So, even before I had been to school, I used to read his annotations on formations, line-ups, strategies, and the history of football. Like most kids in Brazil, I played soccer during my childhood and adolescence and cheered for my favourite club. However, my skills on the pitch were not really outstanding, and my street soccer afternoons were soon replaced by an early career in Journalism.

Prior to starting pursuing my university degree, I had worked as a freelance football reporter for a local newspaper. Already an undergraduate student, I was hired in 1996 by Grupo Editorial Sinos, one of the largest communications groups in southern Brazil, and I worked in a daily newspaper for almost two years. During that period, I spent several months writing for the sports pages, which included daily coverage of Rio Grande do Sul's two biggest football clubs—Grêmio FBPA, club world champions in 1983, and SC Internacional, which were eventually crowned FIFA Club World Cup champions in 2006.

Working for Translation Agencies as a Freelancer

A Guide for Novice Translators

he translation profession has recently undergone three important changes: globalization, professionalization, and specialization. Not so long ago translators would mainly operate on local markets, delivering their translations in person. With the advent of the Internet and e-mail, the profession has gone global and geographical boundaries have disappeared. On the one hand, this means that translators may solicit clients from all over the world; on the other hand, it means a markedly larger pool of translators agencies may choose from; hence, increased competition. Combined with the recent rapid development of translator education, the increased competition means that it is more difficult to get into the profession if you do not have sufficient education and training. The market has also evolved into higher specialization which is driven by the growing knowledge of languages, in particular of English, among employees. Easier texts are translated in-house by clients themselves, while more specialized or technically complex ones are outsourced to translation agencies.

The Bottom Line

Practical tips for practicing translators.

Q:

Dear Fire Ant & Worker Bee,

Is it necessary to accept all job offers from direct clients, or can one occasionally say 'no'?

Linguists and Culture Experts at a Crossroad

imitations in Formulating an Experimental Translation Theory

Abstract

Theories of translation linked to linguistics and cultures have been proposed to take care of an adequate mediation in translating. These theories attempt differently to remove cultural and linguistic barriers between languages and communicate appropriately the intended message of the source text. In view of the differences and similarities between the linguistically and culturally oriented approaches, we shall attempt to study the limitations of these theories to help translation and the emergence of alternative theories. This study employed archival materials for investigation. Works of linguists, translatologists, sociologists, translators, language experts, anthropologists and literary scholars served as reference documents. An analytical, deductive, and synthetic approach is used. It is discovered that the equivalence approach of linguists is not consistent and is problematic and controversial. The culturally linked theory of translation, which is not exhaustive, is an approach that evaluates a text in its cultural dimension. This study concludes that the shortcomings of the two models has encouraged translators to look for alternatives, which led them to the textual, situational, and relevance theories. The study suggests that theories of translation be called approaches or models of translation until an experimental or scientific approach is formulated. Also, the main task of translating should be entrusted to the professional translator who decides on the approach to be used. Encouraging intercultural and cross-cultural understanding will be a good tool for reducing distance among people and cultures.

Key words: Culture, linguistics, theory, translation, mediation, limitation, languages.

The Bottom of the Iceberg

The Explicitation of the Implicit in English-Ukrainian-English Translation

ndeterminacy in translation has always been the cornerstone of numerous scientific works, and not without reason—translation implies an explicit conveying of things so far unknown to the addressee. There is plenty of "vague" information types in speech messages—preterition, irony, parody, intertextuality, etc.—all of these can be combined under a single term—implicit information. It is present in any context though we are mainly interested in the belles-lettres style of the English and Ukrainian contemporary writers in terms of both translation directions.

An interesting fact is that whenever the matter of explicitation is raised in translation science, most of post-Soviet researches would refer to it as "descriptive translation," evidently, after the coryphaeus of Russian translation science V. Komissarov. Yet, he refers to it as "explication" (Komissarov:160 - 186). A parallel survey showed that both terms are used to denote almost the same process. That is why, an incentive is needed to regulate this chaotic terminology—explicitation vs. explication. Maria Sidiropoulou in her Linguistic Identities Through Translation (2004) states (referring to Steiner 1975/1992:291): "...the mechanics of translation are primarily explicative; they explicate (or, strictly 'explicitate') and make graphic as much as they can of the semantic inherence of the original." (Sidiropoulou:17)