131 research outputs found
Review - Community Translation by Mustapha Taibi and Uldis Ozolins
No full textReview of Community Trabslation by Taibi, Mustapha and Uldis Ozolins. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 200 pp
Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators
No full text‘Translating across cultures’ and ‘cultural proficiency’ have become buzz words in translating and interpreting. Back in 1996, Mona Baker warned that many scholars had already begun to adopt a “‘cultural’ perspective ... a dangerously fashionable word that almost substitutes for rigour and coherence” (Baker 1996: 17). Anthropologists, who were the traditional custodians of the field complained that “Everyone is into culture now” (Kuper 1999: 2). Indeed, ‘culture’ became “top look-up” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2014. Its (over)use has led some anthropologists to seriously jettison the term (Agar 2006). As one anthropologist is reported to have stated, “studying culture today is like studying snow in the middle of an avalanche” (in Agar 2006: 2).
In translation, the term took central stage with “the cultural turn in translation studies” (Snell-Hornby 1990:84; 2006: 50-60). The ‘cultural turn’ itself began life much earlier in the field of Cultural Studies, a discipline focussing on contemporary ideologies, politics and how the media manipulates thought. For this discipline, ‘cultural translation’ involves analyzing the dynamics of conflicting models of reality and how they effect or suffer change as a result of contact both at an individual level and at the level of communities. Translation Studies also began to interest itself in the effects or changes as a result of intervention on the text, as well summed up by translation theorist Susan Bassnett (2014: 25):
“In the same way that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his or her peril.”
For linguists this means that understanding the text in question, whether original (source) or translated (target) is not only a question of vocabulary and the grammar, but also a question of assessing the nature of the situation; accessing and understanding what is implied, what can be referred, in what way, by whom and so on. This is the focus of Translating Cultures. Interestingly, Bassnett is also equally a Comparative Literatures scholar, and hence equally at home discussing cultural translation, which occurs in literature when novels are written by what Indian-born author Salman Rushdie called “translated men”. In this case the “translation” is to do with the intralingual usurping of the colonial language by a subject of colonialism for a post-colonial readership.
Our focus here is on interlingual communicating of meanings across language and cultural divides. Hence translation is understood as Intercultural Communication, an often- used epithet, used for example in 2012 by the International Federation of Translators to promote International Translation Day. The simple question is, what is the “cultural” that affects communication in translation?
The aim of this book then is to answer this question, and in so doing to put some rigour and coherence into this fashionable word. It explains what translators, interpreters and other mediators should know about the cultural factor and its importance in communication, translation and interpretation. As such, it aims to provide the context of culture marginalised or missing in books or courses focussing on either translation theory or translation practice, and to provide an understanding of translation theory and practice for those working in intercultural communication. Most importantly, in clarifying ‘culture’, it aims to raise awareness of its role in constructing, perceiving and translating reality.
This book, then, should serve as a framework for interpreters and translators (both actual and potential) working between any language, and also for those working or living between cultures who wish to understand more about their intercultural successes and frustrations.
The book is divided into three main parts:
Part 1: Framing Culture: The Culture-Bound Mental Map of the World.
Part 2: Shifting Frames: Translation and Mediation in Theory and Practice.
Part 3: The Array of Frames: Communication Orientations.
Framing Culture: The Culture Bound Mental Map of the World
Part 1 outlines the complexity of translation, and how even simple technical language can easily create problems that Google Translate cannot cope with, given its limited analysis and understanding of context. Differences across languages, as will be seen, often have their roots in differences across a variety of contexts, ranging from those of the immediate situation to those involving culture. We begin by discussing how the concepts of context, community and culture have been approached.
We then move to organising ‘culture’ and approaches to teaching it, into one unifying framework of Logical Levels, which will then form the backbone of the book itself. Throughout this book, culture is perceived as a system for making sense of experience. A basic presupposition is that this organization of experience is never an objective representation of ‘reality’. It is instead a simplified and distorted model that makes sense to one group of people but should not be expected to be universal. So, cultures act as frames within which external signs or ‘reality’ are interpreted. Logically then, we should not expect that the use of language to express these culture-bound models of reality may be directly translatable. How and in what ways those who interpret and translate should intervene on the text, and the subtly separated roles of the translator/interpreter and the cultural mediator are then discussed.
Part 1 concludes with an in-depth analysis of how individuals perceive, catalogue and construct reality, and how this perception is communicated through language. The approach is interdisciplinary, taking ideas from anthropology, such as Gregory Bateson’s Logical Typing and metamessage theories; Bandler and Grinder’s Meta-Model theory; Sociolinguistics; Speech Act Theory; Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory, and Hallidayan Functional Grammar.
Shifting frames: Translation and Mediation in Theory and Practice
Part 2 begins with a discussion of the strategies a translator, interpreter or cultural mediator needs to adopt to account for culture-bound frames. It includes a brief overview of how culture has been associated with translation. Translation itself, following Nida (1976:65), is here viewed as “essentially an aspect of a larger domain, namely, that of communication”. Steiner (1975:47) in his aptly titled book After Babel takes an even wider view of translation: “inside or between languages, human communication equals translation”. Hence, translation is discussed within the wider context of communication.
This stance entails making the basic differences in translation theory clear. Either translation is principally an activity of transferring or converting text from one language to another, or as we propose, a service with the aim of ensuring communication for people who do not have the necessary language skills. We focus on a number of procedures (such as chunking and use of the metamodel) designed to account for and mediate the context of culture and (re)frame the language for the new listener or reader. In all cases, practical examples of translations with commentary are provided.
The Array of Frames
Part 3 provides an outline of the major influences cultural orientations can have on communication. It begins with an explanation and taxonomy of cultural orientations. The main thrust concerns the communication orientation, and Edward Hall’s theory of contexting. This theory discusses the changing importance of implicit and explicit communication between cultures in the transmission of a message. Communication itself is divided into transactional (the transmission of information) and interactional (relational). Cultural orientations are then discussed according to their relevance in either transactional or interactional communication. As a result, commonly understood pragmatic features of languages, such as lexical density, clarity, (in)directness and politeness are linked to culture. Examples are given, and mediation procedures are discussed. Generally, indicators are given as to likely linguacultural orientations, as well as the pan-cultural situational factors. Emphasis is placed on the variety of factors that may affect communication style or response and the motivations that logically may give rise to those behaviours. Paralinguistic and non-verbal features of languacultures are touched on, and again are linked to cultural orientations.
Apart from our own input, regarding our own spheres of experience, the main sources in the literature come from interculturalists, such as Hofestede, Lewis and Trompenaars, who provide a mixture of qualitative and quantitative information regarding cultural motivations and communication. Practical examples are also taken both from the press and from translations
Curriculum innovation in the Arab world : community interpreting and translation
No full textThe term ‘community interpreting’ denominates a field of practice and study of increasing significance among modern multicultural societies and geographically mobile populations. As encapsulated by Pöchhacker (1999: 126–127), ‘community interpreting refers to interpreting in institutional settings of a given society in which public service providers and individual clients do not speak the same language … community interpreting facilitates communication within a social entity (society) that includes culturally different sub-groups’. According to Gouadec (2007: 35), ‘Community translation encompasses all translating (and interpreting) carried out to facilitate inter-community relations within a given country where diverse linguistic (and cultural) communities cohabit’. These definitions refer in very general terms to multilingual community situations requiring language services, yet community interpreting and translation have been associated with a few prominent host societies to large numbers of immigrants and refugees; these include Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and, since the 1990s, Southern Europe. The literature on community interpreting and translation (e.g. Barsky, 1996; Hale, 2007; Niska, 2002; Taibi, 2011; Wadensjö, 1998) abounds with references to migrants, refugees, and language minorities as the main clients of community interpreters and translators. This association between community language services and mainly European and North American immigration settings is solidly entrenched – as my own experience attests. During much of my time as a community interpreter and translator in Spain in the 1990s and, subsequently, as a lecturer in the field in Spain and Australia, I gave little thought to the situation of the same professional services in the Arab world. Nor am I alone in this: during a meeting held at a Saudi university in 2014 to discuss research and training in community interpreting and language services for pilgrims, a Saudi MP commented that this was the first he had heard of community interpreting and translation and noted the attendant need to recruit qualified professionals to guarantee quality services. Effectively, working with Arabic in dominant Spanish- or English-speaking cultures can foster a unidirectional view of Arabic speakers as consumers only, simply because in (for example) Europe and Australia they are usually migrants or refugees who need interpreters to communicate with/access mainstream public services. Yet this paradigm must clearly be inverted in many other parts of the world: in Arab countries it is Arabic speakers who provide the respective public services and, generally, speakers of other languages who use them
Quality assurance in community translation
No full textIn this chapter translation quality assurance is addressed in a specific and special subfield of translation, community translation, also known as public service translation. The first question that the title of the chapter (quality assurance in community translation) is likely to trigger is whether translation standards and quality assurance processes vary from one field of translation to another, i.e. whether community translation needs to have quality criteria and processes that are different from those applied in other fields of translation. The answer to this question is that, although the core of translation theories, assessment criteria, professional standards and quality assurance processes may apply to different types and settings of translation, each type and setting might require different or more specific considerations and applications, or might need quality processes and evaluations to place more emphasis on some aspects than others
Translating for pilgrims in Saudi Arabia : a matter of quality
No full textEvery year, multitudes of Muslims visit Saudi Arabia to perform one of the most important Islamic rituals, the Hajj (pilgrimage). During the Hajj, which takes place in the last month in the Islamic calendar, Ḏū al-Ḥijjah, approximately three to four million pilgrims gather and move in a limited area (at and around the Holy Mosque, in Mecca) and for a limited time (a few days for the obligatory rituals, but up to a few weeks for optional visits and activities). In addition to this annual event, thousands of religious visitors arrive in Mecca and Medina throughout the year, especially during the month of Ramadan. They travel to the two holy cities to perform Umrah (the optional pilgrimage to the Kaaba, in Mecca), pray at the Prophet Muhammad’s Mosque, and visit his tomb and other religious sites at Medina. It goes without saying that these large numbers of pilgrims require various community services, including transport, healthcare, safety awareness, accommodation, legal and administrative advice and so on. Naturally, given the different nationalities and languages that are represented, these and other services cannot be effectively provided without translation and interpreting services. Saudi authorities have made laudable efforts to improve Hajj services and the pilgrim experience. A number of construction, expansion, and renovation projects (e.g. the multilevel Jamarat Bridge and circumambulation space around the Kaaba) have been undertaken to reduce overcrowding hazards and make Hajj rituals more comfortable. Ambitious transport projects have been completed or are in progress (e.g. Makkah Mass Rail Transit and Haramain High Speed Rail). A number of disease control and prevention measures have been implemented, including continuous monitoring of local and international health hazards, health requirements for Hajj and Umrah visas, and healthcare advice and services before and during visitation. These and other improvements have been complemented with awareness-raising initiatives such as TV and radio programmes that specifically address Hajjrelated issues, as well as flyers, road signs, and illuminated panels that display information and advice. Institutions such as the Hajj Research Institute (Umm Al-Qura University) have also contributed to understanding the needs of pilgrims and improving Hajj services by undertaking Hajj-focused research in diverse areas such as administration, humanities, environment, health, architecture, engineering, information systems, and communication. However, although developments in infrastructures, logistics, and public services are impressive, it appears that the same cannot be said about communication with pilgrims. Little research has been conducted on interpreting and translation services during this large-scale annual event, but the few studies available as well as anecdotal evidence suggest that the current offering is still far from covering the needs of pilgrims or meeting quality standards. In this chapter, we discuss written translations with a view to exploring these issues. Specifically, we focus on translations provided for English-speaking pilgrims. Twelve samples of translated materials, randomly collected from different Saudi pilgrim services, are analysed qualitatively to establish the extent to which they meet basic quality standards such as content accuracy, grammatical and lexical appropriateness, functional equivalence, cohesion, and clarity of meaning. Before proceeding however, it is worthwhile to contextualise our subsequent analysis and commentary with a brief discussion of translation for pilgrims in terms of its community-oriented (public service) dimension, and the situation of Hajj-related translation and interpreting services in Saudi Arabia
Interpreting taboo : the case of Arabic interpreters in Spanish public services
No full textOne of the distinctive features of community interpreting (also known as public service interpreting) is the presence and participation of at least three persons in the interpreted communicative event: a service provider, a user, and an interpreter. Whether or not the interpreter is considered a party is the subject of ongoing debate (e.g. Barsky, 1996; Hale, 2007, 2008; Wadensjö, 1998), but there is indisputably a communicative situation comprising three vertices, as the title of Mason’s (2001) book, Triadic Exchanges, makes plain. The presence of three interlocutors (whether they are all considered as parties, or as two principal participants and an interpreter) conditions the manner in which utterances are formed and interpreted. A principal participant formulates and constructs a message; an interpreter decodes and recodes it; and another principal participant subsequently processes and responds to the interpreter’s rendering. As Wadensjö (1998) argues, the interpreter also co-constructs meaning with the main interlocutors and shares responsibility for the development of their exchange. As the interpreter’s clients usually come from linguistically and culturally distant communities, their exchanges typically involve linguistic and cultural asymmetries. Each principal participant (and the interpreter as well) follows a set of linguistic, social, and cultural norms that determine what and how much may be said, as well as how it may be said. These norms inform the way utterances are constructed and how they are supposed to be interpreted, in both senses of the word (interpretation as understanding or conceptualisation, and interpretation as oral or signed translation). This information implies that the interpreter must have a good command not only of the two working languages but also of their respective social and cultural conventions. Starting from the premise that linguistic output can hardly be disassociated from its social and cultural contexts, this chapter addresses the challenges that sex-related taboos present in community interpreting settings. Culture is understood herein as constituting a mould that shapes linguistic expressions in general, and linguistic forms relating to the human body and sexuality in particular. In this sense, feelings such as love, hate, and pleasure may be universal but cultural norms determine where, when, and how they may be expressed. The same feeling may have multiple verbal (and nonverbal) manifestations. Similarly, the same verbal (or nonverbal) representation may have a completely different impact on different audiences: what is an acceptable topic or expression for some cultural groups might be viewed as extremely offensive for others, at least in some contexts. Our focus in this chapter is upon interpreting in communicative situations that involve Arab cultural taboos, especially in public service settings such as hospitals and courts. In this chapter, the issue of taboo in community interpreting is discussed with special reference to the Spanish public service context and its Arab users. But the discussion is intended to draw attention to a number of issues generally related to intercultural communication and interpreting in public service settings, which may apply to other contexts and cultural groups as well. Our primary aim is to raise awareness among public instrumentalities and their staff of the need for intercultural sensitivity and special arrangements when engaging with users on intimate or sensitive subjects. Second, we explore the conflicting views among interpreters on the most appropriate manner to handle taboo topics and language. Finally, we distinguish between the situations and discourse constraints of different participant combinations and participation frameworks in interpreter-mediated public service encounters (e.g. male interpreter–female user–female provider; female interpreter–male user–male provider; culturally uniform user and interpreter; culturally different user and interpreter). Authentic examples are taken from public service situations involving an Arabic-Spanish interpreter, so as to illustrate the complexity of the task and analyse both observable and potential interpreting strategies
Impact of translated health information on CALD older people's health literacy : a pilot study
No full textLanguage barriers limit culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people's access to a range of services. but particularly healthcare (Brach and Fraserirector, 2000). This lack of participation negatively affects their health in a variety of ways. Most importantly, it results in a poor understanding of healthcare information. which in turn means CALD communities are less likely to receive preventive health care. and when they do they have a low adherence to treatment (Jacobs et al. 2006). English language barriers go hand in hand with low health literacy (Singleton, 2009 ), which is defined as "the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain. process. and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions" (Ratzan & Parker, 2000). In Australia, "'[p]eople who do not speak English well or at all are less likely to assess their health as good or better (59% compared to 83% of all people)" (Australian Social Inclusion Board). Effective communication is essential for healthcare: without it "the provision of health care ends - or proceeds only with errors, poor quality, and risks to patient safety" (Schyve, 2007 ). As has been pointed out several times in this volume (e.g. Rosendo; Lin & Ji; and Sharkas & Hamdan), translation plays an important role in making healthcare information more (or less) accessible to communities with limited host country literacy, thereby educating these communities and improving their health literacy. Such translation adaption lies at the core of culturally competent healthcare delivery (Kreuter et al., 2003)
Volunteers and public service translation
No full textCommunity translation, also called public service translation, generally implies a professional, quality-controlled service for linguistic groups with limited access to the mainstream language(s). It gained recognition as a specific field some decades ago, as part of access and equity policies in advanced democracies seeking to address the needs of newly arriving immigrants. However, a quick web search shows that ‘community translation’ has recently acquired another meaning: the translation of any type of content by volunteer bilinguals, with an emphasis not on for, but on by the community. In this emerging modern sense, it denotes a web-based (crowdsourced, collaborative, user-generated, wiki, etc.) phenomenon, whereby volunteer bilinguals translate any content type via social media: amateur translation by the community. To draw the necessary distinction, some authors (most notably O’Hagan, 2011) have coined the term community translation 2.0. This chapter will follow the same convention, as the 2.0 tag conveniently alludes both to the supporting technological platform (web 2.0) and its broader embedded concept of social media. Community/public service translation and community translation 2.0 would appear to have little in common. Apart from a passing mention by Lesch (2014) and Taibi and Ozolins (2016), no other author has so far felt the need to unite both concepts. Certainly, social media’s impact on professional activities has been the focus of thousands of studies since Locke et al. wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto in 2000; however, little attention has been paid to how the social media subset of community translation 2.0 impacts on traditional public service translation, hitherto the preserve of professionals. This chapter attempts to fill that gap by identifying the resultant landscape if both translation concepts (for and by the community) were to intersect, in the hope that such understanding could help maximise the efficient deployment of perpetually scarce community/public service translation resources. Although mass amateurisation suggests de-skilling and demonetarisation, it need not be wholly negative on professional translators: the entry of bilinguals and social media interaction could also benefit experts in an enhanced role as promoters of standards, trainers/mentors of volunteers and shapers of social perceptions about translation. Such increased influence could conceivably ripple- through into the long tail languages, thus far largely inaccessible to public service translation and professionalisation
Reconsidering tutorials and student-lecturer power relationships in language subjects
Get PDFThe power relationship between teachers/lecturers and students may have
negative effects on the process of learning because it can limit both ‘physical’ and verbal
access to the teacher/lecturer and give rise to a relatively negative attitude towards him/
her. This is why reconsidering that power relationship and trying to reduce the power
asymmetry is likely to improve both the relationship and the student’s learning and
performance. A way to contribute to bridging the distance between student and lecturer
and also enhance personalized teaching and learning is tutorials. This article reports the
results of an “experiment” that was carried out, with such objectives in mind, in the
Teacher Training School of Guadalajara (University of Alcalá).La relación de poder entre profesores y alumnos puede acarrear consecuencias
negativas para el proceso de aprendizaje. Por eso si se reconsidera esta relación
y se reduce la asimetría entre los dos participantes en el proceso educativo, es probable
que mejoren la relación entre los dos y el rendimiento de los alumnos. Una forma de
hacerlo es replantearse el concepto de “tutoría”. Este artículo presenta los resultados de
una experiencia en este sentido llevada a cabo en la Escuela de Magisterio de Guadalajara
(Universidad de Alcalá)
Public service interpreter education in the Gulf States : ideas for curriculum design and teaching
Get PDFThe Gulf States host large numbers of non-Arabic-speaking residents and visitors. These non-nationals need to deal with such public services as hospitals, schools, courts, and other local administrations. In many cases, English is used as a lingua franca; however, not all public service staff or clients are able to speak or communicate effectively in this language. The communication needs in such situations require the assistance of professional public service interpreters, which, in turn, calls for appropriate education. In
this paper, I outline education needs in public service interpreting in the Gulf States; provide an overview of common curricular contents and teaching methods in this area; put forward a proposal for learning outcomes, course contents, and teaching strategies; and highlight the importance of an interpreting practicum for graduate employability and community engagement
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