Translation Procedures

This paper consists both of the translation of a medical research article from English into Polish and the critical commentary. Published in Thyroid Research in 2016, the article explores the development of a predictive model for malignancy in thyroid nodules. The anticipated translational challenges lie in the source text’s specialised medical terminology, tight texture and complex syntactical structures. The overall strategy for translating the text into Polish is determined by the hypothetical brief, indicating the target audience and the text’s functional goal. As a departure point, the commentary presents prevalent Translation Studies theories, followed by discussion of the source text’s intra and extratextual features in the light of possible translation challenges. Owing to different conventions of text production between cultures, the translator is bound to manage pragmatic divergences between the source and the target context to recreate textuality in all its dimensions.  Thus, the commentary further explores the lexical, phraseological, grammatical, textual and pragmatic challenges associated with translating a medical research article for a linguistically and culturally different readership. Subsequently, the procedures applied to overcome these problems are critically evaluated as a part of the translator’s decision-making process. The commentary also assesses translation technology tools as an aid in enhancing the translator’s productivity as well as the reliability of the resources employed in the rendering process.

DEMJANOVÁ Ester: Translation techniques in Recursive translation. [BACHELOR THESIS]. – PAVOL JOZEF ŠAFÁRIK UNIVERSITY IN KOŠICE. FACULTY OF ARTS; DEPARTEMENT OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES. – Supervisor: Prof. dr hab. Grzegorz A. Kleparski – Košice: FF UPJŠ, 2013. 68 p. 

This thesis belongs to the field of translation theory. Its main objective is to analyse a recursively translated text from the point of view of translation techniques and to draw attention to the recursive translation, as well as to the possibilities of its application. Theoretical part of this thesis focuses on the commonly used translation techniques and gives many illustrative examples. The analytical part exemplifies recursive translation, introduces new terminology and a definition of this phenomenon. It also comparatively analyses a culturally significant text recursively translated by 4 professional translators. The hypothesis states that translation techniques employed by different translators on the same unit of translation in the recursive translation will be identical or will at least create a certain observable pattern. Secondary hypothesis claims that a technique mostly used by the translators in a given text will be transposition. This work may be further used for any study concerned with recursive translation and/or translation techniques.

Some translation scholars want us all to be political activists, as is their right and perhaps obligation. The moral connection between politics and translation usually concerns two kinds of observation: first, only rich and powerful groups tend to have their messages moved between languages (the poor and powerless rarely determine which messages are sent); second, translators habitually modify messages in the interests of one group or another, thus meddling in power relations beneath a cloak of default invisibility. In both those ways, translation helps shape the relations of belonging that in turn form the polis, the basis of any politics. Those two kinds of observations steer Translation Studies well away from its more traditional concerns, notably the linguistic comparison of texts and the pedagogical control of equivalence. We are called on to do more than linguistics, it seems. Our past thus somehow becomes irrelevant, even innocent: politics concerns different things, in a na...

Lying at the intersection of translatology, cognitive science and linguistics, this book provides a comprehensive framework for studying, investigating and teaching English-Russian/Russian-English non-literary translation. It provides a holistic perspective on the process of non-literary translation, illustrating each of its steps with carefully analyzed real-life examples. Readers will learn how to choose and process multidimensional attention units in original texts by activating different types of knowledge, as well as how to effectively devise target-language matches for them using various translation techniques. It is rounded out with handy and feasible recommendations on the structure and content of an undergraduate course in translation. The abundance of examples makes it suitable not only for use in the classroom, but also for independent study.