Editorial

Translation as an intellectual and social venture is at least two millennia old, although it was recognised as an academic discipline only in the 1970s. With both retrospective and prospective views, contact, fluidity, local, and global scales of influence can be said to shape the many contexts and voices of translation.

Biel et al. (2019, 1–2) emphasise the growing maturity of the field. Although the authors’ comments specifically refer to legal translation, we think that they can be generalised: “The discipline has been gradually taking on board an ever-growing variety of quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, including corpus-based, corpus-driven and corpus-assisted approaches, process research and experimental methods, workplace studies, practitioner research, critical discourse analysis (CDA), sociological and ethnographic studies, perspectives based on knowledge communication theories and post-structuralist and critical approaches.”

In an attempt to delineate boundaries and acknowledge borderlines, Nicolau (2019, 5) states that “In the epoch of convergence and performativity, the competition, but also the interpenetration of disciplines, have become inevitable.” Admittedly, versatility and pluralism feature transcultural communication, and the status and condition of satellite-like and interdisciplinary canons are questioned.

Complementing these views, Dejica and Dejica-Carțiș (2020, 45) point to the multidimensional translator assuming various roles and responsibilities: “In today’s globalised society, when more than 7 billion people divided into 189 states use between 6,000 and 7,000 languages to communicate (Council of Europe, 2020), translation has become more important than ever. Its importance in people’s personal and professional lives has been highlighted in many scholarly books, educational websites, official national and international bodies, to name just a few of the sources.”

In this climate of opinion, the Special Issue Translation Times is a collection of articles addressing various aspects of translation theory and practice within interdisciplinary landscapes, yet, achieving conceptual and methodological coherence. For instance, the overarching notion of equivalence is part of the common core of interest, going beyond the confines of linguistic approaches, in close relation with the translatability of culture-specific items and idiomatic language, building an evidence-based mechanism through parallel corpus analysis. It is also important to note that besides the more “traditional” (sub)fields of literary translation and of specialised translation (technical translation), transmediation is also discussed in relation to intersemiotic reinterpretations and the computational translation of literary texts, as aligned with the latest enhancements in Digital Humanities. Furthermore, the sociology of translation is a major concern on account of the fact that translation, irrespective of its type, has managed to strengthen its social relevance and impact, being demand driven, and raising the question of its quantitative and qualitative values in the dynamic knowledge-based society. The very fact that all the articles use the language pair English–Romanian for theoretical and practical considerations is indicative of contextualising Translation Times, and of boosting translation research conducted by Romanian scholars while, hopefully, creating wider synergies at the international level.

The Editors

Contents

Titela Vîlceanu, Daniel Dejica

Editorial

Mona Arhire

Deviant language in the literary dialogue: An English–Romanian translational view

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0197

Titela Vîlceanu, Anca Păunescu

Transferring knowledge to/from the market – still building the polysystem? The translation of Australian fiction in Romania

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0199

Nadina Vișan

“‘Peewit,’ said a peewit, very remote.” – Notes on quotatives in literary translation

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0195

Mihaela Cozma

Equivalence and (un)translatability: Instances of the transfer between Romanian and English

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0200

Attila Imre

Categorizing and translating abbreviations and acronyms

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0204

Daria Protopopescu

“Buoyantly, nippily, testily” – Remarks on translating manner adverbs into Romanian

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0202

Felix Nicolau

Performativity of remixed poetry. Computational translations and Digital Humanities

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0205

Dana Percec, Loredana Pungă

Ophelia, more or less. Intersemiotic reinterpretations of a Shakespearean character

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0198

Ana-Maria Trantescu, Georgiana Reiss

Considerations on the meaning and translation of English heart idioms. Integrating the cognitive linguistic approach

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0203

Simona Șimon, Daniel Dejica, Marcela Alina Fărcașiu, Annamaria Kilyeni

New trends in translation and interpreting studies: Linguistic accessibility in Romania

https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0217

Notes on editors and contributors

Titela VILCEANU PhD, phil. hab., Director of the Department of Publications and Media (2012‒2016), Director of the Translatio Centre for Translation, Communication and Interpretation (2012-present), is a Professor at the Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, Romania. Her main research interests lie in translation studies, pragmatics, intercultural communication, and ELT methodology. Titela Vilceanu is the President of the Romanian Society for English and American Studies (RSEAS) and a member of the European Society for the Study of English Board (ESSE) (2017–present). She has been a member of the editorial board of The Scientific Bulletin of the Politehnica University of Timişoara – Transactions of Modern Languages, of Annals of the University of Craiova. Series Philology: Linguistics; a reviewer with Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies, University of Lund, Sweden, and with Open Linguistics; a member of the Scientific Council of Universitaria and Prouniversitaria publishing houses; and head of the Translation, Terminology and Corpus Analysis (CoTraT) research laboratory, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova. Jointly with Muguraș Constantinescu and Daniel Dejica, she coordinates the publication of A History of Translations into the Romanian Language, at the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy.

Daniel DEJICA, PhD, phil. hab., Head of Department (2012–2015), Dean (2016–present), Director of the Centre for Advanced Translation Studies at Politehnica University (2022–present), is a Professor of translation studies at Politehnica University of Timișoara, Romania. His research interests include translation theory and methodology, LSP translation, and discourse analysis for translation purposes. Daniel Dejica was a member of the Advanced Translation Research Center (ATRC) team at the University of Saarbrucken, Germany, and a member of the Doctoral Studies Committee of the European Society for Translation Studies. He has been co-editing the Proceedings of the Professional Communication and Translation Studies conference, organised at Politehnica University of Timișoara since 2001; he has also been a member in the editorial boards of other international peer-reviewed journals including conneXions: international professional communication journal (New Mexico Tech), MuTra Journal (University of Saarbrucken), or The European English Messenger (ESSE – European Society for the Study of English). In 2016 he co-edited with Gyde Hansen, Peter Sandrini, and Iulia Para the volume Language in the Digital Era, published by De Gruyter. He is also the coordinator of the Translation Studies book series at Politehnica Publishing House, and together with Muguraș Constantinescu and Titela Vîlceanu coordinates the publication of A History of Translations into the Romanian Language, at the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy.

***

Mona ARHIRE, PhD, is a Professor at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania. She graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (Arabic-English) at the University of Bucharest and earned her PhD in Philology from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Her teaching, research, and doctoral supervision activities fall within the scope of Translation Studies, Corpus-based Translation Studies, and Contrastive Studies. She has published books and book chapters with national and international publishing houses, and articles and book reviews in reputed journals. Dr Arhire is a member of the European Society for Translation Studies and the Romanian Society for English and American Studies.

Mihaela COZMA, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the English Department in the West University of Timişoara, Romania. Her areas of expertise are translation studies, English morphology, and teaching methodology. In 2006, her research in the field of translation led to the publication of a book entitled Translating Legal-Administrative Discourse: the EU Legislation, a book which is based on the PhD thesis that she defended in the same year. She is also the author of English Grammar for Practical Purposes, a book which deals with a wide range of issues specific to the English morphology from the point of view of their contribution to an accurate and effective type of communication. In addition to books, Mihaela Cozma has published, both in Romania and abroad, a wide range of scientific papers dealing with issues such as translation norms, translator’s competence, translation evaluation, discourse analysis for translation purposes, or legal-administrative translations.

Marcela Alina FĂRCAȘIU, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Politehnica University of Timișoara and a freelance translator. She teaches Culture and Civilisation, Writing Skills, Legal Translation, and English for Digital Media. She holds a PhD in courtroom discourse. She has authored two books and has written many academic papers and reviews. She has also been a freelance translator for over 20 years and has worked with many national and international translation agencies. She has also translated three books for RAO publishing house and has subtitled many films and documentaries for AXN, E! Entertainment, and other TV stations.

Annamaria KILYENI, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Department of Communication and Foreign Languages, Politehnica University of Timişoara, Romania, where she teaches Terminology, English for Specific Purposes, English Grammar and Translation Practice. She holds an MA in Terminology and Translation Studies, and a PhD in English Linguistics from the West University of Timişoara, Romania. She has researched and published regularly in the fields of terminology, ESP, applied cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. She has participated in many national and international conferences, as well as in terminology, interpreting and translation summer schools and workshops, and she has been part of several research projects. She is also a member of the advisory board of ESP Today. Journal of English for Specific Purposes at Tertiary Level, and of the editorial board of The Scientific Bulletin of the Politehnica University, Transactions on Modern Languages.

Attila IMRE, PhD, phil. hab., is a professor in translation studies at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania, Department of Applied Linguistics. His research interests range from American culture and civilisation to cognitive linguistics, English morphology, and syntax, all combined and embedded in translation studies, mostly translation technology, terminology, and audiovisual translations. He has published several books, most recently A Logical English Grammar (2019) and An Introduction to Translator Studies (2020). He has been the editor and co-editor of various conference proceedings, member of the editorial board of Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, and member of several national and international associations connected to linguistics and translation studies.

Felix NICOLAU is a lecturer on the part of Romanian Language Institute at Complutense University of Madrid and professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Communication, The Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, Romania. He was a visiting professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Lund University, Sweden between 2017 and 2021. He is affiliated to the Doctoral School of Philology of “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia. He is the author of many books of literary and communication theory. He is a member in the editorial board of “The Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies.” His areas of interest are translation studies, British and American studies, and Romanian studies.

Anca PĂUNESCU, PhD, phil. hab., Head of the Department of Applied Modern Languages (2013–up to present), is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, Romania. Her main research interests lie in Romanian language teaching methodology, specialised languages, translation studies, and intercultural communication. Anca Paunescu is an editor-in-chief of Annals of the University of Craiova. Series Philology, Applied Foreign Languages, Bucuresti: Pro Universitaria, ISSN: 1841–8074. She coordinates the research axis Specialised languages – terminology and (re)contextualization work within the Translation, Terminology and Corpus Analysis (CoTraT) research laboratory, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova. She has authored 7 books and about 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Dana PERCEC is a Professor of English literature at the West University of Timișoara, Romania. Her areas of interest are Shakespearean drama, Victorian and contemporary British literature, gender studies, and literary translation. She is a PhD supervisor in English studies. Her published work includes books on early modern drama, edited volumes on literary genres, as well as over 100 articles and contributions in journals and volumes. She is a member of the Romanian Writers’ Union, ESSE, and many other international scientific associations. She coordinates the Cultural Heritage research group and task force in the UNITA Universitas Montium academic alliance of European universities.

Daria PROTOPOPESCU is an Associate Professor in the English Department, University of Bucharest. She holds a PhD degree in Philology, summa cum laude, from the same university. She is the author of the books Elements of English Terminology, 2013, Editura Universității București, and a co-author of New Perspectives on English Grammar, 2014, Editura Institutul European Iași. Her research areas include translation studies, terminology, syntax, and the history of the English language.

Loredana PUNGĂ is a Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the West University of Timişoara, Romania. Her domains of expertise are translation studies, English lexicology, applied and cognitive linguistics. She holds an MA in British and American Studies, and a PhD in Philology from the university where she currently teaches, completed on the basis of research mostly carried out at the University of California, Davis, as a Fulbright scholar. Her publications include three books and seven book chapters in thematic volumes, most of them published abroad. She is a (co)-editor of three volumes published in the UK, and a member of the editorial or advisory boards of several academic journals, indexed in important international databases.

Georgiana REISS is a Junior Lecturer at the Department of British, American and German Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova. She holds an MA in Specialised Translation and Studies in Terminology from the University of Bucharest. She followed her doctoral studies at the University of Craiova and received her PhD degree in Philology for a thesis on analysing the procedures involved in translating EU documents from English into Romanian. Her current fields of academic interest comprise linguistics (morphosyntax, semantics, cognitive linguistics) and translation studies.

Ana-Maria TRANTESCU is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Department of Anglo-American and German Studies, University of Craiova, Romania. Her academic interests include morphology, syntax, phraseology, general linguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, semantics, cognitive poetics, the theory of metaphor, and contrastive linguistic studies. She defended her PhD thesis “Metaphorical and Metonymic Conceptualizations in English and Romanian Idiomatic Expressions” in 2007. She is the author and co-author of various articles and books, reflecting the previously mentioned areas of interest.

Simona ȘIMON, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Foreign Languages at the Politehnica University of Timișoara (Romania), where she teaches Interpreting, Pragmatics as well as Oral and Written Communication. Her research interests are in the field of linguistics, interpreting, translation, advertising, and teaching. Simona Șimon has performed many editorial and review activities at academic journals. She has authored or co-authored a book, six chapters in edited volumes, and four dictionaries. Simona Șimon has also co-edited two books and published numerous scientific articles, seven book reviews, and several translations.

Nadina VIŞAN, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Bucharest, Romania. Her main interests lie in the direction of historical linguistics and translation studies. She is the author of A Discourse Representation Theory Analysis of the Perfect in English and Romanian (București, Editura Universității București, 2006), Elements of English Lexicology (București, Editura Universității București, 2015), and co-author of New Perspectives on English Grammar (Iași, Institutul European, 2014).