Volume 62, Issue 1

The present research opens up the theoretical light on measuring translation difficulty through various perspectives. However, accurate evaluation of translation difficulty by means of the level of the text, translator’s characteristics, and the quality of translation are significant for translation pedagogy and accreditation. To measure translation difficulty, one has to scrutinize it into four ways as (1) the identification of resources of translation difficulty, (2) the measurement of text readability, (3) the measurement of translation difficulty by means of translation evaluation products such as holistic, analytic, calibrated dichotomous items (CDI), and the preselected items evaluation (PIE) methods, and (4) the measurement of mental workload. This article will expand on the mentioned factors in detail in order to shed light upon translation difficulty on how and what to measure.

The aim of the present work is to describe the strategies adopted by subtitlers from French into Spanish in the shadow-puppet style animation films by the French renowned director Michel Ocelot. Following the Pedersen’s (2011) and Yuste Frias’ (2010) models, the descriptive analysis will focus on the visual and verbal transfer strategies chosen by subtitlers when rendering linguistic and extra-linguistic culture-bound references with special attention to the cultural aspects of death and suffering when translating for a family audience . Finally, the importance of transculturality and cultural identity will be highlighted.

This paper examines one consequence of the increasingly multilingual and multicultural labor market, resulting from migratory flows caused in part by globalization. It focuses on selected legal and translation issues in labor relations arising from misinterpretations and cultural disparities in communication between different languages and cultures. It draws on decisions of the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), where there were misleading and ambiguous translations. It employs a theoretical approach based on concepts from cross-cultural management, including cultural theory, and thereby expands the discipline of Translation Studies. The findings suggest that an understanding of the cultural content, particularly in the practice of intercultural management, is imperative. The paper concludes that a systematic methodology linking culture and language in labor relations should be adopted.

In the current context of implementation of the new syllabus according to the guidelines and the philosophy of the EHEA, this article presents a cooperation project between two subjects belonging to the educational program of future translators and interpreters, «Language and Culture applied to Translation and Interpreting» and «Translation of General Texts». The goal of this project is to conceive a common task that contributes to the acquisition of both linguistic and cultural knowledge about the history of France and professional competences in translation area.

Concept inclusion constitutes a kind of imperfect equivalence in translating that gives rise to a 1:2 terminological relation and that represents an important translation problem. In translating scientific texts in the fields of biology or medicine into Spanish or Portuguese one such case of concept inclusion is that brought about by the (frequent) usage of the words brain , in English, and (Ge)hirn , in German (whose proper meaning is ‘encephalon’), as generic terms , i. e., as referring to structures or processes that take place exclusively within the cerebrum (therefore, as synonyms of, respectively, cerebrum and Großhirn or Cerebrum ). Currently, through the undue calque of this phenomenon, many scientific texts written in Spanish or Portuguese and translated from English or (to a lesser degree) from German show the unidiomatic usage of the word encéfalo , which means ‘encephalon’, as a generic term (which causes a remarkable strangeness effect, especially in popularizing texts), or, even more frequently, they improperly and deceively use the term cerebro / cérebro (which means ‘cerebrum’) to refer to the encephalon as a whole. In order to avoid this harmful interference, in rendering brain and (Ge)hirn into Spanish or Portuguese the translator of a scientific text should strive to discriminate (with resort to adequate documentation) between occurrences of the word in its proper sense and occurrences of the word as a generic term . Based on the analysis of a number of author-made translations into Spanish (and Portuguese) of passages of English and German-language encyclopedic articles, popularizing books and popularizing articles with scientific content, the present study aims to define the most adequate translation strategy for the problem described, which can be summarized in the three following cases: a ) usage of brain or (Ge)hirn in its proper sense (with extracerebral referents), translated as Sp. encéfalo , encefálico , intracraneal (Port. encéfalo , encefálico , intracraniano ); b ) usage of brain or (Ge)hirn as generic terms (with exclusively cerebral referents), translated as Sp. cerebro , cerebral (Port. cérebro , cerebral ); c ) usage of brain or (Ge)hirn as generic terms (with exclusively cerebral referents), but not directly translatable as Sp. cerebro , cerebral (Port. cérebro , cerebral ) owing to the occurrence in the source text of data pertaining to the encephalon as a whole (in this case, the translator should assess the possibility of using in the target text cerebro / cérebro for all occurrences—by adapting the original data—, or, at least, complementarily with encéfalo —by departing from the original wording).

The paper addresses intercultural differences in argumentation between Arabs and Germans, and, more specifically, politeness-based misunderstandings resulting from mutual stereotypes and negative representations. The analysis of some exemplary conversations demonstrate how diverging discursive practices and argument patterns can influence intercultural situations when Arabs and Germans confront each other during group dialogues: Among Arabs issues that may cause conflict and direct confrontation are – especially in the field of politics and religion – in intercultural situations usually avoided in favor of communicative harmony. In German society, particularly among students, it is, however, regarded as an intellectual challenge to express one’s views and to discuss public issues among friends.

The first part of the contribution discusses the requirements terminology training for translators must meet regarding the specific characteristics of translation competence. Secondly, taking a short critical overview of general proposals for terminology teaching courses within Translation Study Degree Programmes as a starting point, a specific terminology teaching proposal will be made in order to show that not only fundamental aspects of terminology must be taught, but also specific ones deriving from the subject field, the characteristics of L1 and L2 and the presupposed special knowledge of the target group.

The following paper looks at the Croatian translation of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann aiming at analyzing the way the Bavarian dialect spoken by the character Permaneder has been translated into Croatian: for this purpose the translator used Kajkavian, a dialect spoken in the northwest of Croatia. Although generally not recommended as a translation strategy by many translation scholars, the use of a dialect in the target language brings several positive aspects to the translation: it gives the character a social background and preserves the humorous effect of the clash between the dialect of Permaneder and the standard language of the Buddenbrook family. The strategy remains problematic due to the differences in the geographic and cultural context of the story.

Every linguistic phenomenon pertaining to the passive voice in German should be principally of interest for studies of translations and for contrastive studies between German and Spanish, as such phenomena build a source of possible language-pair specific translation problems. In this paper, the equivalence relations that help to express in Spanish the semantic content of the German ‘bekommen-passive’ — i.e., recipient’s perspective with agent’s decentralizing — are identified. The recipient’s perspective is kept in most cases in Spanish, implying, though, high lexical costs in many cases. Further, the semantic profiles of the ‘kriegen-passive’ and the ‘erhalten-passive’ are described.

In the present article and in a theoretical frame based in cognitive linguistics, we will justify and analyse some of the translational processes that have taken place during the translation of the novel “La Tesis de Nancy” (1962). The human being constantly perceives a multitude of impressions which operate as mental impulses and which activate parts of the long-term memory to facilitate the understanding of new information. Apart from the development of mental spaces, the metaphorical thinking plays an important role in the creation of meaning and in the understanding of reality. A professional translator has to consider that an awareness of such processes can be an inspirational source for a creative and functional translation.