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Issues and Problems in Translation

Issues and Problems in Translation. Summer Term of 2014 Part 3 Dr. Abdullah Alkhamis http://fac.ksu.edu.sa/aalkhamisa/home. Important developments in the 1970s-1980s: (will not be discussed in this course) Skopos theory (Vermeer, Reiss) Polysystem Theory (Even- Z ohar)

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Issues and Problems in Translation

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  1. Issues and Problems in Translation Summer Term of 2014 Part 3 Dr. Abdullah Alkhamis http://fac.ksu.edu.sa/aalkhamisa/home

  2. Important developments in the 1970s-1980s: (will not be discussed in this course) Skopos theory (Vermeer, Reiss) Polysystem Theory (Even-Zohar) Norms Theory (Toury)

  3. Directions in Translation Studies (in a very General sense) -to compare the translation with the source-text, the source-language or source-culture, and to examine the creative deviations from the original (mostly prescriptive, linguistic approach). -to examine translations in the context where they are produced and actually functions, in other words in the target culture (mostly descriptive, cultural approach)

  4. Translation and Cultural Hegemonylate 1980s-1990s Translation is not only a process of transferring text from one language to another. Like any human activity, it takes place in specific cultural and historical contexts. Translation research here becomes less focused on linguistic aspects, and more focused on cultural and political aspects.

  5. Johan Heilbron Translation occurs in a set of power relations between languages and language groups. Translation flow: -as of 2010, 80.000 books are translated annually worldwide from up to about 200 languages. 1stlevel: 55 to 60 % of all book translations are made from a single language, English. So English strongly dominates the global market for translations.

  6. In terms of a core-periphery ((المركز-الأطراف, English occupies a hypercentral position. 2nd level: after English, there are two languages that have a central position: German and French. Each with a share of about 10% of the global translation market. 3rd level: There are 7 or 8 languages that have a semi-central position. These are languages that are neither very central on a global level nor very peripheral, having a share of 1 to 3 % of the world market. These are typically languages like Spanish, Italian, and Russian.

  7. 4th level: there are all the other languages from which less than 1% of the book translations worldwide are made. These languages can be considered to be ‘peripheral’ in the international translation economy such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic. In spite of the fact that some of these languages have a very large number of speakers and a rich cultural heritage

  8. Power shift and translation Over the past quarter of a century, dominance of English has significantly increased. Around 1980, the share of translations from English was a little over 40%. It went up to the current level of 55 to 60% after the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, which produced an immediate fall in translations from Russian.

  9. Prior to 1989 Russian language had a central position in the international translation system, comparable to German and French, with a market share of about 10 to 12 %. But after the collapse of communism, translations from Russian fell rapidly to about 2 or 3%. Today: it has a semi-central position, comparable to Italian and Spanish.

  10. Features of world system of translation: • the more central position of a language/language group is, the lower the translation rate within that language. e.g. only between 2 and 4 % of all published books are translations in US and UK. The rates in France and Germany are significantly higher: between 12 and 18%. Higher rates again for the semi-central languages (over 20 %) The highest rates are usually found in peripheral language groups (Greece and Portugal over 30 %; the Netherlands 34%: where 3 out of 4 translations are translated from English).

  11. High number of translations from central languages >>> low number of translations into these language. Low number of translations from peripheral languages >>> high number of translations into these languages. Central: High output/ Low input Peripheral: Low output/ High input

  12. 2. communication between peripheral groups often passes through a more central language. So the more central a language is in the translation system, the more it has the capacity to function as an intermediary language; Central languages groups act as a means of communication between peripheral or semi-peripheral language groups.

  13. 3. The more central a language is in the international translation system, the more types of books are translated from this language. For instance,book statistics in the Netherlands distinguish 33 categories of books such as “religion”, “law”, etc. Only the translations from English,the most central language, are found in all 33 categories. Translations from German are found in 28 categories, translations from French in 22 categories, from Italian in 10 categories, etc.

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