ADEL 7423261

Introduction to Translation Studies

Department of English
King Faisal University
Spring 2019

Week 2
 Translation without training

A long-held belief:
 If you are bilingual, you can translate
NATURAL TRANSLATION (Harris 1978)
 As one’s competencies in two languages
increase, so does one’s ability to successfully
translate; Thoughts?
 Extreme take on this = perfectly balanced
bilinguals have an inherent capacity to translate
and formal training is not necessary = still
prevalent nowadays.
 From “natural” to “trained”

 What might be typical in a job ad written by employers who

buy into the natural translation philosophy?
 Asked to both translate and interpret (or interpreting is
regarded as translation)
 Translation in both language directions
 Emphasis placed on experience in a given academic field or
work experience as opposed to degree/ work experience in
translation
 No mention of CAT tools
 Being “bilingual” is a necessary requisite for translating; How
is “bilingualism” for purposes of translation different from
“bilingualism” for purposes outside of translation?
 From “natural” to “trained”

Bilingualism from the translator’s perspective:

1. Term RETRIEVAL and VERIFICATION is more important
than spontaneous generation from the mental lexicon
2. Often a much higher level of lexical and syntactic
complexity/precision
3. Comprehension-transfer-production-based vs.
comprehension/production-based
4. “Other”-initiated as opposed to self-initiated
 If we regard translation as a skillset which can and SHOULD
be trained, we can focus on a series of competencies, or, as
Pym would call it, a MULTICOMPONENTIAL MODEL OF
TRANSLATION COMPETENCIES
 What are some of the important competencies making up
this model?
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

 Derived by several TS scholars who insisted that

bilingualism is not enough (Bell 1991, Neubert 1994,
Hurtado 1996, Presas 1997,Kautz 2000) = mentioned
by Pym in his article
1. SOURCE LANGUAGE COMPETENCE
 Ability to comprehend and decode the ST correctly
 “Knowing the ST language” is a central part of this;
But, what else might source language competence
involve?
 Knowing author INTENT = being able to “read between
the lines” to flesh out meaning
 How might SL competence be trained/fostered in the
context of translator training?
 Reading comprehension activities, sight/gist translation
activities, etc.
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

2. TARGET LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

 Ability to PRODUCE and encode the TT correctly = being
able to WRITE (monolingual) and FORMULATE text in the
TL
 Do you think SL and TL need to be perfectly balanced in the
context of translation? Which is more important? Discuss
briefly in groups.
 On average, most student errors have to do with
COMPREHENSION if translating into their L1 and
PRODUCTION if translating into their L2 =
DIRECTIONALITY as an important variable in translation
 How can this be trained in the context of translator training?
3. INTERLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
 Awareness of lexical, syntactic, and stylistic differences
across a given language pair in a non-text specific, general
sense = rooted in CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

4. TRANSFER COMPETENCE
 Ability to strategically utilize translation procedures that
take into account the translation’s function and target
audience
 Centers around adhering to the TRANSLATION
BRIEF = a) the PURPOSE and b) the TARGET
AUDIENCE
 It’s important to note that aspects of transfer actually
involve THREE “texts”, as opposed to only the ST and
TT; What might this third “text” be?
 In addition to the ST and TT, you are also working with
a VIRTUAL TEXT =a mental representation of all
possible TT options for corresponding ST units
 A “mental work in progress….a “not-yet-realized TT”
(Neubert and Shreve 1992); What does this imply?
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

 A successful translator considers ALL POSSIBLE OPTIONS

and then narrows them down to one “correct” option based
on purpose and readership = At the heart of TRANSFER
COMPETENCE;
 This is what Pym’s proposed MINIMALIST APPROACH is
all about (more on this later)
5. TEXTUAL COMPETENCE
 An awareness of text genre conventions in the SL and TL
 Genre conventions can vary widely across languages and
cultures; Examples?
 Resumes, recipes, syllabi, police reports, recommendation
letters, prescription medication inserts, …
 Best way to foster textual competence?
 Read tons of parallel texts; corpus-based analysis of lexico
grammatical patterns
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

6. CULTURAL COMPETENCE
 Awareness of the sociocultural context within which the ST
and TT are received
 Has to do with knowing CULTURAL PREFERENCES AND
EXPECTATIONS in both the SC and TC
 How might cultural preferences be embodied verbally and
non-verbally in a text? Discuss briefly in groups.
 Notions of directness vs. indirectness are culturally-rooted;
notions of “distance” vs. “closeness” in writing style;
personalized vs. impersonalized; active vs. passive voice;
time orientation (monochronic = linear vs. polychronic =
circular)
 How might the following text/graphic need to be changed if
targeting your culture (whatever that might be):
 https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/barque_smokeh
ouse_pork
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies

7. TERMINOLOGICAL COMPETENCE
 “Familiarity” with key terminology and the ability to find, store
and manage terms quickly; How is terminological competence
in translation different from terminological competence for
second language use in a general sense?
 Being able to retrieve terms is more important than having
them “internalized” or “memorized”
 The degree of terminological complexity is likely to be much
higher when translating
 Constructing term bases and TMs exhibits this competence =
you will have an entire course on this!
 What is usually found in a term base entry for a given term?
 Domain, grammatical information, a definition, a contextual
example of usage, collocates for both the term and its TL
equivalent
 Logic behind a term base = a target text is populated with TL
terminology as a “pre-translation” stage; Thoughts?
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies
8. SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE COMPETENCE
 Basic background knowledge in the domains in which one
works; How can this be obtained?
 Taking university courses (in-class, distance learning),
reading field-specific journals, retrieving and storing
monolingual (L1) glossaries, etc.
 So, who’s the better translator? The trained translator new to
a given subject or the bilingual subject expert with no formal
translation training?
9. RESEARCH COMPETENCE
 Competence in information retrieval strategies = finding
terms, assistive texts, translation brief-oriented research
(i.e., who is my target audience?) = DOCUMENTATION
SKILLS
 What other skills are being fostered in Research and
Writing?
 A multicomponential model of
translation competencies
ASSISTIVE TEXTS
1. PARALLEL TEXT = same topic, genre, purpose, and
target audience as the text to be translated; How
used?
 Primarily to facilitate TRANSFER COMPETENCE, but
also textual competence
2. BACKGROUND TEXT = same topic, different
purpose/ target audience/genre; How used?
 Primarily to facilitate SUBJECT COMPETENCE
10. TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETENCE
 Ability to work with CAT tools, word processing
features, documents in various formats, etc.

 So, if your family and friends ask what exactly it is that

you are studying in intro to translation studies, these
competencies can serve as food for thought
From multicomponential to minimalist:
Pym’s competence model
 The MINIMALIST APPROACH is centered around two core
competences:
1. The ability to generate a series of more than one viable
target text options (TTI, TT2, …TTn) = GENERATION
2. Being able to decide on and justify a “final translation” from
these options based on contextual (linguistic and
extralinguistic) factors = REDUCTIVE REASONING
 It is these two competencies that need to be DIRECTLY
TRAINED; Thoughts?
 Preparation for Week 3

1. Read textbook, Chapter 3 (Equivalence and equivalence

effect), pages 57-72 only

2. Respond to Reflection Question #1:

Illustrate Pym’s minimalist competency model with a concrete
example. BRIEFLY discuss how competencies guided
generating options and narrowing them down in conjunction
with this example.

“More information” texts = two YouTube clips authored by

Anthony Pym, in conjunction with his textbook “Exploring
Translation Theories”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G5oAMWfObI&index=1&lis
t=PL835F930889F12D2A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP9PcjIMkVU&index=2&list
=PL835F930889F12D2A