Linguistics For Translators

This text examines the relationship between the areas of translation, languages and linguistics. It includes sounds and rhythms, lexis, collocation and semantic prosody, texture, register, cohesion, coherence, implicature, speech and text acts, text and genre analysis, clausal thematicity and transitivity and the expression through language choices of ideological postions.

A Linguistic Handbook of French for Translators and Language Students offers the reader an in-depth contrastive study of French and English based on recent theories of linguistics and discourse analysis. At the same time it is a practical manual for the advanced language student or the translator with dozens of exercises in analyzing and translating French along with detailed corrections. Organized in three sections – Structure, Perspective and Coherence – the handbook first explores French word formation and syntax, then moves on to the use of tense and aspect, illocution and speech styles in various text types. Finally, problems concerning textual coherence and cohesion in both languages are discussed: anaphora and ellipsis, relevance and equivalence and information structure. Each chapter is followed by a list of suggested readings for further discussion and a detailed glossary at the end of the book explains all technical terms used. The handbook is designed to be used either as a textbook or for individuals working at home.

Clear and concise, this textbook provides a non-technical introduction to the basic theory of translation, with numerous examples and exercises.

Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th millennium BC), translation has always played a pivotal role in human societies. Translators were needed whenever the need for contact between different-speaking communities arose, such as for the purposes of communication, commerce, and declarations of war, or peace. Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated. Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people. The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax? From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.

The dynamics of immigration, international commerce and the postcolonial world make it inevitable that much translation is done into a second language, despite the prevailing wisdom that translators should only work into their mother tongue. This book is the first study to explore the phenomenon of translation into a second language in a way that will interest applied linguists, translators and translation teachers, and ESOL teachers working with advanced level students. Rather than seeing translation into a second language as deficient output, this study adopts an interlanguage framework to consider L2 translation as the product of developing competence; learning to translate is seen as a special variety of second language acquisition. Through carefully worked case studies, separate components of translation competence are identified, among them the ability to create stylistically authentic texts in English, the ability to monitor and edit output, and the psychological attitudes that the translator brings to the task. While the case studies mainly deal with Arabic speakers undergoing translator training in Australia, the conclusions will have implications for translation into a second language, especially English, around the world. Translation into the Second Language is firmly grounded in empirical research, and in this regard it serves as a stimulus and a methodological guide for further research. It will be a valuable addition for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of applied linguistics, translation theory, bilingualism and second language acquisition as well as those involved in teaching or practicing translation at a professional level.

The Sociolinguistics of Survey Translation presents an overview of challenges in survey translation, introduces a sociolinguistic framework to overcome these challenges, and demonstrates step-by-step how this framework works to guide and evaluate survey translation. Topics covered in the book include the relationship between linguistic rules, cultural norms, and social practices and their impact on survey translation, the role of orthography and semiotic symbols in translation, translation of different types of survey materials, and various stages of translation review and evaluation. This accessible book not only demonstrates how sociolinguistics can be a useful framework to address thorny survey translation problems but also provides practical and useful tools to guide survey translators and survey practitioners as they conduct and evaluate survey translations. Presenting an easy to implement yet comprehensive survey translation methodology and providing practical tools for survey translators, practitioners and students, this book is the essential guide to this fast-growing area.

This book brings applied linguistics and translation studies together through an analysis of literary texts in Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Korean and their translations. It examines the traces of translanguaging in translated texts with special focus on the strategic use of scripts, morphemes, words, names, onomatopoeias, metaphors, puns and other contextualized linguistic elements. As a result, the author draws attention to the long-term, often invisible contributions of translanguaging performed by translators to the development of languages and society. The analysis sheds light on the problems caused by monolingualizing forces in translation, teaching and communicative contexts in modern societies, as well as bringing a new dimension to the burgeoning field of translanguaging studies.

Language Resources (LRs) are sets of language data and descriptions in machine readable form, such as written and spoken language corpora, terminological databases, computational lexica and dictionaries, and linguistic software tools. Over the past few decades, mainly within research environments, LRs have been specifically used to create, optimise or evaluate natural language processing (NLP) and human language technologies (HLT) applications, including translation-related technologies. Gradually the infrastructures and exploitation tools of LRs are being perceived as core resources in the language services industries and in localisation production settings. However, some efforts ought yet to be made to raise further awareness about LRs in general, and LRs for translation and localisation in particular to a wider audience in all corners of the world. Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and underscores the usefulness that LRs can potentially have in the process of creating, adapting, managing, standardising and leveraging content for more than one language and culture from various perspectives.