Bruna Di Sabato, Emilia Di Martino Testi in viaggio © 2011 Bruna Di Sabato, Emilia Di Martino,...

Bruna Di Sabato, Emilia Di MartinoTesti in viaggio

© 2011 Bruna Di Sabato, Emilia Di Martino, Testi in viaggio

Translation competence

In this lesson …

we will start from the experts’ definition of ‘translation

competence’ to build up our personal idea



Translation competence as an underlying knowledge

Language ability on which …

Transfer competence (Nord)

Translational competence (Toury)

Translator competence (Király)

… is built



“Any old fool can learn a language, if he has enough determination to do so, but it takes an intelligent person to become a translator, and

basically his work is the measure of his intelligence” (Newmark, 1969).

Translation competence

- as intelligence (Newmark)

- as an innate quality (Vannerem Snell-Hornby)



Holmes/Hönig: mapping theory

“I have suggested that actually the translation process is a multi-level process; while we are translating sentences, we have a map of the

original text in our minds and at the same time, a map of the kind of text we want to

produce in the target language. Even as we translate serially, we have this structural

concept so that each sentence in our translation is determined not only by the

sentence in the original but by the two maps of the original text and of the translated text which we are carrying along as we translate”

(Holmes, 1988).



Holmes: macrostrategy → Hönig: central processing unit. This

transfers the text from its natural environment into the translator’s

mental reality.

Uncontrolled Workspace (UW): 1st phase, difficult to detect

Controlled Workspace (CW): mental processes which monitor what has

already happened in the UW.



Hönig rejects the idea of a ‘native translator’:

“A translator without a macro-strategy would be a native translator in the sense that he relies exclusively on the products offered by his

uncontrolled workspace.

It would be hard to imagine a translator who gets through any translation by just relying on his linguistic reflexes and his associated world-

knowledge. It is safe to assume that problem-solving strategies are an integral part of any translation task, and it therefore follows that

innate translation competence has to be supplemented by strategic competence in order to create an overall translation competence” (Hönig,

1990).



Attention must be redirected from microstrategies to macrostragies (how a

translator chooses among different alternatives):

“There can be no question that translators need transfer competence; it could be

compared to the driving force in a car. But as a car has to be steered, so transfer

competence must be controlled and directed by a macro-strategy if the translation task is

to be carried out according to the client’s needs and specifications” (Hönig, 1990).

Transfer competence is innate. Translation/translatory competence may be

acquired.



More recent theories:

PACTE project 2000/2005

http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2005/v50/n2/011004ar.html

Pym (2003) - specific translation abilities:

“ - The ability to generate a series of more than one viable target text (TT1, TT2 … TTn)

for a pertinent source text (ST);

- The ability to select only one viable TT from this series, quickly and with justified

confidence.



We propose that, together, these two skills form a specifically translational competence; their union concerns translation and nothing but

translation. There can be no doubt that translators need to know a fair amount of

grammar, rhetoric, terminology, computer skills, Internet savvy, world knowledge, teamwork

cooperation, strategies for getting paid correctly, and the rest, but the specifically translational part of their practice is strictly

neither linguistic nor solely commercial. It is a process of generation and selection, a problem-solving process that often occurs with apparent

automatism” (Pym, 2003).



Our approach:

Translation competence can be acquired as any language ability.

In line with current translation studies which reject “any notion of immutable correctness” (Pym, 2003).

Any communicative act implies translation/reformulation, i.e. any individual already possesses a macrostrategy which has

to be trained at interlingual, intercultural level → raising awareness of the cultural, sociological, communicative issues

any act of translation implies.

“(T)here is no fixed knowledge in this field”, because “(t)ranslation is a question of solving problems, not of moving

meanings” (Pym, 2003).



“(T)here is no fixed knowledge in this field”, because “(t)ranslation is a question of

solving problems, not of moving meanings” (Pym, 2003).

Translation competence has to be built first through such intralingual translation

activities as paraphrasing, summarising, text reformulation;

and through the development of socio-pragmatic competence.



Compare this text and its translation:

Step 2: Make sure you have the latest iPod and iTunes software.1 Download and install the latest iTunes software to

your computer from www.apple.com/itunes.2 Connect the device to your computer, then select it in the iTunes sidebar

and click Summary.3 If iTunes indicates that your iPod needs an update, click Update and follow the onscreen instructions.

Passo 2: assicurati di disporre del software iPod e iTunes più recente.1 Scarica l’ultima versione del software iTunes da

www.apple.com/it/itunes e installala sul computer.2 Collega il dispositivo al computer, quindi selezionalo nella barra laterale

di iTunes e fai clic su Riepilogo.3 Se iTunes comunica che iPod deve essere aggiornato, fai clic su Aggiorna e segui le

istruzioni su schermo.

Apple, 2010, Nike + iPod Sensor User’s Manual.



Register in instructions/operating manuals is more informal in

English:

make sure you have/assicurati di disporre





Government/public advertising (pubblicità sociale)

Italian advertising is more ‘emotive’

British advertising is more ‘factual’

“Le culture emotive […] tenderanno a evidenziare più che i fatti le emozioni e le relazioni, e lo faranno anche

attraverso un’accentuata comunicazione non verbale. Al contrario, le culture non emotive quali la tedesca, l’inglese

e l’americana sono portate a dare precedenza ai fatti e alle questioni più che agli individui. Ciò che viene detto ha

maggiore rilevanza di come viene detto. Esprimere l’emozione è considerato imbarazzante e perdere il

controllo è percepito negativamente” (Katan, 1997, pp. 50-51).

Conoscenze di genere/conoscenze di sfondo (Mazzotta 2007).



An important complement to sociopragmatic competence is conceptual knowledge

If you do not know anything about the subject you read about it might be very difficult to understand the meaning of what

you read

“The work carried out by Stazione Sperimentale per i Combustibili (SSC) covered the investigation of typical wood

and vegetable oils fuel combustion for domestic heating under real operation conditions. The aim was to quantify

emission factors for typical

gaseous pollutants and for ultrafine particles in terms of particle number concentration and size distribution, in order

to increase the knowledge about the environmental performances of small scale heating appliances and help

policy makers in the regulation of these appliances.”



Language competence is not the major problem. The same text in your language is equally difficult to understand if you

are not an expert in combustion.

“Il lavoro presentato in questo articolo, svolto presso la Stazione Sperimentale per i Combustibili (SSC), descrive i

risultati ottenuti durante un’indagine sperimentale sulla combustione di biomassa legnosa e oli vegetali in apparecchi

per il riscaldamento domestico di medio-piccola potenza durante un tipico ciclo di funzionamento reale. L’obiettivo

dello studio è stato quello di quantificare i fattori di emissione per i principali inquinanti gassosi prodotti dalla combustione,

compreso il particolato ultrafine, espresso in termini di concentrazione in numero [#/cm3] e distribuzione

granulometrica delle particelle”.



Assignment:

Complete the Test about the reading strategies you use before

translating and check your answers (file “Attività Reading

Strategies”).

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