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Interpretational language

How does it sound?

New Research in Translationand Interpreting Studies

Oct 7-8, 2005

Yannick Garcia, URV-UPFyannick.garcia@upf.edu

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Translated Language As A Third Code

Frawley (1984) [The translated text] “emerges as a code in its own

right, setting its own standards and structural presuppositions and entailments, though they are necessarily derivative of [ST] and [TL]”

Baker (1993) [Translated texts are the] “result of the confrontation of

the source and target codes”

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Terminology

Disturbing deviance Third language Translationese

Non-disturbing deviance Third code Translated language Translational language

Two types of deviance: one which runs counter to the linguistic usage in the language, and one which follows the usage but in such a way that it strikes the readers as fresh (Tirkkonen-Condit 2002)

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Translated texts must be constructed upon unique linguistic components:

Universals of translation

This behavior must be governed by standards that lead translators in a given time and space to comply with or deviate from ST/TL rules:

Translation norms

Theoretical Background

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Theoretical Studies

Norms (INT) Shlesinger 1989 Harris 1990 Schjoldager 1995 Gile 1998 Shlesinger 1999 Garzone 2002 Inghilleri 2004

Universals

(Chesterman’s T-universals) Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996

simplification Baker 1993

conventionalization Mauranen 2000

lexical patterning Tirkkonen-Condit 2000

lexical unique items

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Experimental Studies

Interpreting As A Third Code Garwood 2002

Translation As A Third Code

Øverås 1998 Tirkkonen-Condit 2002

Translationese Shama’a 1978 Blum-Kulka and Levenston 1983 Vanderauwera 1985 House 2004 Cardinaletti and Garzone 2005

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Quality Perception (Traunmüller 1998)

Type of quality Information conveyed Phenomena involved

Linguistic phonetic quality

Social conventional.

The message; speaker’s dialect, sociolect, speech style, accent, etc.

Different words, speech sounds, prosodic patterns, etc.

Expressive quality

Psychological, within speaker variation.

Speaker’s emotions, attitudes; adaptation to environment, etc.

Type of phonation, vocal effort, speech rate, liveliness, etc.

Organic quality

Physiological, anatomical, between speaker variation.

Speaker’s age, sex, pathology, etc.

Size of the larynx, length of the supraglottal vocal tract, etc.

Perspectival quality

Physical, spatial.

Where the speaker is in relation to the listener (and how he is oriented).

Illumination, projection angles, acoustic signal attenuation, etc.

Table 1. Types of information and variation in speech.

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Quality Debate in IS

Linguistic phonetic quality in interpreting Native fluency (Pérez Luzardo, Pradas Macías) Use of different dialects/accents (Cheung) Rethorical skills (Pradas Macías) Prosodic patterns (Collados) Genuine usage: lexis, syntax... (Gile) Grammar and discourse building (Garwood) Speech style (Donovan) Creativity (Bastin, Kenny)

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1) Unique Items Hypothesis (TR)

Tirkkonen-Condit 2002 2 groups (teachers and students of TS) 2 sets of texts (original and translated Finnish) Translations v. non-translations Assumption-triggering features: “unique items” Degree of genuinity determined categorization Prejudices about translational language

Pre-formed categorization hinders perception Refinement of UI as quality measuring units

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2) The Case of Cognates (TR + INT)

Shlesinger and Malkiel (in press) Pre-existing stimulus-response pairing Default solution Fear of false cognates Creation of non-existent cognates Experimental study (false v. true cognates) Different modalities (SI v. TR)

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3) Quality Perception in INT

Gile 1985 Perception of interpreted speech by nonexpert speakers

(“informateurs”) Training environment High variability in results Need for shared criteria in assessing quality

(“appropriateness”, “mot juste”, “écarts de langue”, etc.)

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Methodological considerations

1) Perception of rendition v. non-rendition? Need to isolate linguistic phonetic input from organic,

expressive and perspectival variables 2) Transmodality study?

Difficulty in data-gathering for comparable original v. interpreted speech

3) User perception? Screening of expert speaker Assessment methodology

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Compared Perception

Expert NativeSpeaker

Original English (+)

Interpreted Catalan

Original Catalan

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Methodology (1)

Corpora Interpreted Catalan (recorded interpreting

assignments in the Catalan private market: diverse topics, audience, expectations, perception?)

Original Catalan (recorded conference speeches, Contemporary Catalan Corpus)

Subjects Professional interpreters (A-Catalan, B-English) Expert speakers: oral revisers (officially certified:

traceable, shared terminology, known territory)

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Methodology (2)

Measuring units Unique items (monologic) Cognate structures (comparative) Speakers’ comments (questionnaire, interview, shared

protocol) Linguistic variables isolation

Voice-over harmonization (future research) Same person, voice, dialect, accent

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Unique Items – Examples (1)

Prosodic Dinareu aquí? (Que) dinareu aquí?

Syntactical Del company no pots dir res de dolent. Del company, no en pots dir res de dolent.

Phrasal Ens fa falta una fotocopiadora. Ens cal una fotocopiadora.

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Unique Items – Examples (2)

Morphological Això no és comestible. Això no és mengívol.

Lexical Cada un de nosaltres val. Cadascun de nosaltres val.

Discourse-Forming Particles Véns, no? Véns, oi?

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Unique Items – Examples (3)

Collocational No vaig trobar-li la gràcia. No li vaig trobar la gràcia.

Redundant information Ara estic treballant en una agència. Ara treballo en una agència.

Insufficient information Tinc caramels de menta, maduixa i taronja. Tinc caramels de menta, de maduixa i de taronja.

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Research questions (1)

Is linguistic quality perception marked by the degree of genuinity of language? Can this be gauged through unique items and cognate/non-cognate solutions?

Is the amount of such genuinity-measuring units consistent by modality (original, interpreted; formal, informal; extemporaneous, read-out) or by speaker?

If consistent by modality, is that due to interpreting norms or to cognitive constraints (Shlesinger)?

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Research questions (2)

If due to norms, is the choice explained through the diaculture (Vermeer)? Through the hypertext (Pöchhacker)?

Can genuinity/unique items rate be illustrative of the degree of domestication or foreignization of a rendition?

Is this particular to some languages or universal to all?

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Preliminary results

Small pilot (3 interpreters) Produced both original and interpreted Catalan Apparently more cognate solutions in interpreted

(Shlesinger) Need for larger corpus

Apparently same degree of unique items in both Need for further refinement of UI lists Other measuring units may play a role The degree of language-awareness may determine

the success of the unit in the analysis

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Contact data

Yannick Garcia Porres

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

yannick.garcia@upf.edu