II-2-OCI     Second Year English  for English minors (surnames A-Z, curriculum OCI)
Seconda annualità per gli studenti di inglese seconda lingua, cognomi A-Z, curriculum OCI

Module  –  “Translation as a 'double internalization'”  ( + a case study on dubbing)
Tutorial  –  Level B1: Prof.ssa MacLaren;    Level B2: Prof.ssa Fallon    (Timetable)

Notizie, avvisi – News, Messages >  
Attività di ricerca – Research tasks >  
Sunto delle lezioni – Recap of lessons >  
Programma e testi – Syllabus, set texts >  

  < Office hours – Ore di ricevimento
  < Your data – Iscrizioni, presenze. Voti
  < Assessment – Esame: contenuti e date
  < Regulations, credits – Regolamenti, CFU

*  NEWS
* Click on the newspaper to see the archived (old) news items

Students'  Message Board
To communicate with the other students (or with the teacher),
click on one of the orange dots:
 
Associazione Studentesca)   click     Roma Tre LCI + LCS Forum
 

FOR INFORMATION ON THE FINAL EXAM PROCEDURE (June, October, February),
FOR THIS COURSE,  SEE THE PAGE “DIDATTICA” - Notizie”
OR JUST CLICK HERE.

Still waiting for the evaluation sheets for task 3 from some groups...

The evaluation sheets for tasks 1 and 2 are now on the page “Marks for Research Tasks” under YOUR DATA in the main menu.

I'll be correcting the written esonero in the next few days...

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  YOUR DATA*
*ENROLLMENT,  ATTENDANCE,  MARKS

Enrollment form and instructions ( in Italian)>     (Informativa privacy> )
                     You must enroll to be a frequentante and take the esoneri.  Otherwise it is unnecessary.
 
  PC HELP*: Problems using your PC?   Phone a student for help>  

If you don't have a computer, how can you enroll and follow the course?
Here are various solutions>     (Per la versione italiana cliccare qui> )
 

Students enrolled on   
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Attendance as of
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Marks for
Research Tasks>  

Marks for Partial exams*:
Written + Oral> 

*Partial exams: To take the “partial exams” (esoneri), you must enroll in this course (use the form above).  But no booking is required since they are not "real"exams -- they simply reduce the study load for the final exam (for which you must book).  Each partial exam you pass eliminates one of the texts from the final exam and counts for a part of your final mark.  But only the final mark goes on your libretto.

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ASSESSMENT

Non frequentanti   Final exam contents: As a non-attender, you are responsible for all texts (book, articles) on the Reading List> 

    Criteria determining your mark >    (Studenti italiani: Leggete il testo in italiano)

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Frequentanti   Final exam contents: Le domande verteranno sulle discussioni in aula (non sui testi al programma) così come risultano dai RECAP OF LESSONS, dalle spiegazioni dei Tasks nella rubrica TASKS e dalle NOTIZIE, comprese le discussioni sul Bulletin Board del nostro corso a cui si accede, appunto, nella rubrica NEWS cliccando sul tasto arancione nel riquadro rosso "Students' Bulletin Board."

Also the two articles if you didn't eliminate them by taking and passing the partial exams (esoneri).

 Criteria determining your mark (out of a maximum of 30 points*):
   4 automatic points for attendance and completion of all assignments
+ total of marks received for the Research Tasks (out of 20)
+ average of marks received for the mid-term tests (out of 10)
+ mark (from -2 to +3) on the final exam (for an explanation, see here> ).
    *The sum of of all the points listed here is more than 30. This increase is meant to compensate for the fact that, in the Italian grading system, rarely do students get more than 8 out of 10 on partial tests and assignments.  Yet graduate schools and employers expect at least 25 out of 30 on undergraduate exams, and the university itself requires at least 28 out of 30 for an Honors Degree.
 
 

                                     YOUR MARKS   (I TUOI VOTI)
YOUR MARKS FOR THIS MODULE (tasks, partial exam) are in YOUR DATA : click here> 
YOUR MARKS FOR THE ESERCITAZIONI  (LETTORI EXAM, June, Sept., January) are here> 
 
 
 

                                                      EXAM DATES
     Calendar* for final exams (due appelli per ogni sessione di esame): click> 
     For last minute changes, go to the “Didattica / Notizie” page by clicking here> 

*NOTE: There are regulations governing when you can take the exam and in what order you must take each component of this course (the Module, the Tutorial).  See the regulations under Regulations on the main menu or simply click here>   

 
 
   Computerized exam booking>   
No booking is required for the mid-term tests (esoneri) since they are not "real" exams (their purpose is to "exonerate" you from some of the material on the final exam) and the mark you get for them does not go on your libretto.
 
Booking is required, however, for the final exam -- and at least 8 days in advance.  Click on the orange button above to connect to the booking site, usually active 20 days before the exam period.  But before you click to book, see the “Calendar for final exams” in the paragraph above – it will help you determine for which exam to book.

 

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SYLLABUS,  SET TEXTS,  HANDOUTS 
 aaa

Syllabus 

 
“Translation as a 'double internalization'” ( + a case study on dubbing)

This Module treats three related themes:

- Translation as a “double internalization” in the specific case of the dubbing or subtitling (“audiovisual translation”) of English language films into Italian;

- Cultural adaptation into English of personal life stories lived in Italian;

- Translation as an experimental science based on surveys of the reactive effect of source/target texts..

This Module is intended for students following the curriculum Operatori della Comunicazione Intercultural.  It includes a Tutorial conducted by one of the Lettori staff, aimed at consolidating students' hold on the grammar of English and current usage.  Students must pass the Tutorial exam (variously called “l'esame scritto” or “la prova Lettori”) at the end of the year, in order to qualify for taking the final exam on this Module.

Students attending 80% of the Module lessons may substitute a part of the Reading List that follows with research activities and field work. 

The organizational aspects of the Module -- requirements and credits, evaluation 
   criteria and so on – are indicated in the main menu.   The Reading List follows. 
 

 Set texts
("programma")

1. Book: M. Bertucelli Papi et al. (eds.), Lexical Complexity: Theoretical Assessment and Translational Perspectives, Pisa: Edizioni Plus. I l frequentanti che eseguono le attività di ricerca leggono pp. 101-140. I non frequentanti leggono pp. 1-33, 101-154. Ordinabile on-line dalla Pisa University Press. Disponibile anche nella Biblioteca di Facoltà e, limitatamente alle pagine per i frequentanti, presso la copisteria Pronto Stampa, via Ostiense 461.

2. Monograph: P. Boylan, 'Rewriting oneself', monografia inedita, 2003 (scaricabile dal sito).  I frequentanti che eseguono le attività di ricerca sono esonerati dall'intero testo.

3. Lesson materials: Lucidi ed appunti del corso (per i soli frequentanti – scaricabili dal sito)

4. Monograph  P. Boylan “Il come e il perché degli esami” (scaricabile dal sito).  I frequentanti che eseguono le attività di ricerca sono esonerati dall'intero testo.   I non frequentanti saranno interrogati sull'intero testo.  Studenti italiani: leggete la versione italiana che tratta in dettaglio la situazione degli esami nei corsi di laurea in lingue in Italia.  International students: read the English version of the text.

     
    NOTE for STUDENTS FROM LETTERE AND OTHER DEGREE COURSES    
Students from the corso di laurea in Lettere (and other degree courses) who need 4 credits are to study texts 1, 2, 4 indicated above, plus a 4^th text that will be chosen case by case (the student is asked to see the teacher during his office hours indicated here).
 

 Handouts 
 
("Dispense per i soli frequentanti -- i non frequentanti NON devono leggere questi testi.")

<cliccare                     "Learning language as culture" (in italiano)
 
Documento storico di 20 anni fa: è il Manifesto (la prima dichiarazione di principio scritto in lingua italiana) di una nuova concezione di apprendimento delle lingue vive, basata sull'introiezione culturale.
La pagina riprodotta è la Postfazione al volume Accenti sull'America di Patrick Boylan, Roma: Armando Curcio Editore, 1987, p. 387. In glottodidattica, "Learning language as culture" viene chiamato anche "l'approccio comunicativo-culturale".

 
Cultural Parameters Illustrated: How to predict communication friction.
Slides from a course by Linda Beamer, California State University, Los Angeles, 2001,
and modified by Patrick Boylan for University of Rome III students, 2002.
Warning: To see this text, your computer must have a PowerPoint Viewer (most do).  
You can get one free at www.microsoft.com  (enter “PowerPoint viewer”
in the search box or, for a direct link, click here).
 

 
Common European Framework of Reference (CEF)
You'll hear teachers at Roma Tre (and elsewhere) speak of the Common European Framework (CEF) levels of competence in a second language. For example, our university entry test is targeted for Level B1 in reading ability and A2 in speaking ability. What does this mean? Click the orange dot if you want to know more about the system (which many people criticize as simplistic, so it will probably undergo change in the near future).
 

Learn English on the Internet... FREE (no fees to teachers or schools!)
Clicking on the orange dot will open a page full of Internet sites where you can practice and extend your English. But you have to know how to distinguish what sites are most useful to you. This means asking yourself (1.) what learning English really means and thus (2.) what kinds of competence you need to acquire and only then (3.) what exercises are best for you.

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LESSONS
 

     
AFTER EACH LESSON, SEE HERE FOR THE SLIDES/NOTES USED.
 

22/10/07

 
Translation is a kind of communication...
      (And what is communication? As we saw last year, not the transmission of information using a common code but rather the search for a common code, by creating and varying a relationship)
... in which a communicative intent is carried across (“trans-lated”) a divide.

Discussion: What exactly is carried across?
                       What exactly is the divide?
 
Practical application of the discussion:
Task 0 (warm up): Translate the short set of instructions that accompany an Ikea product (a beverage trolley sold in a box as separe pieces that you must put together). Target your translation for one of two publics as described in “Task 0”. (Due Nov. 2)
 
 
Practical considerations: student volunteers to download and distribute free software for dubbing the video formats commonly used by cell phones and the video cameras that the students in the class possess.

Example of the dubbing you will be doing (done by a professional dubbing cooperative) here.
 

26/10/07

 
Who determines what the communicative intent of a text really is?
- The “intrinsic nature” of the text?
- The author who produced it? Or the “author in the text” whose voice we hear?
- The publisher who requests a translation of it?
- One or both of the publics involved (source public, target public?)
- The translator?
- The critics?
- No one (establishing the intent is always an arbitrary construction)
- etc.
 
Practical application of the discussion:
First task: Translate into English a “real life story” -- i.e. an event consisting of a dialog that you originally lived in Italian and that you first write up as a short scenario in Italian – and tell it to the students at Trinity College during the encounter organized for Wednesday, November 7th, 8 pm. See further details under “Task 1”.
 

29/10/07

 
The medium of translation is generally said to be “language”. But what is “language”? The verbal semiotic systems that we call “Italian”, “English”, “Arabic”, etc.?
Clearly something more than that, since in translating for dubbing, the script is not enough, we have to see the film as well. 
It is also clearly something more than BOTH verbal and non-verbal (behavioral) signals, since we cannot translate adequately an audiovisual loop (for dubbing) without seeing the preceding loops, knowing the culture that produced the interaction, etc.

In defining language, distinguish between langue and parole (Saussure):
- as parole language is the “will to mean” that erupts in a communicative event,
- as langue language is the sedimentation of perceived/produced acts of parole which produces a Weltanschauung and a a disposition to express oneself in a certain way: Thus, to speak a language means to acquire that disposition and express oneself from within a certain “world”; to immerge oneself into that world (at least temporarily).
 

05/11/07

The meaning in the text or in the author's mind

Difference between:
- “explanatory texts” (ideative function) and
- “narrative or dialogic texts” (poetic function)

Units of Translation

LIFE STORIES

And the winners are...

Sandra Venuta – The Sicilian Boyfriend.

Silvia De Angelis -- A Dream

Sabrin El Nomrosy – Between Sisters

Lorenzo Carletta – The Genovese Campers.

Silvia Orecchini – Italian Mothers.

Wednesday
07/11/07
7:55 pm

An evening at Trinity College,
Clivio dei Publicii 7 (colle Avventino)
Wednesday, November 7^th, 8 pm until (probably) 10 pm

Meeting point: 7:55 pm (Please be on time!)
IN THE SQUARE NEXT TO TRINITY COLLEGE, IN FRONT OF
L'ACCADEMIA DELLA DANZA, LARGO ARRIGO VII, 5 (it's the blue circle on the map below)

09/11/07

NO LESSON (transport strike)

12/11/07

Metalinguistic translation

(what I tried to do through pantomime
to enable you to translate the Ikea instructions).

Some Computer Assisted Translation programs attempt this method. So if you have a text to translate from Swedish, enter “on-line translation Swedish” in Google and you will find sites that will give you something between a literal translation and a metalinguistic translation:
http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=English&to=Swedish

 If we use, for example, http://www.systran.co.uk/ we obtain this kind of translation:

Original

VIKTIG!
Kontrollera först innehållet. Sortera skruvar och beslag enligt anvisningen. Montera möbeln i nummerordning och som bilderna visar. Om något saknas eller du får problem, ring ditt varuhus!

Systran
IMPORTANT
Check the first content. Sort skruva and confiscating according to the instruction. Assemble the piece of furniture in numerical order and as the pictures shows. About something is missing or you sheep problems, dial your department store!

16/03/07

Two BASIC types of translation:

- semantic (which is NOT literal)
- comunicative (which is NOT free)
          -- Peter Newmark, A Textbook of Translation. Pearson Education, London, 1988

(Newmark gives many more kinds, some defined only sketchily, but these two constitute the major distinction for everyday translation work.)

 I propose 4 kinds of reader-oriented translations 
 and 1 kind of non reader-oriented translation: 

 
THE READER (OR CLIENT) REQUESTS THE TRANSLATOR:

semantic translations

-to treat the text as “sacred”: legal, official (diplomatic), religious, etc.

literal translations

-to treat the text metalinguistically, as in comparative grammar. Example:

Swahili: ndwo 'shhzu a takka'uuhhu

Italiano: leone vidi io grande'molto (or grandissimo)

auteur translations

-to recreate the text with new or modified intentionality (adaptation)

comunicative translations

-to communicate to target RR the intents that source RR see in the text

(THIS IS NOT FREE TRANSLATION)
RR = reference readers

SLRR (source language reference readers)
TLRR (target language reference readers)

IF NO SOURCE READERS ARE REFERENCED (BY DOCUMENTING AND MENTALLY RECREATING THEIR WORLD AND WANTING TO BE PART OF IT, AT LEAST WHILE READING THE TEXT)
AND IF THE READER'S (or client's) VIEWS ARE NOT DEFINED IN ORDER TO DETERMINE VIEWPOINT AND LANGUAGE TO BE USED,

THEN THE TRANSLATOR PRODUCES

EGOCENTRIC translations

EGOCENTRIC TRANSLATION IS WHAT MOST STUDENTS DO IN LANGUAGE (AND EVEN TRANSLATION) CLASSES WHEN THE TEACHER SAYS: “HERE IS A SENTENCE OR HERE IS A TEXT – HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE IT?”

(If the teacher gives no source or target reference readership, students translate according to what the text says to them and for a public identical to themselves.)

SOME PUPILS IN TRANSLATION CLASSES DO HAVE A REFERENCE READER... WHO?

19/03/07

UNIT OF TRANSLATION

For a semantic translation:

How many units in “ripresa”?
La scena è stata ripresa.
Maria ha preso un po' di pasta e poi ne ha ripresa.

(distinguish content elements and operators)

How many units in “c'era una volta”?
C'era una volta in questa stanza un'infinità di libri.
C'era una volta una bambina con ricci d'oro.

Translation unit:

LINGUISTIC DEFINITIONS (dated):

“The whole of a given text” Bassnett 1991
Bassnett, Susan.1991. Translation Studies. Revised edition. London: Routledge. (Original edition 1980.)

“The utterance”, “The clause” Malmkjær 1998
-- Malmkjær K., “Unit of translation”, in Baker M. (a cura di), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Routledge, London, 1998, pp. 286-288.

“A source segment and a corresponding target segment, recorded as equivalents in a data base. It thus constitutes the base unit for the translation memories.”
--  FXM Translator's Glossay 

See also: http://www.proz.com/?sp=store&sp_mode=cat

Today, with the principles of communicative translation firmly established (Steiner 1975; Vermeer, 1986; Bassnet, & Lefevere, 1990; Neubert & Shreve, 1992; Snell-Hornby,1995; Hönig, 1995; Hatim 2000) :

PRAGMATIC OR INTENTIONAL DEFINITIONS
(more later

__________

IKEA INSTRUCTIONS TRANSLATED COMUNICATIVELY, WITH PRAGMATIC ADJUSTMENTS FOR THE TWO TARGETS EXPLAINED IN CLASS:

And the winner is... Enzo_Parente

COMMENT ON STYLE: Federico_Massarelli

                                                                 Niroja_Thangavadivel

23/11/07

Discussion of 4-POINT CHECKLIST TO TEST IF YOU HAVE CREATED A COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION: Click here

Philips Coffee maker: Dutch (Anglo-Germanic) vs. French (Latin) concepts of “logical explanations.” Click here.

Second major activity: dub a one minute extract from an Italian film into English for the market represented by the Trinity College students, and test to see if your translation/dubbing produces the intended effects.

REMEMBER: YOU ARE DEALING WITH DIALOG, SO CHARACTERIZE YOUR CHARACTERS THROUGH THEIR LANGUAGE

BEGIN READING THE TEXT BY SL BRUTI

BEGIN THINKING ABOUT THE FILM EXCEPT YOU WANT TO DUB

1- SCENE SHOULD CONTAIN A COMPLEMENTS

2- SCENE SHOULD CONTAIN SLANG

SOFTWARE

1 COPY DVD FILMS TO .AVI FORMAT

GROUP WILL CHOOSE A DUBBING EDITOR

QUESTION

Why are we doing dubbing as a translation activity?

Because every time you speak English, you're dubbing.

Now...

Next question: WHO are you dubbing?

The “self” (or the persona*) that you want to be in English.
*your public self, the character you want others to see.
     -- (Erving Goffman, 1959, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life)

26/11/07

Review of the concept of translation unit

Semantic Translation units in our Ikea translation:

A first attempt at creating translation units is a serial breakdown, word group by word group. Click here.

1. VIKTIG!
attirare l'attenzione / far leggere testo

2. Kontrollera först innehållet.
prima cosa / ispezionare / roba dentro

3. Sortera skruvar och beslag enligt anvisningen.
sbrogliare / / seguire / avviso

4. Montera möbeln i nummerordning och som bilderna visar.
Costruire / arredo / ordine numerico / + / simile / immagine / mostrare

5. Om något saknas eller du får problem, ring ditt varuhus!
Eventualità / cosa / mancare / in alternativa / tu / avere / problemi / telefonare / tuo / negozio

But often translation units (TU's) jump from one point in a sentence or in the text to another. This page presents the units with circles around each one. Click here.

HOMEWORK:
 
For next Friday: No lesson but consign TASK 2 to your group leader, so that s/he can give me the translations and the evaluation sheet on Monday, December 3^rd.

03/12/07

Review of 4-step evaluation criteria of COMUNICATIVE translations.

Examples: Valentina's and Luca P.'s translations of ENEL press release.

With respect to a SINGLE WORD, lexical complexity is very often impossible to render because, semantically, a "word" is only the meaning that emerges from a stratified, evolving, network of associations that is locally instantiated. (What a "word" means fully depends on the associations it creates in a specific context in a specific moment.) But that's no problem. You can compensate for the associations not rendered in word “A” by evoking them when translating word “B” or “C” or “D” etc. within the text to render.

For while TEXTS also exhibit textual complexity (their meaning is also an emergent property of a stratified, evolving, network of associations that is locally instantiated), any given text extends materially, as a whole, over time and space. It is like both the network of nodes making up the Internet, which extend over space, and a series of gymnastic exercises, which extend over time. This makes the compensation principle explained above easy to put into practice. With the Internet, if there is failure at one node or at a series of nodes, the message still gets through because it establishes new compensatory paths to reach the target. In practicing artistic gymnastics, if you fail to do an exercise right one day you can still improve your performance ability by doing similar exercises that prepare your muscles in the same way the following days.  And thus, when translating, you can always distribute IN THE MOST OPPORTUNE WAY over time and space the effects you want to produce with the text in order to render the totality of the effects by the end of the text, although actually realizing them in different (and easier to translate) places than where they are situated in the original text.


Comments on Silvia Bruti's chapter, Complexity in audiovisual translation. some reflections on the speech act of complimenting. NOTE: I have highlighted (evidenziato in giallo) a few significant passages – if you click on the highlighting, a Post-it note will appear with comments. You must click on the note to see ALL the comments.  I have highlighted only half the text, to give you an example of how to identify key concepts (for example, “speech act”). These concepts are not explained in the text: the author takes it for granted that university language students have studied the concepts in their linguistics courses or, if they have not, are capable of using the Internet to find explanations of the concepts.

This text (and also Elisa Mattiello's text, to be discussed next time) will be the heart of the written test (esonero) on December 14^th. The questions that will be asked will be similar to the questions I raised in class when commenting on the highlighted parts of Silvia Bruti's text.
 

07/12/07

 No Dal Molin video on YouTube: example of where SUBTITLES would be effective (in explaining the written text) and useless (in translating the song), unless... by a skillful adaptation, only the perloctionary effect (or “force”) of each strophe is rendered.
 
ENEL PRESS RELEASE: Comments on the translations made by DUIT students.
 
Comments on Elisa Mattiello's chapter: Keeping Lexical Complexity in Slang Translation: “In Merlini Barbaresi’s (2003) view, complexity is correlated with both markedness and difficulty, since it is the obvious consequence of the former and the possible cause of the latter.

Markedness = Prague Linguistic Circle

voicing

nasalization

roundedness.

hiss
(sibillare)

-

his

+

 But...
Is “signor” unmarked/“more natural” because it's simpler?
Is “signore” marked/“less natural” (it has 1 extra trait)? But it is more common.
Is “signori” marked with respect to “signore” because it is less common?
But if “commonness” determines unmarkedness, who determines the greater commonness, which can vary, for two word forms, according to contexts?
 
“Marked” = useful term to indicate present/missing trait, but a questionable notion semantically (everything is marked).

See Haspelmath, M. (2006) “Against markedness (and what to replace it with)”. Journal of Linguistics, 42: 25-70

My conclusions:
Slang is complex, not because it is “marked” with respect to so-called standard language (which is equally complex), but because it is less universal.

Thus the difficulty produced by the complexity of slang is not due to markedless but to localness (less universality). You have to learn each milieu on its own to understand usage.

Maximum localness: underword slang or “anti-languages”* meant to be understood only by a very few adepts.
*Halliday, M. A. K. (1975) "Anti-Languages". American Anthropologist 78 (3): 570—584

Of course, one has to learn the “milieux” associated with any standard language as well and each “milieu” is just as complex as that associated with any slang.  But to an L2 learner, the so-called “standard usage” in the L2 (language forms plus social codes) seems easier to master because, like the “standard variety” of her/his own native language, it is has been highly rationalized.

 
Mattiello writes:
In line with this approach, I especially claim that complexity in the lexicon arises whenever the interplay of participants in the interaction and social context causes a preference for less natural/more marked less universal, more local choices within vocabulary. As a result, it may obstruct meaning or referent accessibility, and hence constitute both an immediate problem of perception for the addressees (i.e. inside participants), and a potential problem of misinterpretation for the analyst (i.e. the translator and his addressees).

In this paper I mainly focus on the translation of linguistic varieties that are culture-specific or belong to a socially restricted speech community. [Precisely what makes slang!]

a first requirement for equivalence is ‘equivalent function’. Accordingly, the translator should keep low semantic and pragmatic transparency – i.e. polysemy and multifunctionality – in the target language (TL), any time they are motivated by socio-pragmatic purposes (e.g. identification with a group, cryptic reasons, establishing intimacy, etc.) in the source language (SL).

Example of low semantic transparencey =
“Mortacci ” Death to You (The Hateful Dead)
(1989) film by Sergio Citti.
(Actors: Gassman, Melato, Rubini)

1. Why is the title “non-transparent” (opaque)in Italian?
2. Are the two English titles equally opaque?
3. Can you think of a better title for US or UK distribution? (In both countries, the audience for foreign “art” or “social criticism” films is generally highly educated and linguistically sophisticated.)

CLASS EXERCISE: Comment the translations of the ENEL Press Release produced by two DUIT (Perugia) students.

RESULT: Each group judged the DUIT translations differently; some considered the Financial Times translation acceptable, others unacceptable, and the same for the L.A. Times translation.  The reasons given varied greatly.  (Group G gave the most precise reasons, using the terminology taught in this course instead of generic considerations, so they won the first prize.)

This exercise serves to illustrate an important point:  judgments about translations vary necessarily, because the interpretation of the communicative intent of the source text is subjective.  (Or, to be more precise, the interpretation of what “imaginary source readers” see as the communicative intent of the source text is subjective.)

Any interpretation depends on the subjective value systems of the people making the interpretation. And each person thinks s/he sees the most important features to be “trans-lated” into the target text.

So, in a sense, each group was right! (And, theoretically, each group deserves a prize!)


One last consideration:

WHO WILL JUDGE THE VALUE OF YOUR FUTURE TRANSLATIONS IN THE REAL-LIFE WORLD?

The approach to the comunicative translation of texts espoused in this course has made the (imagined) Reference Readerships the final judge of the meaning and value of source and target texts.  In the real world of commercial translation, however, the final judge is the person commissioning the translation (il committente, the client).

Thus be careful about applying the approach espoused here.  Many real-world clients will not accept it.  They will demand semantic translations when you think a comunicative translation is required.  They will refuse adaptations and any kind of rewriting.  They will demand a close translation even where none is possibile, if the communicative value of the source text is to be conserved.  But that is the point: they are not interested in conserving the communicative value defined in terms of reference readers because they consider themselves to be the ideal reference reader (both of the source and target texts).  And since they “see” in a semantic translation what they “see” in the original text, only a semantic translation will satisfy them.  Since they are paying for the translation, they have the last word.
 

10/12/07

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RESEARCH TASKS

Marking Scheme

Italian school marking system:          0

1 - 3

4,  5

 6

7,  8

(9,  10)

Points for each Task completed:          0

   1

   2

 3

   4

   (5)