Words vs. Ideas (continued)

This is a continuation of the penultimate post, which please read first.

Brian Mossop understandably rejects evidence from ‘pathological’ subjects like aphasia patients, but here’s an example of pathological translating behaviour that’s very commonplace. It’s typical of what’s produced when there’s interference between the words-> words and the words-> message-> words paths; the interference suggests that both paths are operating simultaneously. So many Non-Expert Translators (including translation school students) make the mistake of translating French librairie or Spanish librería as English library when it should be bookshop/bookstore. It’s not the fault of the dictionaries. Similarly bibliographie translated as bibliography instead of references in a scientific paper by someone who should know better, and so on with many other ‘false friends’. In the case of librairie/library, two of the semantic features, i.e. meaning elements, are correctly understood and transferred: books and place for. It’s only the third feature, selling and buying, that’s derailed. And why so? Because the word form of librairie is simultaneously present while the meaning is being apprehended, and it connects automatically with the closest word form in the target language.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that some translations turn out noticeably literal and other noticeably free. So there has to be some mechanism that selects or tips the balance one way or the other. Mossop says no conclusions about its nature can be drawn in the present state of research.

What's all this got to do with Natural and Native Translators? Well, three decades ago, Canadian educational psycholinguists Merrill Swain (see photo), G. Dumas and Neil Naiman were doing research on seven-year-old children learning French as a second language and getting them to translate (a technique that they called elicited translation). The children were young and inexperienced enough to be classed as Natural Translators; certainly they had been given no instruction in translation. The investigators observed that the children translated in different ways. Some of them followed the original wording closely and others more freely. In this case the translations were very short and there was no opportunity to revise, at least not openly. It suggests that, whatever the mechanism, the verbal vs. deverbalised distinction or the selection/weighting mechanism runs deep and early. Unfortunately the observation hasn't been followed up. It would be interesting to know, for example, whether bilingual children exhibit the same tendencies in translating between two languages as they do when paraphrasing in a single language.

German researcher Wolfgang Lörscher has carried the observations to a later age and more advanced level of translating. His subjects were Native Translators − “advanced foreign language learners” at university level − whom he compared with “professional translators”, presumably Expert Translators. His conclusions:

“Most of the foreign language students take a form-oriented approach in that they produce translations mainly by an exchange of language signs... As a result, Target Language texts are produced which are neither equivalent in sense to the respective Source Language texts nor grammatically or stylistically acceptable texts by themselves.... Professional translators, in contrast, commonly employ sense-oriented procedures. Thus, the shortcomings of translations with serious distortions of sense or violations of norms of TL text production are avoided.”

This characteristic of Lörscher’s professionals may be a result of their training: they had probably been taught, as I was, to “translate the ideas, not the words.” He doesn’t look into it. On the other hand, “most of the foreign language students” implies that there are some who do not. In other words, it’s a matter of tendencies. Which of the two models is closer to reality − a divergence between word-for-word transfer and deverbalisation with reconciliation between them, or simultaneous processing of them both − remains an open question. But what is not in question is that the difference between literal and message-based translating is one of the most fundamental and fascinating for translation research.

References
Merrill K. Swain (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), G. Dumas and N. Naiman. Alternatives to spontaneous speech: elicited translation and imitation as indicators of second language competence. Working Papers in Bilingualism, 3.68-79, 1974. Available online as ERIC document ED123872.

Brian Mossop (York University, Toronto). An Alternative to 'Deverbalization'. 2003. Click here for the text.

Wolfgang Lörscher (U. of Leipzig). The translation process: methods and problems of its investigation. Meta, 50:2.597-608, 2005. Click here for the text.

Term
Message. The use of message in models of translating is an attempt to deal with inadequacies of the term meaning. The message is the speaker/writer’s intended meaning in that particular instance and including affective elements.

Image
Merrill Swain, pioneer Canadian observer of child translators. She's now a Professor Emeritus in Toronto. Source: clesol.org.nz.

Flash! The Forlì Conference

Registration is now open at ‘early bird’ prices for the First International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation. The venue is Forlì, half an hour by train from Bologna, Italy, and the dates are May 17-19. For more information, click here.

Words vs. Ideas

When I started to learn French at school, at age 11, it was by the venerable grammar-translation method. As soon as we could translate sentences, we were told, "Don't translate the words, translate the ideas." I noticed that our teachers and examiners sometimes didn't practice what they preached, but the advice sank in. As if we had to make a choice.

"Ideas, not words." Here's a little example I saw recently:

En España, ya queda prohibido circular a más de 100 km/h.
Word translation (with help from Google Translate): In Spain, it is already forbidden to drive at more than 100 km an hour.
Ideas translation: The Spanish speed limit is now 70 mph.

At the extremes, translating the words leads to word-for-word translations; translating the ideas leads to free translations.

Years later, I came across the distinction again in Theodore Savory's The Art of Translation. Savory gives a list of six choices that translators have to make, and first on the list is:

"A translator must give the words of the original,
A translator must give the ideas of the original."

Again, a choice.

By that time I'd also learnt that the choice may be determined by the type of text or the purpose of the translation. It was none other than St Jerome who famously said (my emphasis),

"When I translate the Greeks, I do not translate word for word, except for the Scriptures, where even the order of the words is a mystery."

So far, pretty elementary. Then the distinction got a boost in contemporary translation theory from the research and writings of an influential teacher, Danica Seleskovitch (for more about her, enter Danica in the Search box on the right). She also coined some new terminology in French. She called translating the words transcodage and translating the meaning interprétation. Her research was based on the notes and think-aloud recollections of Expert Conference Interpreters working in the long consecutive mode. In this mode there is typically a delay of many minutes between speaker and interpretation, during which time the interpreter has to remember what's been said. The interpreters are trained to take notes that act as prompts, and the notes are of made up principally of ideograms between which are inserted only a minimum of words. Consequently the interpreter is prompted for the ideas but can't remember the exact wording of the original. The content of the original is thus said to be deverbalised. She went even further and said that this deverbalised form is the way we store spoken information in long-term memory. As a teacher, she insisted her students deverbalise and avoid literal translations. As if they had a choice.

But one of our best contemporary Canadian writers on translation, Brian Mossop (see photo), who has over 30 years of practical experience as a Professional Translator, opposes, we might even say debunks, the idea that there is a choice.

"This picture is certainly useful for pedagogical purposes,... However pedagogical utility does not imply theoretical value... That is, the mere fact that a theory may be useful does not imply or even suggest that it is true...
"My proposal is that both processes (direct links and meaning-mediated links) occur simultaneously and they do so whenever someone is translating. It is never a case of one or the other.

"At the outset, as the translator begins to hear or read a chunk of ST [source text], he/she starts to interpret ST, that is, arrive at an understanding of its meaning. On the other hand, and at the same time, the translator’s bilingual brain automatically produces TL [target language] lexical and syntactic material based on the incoming SL forms and on the connections (whatever these may be) between TL and SL items in the mental store of language knowledge. I’ll call this activity of the brain Rendering. Rendering occurs beyond all conscious control and cannot be ‘unlearned’. It happens automatically: bilingual brains render just as stomachs digest incoming food."

He does admit that

"In the present state of knowledge about how the brain works, we cannot prove any theory about unconscious brain processes during translation. Still, we can ask whether there are any observations which can provide at least initial plausibility for a view."

And he goes on to give some of the evidence.

To be continued.

References
Theodore Savory. The Art of Translation, enlarged edition. London: Cape, 1967, 159 pages. Out of print, but available second hand through Amazon.

Michael Marlowe. The literal character of the Vulgate. Bible Research. Click here for the text. The Vulgate is Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible.

Danica Seleskovitch. Langage, langues et mémoire: étude de la prise de notes en interprétation consécutive (Language, Languages and Memory: A Study of Note-taking for Consecutive Interpretation). Paris: Minard, 1975, paperback edition 1998. This is the canonical version, but there's an English summary in:
D. Seleskovitch. Language and memory: a study of note-taking in consecutive interpretation. In F. Pöchhacker and M. Shlesinger (eds.), Interpreting Studies Reader, London & New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 121-129.

Brian Mossop. An Alternative to 'Deverbalization'. 2003. Click here for the text.

Image
Intercultural Studies Group, Braga

Two Translation Preparatory Schools for Children

A book about language that’s popular at the moment is David Bellos’ Is That A Fish in Your Ear?. Bellos himself is an Expert Translator of French literature besides being director of Princeton University’s Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. He knows a lot about the history and practice of translation; the book is erudite, though what one reviewer describes as “a bouillabaisse”. I learnt from it, and especially something about training children in preparation for becoming interpreter-translators. It's well known among translation historians that in the late 17th century, Louis XIV’s enterprising minister Colbert founded a language school for such children in Paris. It was called the École des Jeunes de Langue (School of Young Linguists) and was housed in a Jesuit college, later the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. What I learnt from Bellos, however, was that there was an even earlier school of the same kind in Venice. It was known as the Scuola dei Giovani di Lingua and it was founded on February 21, 1551 because

“The traumatic outcomes of Venice’s wars with the [Turkish] sultans made it clear to its rulers that in the Ottoman case the city would have to rely chiefly on diplomatic and political means rather than offensive military efforts to maintain and defend its position in the eastern Mediterranean.”

Whereas the motivation for the French was trade relations, one of Colbert’s priorities, and part of the expenses were paid by the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce.

Thus both the French and the Venetians needed translator-interpreters for their dealings with the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and both nations decided to start training them from school age. The similarity between the names of the schools suggests that the French may have been inspired by the Venetians; the French pupils were also known as Enfants de langue (Language Children), which says something about their age. The working languages of the Ottomans were Turkish and Arabic, but the bureaucracy also needed Persian. The French consistently gave initial language teaching in Paris, and then sent suitable graduates in their teens for on-the-job training in Istanbul (aka Constantinople in those days).

“The reports, translations and copies of their source texts that the Student Dragomans had to send periodically to Paris grew into a collection of contemporary documents that remains extremely useful for oriental philology.”

The Venetians started their Professional careers as assistants to the baili, the Venetian diplomats stationed in Constantinople, and were housed in the diplomats’ residence while still students.

The Venetians wavered in their method; for part of the time all their teaching was done in Constantinople, but at periods they too followed the same pattern as the French. At both schools, the intake was mainly of children from the families of men (always men!) who were themselves established dragomans, as the official translator-interpreters were called. As such, the boys were probably bilingual to some extent from the start. The Venetian school had its ups and downs for three centuries and disappeared with the Republic of Venice. The Paris school was reestablished after the French Revolution and continued into the 19th century, but its function was absorbed into a university level School of Oriental Languages, which still flourishes as the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures (INALCO). So INALCO can lay claim to being the oldest still operating school of translators in the world.

The training at the Venetian school initially lasted five years, but in 1623 it was increased to seven. The students began “very young”. One question these extraordinary schools raise is the age at which it is possible to start preparing the ground for youngsters to become Expert Translators, and multilingual at that. Note that neither the French nor the Venetians gave translator training as such before adolescence, but they did language teaching while the boys’ minds were still ‘plastic’. Furthermore, it was in the era of teaching languages by the grammar-translation method.

References
David Bellos. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? UK: Particular Books / USA: Faber and Faber, 2011.

Léon Vaïsse, Essai sur l'histoire de la philologie orientale en France, Paris, 1884. An extract is reproduced as Jeunes de langues, interprètes au Levant (‘Jeunes de langues’, interpreters in the Levant) in Turquie-culture / Türk kültürü, in French only, at this link. It’s a good one-page history.

We know quite a lot about the Scuola di Giovani di Lingua thanks to the research and writings of Italian orientalist Francesca Lucchetta, for example:

F. Lucchetta, La scuola dei ‘giovani di lingua’ veneti nei secoli XVI e XVII (The school of Venetian ‘giovani di lingua’ in the 16th and 17th centuries). Quaderni di Studi Arabi, No. 7 (1989), pp. 19-40. For the English abstract, click on this link.

Her other articles can be traced through the author index of the Quaderni by clicking here. There are English abstracts.

Term
Dragoman: For more about dragomans, enter the term in the Search box on the right.

Image
Venice in the seventeenth century, a Belgian tapestry. Source: http://castletapestry.com/dload5/im010039.htm

Expanding the Abilities of Bilingual Youngsters

Recently, Lionel Dersot posted a whole collection of interesting videos on his Liaison Interpreter website. To access them, click on the Liaison Interpreter in Japan link in the right-hand column of this page and scroll back a few posts.

One of them waxes enthusiastic about a programme that describes itself as Liaison Interpreting. And so it is, sort of (see Term below), but a particular kind of liaison interpreting that is usually called community interpreting or public service interpreting; or, since it involves immigrants in the United States, language brokering. But let’s ignore the misnomer and consider what it does.

The organisation behind the video and the programme is Cross Cultural Communication Institute (CCCI) of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. CCCI is very serious about standards and the training for them: see their website referenced below. It gives courses and issues diplomas. The interpreters it turns out therefore qualify as Expert Interpreters.

What interests us particularly here is where they recruit their budding interpreters. They say (my emphasis):

"We have taken a futuristic approach to building a bilingual workforce by consulting and providing trainings to middle and high schools. At the high school level, we have developed highly acclaimed programs that encourage young ones to view their bilingualism as a tool in the ever changing and evolving marketplace. In order to meet the linguistic needs of an increasingly diverse population, we supply organizations with the trainings and tools necessary to educate and assess their bilingual workforce.

"CCCS, Inc. created the Cross Cultural Communication Institute (CCCI) in order to meet the needs of interpreters. CCCI was the first accredited post secondary school for interpreters in New Hampshire and is in the process of applying for the same status in Massachusetts. We offer trainings, workshops, and presentations geared towards students at the Middle School, High School, and College levels. We can also offer customized trainings for healthcare professional institutions."

The age range can therefore be summed up as adolescents and young adults. The credits on the video indicate that the ones shown are mostly students from MIT. The video is full of their enthusiasm (see photo).

The emphasis in the recruitment material is on job satisfaction and not remuneration:

"Have you ever wondered what it is like to work as an interpreter? Many bilingual individuals find this work to be truly rewarding... The majority of us at one time or another has had difficulty communicating with someone else due to a language barrier. An interpreter bridges that gap, and, as a result, many times the other parties are very grateful and appreciative of your services. If you choose to become an interpreter you are choosing a career that is very challenging and always changing. Many interpreters state that every day is different and that they are always learning and perfecting their skills. Lastly, if you are fully bilingual you probably already interpret on occasions for family and friends, so why not receive the training so that you can take the next step."

From an educational viewpoint, this work is part of a movement to encourage and apply what are seen as special gifts of bilingual children:

"For immigrant youth still learning English or for others who are fully bilingual, their lack of English fluency is often seen only as a deficit: their bilingualism seldom encouraged... LIPS helps bilingual youth catalyze the use of their unique skills to promote their own development while also supporting the engagement of immigrant families in the civic life of the city."

This is a view that has been promoted for a long time by Claudia Angelelli of San Diego State University and is backed up by a comprehensive paper with a curriculum outline that she published recently (see References).

Term
Liaison interpreters (LI). They facilitate communication (hence they liaise) between individuals or small groups and normally work in the consecutive or whispering mode. They translate in both directions between the two languages. They often move around with their clients and even go on journeys with them; hence one of the synonyms for LI is escort interpreters. There are specialities within LI, notably business interpreters (who, like Lionel, interpret for businessmen) and diplomatic interpreters (as members of diplomatic missions). It can be very intensive work. I once met French President Mitterand’s liaison interpreter in Canada, and he told me he was worn out from being on call from eight in the morning till past midnight.

References and Links
Cross Cultural Communication Institute. Click this link.

Liaison Interpreter Program of Somerville. Click this link.

Claudia V. Angelelli. Expanding the abilities of bilingual youngsters: can translation and interpreting help? In M. J. Blasco Mayor and M. A. Jimenez Ivars (eds.), Interpreting Naturally, Berne, Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 103-122.

Image
LIPS interpreters at the Immigrant Health Fair and Flu Clinic. Source: Welcome Project.

Natural Translation Makes It Into Student Handbook

First a word to those of you who've sent me 'Get Well' messages. I'm much better now, thank you. And just as well, because there's so much to write about. To start with, the following.

This blog has frequently bemoaned the way 'mainstream' translation studies as taught in the universities have blissfully ignored Natural Translation and for that matter Native Translation. It therefore comes as a pleasant surprise to find that a new publication from Benjamins of Amsterdam, Handbook of Translation Studies (HTS) Volume 2, includes a short chapter about NT. It's by Prof. Rachele Antonini of the University of Bologna, Italy (see photo), who's also the enterprising lead organiser of the First International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation this coming May.

Credit must likewise go to the editors of the volume, Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, for opening it up to a wider perspective.

Furthermore, recognising that the price of academic publications these days puts them beyond the reach of most individual buyers – academic publishers depend on sales to libraries and other institutions – Benjamins are making a special offer in connection with HTS. Students, but only students, can 'rent' both volumes of HTS for one year online for a subscription of 30 euros. To take advantage, get in touch with Isja Conen, isja.conen@benjamins.nl.

References
Rachele Antonini. Natural translator and interpreter. In Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer (eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies Volume 2, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 2011, pp. 102-104.

First International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation, May 2011. Click link here

For the Benjamins offer, click this link.


Image
Rachele Antonini. multimodality-lab.net.

Non-Expert Court Interpreting: the Reality

From time to time somebody asks me when I think non-Professional translators (by which they mean non-Expert in my terminology) should not be used. (I was asked it on the Translation Advisor blog last year.) I usually start by answering: When the translation may have legal implications or consequences. It's not just a question of quality. A translation by an Advanced Native Translator may be just as good per se. It's also a matter of authority. If the translation is ever used as evidence or called into question in legal proceedings, then it won't be necessary to go through some procedure to establish the translator's ability if that has already been tested and sanctioned by some recognised body. One obvious area where the translating should carry such authority is court interpreting. But notice I say "should carry" . The observable reality is that the precept can't always be followed. There are many reasons, but one of the most common is that adequately qualified interpreters aren't available at the right place at the right time, and this is often due to the languages involved. Another reason which arises these days is that the interpreters have been trained in the traditional mode for court interpreting, which is consecutive interpreting, but the powers-that-be have decided to import modern technology and switch to simultaneous interpreting.

Several previous posts on this blog have commented on the linguistic aspect and problems of the Shafia murder prosecution in Canada. (To find them, enter shafia in the Search box on the right.) That trial is reaching it climax at present and is widely reported in the Canadian media (see References). Whatever the outcome, it's likely to go down in the annals of famous Canadian murder mysteries. However, there's been nothing new linguistically. On the other hand, other Canadian reports tell of one of the most frustrating and expensive things that can occur when the interpreting goes wrong: a mistrial.

"Words matter, and how.

A physical assault is not the same as a sexual assault. Touching between legs is not the same as touching the genital area. And a couple of weeks is definitely not two days.

But a Hindi interpreter mistranslated those phrases exactly that way in a sexual assault case in Brampton, Ontario, triggering a mistrial and sending ripples through the Greater Toronto Area legal community.

Superior Court Justice Casey Hill [see photo] declared a mistrial in a case against Vishnu Dutt Sharma, an Indian citizen on a work permit in Canada, because the interpreter’s Hindi interpretation of the proceedings was poor and substandard, according to court documents.

'In this case, the non-English-speaker was prejudiced by a denial of full linguistic presence at his trial on April 27, 2011, on account of pervasive departure from the guaranteed standard of interpretation to which he was constitutionally entitled, and in particular during the very details of the complainant’s factual allegations of sexual assault,' Hill said.

...audiotapes from cross-examination were sent to an expert in the United States, who, in a scathing report, said the interpreter 'did not interpret verbatim, summarized most of the proceedings and was not able to interpret everything that was said on the record.'

Umesh Passi, a member of the New York State Bar, said the interpreter spoke 'perfect Hindi but could not keep up with the speed required for simultaneous interpretation.'

Prashant Rai, Dutt’s lawyer, is fluent in Hindi and says that helped bring the problem to the forefront. The court may not have become aware of the inaccuracies otherwise, he added. 'She spoke well in Hindi… I don’t know what happened while interpreting,” Rai said."

Perhaps, at least in the examples quoted above, the non-Expert interpreter was inhibited by cultural taboos from using the literal translations.

For what it's worth, the interpreter in question was accredited and paid as a professional by the Ontario Ministry of Justice. Why? Probably because, in the words of Pat Band, a director with the Criminal Lawyers’ Association of Toronto, "The situation with interpreters is a crisis. There aren’t enough accredited interpreters and the standards (of interpreting) are almost impossible to tell.” In short, whether we approve of it or not, a great deal of court interpreting is still done by non-Experts. One of my correspondents even wonders whether "we have ended up the wrong way round in that demand for, nay a feeling of entitlement to, quality interpreting has outstripped our ability to provide the necessary training and support strategies to achieve it."

References
Paul Schliesmann. Sun News Shafia trial update-Friday. Video. Kingston Whig-Standard, January 14, 2012.

Raveena Aulakh. Mistakes by Hindi interpreter leads to mistrial in Brampton sex assault case. thestar.com, January 5, 2012

Image
Justice Casey Hill of Brampton Superior Court. Source: Toronto News.