University Students As Advanced Native Translators

A good source of volunteer non-Expert translators for NGOs is university students. There are plenty of them in most countries who are foreigners or who at least know a foreign language. They aren’t Experts because they haven’t received training and lack experience; but on the other hand nor are they naive Natural Translators. The very fact that they volunteer for translating shows they have some awarenes of it. More than that, however, their migrations and their education will almost certainly have obliged them to use translations and even do some themselves, either perceptibly or in their heads. This is especially true of any language learning courses, because even now the grammar and translation method is still widespread. These experiences place them, on my scale of translating ability development, as Advanced Native Translators. (For the complete scale, enter definitions in the Search box on the right.)

It’s often a form of social service. The latest example to come my way is from prestigious Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

"Early this academic year we wrote about World Pulse Correspondent Neema Namadamu’s visit to campus as part of Agnès Peysson Zeiss’ Praxis III French course in which students translated blog posts for the organization. We revisited the class in October to get an even better sense of what the students were doing to help women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Now, Seniors Su Oner and Lianna Reed have written a piece of their own on what it meant to work with the women…

"Over the past year, through the Praxis III program…, we have worked as volunteer translators for World Pulse. This semester, six of us have translated four ten blogs a week. Although we are comfortable with our French, it remains a challenge to this day to read and translate Congolese French into English. Many of the women… for many of them, French is not their mother tongue. Our weekly meeting with Professor Agnès Peysson Zeiss focused primarily on understanding challenging blogs so that we could translate them into English. We often come to class with words written phonetically that we cannot decipher. Other times there are idioms and acronyms that we are not familiar with. It all comes together when we post the blogs below the original version on the World Pulse website. We comment under the blogs we translate and interact with these women (in French) through these comments."

Notice this last remark mentions that the translators also comment - something that Expert Interpreters aren't supposed to do according to dogma.

An unexpected mention in this report is Congolese French. All the major languages have varieties and dialects that may be more or less understandable to people brought up on the ’standard’ language taught in schools. Congolese French still bears traces of the country’s colonial past, which has bequeathed it similarities to Belgian French. Canadian French can also be hard for Europeans to understand. We Canadians are sometimes amused to see our films and TV programmes subtitled in so-called International French for export. People can be quite ignorant about dialects. I was once called in to interpret Glaswegian (the English of Glasgow) on the grounds that after all I'd been educated in England. My favourite story in this respect is about how Gaddafi stymied the very Expert Arabic interpreters at the United Nations in New York by addressing the General Assembly without warning in his native Libyan dialect. The problem is particularly acute in court interpreting, as this current example shows:

"Exactly three years after they were arrested at Toronto’s Pearson airport, a pair of accused Jamaican drug smugglers remain unable to stand trial because of a critical shortage of Jamaican Patois interpreters."

It may be more satisfactory to employ a Native Interpreter who knows the dialect than an Expert Interpreter who doesn't.

References
Sue Oner and Lianna Reed. BMC Seniors reflect on translating blogs for women from Democratic Republic of Congo. Bryn Mawr Commmunications Office, 30 April 2014. Click here.

Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Wikipedia, 2014.

Mark M. Orkin. French Canajan, Hé!. 1975. Out of print, but the second-hand copies from Amazon are inexpensive.

Multi-Languages Corporation. Jamaican patois interpreter shortage causes mistrial, leaving alleged drug smugglers in legal limbo. Multi-Language Newsletter, May 2014.

Crowdsourcing: Translation Commons

Crowdsourcing is changing not only the way translations are done, but also the way people think about translating. When I broke away as a maverick translatologist 40 years ago, the notion that useful and usable translations could be done by bilinguals with no training was anathema to the community of Professional Translators and to their trainers in the translation schools. And the general public followed suit in principle if not in practice. I say “not in practice” because in reality there always were many translators who made money as professionals yet were not trained as Expert Translators.

Nowadays the crowdsourcing of translations, either through cooperatives or through agencies, is too prevalent to be ignored or to be dismissed as unacceptable. Even such a universally read source of information as Wikipedia couldn't function without it. Users do make mistakes and go to the wrong kind of translator, but hopefully they’re learning that each kind has its place. The crowdsourced translators usually lay no claim to being experts. Yet nor are they naïve Natural Translators. They are Native Translators, who have learnt by absorption; that is to say by reading or listening to other people’s translations. And they just assume they were born capable of doing it.

The latest example to reach me is Translation Commons. Irish. Let it speak for itself (but with my emphasis).

"A University of Limerick spin-off has gained 5,000 language volunteers world-wide for its Translation Commons platform.
"The Translation Commons matches non-profit translation projects and organisations with volunteer translators, delivering free translation services in to 120 non-profit organisations in 27 countries.
"The platform was launched less than a year ago by the Rosetta Foundation, a non-profit spin-off from the University of Limerick, that works to provide equal access to information and knowledge across the languages of the world.
"The Rosetta Foundation has worked with 88, the most common being English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Catalan, Polish and Arabic.
"Reinhard Schäler, CEO and foundertranslation of The Rosetta Foundation, said: 'Language volunteers have shown that there are no language barriers. The real barrier is access to costly language services which the Translation Commons have brought into the reach of communities that need them most.'
“'At the moment we have around five new volunteer registrations per day, and the most active community is the Spanish one with around 2,000 volunteers. Access to and sharing information in your own language is a fundamental universal human right – one that The Rosetta Foundation is committed to preserve and protect.'”

References
TechCentral Reporters. Translation Commons passes 5,000 volunteer mark. TechCentral.ie, 2014. Click here. http://www.techcentral.ie/translation-commons-passes-5000-volunteer-mark/

Julie McDonough Donough. Wikipedia translation projects: Take 2. Some Thoughts on Translation Research and Teaching blog, 2014.

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University of Limerick arms.

Personal Footnote
To those who know about my recent accident, the good news is my shoulder is healing well. But I’ll have to go through a period of rehab after Easter before I can write normally.

Translation Nation

A few posts ago (February 20), there was one on this blog about Translators in Schools. British schools, that is. Now here's some information about a related UK initiative called Translation Nation. Actually it's the elder of the two, though it's slipped under my radar until now.

"Translation Nation is an award-winning project which aims to inspire children and young people to begin or continue what we hope is a lifelong exploration of literature and culture from around the world. The project promotes pride and enthusiasm for the many languages that are spoken or taught in UK schools, encourages recognition for the important role translation plays in our lives, and encourages an enjoyment and appreciation of literary English and the nuances of the English language."

The project is a partnership between Eastside Educational Trust and the Stephen Spender Trust. (Though the name sounds American, Eastside refers here to the East End of London.) It was started in 2010 for primary schools and in 2012 it received both the European Language Label and the EuroTalk Primary Education Language Prize. The project was also re-launched that year to extend its work to primary schools.

"Translation Nation empowers primary school children as translators, interpreters and storytellers of international stories. It celebrates the many community languages spoken by the children and encourages a curiosity about world literature. Working in small groups under the guidance of language experts, the children translate into English and re-interpret stories that their parents have shared with them from their home languages. The process introduces the children to literary fiction and by including music, props and performance the children find it easy to become engaged and the workshops encourage a more thoughtful, confident, nuanced and imaginative approach to writing in English

"Translation Nation in secondary schools creatively and persuasively highlights to students the value of multi-lingualism today and the opportunities it brings in social and professional contexts and in accessing global literature and culture. The project enables pupils through a single workshop to build confidence as translators and to see the relevance of the modern foreign languages (MFLs) they learn in school. It promotes the continuation of MFL learning to equip pupils with highly desirable tools for the future."

These initiatives are – or should be – important to translatologists because they extend significantly the scope of translating by children and adolescents. In recent years, most of the research attention in this area, and especially in the USA, has been focused on child language brokering (CLB), which means basically the translating that individual bilingual children of immigrant families do in order to help out other, less bilingual members of their families and immediate entourages. This has expanded, mainly in the UK, to organised LB teams in schools, and even to a whole movement like the East Hampshire Young Interpreters (enter hampshire in the Search box on the right). It does reinforce our certainty that normal children without special gifts or teaching can translate, but it has a serious limitation. Which is that CLB is only done for utilitarian purposes and to maintain personal relations with its beneficiaries.

Now comes a quite different kind of stimulus and a quite different kind of adult intervention. The interveners aren't school teachers but are themselves translators or "language experts". And their aim is not utilitarian but to help children's cultural development. This goes along with the general observation that although most translating may be performed to facilitate practical communication, there is nevertheless a great deal which is not (starting with the ludic translating done by the very young like Leopold's daughter.) Activities such as TN point the way to how children's natural translating ability can be developed in pleasure-giving non-utilitarian areas too.

References
Eastside Educational Trust. Translation Nation: inspiring literature in translation in schools. Click here.

Werner F. Leopold. Speech Development of a Bilingual Child: A Linguist’s Record. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1939-1949. Reprinted New York: AMS, 1970.

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Source: www.eastside.org.uk

Accident Report

Dear Friends, Followers, Clients and All,

On Monday I fell and broke my left shoulder. The trauma surgeon is hopeful that I will not need an operation if the bones knit naturally, but as a result, for at least the next three weeks I will only be able to write with one hand. This of course is very slow. Please excuse the delays.

For faster communication, my phone number is 34 (for Spain) followed by 963248846.

Thanking you for your understanding,

Brian Harris

The incident has inspired the following limerick.
In Valencia there was an old man
who promised, “I’ll write what I can
promoting Natural Translation.” But he tripped on a boulder
and busted his shoulder,
and now all he can write is DAMN! DAMN!

Translation Limericks

This blog is usually serious, in intent at least. But let's take a break.

Do you know what a limerick is? In case not, it's a peculiarly English comic verse form: a single verse with a sting in the last line; metre anapaestic; rhyme pattern AABBA; line pattern long, long, short, short, long. But as it's a fun genre, a lot of poetic licence is allowed. Limericks are often – to use a euphemism – ribald: I still remember one from school days that began

There was a young lady of Kent
who said that she knew what men meant...

But the ones that follow won't be of that kind. "Clean if I'm not very clever," as British comedian Arthur Askey used to sing.

To start off, here's pride of place to one about Natural Translation.

There was a young girl of Peru
who started translating at two.
By the time she was five
to her teachers' surprise
she was translating better than you!
(or than me or than anybody else for that matter.)

Only girls?

There was a young boy from Cartagena
who interpreted super-fast without a trainer.
When asked how it could be,
he said, "Here by the sea
in Cartagena we speak Spanish plainer."

Not true, of course. But for the sake of the rhyme.
Both Cartegena (Colombia) and the Cartagena (Spain) are port cities.

The next one is about Bible translation. It helps to know that the great Bible translator St. Jerome was a native of Dalmatia. It also helps to know that adaptation is a constant topic among translation theoreticians, who ponder over where the boundary lies between adaptation and translation proper.

There was an old man, a Dalmatian,
who caused an adaptation sensation.
He cast the whole Universe in doubt
by leaving out
the chapter about the Creation.

And on another hot topic, audiovisual translation. It's very fashionable. Not a week goes by but that I receive the announcement of a lecture, a conference, an article or a book about it.

Are Translators Traitors? They bait the critic
of film, television and rhetoric
by interpretative nuances
taking linguistic chances,
whether subtitled, dubbed, or what makes them tick.

Finally, here's one for all you academics. You need to know that chargé de cours is the lowest teaching rank in French universities, and that the real meaning of French permanence is English 'tenure'.

A proud chargée de cours in Translation
considered she was a gift to the nation.
By departmental attrition
she obtained a position
with permanence, which she translated as 'adulation'.

Over to you now. If you have a limerick to contribute, found or original, you can share it as a Comment to this post or send it to me directly at translatology@yahoo.com.


References
Limerick (poetry). Wikipedia, 2014. Click here.

Arthur Askey. Wikipedia, 2014. Click here.

For examples of adaptation on this blog, enter aladdin, cinderella or nutcracker in the Search box on the right.

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Cover of a book of nonsense poems by Edward Lear, the 19th-century godfather of the limerick.
Source: indianapublicmedia.org

Margaret Atwood on Childhood Translating

It's always encouraging to have support from someone famous. Margaret Atwood is a familiar name to Canadians, and to fans and students of English literature elsewhere. She was recently invited to give a talk about a subject of her choice at the British Library in London.

Here's what she had to say about her own childhood translating. (The emphasis is mine.) It also says something about her motivation.

As it was the WG Sebald lecture, Margaret Atwood told her audience at the British Library, she was entitled to make it as freeform as Sebald's writing, full of "peripatetic" wanderings, mixing up memoir with other genres, and just plain 'odd'.

Though this was a warning not to expect a linear argument, let alone a theory of translation, her beguiling autobiographical digressions in Atwood in Translationland were not there just for fun. They illustrated that "we spend much of our childhood translating"; that it's a universal activity, not one confined to professional translators. Atwood recalled a childhood divided between Ottawa (where her parents listened to bemusing BBC radio broadcasts) and a cabin in Quebec, where the local language was French and she would try to decode the writing on cereal packets.

Other puzzles included the symbols used in cartoon speech bubbles to indicate extreme emotion, hints of sex in murder mysteries, and phrases such as "interfered with" in newspaper crime reports (she blundered in decrypting "child molester", Atwood said, assuming it meant a child willing to collect moles).

And then there was nonsense verse, such as Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky ("helpfully some translation is provided, though by an egg")

Margaret was born in Ottawa. She therefore had the advantage, and took it, of growing up in contact with two languages. Ottawa is situated right on the border between predominantly English-speaking Ontario and predominantly French-speaking Quebec.

Far from depicting them [translators] as nuisances bound to distort her words, she viewed translators sympathetically, as serious Alices lost in bewildering Atwoodland, and potentially as her most intimate creative partners: "Nobody is going to be reading more closely than a translator.

Notice that her childhood translating wasn't communicative and she wasn't taught it. It was for her own understanding and amusement and it came to her naturally from her everyday environment.

References
John Dugdale. Margaret Atwood translates translation. Guardian Unlimited, February 20, 2014. The article is here.

Margaret Atwood. Wikipedia, 2014. Click here.

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Source: The Guardian, 2014

Translators in Schools

Last year there was a lot on this blog about the Young Interpreters scheme in British schools. (To find it, enter hampshire in the Search box on the right.) Now news has come about a very different programme, also for British school children. Its name is Translators in Schools (TiS). In its own words:

Translators in Schools entails three increasingly focused stages of training:
A full day of workshops covering translation activities, lesson planning and classroom management
A half day involving a session with visiting schoolchildren based on a template introduced on the first training day
A period of mentoring for participants during which they adapt activities from the training, introduce their own original ideas and lead a translation workshop in a school while being mentored, observed and recorded by TiS mentors
Translators in Schools was run for the first time in November 2013, when 36 translators, language teachers and writers came together at the Free Word Centre in London for a day-long workshop that culminated in a panel discussion. [The participants included] Emma Langley (co-founder and Publisher at Phoenix Yard Books, an independent children’s publishing house and a Masters student in Education at Cambridge University), Vicky Macleroy (lecturer in secondary English with media and drama at Goldsmiths) and Canan Marasligil (a writer, literary translator, editor and screenwriter who was one of the two translators in residence at the Free Word Centre in 2013).
Day 2 took place at Europe House in January 2014, when 21 graduates of Day 1 worked in pairs to deliver mini-workshops to children from Granton Primary School, observed by Sarah Ardizzone and Sam Holmes.

Sarah is a published translator of children's books. Sam Holmes is a French teacher who also leads another school project called Translation Nation, about which I hope to write more later. There's support from the Stephen Spender Trust and the European Commission.

"Free Word works at the meeting point of literature, literacy and free expression as a catalyst for collaborations, nationally and internationally, that explore the transformative power of words. At our London hub, the Free Word Centre, we run a programme of events and exhibitions, and provide a home to six resident organisations and over 25 associates."

One of its Lines of Enquiry is The Power of Translation. It considers translating "as natural as breathing." Hear! Hear!

There are several Granton Primary Schools in the UK, but I had no difficulty identifying this one. It's in Southeast London.

Granton Primary is an ambitious school... The school educates over 490 pupils aged 3-11. The school serves a range of pupils that represent the [ethnic and linguistic] diversity of the local area. This is reflected in our rich and engaging creative curriculum.

So of course they would welcome an initiative like this.

The occasion of the notice I received is that the project wishes to recruit MA translation students to work in schools. MA students should, after their lower degree, already be Expert Translators. This would be an excellent opportunity for them to expand their translating horizon.

Plainly TiS takes a very different approach and has different objectives from Young Translators. The background of the people running it is in literature, or at any rate story-telling. Cultural instead of practical, and not an application of language brokering. (Perhaps story-telling too is intuitive from an early age - but that's another topic.) It's a good thing to recognise that children don't only enjoy translating for practical reasons.

Children who go through the programme should emerge at least as Native Translators. However, the information I've received is short on pupil selection criteria (if any), translation methods and outcomes. The best way to find out more would undoubtedly be to attend a TiS workshop, but they're out of range for me. So I'm writing to the organisers and will let you know.

References
The news about Translators in Schools came to me through the valuable service provided by Philippe Caignan, Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Translation Studies.

The Granton Primary School website is here.

The Free Word Cantre website Centre is here.

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Source: PEN