Lagöversättning som process och produkt : Revideringar och institutioner vid lagöversättning till svenska i Finland

The thesis studies the translation process for the laws of Finland as they are translated from Finnish into Swedish. The focus is on revision practices, norms and workplace procedures. The translation process studied covers three institutions and four revisions. In three separate studies the translation process is analyzed from the perspective of the translations, the institutions and the actors. The general theoretical framework is Descriptive Translation Studies. For the analysis of revisions made in versions of the Swedish translation of Finnish laws, a model is developed covering five grammatical categories (textual revisions, syntactic revisions, lexical revisions, morphological revisions and content revisions) and four norms (legal adequacy, correct translation, correct language and readability). A separate questionnaire-based study was carried out with translators and revisers at the three institutions. The results show that the number of revisions does not decrease during the translation process, and no division of labour can be seen at the different stages. This is somewhat surprising if the revision process is regarded as one of quality control. Instead, all revisers make revisions on every level of the text. Further, the revisions do not necessarily imply errors in the translations but are often the result of revisers following different norms for legal translation. The informal structure of the institutions and its impact on communication, visibility and workplace practices was studied from the perspective of organization theory. The results show weaknesses in the communicative situation, which affect the co-operation both between institutions and individuals. Individual attitudes towards norms and their relative authority also vary, in the sense that revisers largely prioritize legal adequacy whereas translators give linguistic norms a higher value. Further, multi-professional teamwork in the institutions studied shows a kind of teamwork based on individuals and institutions doing specific tasks with only little contact with others. This shows that the established definitions of teamwork, with people co-working in close contact with each other, cannot directly be applied to the workplace procedures in the translation process studied. Three new concepts are introduced: flerstegsrevidering (multi-stage revision), revideringskedja (revision chain) and normsyn (norm attitude). The study seeks to make a contribution to our knowledge of legal translation, translation processes, institutional translation, revision practices and translation norms for legal translation. Keywords: legal translation, translation of laws, institutional translation, revision, revision practices, norms, teamwork, organizational informal structure, translation process, translation sociology, multilingual.

Teoria, proposta e aplicação de uma sequência didática em Educação Linguística: trabalhando os conceitos de língua, gramáticas e normas linguísticas no nono ano do Ensino Fundamental

O ensino-aprendizagem da disciplina Língua Portuguesa se apresenta como um desafio para professores e alunos; muito disso se deve à falta de reconhecimento da diversidade linguística (LIMA, 2014). Há uma tendência no ambiente escolar em se valorizar apenas uma norma linguística, ignorando as diferentes normas que fazem parte do convívio em sociedade. Com isso, os discentes entram em conflito, pois aquilo que é apresentado para eles como a Língua Portuguesa está bem distante da sua experiência pessoal com a língua. Em via de eliminar esse conflito, os PCNs e o PNLD estabelecem a inserção do tema variação linguística no conteúdo programático da disciplina Língua Portuguesa. Entretanto, ainda perdura uma lacuna no tratamento desse tema. A preocupação em preencher essa lacuna motivou este trabalho, que teve como objetivo principal propor e aplicar uma sequência didática que abordasse os seguintes temas: língua, gramáticas e normas linguísticas, a fim de contribuir com a realização de uma Educação Linguística eficaz (BAGNO; RANGEL, 2005). Esses três conteúdos principais geraram desdobramentos que proporcionaram a discussão dos seguintes tópicos: variação e preconceito linguísticos. A sequência didática elaborada é composta por oito etapas em que são intercalados momentos de aula expositiva e de atividades lúdicas. A aplicação da proposta de sequência didática ocorreu em uma turma de nono ano do Ensino Fundamental de um CIEP (Centro Integrado de Educação Pública) localizado na Zona Oeste da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. As ferramentas utilizadas para identificar os conteúdos assimilados pelos alunos foram a avaliação da participação da turma e os resultados de quatro atividades específicas. Considerando a complexidade e o ineditismo dos conceitos apresentados na sequência didática, o desempenho da classe foi satisfatório. Os alunos também responderam a dois questionários, um no início da sequência e outro ao final, que tinham o propósito de avaliar se houve mudança com relação ao entendimento da existência de variação linguística e do preconceito linguístico. O primeiro questionário revelou que a maioria dos alunos já havia sofrido e praticado preconceito linguístico; já o segundo mostrou que a maioria dos discentes assimilou a noção de preconceito linguístico e rompeu com a ideia de certo e errado na língua. Como objetivo secundário, este trabalho intentou deixar um legado para professores, pois com esta dissertação a ação não ficará limitada apenas ao nono ano daquele CIEP, mas poderá contribuir com o ensino linguístico de diversas escolas; e para pesquisadores, pois este registro descreve um modelo de trabalho acadêmico em que se pretendeu aplicar o princípio de indissociabilidade entre ensino, pesquisa e extensão. A expectativa é que, somados a trabalhos similares, seja possível abrir um precedente de trabalhos acadêmicos fundamentados teoricamente e desenvolvidos de forma prática, além de realizados com preocupações sociais e educacionais

New Irish speakers and the ‘gaelicisation’ of Belfast

New Irish speakers in Belfast play a crucial, complex part in the revitalization and change of both the city and Irish within Northern Ireland. This paper examines the role of new Irish speakers in transforming Belfast, whose emergence from a post-conflict period involves a reassessment of communal cultural expressions. Markers of ethno-national identity are bitterly contentious locally, and yet increasingly celebrated, in line with international trends, as high status cultural forms and potentially profitable tourist attractions. Irish in Belfast currently occupies an ambiguous position: divisive enough for a sign reading ‘Happy Christmas’ in Irish to be experienced as an insult by some city councillors, yet a secure enough part of the establishment for a neighbourhood to be officially rebranded as the Gaeltacht Quarter.
When, how and where new Irish speakers use the language in Belfast has implications for the relationship of Irishness to the Northern Irish state and for the place of Belfast within regional frameworks across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Adult learners and young people exiting Irish medium education have an impact on life in Belfast beyond its small population of Irish speakers. Urbanisation fuelled by new speakers, which shifts the balance of Irish language resources and speakers away from traditional rural Gaeltacht areas and towards cities, also has implications for the language itself. Recent increase in new Irish speakers in Belfast is due to expansion in the Irish-medium sector as well as to adult learners, whose decisions contribute to the school expansion.
Urbanisation, multilingualism and intergenerational shift combine in Belfast to produce new linguistic norms. Moreover, in a minority language community where hierarchies of ‘authenticity’ are weighted towards the rural and the native speaker, where the rural and the native have traditionally been conflated, and where indigeneity is a central concept to contested nationalisms, the emergence of a self-confident, youthful Irish speaking community in Northern Ireland’s biggest city involves a recalibration of the qualities signifying ‘gaelicness’. As students, professionals, hobbyists and activists, new Irish speakers in Belfast occupy a vital position at the crux of changing ideas about place, language and identity.

Tu dis et je murmure! : Une analyse des verbes de parole dans la littérature suédoise pour enfants et leurs traductions en français

This study presents a description of the role of verbs in introducing the direct dialogue in literacy and of the way they are translated from Swedish to French in children’s literature. In order to adapt the text to the target language, these verbs sometimes change and lose their impact on the tone and character of the dialogue. This can be problematic in texts aimed for children where readability depends on a child’s language capacity. Another aim of this study is to expose des difficulties encountered in the transfer of values and emotional effects when translating children’s literature from source language to target languageOur conclusion is that the Swedish children’s literature translated to French is often subject to modifications rather than translation of verbs that introduce direct dialogue. Consequently, dialogue meaning and character personalities are modified within the text translation. In our analysis of four Swedish children’s books and their translation to French we have seen that these adaptations are not made for adapting to the intended reader’s capacities in the target language or to the literacy of the source text but rather to adapt to certain linguistic norms relative to the style of French language.

Clíticos e preposições: a norma e o normal em jornais paulistas (1900 a 1915)

Based on the assertions of the Theory of Linguistic Variation and Change, this paper proposes a discussion about the possible action of linguistic norms over two variable phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese: the position of clitic pronouns associated with a single verb, and the use of prepositions with verbal complements indicating a ?goal/recipient?. By the analysis of data from the newspapers from São Paulo and Rio Claro between (the years of) 1900 and 1915, we intend to describe each phenomenon; compare these descriptions and evaluate the role played by the standard and the common usage which is (already) perceptible in the ?paulistas? continuous published pages of that period.

Interferências linguísticas e interlíngua: a aprendizagem de Português Língua Estrangeira por peruanos hispanofalantes

Pós-graduação em Linguística e Língua Portuguesa - FCLAR

A Corpus-Linguistic Analysis of News Coverage in Kenya's Daily Nation and Great Britain's Times

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015

Linguistic capital and the linguistic field for teachers unaccustomed to linguistic difference

Teachers in classrooms throughout England are facing a shifting demographic in their pupil intake. Where once the teaching of children whose first language was not English was considered an inner-city teachers’ role, more recent migration patterns have challenged this preconception (Andrews, 2009). In England in particular, this change sits against an historical backdrop of centralised control of the curriculum for English. This article explores how primary school teachers responded to the arrival of Polish children in county settings following EU accession in 2004. Interviews with a small sample of teachers in schools that had previously been mainly monolingual were coded using Bourdieu’s Logic of Practice. Analysis revealed a complex mix of experienced that appeared to rest on assumed pedagogical norms and professionally assimilated external pressures. Discussion centres on the author’s interpretation of teachers’ ownership of linguistic capital and its relationship to linguistic field.

Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters’ social or language status, but not with the raters’ age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

Negotiating face in feedback conferences:a linguistic ethnographic analysis

This article examines the negotiation of face in post observation feedback conferences on an initial teacher training programme. The conferences were held in groups with one trainer and up to four trainees and followed a set of generic norms. These norms include the right to offer advice and to criticise, speech acts which are often considered to be face threatening in more normal contexts. However, as the data analysis shows, participants also interact in ways that challenge the generic norms, some of which might be considered more conventionally face attacking. The article argues that face should be analysed at the level of interaction (Haugh and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010) and that situated and contextual detail is relevant to its analysis. It suggests that linguistic ethnography, which 'marries' (Wetherell, 2007) linguistics and ethnography, provides a useful theoretical framework for doing so. To this end the study draws on real-life talk-in-interaction (from transcribed recordings), the participants' perspectives (from focus groups and interviews) and situated detail (from fieldnotes) to produce a contextualised and nuanced analysis. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Making sense of an everyday science text : linguistic, visual and spatial design

In this article, we take a close look at the literacy demands of one task from the ‘Marvellous Micro-organisms Stage 3 Life and Living’ Primary Connections unit (Australian Academy of Science, 2005). One lesson from the unit, ‘Exploring Bread’, (pp 4-8) asks students to ‘use bread labels to locate ingredient information and synthesise understanding of bread ingredients’. We draw upon a framework offered by the New London Group (2000), that of linguistic, visual and spatial design, to consider in more detail three bread wrappers and from there the complex literacies that students need to interrelate to undertake the required task. Our findings are that although bread wrappers are an example of an everyday science text, their linguistic, visual and spatial designs and their interrelationship are not trivial. We conclude by reinforcing the need for teachers of science to also consider how the complex design elements of everyday science texts and their interrelated literacies are made visible through instructional practice.

The interactions of consumption characteristics on social norms

Purpose: An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model tests how customer loyalty intentions may relate to subjective and descriptive norms. The study further determines whether consumption characteristics – product enjoyment and importance – moderate norms-loyalty relationships.----- Methodology: Using a two-study approach focusing on youth, an Australian study (n = 244) first augmented TPB with descriptive norm. A Singapore study (n = 415) followed up with how consumption characteristics might moderate norms-loyalty relationships. With both studies, linear regressions tested the relationships among the variables.----- Findings: Extending TPB with descriptive norm improved TPB’s predictive ability across studies. Further, product enjoyment and importance moderated the norms-loyalty relationships differently. Subjective norm related to loyalty intentions significantly with high enjoyment, whereas descriptive norm was significant with low enjoyment. Only subjective norm was significant with low importance.----- Research limitations: Single-item variables, self-reported questionnaires on intended rather than actual behavior, and not controlling for cultural differences between the two samples limit generalizablity.----- Practical implications: The significance of both norms suggests that mobile firms should reach youth through their peers. With youth, social pressure may be influential particularly with hedonic products. However, the different moderations of product enjoyment and importance imply that a blanket marketing strategy targeting youth may not work.----- Originality/Value: This study extends academic knowledge on the relationships between norms and customer loyalty, particularly with consumption characteristics as moderators. The findings highlight the importance of considering different norms with consumer behavior. The study should help mobile firms understand how social influences impact customer loyalty.

Willingness to trial functional foods and vitamin supplements: the role of attitudes, subjective norms, and dread of risks

Australian non-users of vitamin supplements (N = 162) and functional foods (N = 226) responded to a questionnaire examining their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), risk dread and risk familiarity, and willingness to engage in free product trials. The impact of participants’ gender and age was also examined. Attitude and subjective norms were significant determinants of non-users willingness to trial each of the health products. Participants’ dread of the risk associated with the product was also a determinant of willingness to use functional foods. The overall models predicted between 25% and 30% of the variance in people’s willingness to trial the products. The findings provided some support for the TPB in predicting people’s willingness to trial functional foods and vitamin supplements and suggested, for willingness to trial functional foods, that non-users are also influenced by their dread of the risk associated with product use.