Humour and translation, an interdiscipline

This paper calls for greater attention from researchers into the nature of humor translation as an interdisciplinary area that should be of interest to translation and humor studies. It includes a brief review of the complexity of translation and the problems posed by traditional approaches. The paper introduces a number of parameters that may be of assistance in developing joke typologies for translators or translation scholars. A model is presented for structuring joke-types according to binary branching. An attempt is then made to combine the model with ideas and concepts put forward in Attardo (2002). The result is a binary branch tree for the 6 Knowledge Resources and the hierarchical structure that Attardo claims they have. One important conclusion is that sameness, or similarity, may have little to do with funniness, and, if this is so, it is going to create a dilemma for translators wishing to achieve equivalent effect.

Translation as a Process and Translation as a Product in Teaching Translation

L'ensenyament de la traducció s'ha utilitzat tradicionalment en algunes titulacions de filologia com a eina d'aprenentatge d'habilitats de la llengua. Aquesta circumstància, però, no ha d'estar renyida amb la producció d'una traducció acceptable. En aquest article es pretén analitzar si pot aconseguir-se aquest objectiu mitjançant la incorporació d'informació extratextual en l'enunciat de l'exercici de traducció. Els resultats obtinguts amb un grup d'estudiants de filologia mostren que en les seves decisions lingüístiques va tenir un pes important el tipus d'informació extratextual adjunta als textes originals anglesos. Si bé caldria fer un esforç investigador més sistemàtic per poder afirmar-ho categòricament, aquest estudi intenta esbossar la qüestió tan discutida de fins on l'aprenentatge d'una llengua s'ha de realitzar junt amb l'aprenentatge de la traducció. Aquest estudi, també, planteja la necessitat d'incorporar informació extratextual en l'aprenentatge de la traducció, independentment de la titulació que en aquests estudis s'insereixen.

Teaching foreign languages through translation: considering multiple intelligences

Aquest treball de recerca tracta de la relació existent entre pedagogia, traducció, llengües estrangeres i intel•ligències múltiples. El debat sobre si la traducció és una eina útil a la classe de llengües estrangeres és un tema actual sobre el qual molts investigadors encara indaguen. Estudis recents, però, han demostrat que qualsevol tasca de traducció -en la qual s’hi poden incloure treballs amb les diferents habilitats- és profitosa si la considerem un mitjà, no una finalitat en ella mateixa. Evidentment, l’ús de la traducció dins l’aula és avantatjosa, però també hem de tenir presents certs desavantatges d’aquesta aplicació. Un possible desavantatge podria ser la creença que, al principi, molta gent té referent a l’equivalència, paraula per paraula, d’una llengua vers una altra. Però després de presentar vàries tasques de traducció als estudiants, aquests poden arribar a controlar, fins i tot, les traduccions inconscients i poden assolir un cert nivell de precisió i flexibilitat que val la pena mencionar. Però l’avantatge principal és que s’enfronten a una activitat molt estesa dins la societat actual que combina dues llengües, la llengua materna i la llengua objecte d’estudi, per exemple. De tot això en podem deduir que utilitzar la llengua materna a la classe no s’ha de considerar un crim, com fins ara, sinó una virtut, evidentment si és emprada correctament. En aquest treball de recerca s’hi pot trobar una síntesi tant de les principals teories d’adquisició i aprenentatge de llengües com de les teories de traducció. A la pregunta de si les teories, tant de traducció com de llengües estrangeres, s’haurien d’ensenyar implícita o explícitament, es pot inferir que segons el nivell d’estudis on estiguin els aprenents els convindrà aprendre les teories explícitament o les aprendran, de totes maneres, implícitament. Com que qualsevol grup d’estudiants és heterogeni -és a dir que cada individu té un ritme i un nivell d’aprenentatge concret i sobretot cadascú té diferents estils de percepció (visual, auditiu, gustatiu, olfactiu, de moviment) i per tant diferents intel•ligències-, els professors ho han de tenir en compte a l’hora de planificar qualsevol programa d’actuació vers els alumnes. Per tant, podem concloure que les tasques o projectes de traducció poden ajudar als alumnes a aprendre millor, més eficaçment i a aconseguir un aprenentatge més significatiu.

PCAF regulates the stability of the transcriptional regulator and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27Kip1

P27(Kip1) (p27) is a member of the Cip/Kip family of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors. Recently, a new function of p27 as transcriptional regulator has been reported. It has been shown that p27 regulates the expression of target genes mostly involved in splicing, cell cycle, respiration and translation. We report here that p27 directly binds to the transcriptional coactivator PCAF by a region including amino acids 91-120. PCAF associates with p27 through its catalytic domain and acetylates p27 at lysine 100. Our data showed that overexpression of PCAF induces the degradation of p27 whereas in contrast, the knockdown of PCAF stabilizes the protein. A p27 mutant in which K100 was substituted by arginine (p27-K100R) cannot be acetylated by PCAF and has a half-life much higher than that of p27WT. Moreover, p27-K100R remains stable along cell-cycle progression. Ubiquitylation assays and the use of proteasome inhibitors indicate that PCAF induces p27 degradation via proteasome. We also observed that knockdown of skp2 did not affect the PCAF induced degradation of p27. In conclusion, our data suggest that the p27 acetylation by PCAF regulates its stability.

L' Ensenyament per tasques: programació d'una assignatura de traducció de l'alemany a l'espanyol

In this work we present a proposal for a course in translation from German into Spanish following the task based approach as known in second language acquisition. The aim is to improve the translation competence of translation students. We depart from the hypothesis that some students select inapropiate translation strategies when faced with certain translation problems leading them to translation errors. In order to avoid these translation errors originated by wrong application of such strategies we propose a didactic method which helps to prevent them by a) raising awareness of the different subcompetences required while translating, b) improving the ability to identify translation problems and relate them to the different subcompetences and c) enhancing the use of the most adequate strategy according to the characteristics of each problem. With regard to translation and how translation competence is acquired our work follows the communicative approach to translation theory as defended among others by Hatim & Mason (1990), Lörscher (1992) and Kiraly (1995), where translation is seen as a communicative activity which can be analized from a psycholinguistic perspective. In this sense we give operative definitions for what we understand by “translation problem”, “translation strategy”, “translation error”, “translation competence” and “translation”. Our approach to didactics adapts recent developments in Second Language Teaching within the communicative paradigm as is the task based approach by Nunan (1989) acquisition to translation. Fitting the recquirements of this pedagogic approach we present a planning for a translation course which is compatible with present translation studies.

El arte que traduce. 1995-2010: la traducción como mediación cultural en los procesos de transmisión y recepción de las obras de arte

El trabajo de investigación realizado durante los tres últimos años de beca se centra en las teorías críticas y en las prácticas artísticas contemporáneas que utilizan la traducción como mediación cultural en los procesos de transmisión y recepción de las obras de arte contemporáneo. En el contexto artistico contemporáneo la traducción es entendida como intercambio, adaptación, traslado o transacción. Tomando como referentes conceptuales las teorías nacidas en el marco interdisciplinar de los Estudios Visuales y de los Estudios de Traducción, dicha investigación se ha centrado en el análisis del fenómeno de la traducción en la producción artística. A partir de este análisis se han investigado las conexiones entre estas disciplinas humanísticas y la práctica artística, así como la problemática que éstas conllevan en la formulación de nuevos criterios y nuevas categorías de la Historia del Arte actual. En la práctica artística cuestiones relativas a la traducción se han podido integrar al arte visual: por un lado como práctica indispensable para la comprensión e interpretación de la obra de arte entre diferentes contextos geográficos o culturales, y por otro, como elemento “formal” indispensable para la realización de los artefactos artísticos que, a su vez, quieren interpretar diferentes realidades sociales, antropológicas o políticas. Sobretodo a partir de la serie On Translation del artista catalán Antoni Muntadas, así como de otros artistas de varios contextos geográficos y culturales, se han analizado las dinámicas prácticas y teóricas de la traducción que acompañan el proceso de la realización de los artefactos artísticos. Muchas de estas obras de arte contemporáneo asimilando los significantes propios del contexto cultural, social, político, económico, y utilizando elementos formales variados (sobretodo tecnológicos) necesitan de un análisis interdisciplinar.

Sobre las fronteras retóricas del español escrito

El artículo explora la presencia de elementos culturales y retóricos procedentes de la lengua nativa (L1) de un autor en sus escritos en segunda lengua (L2). Se resumen y comentan varias investigaciones de la Retórica Contrastiva, los Nuevos Estudios de Literacidad y la Traductología, que analizan las estrategias usadas por autores y traductores para ocultar o mostrar aspectos de su L1 en sus escritos en L2. También se analizan dos casos de escritura académica (de un latino que escribe en inglés y un quechua que lo hace en español), que aportan ejemplos de extralimitaciones en la corrección y de ocultación de rasgos culturales relevantes. Esos datos y las teorías permiten reflexionar sobre la gestión de la retórica y la cultura en los textos de los plurilingües, tanto desde una óptica de la construcción de la identidad como de la corrección de textos en clase.

Traducción médica comentada inglés-español: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome(Joyce King)

El trabajo se divide en tres partes: una traducción del ámbito médico inglés-español; un glosario de términos extraídos del texto con su equivalente en español, y un análisis de los principales problemas de traducción detectado y que son frecuentes en los textos biomédicos, con sus respectivas soluciones.

Bootstrapping a statistical speech translator from a rule-based one

We describe a series of experiments in which we start with English to French and English to Japanese versions of an Open Source rule-based speech translation system for a medical domain, and bootstrap correspondign statistical systems. Comparative evaluation reveals that the rule-based systems are still significantly better than the statistical ones, despite the fact that considerable effort has been invested in tuning both the recognition and translation components; also, a hybrid system only marginally improved recall at the cost of a los in precision. The result suggests that rule-based architectures may still be preferable to statistical ones for safety-critical speech translation tasks.

Concentration and self-censorship in commercial media

Within a simple model of non-localized, Hotelling-type competitionamong arbitrary numbers of media outlets we characterize qualityand content of media under different ownership structures. Assumingadvertising-sponsored, profit-maximizing outlets, we show that (i) topicssensitive to advertisers can be underreported (self-censored) by alloutlets in the market, (ii) self-censorship increases with the concentrationof ownership, (iii) adding outlets, while keeping the number ofowners fixed, may even increase self-censorship; the latter result relieson consumers' most preferred outlets being potentially owned by thesame media companies. We argue that externalities resulting fromself-censorship could be empirically large.

Translation and validation of the Ten-Item-Personality Inventory into spanish and catalan

In response to an increasing need for ever-shorter personality instruments, Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann (2003) developed the Ten-Item-Personality Inventory (TIPI), which measures the dimensions of the Five Factor Model (FFM) using 10 items (two for each dimension) and can be administered in about one minute. In two studies and using a multi-judge (self and observer) and multi-instrument design, we develop Spanish (Castilian) and Catalan versions of the TIPI and evaluate them in terms of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent, discriminant, and content validity, as well as self-observer correlations. Test-retest correlations were strong, and convergence with the NEO-PI-R factors was significant. There were also strong correlations between observer ratings and the participants’ self-ratings. Despite some inconsistencies with respect to the Agreeableness scale, the Catalan translation and both translations into Spanish of the original TIPI demonstrated sufficient psychometric properties to warrant use as a Five Factor personality measure when the use of longer instruments is not convenient or possible. Furthermore, as the first translation of a brief standard Big Five Instrument into Catalan, this work should facilitate future research on personality in the Catalan-speaking population.

A Widely Used Machine Translation Service and its Migration to a Free/Open-Source Solution : the Case of Softcatalà

Softcatalà is a non-profit associationcreated more than 10 years ago to fightthe marginalisation of the Catalan languagein information and communicationtechnologies. It has led the localisationof many applications and thecreation of a website which allows itsusers to translate texts between Spanishand Catalan using an external closed-sourcetranslation engine. Recently,the closed-source translation back-endhas been replaced by a free/open-sourcesolution completely managed by Softcatalà: the Apertium machine translationplatform and the ScaleMT web serviceframework. Thanks to the opennessof the new solution, it is possibleto take advantage of the huge amount ofusers of the Softcatalà translation serviceto improve it, using a series ofmethods presented in this paper. In addition,a study of the translations requestedby the users has been carriedout, and it shows that the translationback-end change has not affected theusage patterns.

Priorities and hierarchical accounts of translation

This paper is a study of the concept of priority and its use together with the notion of hierarchy in academic writing and theoretical models of translation. Hierarchies and priorities can be implicit or explicit, prescribed, suggested or described. The paper starts, chronologically, wtih Nida and Levý’s hierarchical accounts of translation and follows their legacy in scholars as different as Newmark and Gutt. The concept of priorities is hinted at also in didactic models (Nord) as well as in norm-theoretical and accounts of translation (Toury and Chesterman) within Descriptive Translation Studies. All of these authors are analyzed and commented. The paper calls for a more systematic and straightforward account of translational priorities, and proposes a few conceptual tools that stem from this research model, including the concepts of ambition and richness of a translation. Finally, the paper concludes with an adaptation of Lakoff and Johnson’s view of prototypicality and its potential usefulness in research into and the understanding of translation.

How Spanish in an American film is rendered in translation: dubbing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Spain

This is a case study of the Spanish dubbed version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill 1969) to illustrate and further develop the concept of L3 as a language that appears in source texts and their translations. L3 is distinguishable from the main language(s), L1 for the source text and L2 for the translation, based on a model proposed by Corrius and Zabalbeascoa 2011, and Corrius 2008. The study reveals various possible ways of rendering L3 in translation, in particular when L3 happens to coincide with L2. It also looks into the effect that certain translation solutions may have on intratextual translation and metatranslation.

Language variation in source texts and their translations: the case of L3 in film translation

In addition to the two languages essentially involved in translation, that of the source text (L1) and that of the target text (L2), we propose a third language (L3) to refer to any other language(s) found in the text. L3 may appear in the source text (ST) or the target text (TT), actually appearing more frequently inSTs in our case studies. We present a range of combinations for the convergence and divergence of L1, L2 and L3, for the case of feature films and their translations using examples from dubbed and subtitled versions of films, but we are hopeful that our tentative conclusions may be relevant to other modalities of translation, audiovisual and otherwise. When L3 appears in an audiovisual ST,we find a variety of solutions whereby L3 is deleted from or adapted to the TT.In the latter case, L3 might be rendered in a number of ways, depending on factors such as the audience’s familiarity with L3, and the possibility that L3 inthe ST is an invented language.