"The Alien Within":translation into German during the Nazi regime

In a regime obsessed with purity, what place could there be for a literary practice that epitomises hybridity — translation? Examining the discourse on translation in Nazi literary journals, this study shows how foreign literature was viewed through the prism of national identity formation, in terms of the threats or benefits to nationhood which translation might offer. The fortunes of translation under the strictures of censorship are traced with an analysis of official policies and publication patterns, complemented by two detailed case studies of translations from English.

Is there a special kind of "reading" for translation? An empirical investigation of reading in the translation process

The role of reading in translation is rarely discussed in the literature. Translation has mainly been discussed within a product-oriented framework. The more process-oriented approaches of recent years have taken notice of reading as a component activity of the translation process. However, few empirical studies have been completed which address the role of reading in translation. The way a person reads, and the result of that reading (some sort of mental representation of the text or text segment), will depend on the reader's purposes and motivations. The present empirical study indicates that while the translator's reading of a text may be to some extent more thorough and deliberate than that of an ordinary reader, it is not likely to be markedly so. The study also indicates a significant variability in the way translators "read for translation". This suggests the existence of alternate strategies in this kind of reading.

Translation practices in political institutions:a comparison of national, supranational, and non-governmental organisations

This article explores the settings and practices of translation at three types of political institutions, i.e. national, supranational, and non-governmental organisations. The three institutions are the translation service of the German Foreign Office, the translation department of the European Central Bank, and translation provision by the non-governmental organisation Amnesty International. The three case studies describe the specific translation practices in place at these institutions and illustrate some characteristic translation strategies. In this way, we reflect on how different translation practices can impact on translation agency and how these practices in turn are influenced by the type of institution and its organisational structure. The article also aims to explore to which extent the characteristics of collectivity, anonymity and standardisation, and of institutional translation as self-translation are applicable to the institutions under discussion.

Labeled EF-Tus for rapid kinetic studies of pretranslocation complex formation

The universally conserved translation elongation factor EF-Tu delivers aminoacyl(aa)-tRNA in the form of an aa-tRNA·EF-Tu·GTP ternary complex (TC) to the ribosome where it binds to the cognate mRNA codon within the ribosomal A-site, leading to formation of a pretranslocation (PRE) complex. Here we describe preparation of QSY9 and Cy5 derivatives of the variant E348C-EF-Tu that are functional in translation elongation. Together with fluorophore derivatives of aa-tRNA and of ribosomal protein L11, located within the GTPase associated center (GAC), these labeled EF-Tus allow development of two new FRET assays that permit the dynamics of distance changes between EF-Tu and both L11 (Tu-L11 assay) and aa-tRNA (Tu-tRNA assay) to be determined during the decoding process. We use these assays to examine: (i) the relative rates of EF-Tu movement away from the GAC and from aa-tRNA during decoding, (ii) the effects of the misreading-inducing antibiotics streptomycin and paromomycin on tRNA selection at the A-site, and (iii) how strengthening the binding of aa-tRNA to EF-Tu affects the rate of EF-Tu movement away from L11 on the ribosome. These FRET assays have the potential to be adapted for high throughput screening of ribosomal antibiotics.

The role of intuition in the translation process:A case study

This paper explores the psychological construct of intuition and its influence in decision-making behavior. Intuition was defined by Jung (1971) as a primary mode of perception operating subconsciously. As opposed to sensing personality types who prefer concrete details, intuitive personality types prefer to acquire information by imagining possibilities (Myers and Myers 1995). In this paper, an analysis of verbalization data from a translation process study is discussed in order to demonstrate the influence of intuition on decision-making during the translation process and to explore the implications of this influence. Recent studies have found that intuition plays a role in learning and decision-making tasks involving affect (Laborde et al. 2010: 786). Intuition is therefore here viewed as a potentially vital component of translator behavior which could predict individuals' translating effectiveness. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Revolution in Translation- The Plays of Augusto Boal in a Post 9-11 World Pt.1

Dr. Robert Moser, Associate Professor of Portuguese, Brazilian and Lusophone African Literature and Culture at the University of Georgia, lectures on the late Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal, who was known for developing the Theater of the Oppressed. Lecture held at Green Library, Modesto Maidique Campus, Florida International University.

Functional Evaluation of Causal Mutations Identified in Human Genetic Studies

Human genetics has been experiencing a wave of genetic discoveries thanks to the development of several technologies, such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS), whole-exome sequencing, and whole genome sequencing. Despite the massive genetic discoveries of new variants associated with human diseases, several key challenges emerge following the genetic discovery. GWAS is known to be good at identifying the locus associated with the patient phenotype. However, the actually causal variants responsible for the phenotype are often elusive. Another challenge in human genetics is that even the causal mutations are already known, the underlying biological effect might remain largely ambiguous. Functional evaluation plays a key role to solve these key challenges in human genetics both to identify causal variants responsible for the phenotype, and to further develop the biological insights from the disease-causing mutations.

We adopted various methods to characterize the effects of variants identified in human genetic studies, including patient genetic and phenotypic data, RNA chemistry, molecular biology, virology, and multi-electrode array and primary neuronal culture systems. Chapter 1 is a broader introduction for the motivation and challenges for functional evaluation in human genetic studies, and the background of several genetics discoveries, such as hepatitis C treatment response, in which we performed functional characterization.

Chapter 2 focuses on the characterization of causal variants following the GWAS study for hepatitis C treatment response. We characterized a non-coding SNP (rs4803217) of IL28B (IFNL3) in high linkage disequilibrium (LD) with the discovery SNP identified in the GWAS. In this chapter, we used inter-disciplinary approaches to characterize rs4803217 on RNA structure, disease association, and protein translation.

Chapter 3 describes another avenue of functional characterization following GWAS focusing on the novel transcripts and proteins identified near the IL28B (IFNL3) locus. It has been recently speculated that this novel protein, which was named IFNL4, may affect the HCV treatment response and clearance. In this chapter, we used molecular biology, virology, and patient genetic and phenotypic data to further characterize and understand the biology of IFNL4. The efforts in chapter 2 and 3 provided new insights to the candidate causal variant(s) responsible for the GWAS for HCV treatment response, however, more evidence is still required to make claims for the exact causal roles of these variants for the GWAS association.

Chapter 4 aims to characterize a mutation already known to cause a disease (seizure) in a mouse model. We demonstrate the potential use of multi-electrode array (MEA) system for the functional characterization and drug testing on mutations found in neurological diseases, such as seizure. Functional characterization in neurological diseases is relatively challenging and available systematic tools are relatively limited. This chapter shows an exploratory research and example to establish a system for the broader use for functional characterization and translational opportunities for mutations found in neurological diseases.

Overall, this dissertation spans a range of challenges of functional evaluations in human genetics. It is expected that the functional characterization to understand human mutations will become more central in human genetics, because there are still many biological questions remaining to be answered after the explosion of human genetic discoveries. The recent advance in several technologies, including genome editing and pluripotent stem cells, is also expected to make new tools available for functional studies in human diseases.