The other on display: translation in the Ethnographic Museum

The ethnographic museum in the West has a long and troubling history. The display of 'exotic peoples' in travelling exhibitions began as early as the sixteenth century, but it was the mid and late nineteenth century that saw the great expansion of museums as sites to show artefacts collected - under anything but reputable circumstances - from what were considered the 'primitive', 'natural', or 'tribal' peoples of the world. Today the ethnographic museum is still a feature of large European cities, though faced with newly formulated dilemmas in the postcolonial world. For how can the material culture of a non-western people be collected and displayed in the West without its makers being translated into wordless and powerless objects of visual consumption? In national museums the processes of choosing, contextualizing and commentating exhibits help form national identity; in the ethnographic museum, similarly, they shape perceptions of the apparently distant Other. Like written ethnography, the museum is a 'translation of culture', with many of the associated problems traced by Talal Asad (1986). Like the written form, it has to represent the dialogic realities of cultural encounters in a fixed and intelligible form, to propose categories that define and order the material it has gathered. As the public face of academic ethnography, the museum interprets other cultures for the benefit of the general reader, and in that task museum practice, like all ethnography, operates within very specific historical and political parameters. How are museums in western Europe responding to the issues raised by critical ethnographers like James Clifford (1988), with their focus on the politics of representation? Is globalisation increasing the degree of accountability imposed on the ethnographic museum, or merely reinforcing older patterns? What opportunities and problems are raised by the use of more words - more 'translation' in the narrower sense - in ethnographic museums, and how do museums gain from introducing a reflexive and contextualizing concept of "thick translation" (Appiah 1993) into their work of interpretation?

World knowledge in the process of translation

The paper illustrates the role of world knowledge in comprehending and translating texts. A short news item, which displays world knowledge fairly implicitly in condensed lexical forms, was translated by students from English into German. It is shown that their translation strategies changed from a first draft which was rather close to the surface structure of the source text to a final version which took situational aspects, texttypological conventions and the different background knowledge of the respective addressees into account. Decisions on how much world knowledge has to be made explicit in the target text, however, must be based on the relevance principle. Consequences for teaching and for the notions of semantic knowledge and world knowledge are discussed.

Translation in the global village

Recent developments, particularly globalization and advances in technology, have affected our production and perception of language, as reflected in two conflicting forces, globalism and tribalism. The role of English as an international lingua franca is dicussed, and conclusions are drawn for the varying activities of translation today and for the rapidly changing job profile of the translator.

Strong localization of whispering gallery modes in an optical fiber via asymmetric perturbation of the translation symmetry

Recently introduced Surface Nanoscale Axial Photonics (SNAP) is based on whispering gallery modes circulating around the optical FIber surface and undergoing slow axial propagation. In this paper we develop the theory of propagation of whispering gallery modes in a SNAP microresonator, which is formed by nanoscale asymmetric perturbation of the FIber translation symmetry and called here a nanobump microresonator. The considered modes are localized near a closed stable geodesic situated at the FIber surface. A simple condition for the stability of this geodesic corresponding to the appearance of a high Q-factor nanobump microresonator is found. The results obtained are important for engineering of SNAP devices and structures.

Special issue:key debates in the translation of advertising material

Much has been written about the marketing aspects of promotional material in general, and several scholars (particularly in linguistics) have addressed questions relating to the structure and function of advertisements, focusing on images, rhetorical structure, semiotic functions, discourse features and audio-visual media, amongst other aspects of the genre. Not much, on the other hand, has been written within translation studies about the complexities involved in the transfer of an advertising message. Contributors to this volume explore various interdependent aspects of the interlingual and intercultural transfer of an advertising message. They emphasize features of culture specificity, of multi-medial semiotic interaction, of values and stereotypes, and most importantly, they recommend strategies and approaches to assist translators. Topics covered include a critique of the Western-based approach to advertising in the context of the Far East; different perceptions of the concept of cleanliness in advertising texts in Italy, Russia and the UK; the Walls Cornetto strategy of internationalization of product appeal, followed by localization; the role of the translator in recreating appeal in different lingua-cultural contexts; what constitutes 'Italianness' in advertisements for British consumers; and strategies for repackaging France as a tourist destination.

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.

The role of social agents in the translation into English of the novels of Naguib Mahfouz

This research investigates the field of translation in an Egyptain context around the work of the Egyptian writer and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz by adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological framework. Bourdieu’s framework is used to examine the relationship between the field of cultural production and its social agents. The thesis includes investigation in two areas: first, the role of social agents in structuring and restructuring the field of translation, taking Mahfouz’s works as a case study; their role in the production and reception of translations and their practices in the field; and second, the way the field, with its political and socio-cultural factors, has influenced translators’ behaviour and structured their practices. In this research, it is argued that there are important social agents who have contributed significantly to the structure of the field and its boundaries. These are key social agents in the field namely; the main English language publisher in Egypt, the American University in Cairo Press (AUCP); the translators: Denys Johnson-Davies, Roger Allen and Trevor Le Gassick; and the author, Naguib Mahfouz. Their roles and contributions are examined and discussed through the lens of Bourdieu’s sociology. Particular focus is given to the author Mahfouz and his award of the Nobel Prize, and how this award has influenced the field of cultural production and its social agents. Also, it is argued that socio-cultural factors in the field, in the period between 1960s and 2000s, affected the translators’ practices in terms of modes of production of Mahfouz’s works. To investigate the influence of these factors on translators’ practices in the field, empirical examination is conducted, at the textual level, on a corpus of six translated novels written by the same author, Mahfouz. It is shown that the translators have an increased tendency, over time, towards applying a foreignising approach in their translations of culture-specific items. The translators’ behaviour, which is a result of their habitus, is correlated to political and socio-cultural factors in the field of translation. That is, based on interviews conducted with the translators, it has been found that there are particular factors influenced their translational habitus and, thus, their practices during the production process of the translations.

Translating specialised texts:an overview of key factors involved in translator training for specialized translation

Translators wishing to work on translating specialised texts are traditionally recommended to spend much time and effort acquiring specialist knowledge of the domain involved, and for some areas of specialised activity, this is clearly essential. For other types of translation-based, domain-specific of communication, however, it is possible to develop a systematic approach to the task which will allow for the production of target texts which are adequate for purpose, in a range of specialised domains, without necessarily having formal qualifications in those areas. For Esselink (2000) translation agencies, and individual clients, would tend to prefer a subject expert who also happens to have competence in one or more languages over a trained translator with a high degree of translation competence, including the ability to deal with specialised translation tasks. The problem, for the would-be translator, is persuading prospective clients that he or she is capable of this. This paper will offer an overview of the principles used to design training intended to teach trainee translators how to use a systematic approach to specialised translation, in order to extend the range of areas in which they can tackle translation, without compromising quality or reliability. This approach will be described within the context of the functionalist approach developed in particular by Reiss and Vermeer (1984), Nord (1991, 1997) inter alia.

Work placements in doctoral research training in the humanities:eight cases from translation studies

Research cooperation between academic and nonacademic institutions tends not to concern the humanities, where mutual financial rewards are mostly not in evidence. The study of eight nonacademic placements of doctoral researchers working on interlingual translation nevertheless indicates some degree of success. It is found that the placements lead to ongoing cooperation when the following conditions are met: 1) the nature of the placement is understood and relations of trust are established; 2) mutual benefits are envisaged; and 3) there are prior arrangements for receiving visiting researchers. A placement can be successful even when one of the last two factors is missing. Further, the measure of success for placements in the humanities should concern social and symbolic benefits, in addition to financial profits.

Noun Sense Disambiguation using Co-Occurrence Relation in Machine Translation

Word Sense Disambiguation, the process of identifying the meaning of a word in a sentence when the word has multiple meanings, is a critical problem of machine translation. It is generally very difficult to select the correct meaning of a word in a sentence, especially when the syntactical difference between the source and target language is big, e.g., English-Korean machine translation. To achieve a high level of accuracy of noun sense selection in machine translation, we introduced a statistical method based on co-occurrence relation of words in sentences and applied it to the English-Korean machine translator RyongNamSan. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): I.2.7.

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.

Clinical translation of a hand-held optical imager for breast cancer diagnostics: In vitro and in vivo tomography studies

Optical imaging is an emerging technology towards non-invasive breast cancer diagnostics. In recent years, portable and patient comfortable hand-held optical imagers are developed towards two-dimensional (2D) tumor detections. However, these imagers are not capable of three-dimensional (3D) tomography because they cannot register the positional information of the hand-held probe onto the imaged tissue. A hand-held optical imager has been developed in our Optical Imaging Laboratory with 3D tomography capabilities, as demonstrated from tissue phantom studies. The overall goal of my dissertation is towards the translation of our imager to the clinical setting for 3D tomographic imaging in human breast tissues. A systematic experimental approach was designed and executed as follows: (i) fast 2D imaging, (ii) coregistered imaging, and (iii) 3D tomographic imaging studies. (i) Fast 2D imaging was initially demonstrated in tissue phantoms (1% Liposyn solution) and in vitro (minced chicken breast and 1% Liposyn). A 0.45 cm3 fluorescent target at 1:0 contrast ratio was detectable up to 2.5 cm deep. Fast 2D imaging experiments performed in vivo with healthy female subjects also detected a 0.45 cm3 fluorescent target superficially placed ∼2.5 cm under the breast tissue. (ii) Coregistered imaging was automated and validated in phantoms with ∼0.19 cm error in the probe’s positional information. Coregistration also improved the target depth detection to 3.5 cm, from multi-location imaging approach. Coregistered imaging was further validated in-vivo , although the error in probe’s positional information increased to ∼0.9 cm (subject to soft tissue deformation and movement). (iii) Three-dimensional tomography studies were successfully demonstrated in vitro using 0.45 cm3 fluorescence targets. The feasibility of 3D tomography was demonstrated for the first time in breast tissues using the hand-held optical imager, wherein a 0.45 cm3 fluorescent target (superficially placed) was recovered along with artifacts. Diffuse optical imaging studies were performed in two breast cancer patients with invasive ductal carcinoma. The images showed greater absorption at the tumor cites (as observed from x-ray mammography, ultrasound, and/or MRI). In summary, my dissertation demonstrated the potential of a hand-held optical imager towards 2D breast tumor detection and 3D breast tomography, holding a promise for extensive clinical translational efforts.