Chapter published in:
Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research
Edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi
[Benjamins Translation Library 129] 2017
► pp. 45–64

Chapter 3
We are all translators

Investigating the human ability to translate from a developmental perspective

This paper shares some observations and data about the human ability to translate as described in detail in Whyatt (2012). Setting off from an assumption that the human mind is intrinsically a translating mind, the human ability to translate can be viewed in its developmental continuum from the predisposition to translate to expertise in translation. Choosing this developmental perspective has a number of assets. First, it allows encompassing all the forms and facets of translation as a widespread social phenomenon in today’s multilingual and multicultural communities. Second, it allows seeing the development of the human ability to translate in response to the experience of translation in which external social factors come to interact with cognitive factors within the translating individual. Third, it encourages an all-inclusive approach to the study of translation as a human ability performed by professional and frequently invisible and unacknowledged non-professional translators.
Keywords: translating mind, interlingual translation, natural translation, developmental perspective, questionnaire, translation experience
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The human translating mind
  • 3.Interlingual translation as a human skill
  • 4.Need for a developmental perspective
  • 5.Translation as an untrained ability
  • 6.Translation as a trained skill, competence and expertise
  • 7.Misconceptions about the human ability to translate
  • 8.Consequences of the translation experience
  • 9.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 19 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.129.03why
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