Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 12:2 (2000) ► pp.205–228

Poor Relations and Black Sheep in Translation Studies

| School for Translators and Interpreters, Forlì, University of Bologna
The opposition of translation into the mother tongue (L1 translation) vs. translation into the foreign language (L2 translation), with its clear relationship of superiority/inferiority in translation circles, is just one of a series of binary oppositions prevalent in the literature with an apparently similar relationship. These include principally (i) target language vs. source language, and (ii) original texts vs. translated texts. This paper examines what implications such oppositions might have for the L1 translation vs. L2 translation issue, particularly within the developing field of corpus linguistics, subsequently taking a look at some L1 and L2 translations and reflecting upon their degree of acceptability or unacceptability in the light of the discussions proposed.
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.Opposition 1: L1 Translation vs. L2 Translation
  • 2.Opposition 2: Target Language vs. Source Language
    • 2.1.Preliminary Remarks
    • 2.2.TL vs. SL and the Rise of Corpus Linguistics
  • 3.Opposition 3: Original Texts vs. Translated Texts
    • 3.1.Distribution Patterns in Translated Texts
    • 3.2.The Status of Translated Text
    • 3.3.Readers’ Reactions to Translated Texts
  • 4.Implications of the Oppositions Discussed for L2 Translation
    • 4.1.The Bad News
    • 4.2.The Good News
  • 5.Translation: Parameters of Acceptability
    • 5.1.L1 and L2 Translation: Banana Skins and Tightropes
    • 5.2.Readers’ Expectations: Tourist Literature
    • 5.3.Tourist Literature: A Test Case of L2 Translation
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 May 2001
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.12.2.02ste
References (38)
References
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications”. Baker et al. 1993 : 233–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
, ed. 1998a. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London-New York: Routledge.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998b. “Réexplorer la langue de la traduction: une approche par corpus”. Laviosa 1998b : 480–485.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mona, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, eds. 1993. Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeby Lonsdale, Allison. 1998. “Direction of Translation (Directionality)”. Baker 1998a : 63–67.Google Scholar
Campbell, Stuart. 1998. Translation into the Second Language. London-New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 1997. Memes of Translation. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Congrat-Butler, S. ed. 1979. Translation and Translators: An International Directory and Guide. New York: R.R. Bowker Company.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dodds, John. 1995. “All’antica commedia degli errori: Or Crappy English in Italian Restaurants”. Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione. Edizioni Università di Trieste 1. 143–147.Google Scholar
Duff, Alan. 1981. The Third Language: Recurrent Problems of Translation into English. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Frawley, William. 1984. “Prolegomenon to a Theory of Translation”. William Frawley, ed. Translation: Literary, Linguistic, and Philosophical Perspectives. London-Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984. 159–175.Google Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin. 1993. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hermans, Theo. 1991. “Translational Norms and Correct Translations”. Leuven-Zwart and Naaijkens 1991 : 155–169.Google Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy. 1998. “Corpora in Translation Studies”. Baker 1998a : 50–53.Google Scholar
Laviosa, Sara. 1997. “How Comparable Can Comparable Corpora Be?”. Target 9:2. 289–319.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998a. “The English Comparable Corpus: A Resource and a Methodology”. Lynne Bowker, Michael Cronin, Dorothy Kenny and Jennifer Pearson, eds. Unity in Diversity: Current Trends in Translation Studies. Manchester: St Jerome, 1998. 101–112.Google Scholar
, ed. 1998b. L’Approche basée sur le corpus/The Corpus-Based Approach. Special issue of Meta 43:4.Google Scholar
. 1998c. “Core Patterns of Lexical Use in a Comparable Corpus of English Narrative Prose”. Laviosa 1998b : 557–570.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laviosa-Braithwaite, Sara. 1997. “Investigating Simplification in an English Comparable Corpus of Newspaper Articles”. Klaudy Kinga and János Kohn, eds. Transferre Necesse Est: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Current Trends in Studies of Translation and Interpreting, 5–7 September, 1996. Budapest: Hungary, 1997. 531–540.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Universals of Translation”. Baker 1998a : 288–291.Google Scholar
Leuven-Zwart, Kitty M. van and Ton Naaijkens, eds. 1991. Translation Studies: The State of the Art. Proceedings of the First James S Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Malmkjær, Kirsten. 1993. “Who Can Make Nice a Better Word than Pretty?: Collocation, Translation, and Psycholinguistics”. Baker et al. 1993 : 213–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marmaridou, A. Sophia S. 1996. “Directionality in Translation Processes and Practices”. Target 8:1. 49–73.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McAlester, Gerard. 1992. “Teaching Translation into a Foreign Language—Status, Scope and Aims”. Cay Dollerup and Annette Loddegaard, eds. Teaching Translation and Interpreting: Training, Talent and Experience. Papers from the First Language International Conference. Elsinore, Denmark, 31 May-2 June 1991. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1992. 291–297.   DOI logo
Newmark, Peter. 1981. Approaches to Translation. London: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Parks, Gerald. 1998. “Towards a Sociology of Translation”. Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione. Edizioni Università di Trieste 3. 25–35.Google Scholar
Pym, Anthony. 1992. “In Search of a New Rationale for the Prose Translation Class at University Level”. Interface: Journal of Applied Linguistics 6:2. 73–82.Google Scholar
. 1996. “Venuti’s Visibility”. Review of Venuti 1995 . Target 8:1. 165–177.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rydning, Antin F. 1991. Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction acceptable en B?: Les conditions d’acceptabilité de la traduction fonctionnelle réalisée dans la langue seconde du traducteur. Oslo: University of Oslo. [Doctoral Thesis.]Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Mark and Moira Cowie. 1997. A Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1995. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Stewart, Dominic. 1999. “Translators into the Foreign Language: Charlatans or Professionals?”. Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione. Edizioni Università di Trieste 4. 41–67.Google Scholar
Taylor, Christopher. 1998. Language to Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1991. “Experimentation in Translation Studies: Achievements, Prospects and Some Pitfalls”. Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit, ed. Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1991. 45–66.Google Scholar
. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London-New York: Routledge.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weizman, Elda and Shoshana Blum-Kulka. 1987. “Identifying and Interpreting Translated Texts: On the Role of Pragmatic Adjustment”. Gideon Toury, ed. Translation Across Cultures. New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1987. 61–73.Google Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Song, Hua
2022. A corpus-based comparative study of explicitation by investigating connectives in two Chinese translations of The Lord of the Rings . Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 68:1 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Yifang
2021. The Impact of Directionality on Cognitive Patterns in the Translation of Metaphors. In Advances in Cognitive Translation Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 201 ff. DOI logo
King, Ross
2020. CAN KOREAN-TO-ENGLISH LITERARY TRANSLATION BE TAUGHT?. Translation Review 108:1 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Marco, Josep
2019. Living with parallel corpora. In Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 90], ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo
Malkiel, Brenda
2006. The effect of translator training on interference and difficulty. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 18:2 ► pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
Malkiel, Brenda
2008. What Can Grades Teach us?. Perspectives 16:1-2 ► pp. 61 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Wallace
2004. Inuestigating explicitation of conjunctions in translated Chinese: A corpus-based study. Language Matters 35:1 ► pp. 295 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.