Lecture 1 (Introductory)

Translation as a social practice and a means of socialization

Course: Translation in the Social Sphere
Date: March 10, 2021
Agenda:
• Translation as a social activity – Translators as social agents
• Social influence on translators: general & professional
• Translation’s role in the social system (Niklas Luhmann’s scheme)
• Translation as a ‘distancing’ or ‘furthering’ force (Sherry Simon’s ideas)
• Communicative ecology and translation
• Machine translation and Social Framing
• Case studies

WHAT IS SOCIETY?
The main two meanings of the term ‘society’ as used in sociology are:
1. a society is a social formation with its own political, economic, religious, familial,
educational and other institutions distinct from other societies. In this meaning, the notion
society may refer to large empires or state-like formations, for example France,
Argentina, South Africa, Ancient Egypt, or to small tribes.
2. the broadly conceived society as synonymous with the terms ‘social order’ or ‘social
structure’. Society is seen as a cluster of institutionalised modes of behaviour, where
‘institutionalised’ means ‘recurring across time and space’.
 To envision the subject matter of this course, let us draw a mind map where you put all
possible links, interdependence and special connection between translation and/in
society. Try to brainstorm and generate your ideas.

translation
and/in
society

The position of translation in society

• There are countries with huge need for translations → translation-dependent.
• According to the survey performed by the European Council of Literary Translators’
Associations (CEATL) “The real ‘European champions’ of literary translation are the
Czechs and the Slovaks with a proportion of 80% in fiction” (Fock, De Haan et al. 2008:
67).
• This means that as much as 80% of overall literary production consists mainly of
translations.
• Further research conducted in 2011 by Djovčoš and Pliešovská indicated that of the
overall proportion of translations from English written literatures in the period between
1989 (Velvet Revolution) and 2010, the total translation production was 51% (Djovčoš
and Pliešovská 2011: 84).
Translated Literature in the US
• Only about 3.5% of all books published in the United States are works in translation
(0.7 % literary translation).
• The general growth in the number of translations offered on the market over the past 11
years—from 369 titles in 2008 to 609 in 2018, with a peak of 666 titles in 2016—the
recent decline is worth noting.
• When it comes to the most frequently translated languages, the top three—French,
German, and Spanish—have remained the same since 2008, but in 2018, Spanish
overtook French, with 101 Spanish translated titles compared to 97 French. German
was a distant third with 53 titles, with the following languages rounding out the top 10:
Japanese (47), Italian (33), Norwegian (23), Chinese (22), Swedish (21), Russian (19),
and Arabic (18).

Translation as a social practice

• Translation is never practised (and therefore, should not be theorised) outside the
social context: it mediates – successfully or not, partially or impartially – between
peoples, nations, groups and individuals.
• Second, translators themselves are social beings: they grow up in a society, absorbing a
particular worldview, and ethical and aesthetical values. Becoming professionals, they
remain socialised individuals. They learn to be more open-minded to other cultures, they
learn not to be rash, let alone bigoted or biased, in their evaluations of the people for
whom they translate. They do not turn into translating machines. Their work, their
translations, whether written or oral, bear an imprint of their socialisation,
sometimes invisible even to translators themselves.
• On the surface many decisions translators make appear as their own. The social
underpinnings of their decisions, however, always lurk behind their individual wills and
individual styles.
• Translators: socially-conditioned & socially-conditioning subjects!

Wight is a literary word used within the fantasy genre of literature to describe certain undead or other
supernatural creatures. In addition, the card also alludes to the Wright Brothers with the help of the pun
created by the similarity between the pronunciation and spelling of words wight and wright. The Wright
Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were the American aviators, engineers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who
built and flew the world's first successful airplane. The brothers lived at the end of the 19th and the beginning
of the 20th century.

Wight Brothers Брати Зомбюкіни

• The reference to the real people who • The reference to real people who played
played the significant role in the world the significant role in the Ukrainian pop
history and are well-known to the culture and are well known to the
Americans UkrainiansThe seme of the undead is
• The seme of the undead created by the preserved by the pun created with the
combination of the word wight and the help of the word zombie
reference to the dead Wright Brothers • The seme of the brothers
• The seme of the brothers preserved • Pun and allusion
• Pun and allusion

Social profile of translators

• Translators develop socially as any other human being, but when we are speaking about
them as translators, it is their professional socialisation and social status that concern us
primarily. We may ask the following questions:
? How is the translator socialised as a translator? What are the stages of his/ her
professional socialisation (university? a first translation project? the start of a
translator/interpreter career?)
? How and when does the translator come to realise that s/he is a professional translator?
 ? How do translators learn about and see their professional status in (a) society in relation
to other professions?
• There are other aspects of translators’ social profile that play significant roles in their
professional performance. For instance, translators’ convictions and beliefs are essential
constituents of their professional profiles. These aspects should be taken into
consideration if we want to understand:
? how these social features influence translators’ performance;
? to what extent their work is biased, prejudiced or, on the contrary, open-minded and fair;
? what kinds of texts they prefer to translate;
? for what organisations they provide services and on what conditions, etc.

Social influences
• In the case of social influences on the translator and translation , one can distinguish two
types of cultural influence on the translator:
(1) the one from the ‘general’ culture of the society in or for which s/he works
(Weltanschauung values)
(2) the other from a subset of this general culture – the professional culture.
Translation norms are comprised of professional norms, defined by the professional
translation community in terms of its professional standards and ethics, and expectancy
norms gauging conformity of a particular translation to the expectations of the target
audience (framed by A.Chesterman).
So > Translation is a social activity practised in social contexts and practised by
socialised human beings.

Amanda Gorman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ055ilIiN4

“The Hill We Climb”

Translators need to love the author’s work, not to be like them.
Translation’s role in the social system (Niklas Luhmann’s scheme)
• Translation’s role within a particular culture is vital because no culture stands still.
Although society is fundamentally stable, it continuously evolves. How can anything
penetrate an otherwise self-sufficient system such as culture with its laws, norms,
 conventions? One of the mechanisms for bringing new ideas is translation.
Translation is one of the major agents of socio-cultural evolution.
• The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann considered evolution as consisting of three
stages – variation, selection and stabilisation (1997: 456–505).
• At the first stage, variation, new ideas are brought into the culture from the outside
world: new books are translated, new concepts and vocabulary are introduced. In
today’s world, the penetration of new ideas into cultures has become even easier through
the World Wide Web, internationalised mass media and such internationally and
interculturally operating arts as cinema.
• Imagine somebody speaking a language in which s/he reads a news report. There seems
to be no translation needed, yet this person filters the news through his/her mind, which is
tuned to his/her home culture – in other words, the new information is translated. The
reader turns a piece of news as it is in the paper into his/her understanding of the news.
This may still seem not to be a translation, but a simple experiment will show that there is
translation here: different people understand the same text differently because, like in
interlingual translation, they translate the source into their understanding/ vision of the
news selecting different features of the original message. Note that the readers of the
news act as both translators and the target receiver of the translation.
• Some of the new ideas are rejected as being too foreign to the culture, but some are
accepted. This may throw the culture out of balance and force it to reconsider its ways.
The new that translation brings into the culture may significantly influence its practices
and even fundamental principles. As translation introduces the new at the stage of
variation, the system starts considering the suggested options as acceptable or
unacceptable, so the stage of selection sets in.
• Then, finally, the stage of stabilisation joins the circular evolutionary process. At the
stage of stabilisation, the system operates in a renewed way, that is, with new
cultural patterns adopted and adapted to the system’s needs. As still newer things are
introduced, they will be selected according to the renewed cultural patterns.

Translation as a ‘distancing’ or ‘furthering’ force (Sherry Simon’s ideas)

• Translation makes and unmakes boundaries in the society or community.
• In this relation, translation can be seen to express two kinds of social interaction:
distancing (translation as the expression of the gulfs which separate languages and
cultures), and furthering (translation as the vehicle of esthetic interactions and
blendings) (Simon 2012: 13–19).
• Distancing is what happens when translations serve to underscore the differences that
prevail among cultures and languages, even when the gap may be the small distances of
urban space. Distancing occurs when authors are treated as representatives of their
origins, of their national or religious traditions, when translation is undertaken for
ideological reasons, either in a mood of antagonism, of generosity or simply of politeness.
• Furthering, by contrast, involves what Edith Grossman calls the “revivyfing and
expansive effect” of translation, one language infusing another “with influences,
alterations and combinations that would not have been possible without the presence of
translated foreign literary styles and perceptions, the material significance and heft of
literature that lies outside the territory of the purely monolingual”.
COMMUNICATIVE ECOLOGY
• According to David L. Altheide, who introduced the concept, the ecology of
communication refers to the structure, organization, and accessibility of information
technology, various forums, media, and channels of information. The ecology of
communication stresses the importance of a holistic view of the social realm.
• Communicative ecology studies human interactions in all their forms and those forms’
links, ties and bonds, whether in an intimate tete-а-tete or in a technologically mediated
long-distance videoconference.
• The communicative ecology has been theorized as composed of three layers: social,
technological and discursive (Hearn and Foth 2007).
(1) The social layer is people and their various groups or organizations.
(2) The technological layer includes devices and media connecting people and enabling their
communication.
(3) The discursive layer is the content of communication, the topics people discuss, the ideas
they exchange and so forth.
• Arguably, a fourth layer should be factored in whenever the communicative ecology is
discussed. This fourth layer is mediation or translation in a broad sense of the term
(not limited to interlingual transfer).
• Translation cuts across the three layers of the communicative ecology. Translation is
there when people communicate with other people, when they communicate directly or
through technology. The contents of the discursive layer are constantly translated and
retranslated and thereby undergo countless transformations. In the same way as
technology affects communication, its formats and its contents, translation also affects the
social realm in general.

• Translation also functions as a mechanism for mediating between different cultural strata
of one society: a describer-translator (who may be an insider or an outsider) looks at a
social group and translates his/her vision of the group in the terms understandable for
his/her target audience. The mechanism that allows us to qualify this action as translation
is the same as any other type of translation: a source (in this case, a subculture) is
presented to a target audience (other subcultures or the general culture of a society) by a
mediator.

Machine Translation: A War of Translations?

• Translation engines, such as Google Translate, can help. Yet translation’s proximity,
literally at one’s fingertips, comes at a cost. The quality may be less than satisfactory that,
however, may be not problematic when one is happy with understanding only the gist of
the original message. But sometimes Google’s translation engine makes glitches that look
not so innocuous.
• In January 2016, some mass media alerted those using Google translation that if the
Ukrainian word for Russians (rossiiany) was entered, they might be prompted to translate
it as ‘occupiers’ https://ru.tsn.ua/politika/google-nachal-perevodit-rossiyane-s-
ukrainskogo-na-russkiykakokkupanty-555480.html
• According to the same news article, translating from Ukrainian Revoliutsiia dostoinstva
[the Revolution of dignity] produced in Russian politicheskii krizis na Ukraine [a political
crisis in Ukraine]. In addition, the BBC Russian Service reported that Google translated
 from Ukrainian into Russian the word combination ‘Russian Federation’ as ‘Mordor’,
which, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, is the base of Sauron, a negative character.
• The surname of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, when entered for translation
from Ukrainian into Russian, was rendered as grustnaia loshadka meaning ‘a sad little
horse’, which is his humorous nickname
http://www.bbc.com/russian/news/2016/01/160105_google_translate_russia_mordor
• According to the BBC, a Russian Google representative explained the ‘translations’ as
mistakes of automatic translation systems. Translation, in this case (allegedly) purely
automatic, creates target language versions that reflect certain publics’ views of a
particular (controversial) subject matter. As a result, what is neutral in the original and
should not be problematic suddenly is turned into a centre of discussion (is the Ukrainian
‘revolution of dignity’ really a crisis?). In the case of the Google (mis)translations, the
renditions of neutral expressions and words may be seen as intentional pranks (to say the
least), especially because all these ‘translations’ happened in the period of the conflict
between Ukraine and Russia.

Lecture II.
Community interpreting: key premises
COMMUNITY INTERPRETING
• a special type of oral translation facilitating access to public services by mediating
between service users and service providers who do not share the same language.
• public service interpreting (UK),
• cultural interpreting (Canada),
• liaison interpreting (Australia),
• contact interpreting (Scandinavia),
• dialogue interpreting, ad hoc, triangle, face-to-face, and bidirectional or bilateral
interpreting

The value of CI
• It is a particularly vital service in communities with large numbers of ethnic minorities, enabling
those minorities to access services where, due to the language barrier, they would otherwise find it
difficult.
• Situations where such interpreters are necessary are typical include medical,
educational, housing, social security and legal areas.
• A very different role and responsibilities from a commercial or conference interpreter. Community
interpreter is responsible for enabling professional and client, with very different backgrounds and
perceptions and in an unequal relationship of power and knowledge, to communicate to their mutual
satisfaction.

Community interpreting
Briefing: Preparation with the interpreter
• pre-session interview with the interpreter.
• It is recommended for the service provider to spend 10 or 15 minutes on the first occasion
to establish a relationship, decide how you will work together, explain the objectives of
the meeting and share any relevant background information.
• establishing the ground rules, mode of interpreting, seating arrangement, communication
control strategies;
• cultural background information.
Interpreter should encourage speakers to address each other directly.
Briefing is particularly crucial in torture and trauma counselling, and in areas where formal
cognitive assessment is performed such as neuropsychology, speech pathology and
mental health.

Service providers & community interpreters

• Service providers are to explain at the beginning of the first meeting that the interpreter is
a professional doing their job, has no decision-making powers and is bound by the
confidentiality policy of the agency and their professional body.
• Clients can put interpreters under considerable pressure to take on additional roles, for
example to become involved in advocacy on their behalf, etc.
• De-briefing: how it was for the interpreter to work with service provider and whether
anything is to be changed in the way you are working (e.g. pace of speaking, length of
speaking)
Quality criteria to community interpreters
• Community or social service interpreting takes place in a great variety of settings and
demands good interpersonal skills as well as linguistic and cultural knowledge.
• Community interpreters are impartial and unbiased communication facilitators, yet
empathetic, which presents an obvious contradiction at face value: being impartial
implies distance, whereas empathy denotes a connection -- how do you establish a
connection without crossing certain boundaries?
• Empathy is not walking a mile in someone else's shoes, empathy is walking a mile in
someone else's shoes as that person.
• Construing the situation in this manner usually helps me establish an empathetic
connection with the limited English speaker.

The importance of briefing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMWaP9EV3_A

Settings in CI (1)
 The community interpreter must work in both languages and often must overcome cultural barriers that
block communication. Usually, the environment is one of high emotion where misunderstanding will
expose the parties to some serious risk.
 Add to these difficulties the fact that the professionals -- the doctors, nurses, police
officers, social workers etc. -- are usually in a hurry. They have a given case load to take
care of and are disinclined to let the interpreter do "a beautiful consecutive.“
 For example, it may result in improper diagnosis, unneeded tests, loss of income,
criminal charges being wrongfully laid or the failure to lay criminal charges when
warranted.

Settings in CI (2)
o Another characteristic feature of community interpreting is the degree of formality/informality in the
interpreting activities.
o The clients are mainly immigrants, refugees of all age groups, migrant workers and their children. The
clients are worried, afraid, and sometimes illiterate. They find themselves in strange surroundings.
o Moreover, the language level may be quite different from that of a diplomatic conference: regional
variations and dialects can be a problem.

e.g. Healthcare interpreting

 Interpreters can maintain professional distance by steering the conversation towards general topics not
related to the personal life of the patient or the interpreter.
 This may be a good opportunity to educate the client about the role and professional boundaries of
interpreters.
 If the patient starts talking about their condition, medical history or feelings, interpreters can advise that
they are unable to repeat the information to the healthcare provider.
 This approach confirms the patient’s right to choose what to say to healthcare providers and empowers
them to make their own decisions. It also discourages patient dependence on the interpreter.

Claudia V. Angelelli

Ethical principles of community interpreters

1. Confidentiality
2. Accuracy
3. Impartiality
4. Transparency
5. Direct Communication
6. Professional Boundaries
7. Intercultural Communication
8. Professional Conduct

Community interpreting in Ukraine

• The profession of community interpreter as a formal occupation has no tradition
in the Ukrainian society.
• In contrast to the situation in, for example Canada, where a non-profit
organization working under the name Critical Link Canada puts a lot of effort
into
(a) promoting the establishment of standards which guide the practice of
community interpreters;
(b) encouraging and sharing research in the field of community interpretation;
(c) adding to the discussion about the educational and training requirements for
community interpreters;
(d) advocating for the provision of professional community interpreting services
by social, legal and health care institutions;
(e) raising awareness about community interpreting as a profession
(www.criticallink.org).
Ethical Scenario (1)
The nurse pulls the interpreter aside after the session and asks “I’m worried about this
patient, can you tell me what you think is really going on?” The interpreter shares with
the provider what she knows about the client from her contact with her in the
community.
Yes – No – Maybe ?

Ethical scenario (2)

 When the doctor leaves, the patient leans in to the interpreter and says “I missed my
appointment last week because my husband hit me and my face was bruised. But don’t
tell the doctor, I’m afraid she’ll report my husband and my kids will get taken away.” The
interpreter chooses to honor the patient’s request and doesn’t share this information with
the doctor.

Ethical scenario (3)

 You are interpreting for a family whose daughter has developmental delays. The psychologist who tested
the daughter is reporting the results of the exam, which will determine whether the child will be eligible
for speech and physical therapy services.

 It is clear to you, the interpreter, that, so you do your best to the family members do not understand what
the psychologist is saying because she uses complicated language simplify the language without

changing its meaning.

Guidelines for community interpreter (1)

 Situation: The doctor explained prescription instructions in complicated language. You are very
afraid the patient did not understand the instructions and may take the wrong dosage.
 Speaking to the doctor:
 Excuse me, as the interpreter I’m worried that what I’m interpreting about the medication isn’t clear.
 Speaking to the patient:
 Excuse me, as the interpreter I told the doctor I’m worried that what I’m interpreting about the
medication isn’t clear.

Guidelines for community interpreter (2)

 Situation: A municipal sanitation employee is explaining recycling requirements to a restaurant
owner. He uses the word “commingled,” which you think means that the restaurant owner has to
recycle metal, paper and certain kinds of plastic together in one container (but even you are
slightly confused).
 Speaking to the restaurant owner and sanitation employee (in their two languages):
 Excuse me, as the interpreter I’m not sure the meaning of “commingled” is very clear. Maybe if you
explain, I can interpret it more clearly.
 Excuse me, as the interpreter I just told the sanitation representative that I’m not sure the meaning of
“commingled” is very clear. I told him that maybe if he explains, I can interpret it more clearly.
Not translating some HSPs’ statements
 One medical interpreter – Vicente – recalls another situation in which the doctor in the
emergency room needed a yes or no answer to the question: “Is he hypertensive?”
 The patient started telling a story from twenty years ago, and two sentences into the story
the doctor told Vicente, “Tell him that I do not need to hear that crap.”
 Vicente recalls not translating that statement, as it would not have helped the situation.
 Rather, he continued to elicit the yes or no answer and finally got it. Vicente emphasizes
that part of his role is to educate both parties. He tells HCPs how to make culturally
appropriate adjustments; he paves the way to questions that can otherwise be
misinterpreted, and as he does this, he reminds HCPs that this process generally takes
more time than communication with monolingual patients. Also, he educates patients in
staying focused and complying with the HCPs’ instructions.

prohibitions
✘ In addition, healthcare interpreters do not:
• assume the role of other health professionals;
• provide emotional support to patients;
• fill out forms on behalf of a client;
• interpret for their own relatives or friends

Advocacy
Taking action or speaking up on behalf of a service user or patient whose safety, health,
well-being or human dignity is at risk, with the purpose of preventing such harm.
Interpreter → Cultural broker / Mediator
Case:
Maria had never been a successful student, but it was her behavior at school—which was
becoming more and more problematic—that had caused her to be suspended from class
for three days. Now she faced a disciplinary hearing and might be expelled.
Maria, her mother and the principal of her high school all gathered to discuss the situation.
The interpreter could not believe what she heard when the principal asked Maria: “Do
you want to become a no-one like your mum? Or do you want to be able to get a real
job and go somewhere in life? If you want a job and a good life, you’d better try hard.
We’re here to help, but you have to do your part.”

What would you do if you were the interpreter in the session with Maria’s principal?
Would you:
a. Avoid interpreting the offensive reference to the mom (simply omit it).
b. Apply strategic mediation to tell the principal that his comments are racist.
c. Tell the mother that the principal was being racist, but only once the session is over.
d. None of the above: interpret everything that is said and avoid any further involvement.

Extreme situations
 The following phrase is a good way to introduce cultural information: “It is possible that some people
who come from this country may have these beliefs…”
 Interpreter statements beginning with “in my culture…” are generally unhelpful.

LectureIII.
COMMUNITY TRANSLATION
The niche of Community Translation in TS
• Community translation both as a practice and as a field of investigation is a relatively
new addition to the spectrum of Translation Studies.
While their external circumstances are different, conventional community translation & community
translation 2.0 share a core ethos of individual empowerment and social inclusion.

Conventional community translation is there to Community translation 2.0 denotes crowdsourced

help linguistically disadvantaged minorities or volunteer translation on the Internet.
gain access to services and enable them to It is the practice whereby non-professionals
participate in society on equal footing with translate software or websites that they
prestige-language speakers. actually use (cf. fan translation, user-based
Community translation is a language service that translation, lay translation, citizen translation,
ensures the rights of all individuals and etc.).
communities to public information and
Community translation 2.0 is about bypassing the
services.
traditional gatekeepers so that everyone can
This service, known also as public service
translation, is normally required in have a public voice.
multilingual and multicultural societies.

Part 1.
Conventional Community Translation
• Community Translation (CT) is essential for the civic involvement of speakers of non-dominant
languages. However, for a number of reasons, including budgetary considerations, the level of
recognition of community translation as a societal obligation towards disempowered language
groups is not at its best.
• Policies and practices vary from one part of the world to another, but generally tend to show a lack of
recognition, inadequate support, and ad hoc(situational) measures.

The premises of community translation (CT)

• Situations which require CT may include historically multilingual societies as well as emerging or
temporary diversities arising from migration, natural disasters or armed conflicts.
• What is common in all these situations is that there is a mainstream community (and language), one or
several linguistic and cultural minorities, and a resultant need for mainstream public services to
communicate in writing with those minorities and vice versa.
• The materials handled by community translators are not only informative, nor always produced by
public institutions. Rather, they may be produced by a number of different social agents such as non-
governmental organizations, local or ethnic community leaders, private organizations with an interest in
community welfare and development, and so on.
• Community texts are often public service in nature, with official discourse, specialized terminology and
a relatively high register.

A case study (I)

A report published by the Scottish Consumer Council showed that the end users of community translations
thought that these were often not reader-oriented.
Focus groups from minority ethnic communities (Chinese, Pakistani, Indian, Turkish, Iraqi and Brazilian)
reported ‘that the quality of translated material was variable and frequently used inaccessible and out-
of-date terminology’.
The translation shortcomings reported by the study participants included, among others, excessive literality,
outdated or overly formal language, and a profusion of unnecessary lexical items or expressions
(Scottish Consumer Council, 2005)
→ Most translators tend to take a very cautious approach towards translating community brochures. They
believe that the safest way is to do a literal translation, which, however, often results in an awkward
and sometimes incomprehensible target text.

Conclusions from the case study

• CT services are usually offered to disempowered social groups who – at times – can score lower in terms
of education, literacy etc.
• At a discourse level, users of community translations are normally less powerful than the text
producer (public institutions) because of the gap in specialized knowledge and access to specialized
terminology.

CT & power imbalance

• Community translation is a means to an end, namely to equip the community with the necessary
information and other means to develop skills for themselves. It is an attempt to balance the power
relationship between the sender and the receiver by prioritizing the needs of the community. Effective,
empowering communication between the author and the reader via the translated text implies that the
translator needs to be on the side of the powerless, that is the reader.
• The mere act of translating in the community translation context contributes to redressing asymmetries
between those who have access to written information and those who do not.

Fundamental ethical values in CT

• Clarity
 Audiences generally expect communicators to avoid ambiguity and obscurity and to be brief and orderly.
 Clarity ensures rational communication in human societies. Translators in particular attend to the value
of clarity both preventively and productively. Preventively, they process texts from one language to
another in a way that avoids obscurity and confusion. Productively, they generally make translation
choices that contribute better to clarity by, for instance, favouring iconicity, i.e. unmarked linguistic
forms whose meaning can easily be identified.
• Truth, which means correspondence to reality or a state of affairs; in translation it refers to
correspondence to the source text.
 In the context of CT, this warrants a number of possible ways of producing and translating texts in
consultation and collaboration with the relevant stakeholders.
• Trust: as an overriding value, trust has to do with the translator’s assumption that the different
stakeholders and participants in the communication act (translation commissioner, audience, other
translators) are acting in good faith and, at the same time, expect the translator to act in a loyal and
trustworthy manner.
• Understanding
 Translators undertake their work to produce and expand understanding by making texts accessible to a
larger and more diverse audience.

• In other words, community translators need to strike a balance between the requirements of truth (the
forms, meanings and functions of the original text), understanding (the background, needs and
expectations of the target readership) and trust (loyalty to the different stakeholders, including writer,
reader and commissioner, among others).

A case analysis (II)

• For instance, let us imagine that a government publishes a sixty-page immigration law rich in legal
discourse and specialized terminology; now suppose that some non-governmental organization (perhaps
an advocacy body) subsequently commissions a translation into a number of relevant community
languages, but with a brief clearly specifying that the intention is to inform the relevant social groups of
updates to migrant rights, obligations, restrictions and procedures.
• In this case, the hired community translators could produce, say, ten-page summarized versions that
reflect the communicative needs and expectations of their respective communities (i.e. values of clarity
and understanding) more than the exact definitions, complex structures, or specialized terms and phrases
of the original text (i.e. a narrow sense of the value of truth).

Community translators’ positioning

• The commissioner’s translation brief can certainly serve as the basis for community translators to
determine a hierarchy of interests.
• However, this implies that they will usually adopt the position and serve the interests of officialdom
when translating institutional material (informative brochures and leaflets, community advice and
instructions, government advertising, etc.) and those of individual community members when translating
personal documents for submission to public services (e.g. identity documents, refugee statements,
statutory declarations, etc.).
• As linguistic and cultural mediators working in a community context, community translators will
frequently be members of a minority group themselves, which may drive some either to one extreme or
another (advocate for the minority group or for the mainstream society and institutions).

• As translators are active subjects, Anthony Pym asserts that ‘translators cannot help but take position –
since even neutral positions have to be created – their ethics should break with passive non-identity,
forcing them actively to evaluate the texts they work on, making them take on a major degree of
responsibility for the texts they produce’ (Pym 2010 [1992]: 170).
• Translators are expected to be intellectuals who have ideas about their collective identity and aims (Pym
2010 [1992]:179).
• Ultimately, their loyalty should lie with their own profession, with themselves as a collective of
professionals who are able to justify their translation decisions in light of their ultimate aim, namely to
improve intercultural relations (Pym 2010 [1992]: 176–7).

Community translation
is always an instance intercultural communication!
The Iceberg Theory was put forward by Edward T. Hall, and it suggests that just like an iceberg, culture is
made of a visible and an invisible parts, thus community translators are to pay attention to the intersection of
both aspects.

Ukraine through the lens of CT

• 15 травня 2003 року Верховна Рада ратифікувала Європейську хартію регіональних мов або
мов меншин. (On 15 May 2003, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the European Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages).
Положення Хартії застосовуються до мов таких національних меншин України(The provisions of the
Charter apply to the languages of such national minorities of Ukraine): білоруської, болгарської,
гагаузької, грецької, єврейської, кримськотатарської, молдавської, німецької, польської,
російської, румунської, словацької та угорської.
• ЗАКОН УКРАЇНИ “Про забезпечення функціонування української мови як державної” (2019
р.) LAW OF UKRAINE “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State
Language”
Стаття 1. (8) Українська мова як єдина державна мова виконує функції мови міжетнічного
спілкування, є гарантією захисту прав людини для кожного українського громадянина
незалежно від його етнічного походження, а також є фактором єдності і національної безпеки
України. Ukrainian as the only state language serves as the language of interethnic communication, is
a guarantee of human rights protection for every Ukrainian citizen regardless of his ethnic origin, and
is a factor in the unity and national security of Ukraine.
Стаття 2. (3) Порядок застосування кримськотатарської мови та інших мов корінних народів,
національних меншин України у відповідних сферах суспільного життя визначається законом
щодо порядку реалізації прав корінних народів, національних меншин України з урахуванням
особливостей, визначених цим Законом.
Стаття 5. Державна програма сприяння опануванню державної мови
Розділ V (!!!) ЗУ: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2704-19

A case study of language profiles of

Lviv social/community/ administrative centers
Visit the following centers via the Internet and imagine that you are not a citizen of Ukraine but you are
a resident of Lviv for two years:
• Управління соціального захисту департаменту гуманітарної політики Львівської міської ради
https://social.lviv.ua/program/nashi-prohramy/
• Центр надання адміністративних послуг міста Львова https://city-adm.lviv.ua/services/
• Центр туристичної інформації https://lviv.travel/ua/lviv-tic

Part 2.
Community translation 2.0.
• It is used more or less synonymously with such terms as translation crowdsourcing, user-generated
translation and collaborative translation;
• It has an intrinsic tie to online communities and directs us to new dynamics resulting from general
Internet users acting as translators.
• It is usually produced in some form of collaboration often on specific platforms by a group of people
forming an online community.
• !!! The Facebook user translation initiatives became the most publicised early example of community
translation, where a group of self-selected Internet users translate fragments of text to be used on the
Facebook website in different language versions.

Community translators 2.0.

• When Facebook called on its users to help translate its website, various protest groups sprouted,
including the 7,000-strong “Leave Translation to Translators!” deriding the Facebook translation
community as “people who think they can do it” (cited in Keegan, 2009).
• Participants in community translation settings are not all untrained volunteers; professional translators
also respond to a particular call which they consider worthwhile, despite a lack of remuneration.
• But of course, among the common issues highlighted in current community practices of translation 2.0.
are quality control, crowd motivation and the role of professionals.

It is tempting for translation professionals to condemn the emergence of community translation as “the rise
of the amateur” but it may actually be pointing to “the crisis of the experts” who “undervalue what they do
not know and overvalue what they do” (Gee & Hayes, 2011, p. 44).

A case study (III)

 Sampling Translation for TED:
Community (crowd-sourced, fan translation)
Watch these videos to learn the nuances of TED translation:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wBZupNSmR0
When you join TED Translators, you will work with a global community of volunteers to make
extraordinary ideas accessible.
Before you get started, let's cover how to create good subtitles. The best subtitles can be easily read by
viewers; there's enough time to read the on-screen text and process what the speaker is saying. When you
create subtitles, stick to these simple rules: Never use more than two lines per subtitle. In most languages, if
a subtitle is longer than 42 characters, break it into two lines. Make sure each subtitle is on screen for at least
one second. Never combine two incomplete sentences in one subtitle. [It's not very good-looking.] Include
sound information in parenthesis. Represent on-screen text in square brackets. Next, here's what to expect as
a new TED Translator. After your application is accepted, you can select a talk to transcribe or translate.
Start with a shorter talk, so you can get quick feedback from an experienced volunteer. Speaking of
experience: only volunteers with at least five subtitled talks can review other TED Translators' work; this
ensures new volunteers get the best advice. Finally, a language coordinator will check your reviewed
subtitles and approve them for publication. You'll receive credit for your subtitles on TED.com.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJeEwMCioqs
The TED Translators program is about teamwork, and reviewers play a crucial role.
Reviewers collaborate with volunteers to improve the quality of subtitles, so TED viewers can connect with
speakers’ ideas. Here are five tips for reviewers: 1. Be qualified! You need five sets of published subtitles
before you can review. This ensures you’re familiar with and can advise others on subtitling best practices.
2. Watch the talk first! Before making changes, watch the entire talk with subtitles to identify areas where
you should focus. Look out for common mistakes, like overly-literal translations, grammatical errors, and
timing issues. 3. Give useful feedback! Good feedback is constructive and actionable. It includes specific
examples of what you should change and why. Link to resources so volunteers can learn to avoid similar
mistakes in the future. To motivate volunteers, highlight what they did well. 4. Send it back! If you notice
too many mistakes, send the subtitles back to the original volunteer. Reviewers don’t need to correct every
error. Instead, point out recurring issues and offer an example correction. 5. Work as a team! TED
Translators are volunteers united by the mission to spread great ideas. Always be respectful, and think of
reviewing as a conversation with a teammate about how to best communicate the speaker’s idea in your
language.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DahAZ2DQ738
we translate more than just the words we translate the meaning

Lecture 4:
Translation and Media Communications
Agenda
• Mass media discourse: what’s in the name?
• Media content creation
• Types of content
• Structuring the content: 4 key parts
• Tools in finding the “cuts”
• Rewriting & copywriting
• Transediting

Mass media discourse

The main task of mass media discourse is to draw attention to certain problems of the widest
possible circle of citizens, to motivate them to action, to provoke an appropriate reaction to
information or simply to express their position on important social phenomena.
The basis of the content of the mass media discourse are issues of public, social and public nature. It
is designed not only to inform, but also to solve urgent problems of socio-political life through
active influence on the reader.
Media discourse uses texts created by journalists and / or spreaded through the press, radio,
television, and the Internet.
Mass-media discourse (2)
 Producers of mass discourse play the role of intermediaries between political, economic,
financial and other institutions of any state, which are subjects of power and, therefore,
determine the "sanctioned" opinion about a particular speaker in the discourse, and society as
object of power.
 The population as a mass addressee of mass media discourse is detached from world events
(people do not witness events in other parts of the world), so it is the media that perform the
function of shaping public opinion.
 In the media discourse there are processes of conversion of information into meanings
(construction of knowledge), transition of knowledge from one level (institutional) to another
(everyday), merging of information of any type (political and entertainment, events and
advertising), etc.

Media communications and media content

Media are the means and tools of storing and transmitting information and data for individual and /
or mass audience.
 In the media, content is content, any informationally significant content of information resources
(newspapers, magazines, radio or television programs, websites, etc.), namely: texts, graphics,
audio, multimedia, ie information intended for consumption by the reader.
 Ideal content satisfies the recipient's requests at the right time and in the most convenient and
understandable form. That is, for the formation of content you need not only to collect facts and
 data, but also to know the needs of the reader, to understand the principles of perception of
information, behavior and reaction of the reader.
 Data - figures, specific parameters, facts, concepts or instructions presented in a form accepted
for understanding, processing and interpretation; the source through which journalistic news is
made.
 Content parameters are volume, presentation form, relevance and effectiveness (should
encourage communication).
 Any content is the object of copyright, the product of human intellectual labor. Unique content
has no analogues, it is published in the media with the permission of the author, is the result of
his intellectual work and is protected by copyright law.

Culture of digital communication

 The presence of external hyperlinks has recently become a necessary requirement for network
etiquette and the culture of Internet communication, because in the case of non-original (non-
unique, borrowed) content, the use of active hyperlinks is a must.
 When copying, quoting or rewriting texts, you need to refer to the source of information, which
will also ensure the appropriate level of quality of your content.

Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in
broadcasting.
Six ways to develop content:
 informing
 judgment
 propaganda
 Public Relations
 social advertisement
 commercial advertising

New content
 IDEA+TARGET AUDIENCE
 Content in the perspective of translation - possible scenarios:
 Translate foreign content 1: 1
 Fragmentary translation + interpretation
 Translation as a tool in the representation of information or data for writing content
 TransEditing: compilation of several articles, selection of citations and their translation + own
ice
 The mechanism of content creation:
• Lead
• Theme
• Comments/cuts
• Background

вступ/lead– тема – коментар – тло/background

 The rule of the inverted pyramid: arrange the information on the principle from the most to the
least important.
 During the first two hours of the crisis, gather all the information, activate the monitoring
services and create key messages. When informing about a current problem or situation, follow
the formula of "four U": useful, unique, urgent, ultra-specific. Emphasize the novelty and
uniqueness of your message in the text.
 Follow the rule "one sentence - one thought". If you publish a text in a blog, the volume of the
publication should not exceed 2100 words. If you plan to share information on social networks,
pay attention to the recommended length of the publication. For example, on Facebook it is 40-
80 characters, on Twitter - 71-100, on Instagram - 138-150.
 According to research, 80% of people read the title and only 20% - the whole text. Use in the
title a question or quote from the character, numbers, facts, as well as "catch-words". Note that
the title should not be large, it is optimal to use no more than seven words.
Selection of comments for translation in the creation of media content
• Agenda-Setting: Aggressive media coverage of an issue can make people believe an
insignificant issue is important. Similarly, media coverage may underplay an important issue.
• Priming: People evaluate politicians based on the issues covered in the press.
• Framing: How an issue is characterized in news reports can influence how it is understood by
the receivers; involves the selective inclusion or omission of facts ("bias").
! News consumers are rarely aware of any translation processes, let alone of any ideological
shifts aimed at infusing the target versions with new meaning.

Ресурс HARO: Help a Reporter Out

English-language resource for the exchange of information between the media and companies. New
inquiries from journalists from England, Germany, America, Japan, China and other countries are
constantly published here.
Ресурс Expertisefinder
 A simple and convenient English-language resource where journalists look for experts to prepare
an article or interview
 The site presents a database of international experts, as well as areas in which they work.
 Journalists from CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times and others regularly ask for
comments.

Re-writing
• “Re-writing” takes place at different levels between editing and translating. Journalists often
have to draw on material in other languages. This is especially true in countries whose language
is not internationally used.
• Here foreign-language competence is often a high priority, because international orientation is a
necessity, and journalists will naturally work through a great deal of foreign material in order to
process some of the information into articles in their own language.
• In other cases, articles are bought and simply translated with a relevant amount of editing to suit
the new group of receivers, this sometimes being performed by the same person in one process.
(Stetting 1989: 374)
Rewriting – «рерайт»
 Apparently, you have repeatedly noticed that on different sites can be found almost identical in
meaning articles, written in completely different styles and using different words. Why is this
happening?
 Rewrite is rewriting, in other words, an article that has already been written, while copyright is
writing copywriting from scratch.
 Rewrite is a unique text that was created based on another text, taking into account the
mandatory preservation of the meaning of the "original".
 On the one hand, the performer is faced with the task of creating a completely new text, but, on
the other hand, it is necessary to maintain the original style, not to add new facts and, moreover,
not to express their own opinions and judgments.
Рерайт

Convergent newsrooms
 Convergence (from the Latin convergere - to approach, coincide) - is the process of merging
information and communication technologies, integration of different media platforms for the
joint production and distribution of content (blurring the boundaries between media)
 As a result of this process, convergent newsrooms are emerging, a new model of media activity
in which journalists collect, process, and disseminate information to the press, radio, television,
and network sites. Provides interaction for content creation and content exchange between
different media platforms
 The term "convergent edition" is often used in conjunction with the term "integrated edition",
but in this case it usually refers to associations of journalists who prepare a printed version of the
publication and its Internet counterpart or create TV sites.
 Instead, journalists from different types of media work in a convergent editorial office on the
basis of one editorial office.

Translation in the media as trans-editing

• Since translation is perceived as an integral part of their journalistic work (not only in the case of
global news agencies, but also in press translation more widely), the very word translation is
avoided, which makes translation largely invisible.
• “Information that passes between cultures through news agencies is not only ‘translated’ in the
interlingual sense, it is reshaped, edited, synthesized and transformed for the consumption of a
new set of readers” (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 2).
• to investigate translation of international news, using the concept of gatekeeping to describe the
“process of controlling the flow of information into and through communication channels”.
• Gatekeeping denotes information selection prior to translation; transediting describing changes
during translation.
Тransediting : трансредагування
• In 1989, Karen Stetting introduced the term transediting, which she used as a composite term of
translating and editing to refer to the “combination of both tasks”.
• The study of transediting has been restricted to news translation.
• It implies acts of ST rewriting, and sometimes of ST re-ordering, which is essentially both
communication-oriented and receiver-oriented.
• Stetting’s original aim in coining the term transediting was to raise awareness of translation
being more than a pure replacement of a source text by an equivalent target text.
Three distinct areas of transediting:
• 1. Adaptation to a standard of efficiency in expression: “cleaning-up transediting”;
• 2. Adaptation to the intended function of the translated text in its new social context:
“situational transediting”;
• 3. Adaptation to the needs and conventions of the target culture: “cultural transediting”
(Stetting 1989: 377)

Profiling a transeditor
It takes more courage and energy to be a transeditor than a straight translator […] proficient work is
likely to bring back clients for more business, once they have understood that their intentions have
been taken well care of. A transeditor is also likely to feel that her work is more rewarding, if it is
more independent and more on a par with that of the writer.

Five typical patterns of trans-editing

1) Adding information (mainly for explanation);
2) Modifying the semantic meaning (stylistic adaptation and semantic shifts);
3) Reducing information (e.g., omission of idioms);
4) Enhancing comprehension by omission (e.g., omission of information deemed irrelevant to the
target culture);
5) The editor adding input.