Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English-language Translation
Bc. Michaela Chlebdová
Translation Quality in Non-literary Translation into the Second Language
Master’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Mgr. et Ing., Jiří Rambousek, Ph. D.
2018
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
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Author’s signature
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. et Ing. Jiří Rambousek, Ph.D., for his kind help and valuable advice. I would also like to express my gratitude to all the translators and reviewers who have willingly participated in my experiment for their precious time and involvement.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ...... 1
2. Theoretical Background ...... 4
2.1 Directionality in Translation ...... 4
2.2 The Literary vs. Non-literary Translation ...... 9
2.3 Translation Quality Assessment ...... 10
3. Methodology...... 13
3.1 Research Design, Materials, and Subjects ...... 15
3.1.1 Subjects Participating in the Study ...... 18
3.1.1.1 Translators ...... 18
3.1.1.2 Reviewers ...... 22
3.1.1.3 End-users ...... 22
3.1.2 Selection of the Source Texts ...... 23
3.1.2.1 Text No. 1 ...... 24
3.1.2.2 Text No. 2...... 24
3.1.2.3 Text No. 3 ...... 25
3.1.2.4 Text No. 4 ...... 26
3.1.3 Questionnaire Survey ...... 26
3.2 Assessment of the Quality of the Target Texts ...... 27
3.2.1 Categorisation of Errors ...... 28
3.2.1.1 Editorial Interventions Omitted from the Analysis ...... 32
4. Results and Discussion ...... 35
4.1 Error Count and Representation of Errors ...... 35
4.2 Qualitative Error Counts and Representations of Error Categories ...... 40
4.2.1 Substantial and Less Serious Shifts in Meaning...... 44
4.2.2 Counts and Representation of Qualitative Errors by Translators ...... 49
4.3 Quantitative Errors in L1 and L2 translations ...... 52
4.4 End-user Assessment ...... 53
4.5 Discussion and Suggestions ...... 55
5. Conclusion ...... 60
6. Bibliography ...... 63
7. Résumé ...... 70
7.1 English...... 70
7.2 Czech ...... 71
8. Appendixes ...... 72
Appendix A: Source Texts ...... 72
Appendix B: Target Texts with Corrected Errors ...... 75
Appendix C: Examples of Tables with Categorised Errors by Individual Texts ...... 76
Appendix D: Questionnaire for L2 Translators ...... 93
1. Introduction
Although in the distant past directionality of translation was not an issue and many translations were carried out into non-mother tongues, Latin and Greek in particular, this view radically changed in the sixteenth century, when translation into the second language began to be regarded as of inferior quality and therefore undesirable. This opinion was carried over in the field of Translation Studies until the 1990s when some scholars set out to challenge it. Since then, the opinion on translations into non-mother tongue has been gradually changing.
The claim against translations carried out into one’s second language has been that the language used by non-native speakers lacks the nativelike selection and fluency (Pawley and Syder 1983: 191) and that they are of inferior quality.
For many years this axiom held true without any evidence obtained by means of a research. These days, it is widely acknowledged that translation into the second language (L2 translation) is a reality in many settings around the world (e.g.
Pavlović N., Pokorn), in the cultures that use a “language of limited diffusion” in particular, and the issues of the directionality of translation have focused the attention of Translation Studies. The research conducted by Pokorn, for instance, aimed to determine whether the target audience is able to tell the directionality of translation of a set of literary texts. However, such texts usually provide the readers with much more clues regarding the direction of the translation than only the idiomaticity of the language. The readers might decide based on some signs of foreignization, for example. Yet it is the idiomaticity what translations into the second language are supposed to lack and why translators were (and sometimes still are) discouraged from translating into the second language. Therefore, non- literary texts seem to be more suitable to test this ability of the target audience
1 since many of them, e.g. some purely technical texts would not show such clues for the target audience (although this cannot be held as a general rule, of course).
Furthermore, the issues of quality of translation into the second language have remained unresearched. Still, it would be beneficial to know potential differences in the quality of L1 and L2 translation, in the case when the second language is
English in particular, since L2 translations can hardly be avoided in the translation practice. As the Pavlović claims, “even translators whose mother tongue is one of the ‘major’ languages are more and more frequently required to work out of their first language into English, the dominant language of the globalised world”
(Pavlović 2007).
This thesis sets out to explore the potential differences in the quality of translation of non-literary texts carried out by native and non-native speakers of the target language and to test whether the target audience of these translations is able to recognise the direction of translation. The basic assumption related to the research is that the knowledge of the differences in the quality of L1 and L2 translations can help translators who carry out translations into the non-mother tongue to concentrate on some specific aspects the related to the quality of L2 translations and thus improve the quality of their work.
The main aim of the thesis is to examine potential differences in the quality of translations of technical and general non-literary texts from Czech into English performed by English native speakers (L1 translations) and by Czech translators translating into English as into their second language (L2 translations). Based on the findings, the study further seeks to identify the variance in the representation of the specific types of errors in the translations and to identify the types of errors which prevailingly occur in the L2 translations and could be related to the
2 direction of translation. Finally, it is going to examine a potential link between the directionality of the translation and the opinion of potential end-users on the quality of the respective translation. This aspect is also closely related to the ability of the target audience to distinguish texts translated by native speakers of the given language from texts translated by non-native speakers of the language, namely of English in the case of this study. Therefore, this ability of the target audience is also going to be tested.
The theoretical background provided in Chapter 2 of this thesis summarises the knowledge in the areas related to the topic of this theses and provides a brief overview of the research conducted in those areas so far. Besides the dichotomy of literary vs non-literary translation and the issues of the directionality of translation, it also presents an overview of approaches to the translation quality and summarises the main translation quality models.
The design of the research is presented in Chapter 3. The chapter also introduces the subjects participating in the study and the source texts used for the translation tasks performed within the scope of the research. Furthermore, it explains the model of translation quality assessment used to assess the target texts translated by the translators participating in the study.
Chapter 4 presents the results of the translation quality assessment of 44 target texts translated by 11 translators, both native and non-natives speakers of
English, and provides detailed analyses of the results. This chapter also offers a discussion of the results of the analyses as well as the implications for the translation practice.
Finally, Chapter 5 summarises the findings of the presented research and provides conclusions related to the aims of the thesis.
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2. Theoretical Background
This chapter presents theoretical information relating to the topic of this thesis and sums up the research conducted in the respective areas so far. The first sub-chapter discusses the differences between literary and non-literary texts and the implications for translation strategies. Second sub-chapter deals with the issues of directionality of translation and provides a brief summary of the researches focused on the directionality of translation. The third sub-chapter informs about methods of translation quality assessment and present some models of translation quality assessment.
2.1 Directionality in Translation
In the past, directionality was not an issue in Europe because, as Beeby
Lonsdale explains, most of the translations were carried out into Greek and later into Latin since “vernacular languages like English were constantly changing and had a limited number of readers” (1998: 65). The axiomatic believe that translators should only work into their mother tongues dates back to the fifteenth century, and although the translations into the second language were generally used for pedagogical purposes from the sixteenth century on, Latin has remained the language of Catholic Church until these days (Beeby Lonsdale 1998: 65).
The view of translation into the second language (L1 translation) started to change in the twentieth century with the rise of the new lingua franca of the present days – English. In many countries, those using languages of limited diffusion in particular, the number of English native translators could not meet the increasing demand for translations into English. As a result, “L2 translation is likely to become an increasingly important translation practice that deserves to be
4 recognised as such, also in Translation Studies” (Hunziker Heeb 2016). The gap between the demand for translations into English and the supply can be illustrated with the situation of the Czech-English language pair, where the number of L1 translators for translations from Czech into English listed under translator associations and on translator portals hardly exceeds one hundred of translators worldwide, and the number of those resided in the Czech Republic does not even reach tens (see Tab. 1).
Table 1: Comparison of Numbers of L1 vs L2 Translators for the CZEENG Language Pair Listed under Translator Associations and Portals in the Czech Republic Number of L2 Number of L1 translators translators Union of Interpreters and Translators 163 5 (JTP) Překlady-překladatelé.cz 176 3 Registr překladatelských firem ČR 111 1 Navolnenoze.cz 273 1 ProZ 272 46 Translatorscafe.com 457 102
In 2014, the International Association of Translators and Interpreters conducted a survey on translation into a non-native language, which included 776 respondents from 80 countries. As many as 54.63% of the addressed translators admitted that they regularly translated into a non-mother tongue. Concerning the feasibility of L1 translations, Tomasz Kościuczuk remarks the following:
“What distinguishes languages of limited diffusion from other languages is
not the actual number of native speakers but rather how popular they are
outside a particular country. One can, therefore, speculate that adherence
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to L1 translation requirement is more feasible when translation is done
from major language into a language of limited diffusion.” (2016: 6)
The usual argument for which translators have been discouraged from translating into a non-mother tongue is the conviction that L2 translations inevitably sound strange to the native speakers of target language because of unacceptable or improbable collocations (Newmark 1981:180). Kościuczuk comments this popular belief as follows:
“It is often believed that native speakers know their L1 perfectly well and
will always outperform non-native users of the language. The definition of
a native speaker tends to incorporate such ideas as the skill of using L1
creatively and idiomatically, the power to discriminate between correct
and incorrect utterances, the ability to distinguish other native speakers
from non-native users of the language.” (Kościuczuk 2016:4)
Leaving aside the fact that the definition of a native speaker is rather problematic per se, this kind of definition seems to disregard the fact that not every native speaker has the same language and literary potential. As John Kearns aptly remarks, the wide range of abilities of people in all cultures attests to the fact that “some of us are better with language than others, just as some of us are better at maths, physics, geography, etc.” (2006). He further stresses the importance of
“L1 training in second- and third-level education to the development of mother tongue competence” (ibid.). He goes even further in undermining the myth of an ideal native speaker with perfect knowledge of their mother tongue by pointing out to examples such as language attrition, which he claims to be “far from an
6 anomaly for many L1 translators working in L2 environments” and to the “mere fact of variable student performance on second-level language and literature courses” (ibid.). According to Kościuczuk, the idea of the supremacy of L1 translators does not “account for the fact that mistakes are often caused by a misunderstanding of the source text rather than insufficient competence in the target language” (2016: 6). Last but not least, the idealised notion of L1 translator also disregards the fact that hardly any translation, let it be into the mother tongue, is perfect. Thus, this idealisation of the L1 translation seems to neglect the existence of phenomena such as interference or translationese.
When it comes to translation into the second langue, Stuart Campbell draws attention to the necessity to consider the language and translation competence of the individual translators. (1998). Warren argues that despite the fact that it is difficult to attain nativelike mastery in a foreign language, there are learners who almost achieve it (2005: 48). She further suggests that “the real stumbling blocks for the non-native speaker are the expressions which are condoned by the grammar and standard meanings of words, but which nevertheless are not used by native speakers” (2005: 39). Pawley and Syder confirm that there is “no sharp boundary between the classes of nativelike and non-nativelike sentences” but
“there are degrees of naturalness”. (1983: 195-197) Warren believes that to develop sensitivity to this ‘naturalness’ requires “a great deal of exposure to a language” and that “exposure to the target language is a sine qua non” (Warren:
46-48). She might be right, but it is not so problematic to ensure this in the case of
English, which serves as the global language in the modern world and, thus, this exposure to the target language is far more accessible than in the past. Moreover, the Newmark’s concern about L2 translations sounding strange to the native
7 speakers of the target language assumes native speaker audience. However,
Kearns argues that “non-literary translation into English presumes a native-
Anglophone readership to far less a degree than does literary translation.” (Kearns
2006). Still, when it comes to the quality of translation, Juliane House believes that “translators should adhere to the expectations of native English readers, rather than those of readers using English as a lingua franca” (House 1997: 106).
The gradual change in the opinion on the translations into a non-mother tongue within Translation Studies has entailed a growing interest of the researches in the directionality of translation. Stuart Campbell’s (1998) research in translation into the second language concentrated on translation competence. Nike
K. Pokorn (2005) conducted a survey testing the ability of native speakers of the target language to recognise the directionality of the presented translations of texts by Slovene writer I. Cankar. Furthermore, two surveys mapping the situation on the translation market were conducted. The first survey was carried out by Natasa
Pavlović (2007) and concentrated on the position of L2 translation on the market in Croatia. Later, she focused her research on the directionality in collaborative translation tasks. Similarly, Tomasz Kościuczuk and Boguslawa Whyatt (2013) explored the market situation and the translators’ self-concept in Poland. The research conducted by Tanja Pavlović (2008) dealt with the problems of translation process and translation quality in translation tasks performed by groups of students. The directionality of translation with the focus on the differences in the translation process was studied by Boguslawa Whyatt (2018). Continuous research in the area of directionality is also conducted by the Spanish PACTE research group (Beeby Lonsdale, Rodríguez, Fox, Albir, Neunzig, Orozco, Presas,
Rodríguez Inés, and Romero), who have carried out studies in translation process
8 and acquisition of translation competence which involved both directions of translation.
2.2 The Literary vs. Non-literary Translation
Traditionally, the main focus of Translation Studies was on literary translation. However, as the ratio of works which are translated these days shifts from literature in favour of non-literary texts, the interest of the field has also been moving towards what is called non-literary or specialised translation. Yet the definition a non-literary text is rather problematic. The range of texts which are labelled as non-literary is truly extensive. Konečný suggests that non-literary texts cover “a broad area comprising many different text-types, functions and approaches, an area which by definition explains what it is not” (2008: 6).
According to Peter Newmark, literary texts comprise the world of mind and imagination while non-literary texts dwell in the world of reality, facts, and events
(2004). Nonetheless, the problem lies in defining the borders between these two worlds and types of texts. Newmark admits the existence of a “middle stream of topics” between literary and non-literary texts such as the essay, which has a non- literary subject and literary form (ibid). There are many text typologies which further categorise texts on the basis of various criteria but, as Puchala points out,
“texts rarely display features of only one particular type” (2011). Rogers suggests changing to a model which is no longer based on the binary ‘literary’ and ‘non- literary’ or ‘specialised’ translation, which seems to be inadequate for describing the current scope of translation and Translation Studies (Rogers 2018: 5)
Probably the most widely used typology of texts in Translation Studies is that by Katharina Reiss (2000: 10). Texts are divided into types according to their
9 function (informative, expressive or operative), focus, and language dimension.
The text type further determines the translation method which shall be used to translate the source text. The result should be a target text with the same function.
A special subcategory of non-literary text is represented by technical texts.
Heltai claims that “Literary and technical translation show such significant differences that one wonders whether these differences are of a degree or of a kind, and indeed, if a unified theory of translation is possible at all” (2004: 52).
Newmark defines specialised translation as “the most technical form of non- literary translation, which has its focus in terms, i.e. words with single meanings within a text to be translated” (Newmark 2004). Heltai also states that the typical feature of the register of technical translation is the use of ready-made units, which must fit within the limits expected by the target audience, otherwise the target text might be perceived as jargon or translationese (Heltai 2004: 59).
However, Asensio argues that phenomena such as “metaphorisation, linguistic variation and idiolect which used to be thought of specific of general communication, are easily detected in highly specialised communication as well”
(2007: 50).
2.3 Translation Quality Assessment
The quality of translation can be assessed with respect to various aspects.
For instance, it can concentrate on the translation process, the product of translation, the user of the translation, on the purpose and use of the translation or on its compliance with valid standards. Zehnalová states that the most frequently used method of translation quality assessment (TQA) in commercial translation is either the assessment of the final product based on the pre-set methodology or the
10 assessment the process of provision of translation service with respect to its compliance with standards (Zehnalová 2015: 101). Considering this variety of approaches, it is not surprising when Castilho and O’Brien claim that “the definition of translation quality and the various models that purport to measure it are still a source of intense disagreement between academia and industry” (2017).
Joanna Drugan says that “theorists and professionals overwhelmingly agree there is no single objective way to measure quality” (Drugan 2013: 35).
The translation quality assessment models dealing focused mainly on literary translation include e.g. the models by Levý and Popovič. Another translation quality assessment model suitable for assessment of literary translation in particular is that designed by Juliane House, which considers the syntactic, lexical, and textual level and assesses the language means used to meet the genre and register of the source text (House 1997). Katharina Reiss compares the source text and target text with respect to the type of text, the language means used
(semantic, lexical, grammatical, and stylistic), and extra-linguistic (2000: 9).
The approaches to translation quality assessment mentioned at the beginning of this subchapter included those targeted at the end-user of the translation and at the use of the translation for the intended purpose. These methods of translation quality assessment view the quality of a translation from the perspective of the usability of the translation and its acceptability for the end-user. According to
Suojanen, Koskinen and Tuominen, usability is “ultimately about the user’s relative experience of the success of use” (2015). Newmark suggests applying
‘communicative’ (targeteer’s) translation to general non-literary and technical texts (2007).
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Malcolm Williams divides the translation quality models into quantitative or standardised, which are based on set standards, and qualitative, which are based on set criteria which the given text must meet. According to him, a quantitative model encompasses a tolerance level for errors unwittingly committed by the translator (2004: 3–19). The quantitative models include Sical (Canadian
Language Quality Measurement System), for example, or the system used by the
American Translator Association. These models assess the quality of a text based on quantification of errors occurring in a text of a specified length. The language and translation errors are categorised and assessed with respect to the seriousness.
Another model of quality assessment which considers the level of ‘seriousness’ of errors was suggested by Zlata Kufnerová, who divides errors occurring in translation into qualitative errors, which she sees as the mistakes in the true sense of the word, and quantitative error, which are less serious mistakes – expression or phrases that exist in the target language but their stylistic validity or frequency are wrong (2009).
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3. Methodology
The following chapter describes the aims and operationalisation of the study, which was conducted in the Czech Republic in 2018 and dealt with the correlation between the directionality of translations of non-literary texts from Czech into
English and the final quality of the translated texts.
The main aim of the study was to examine potential differences in the quality of translations of technical and general non-literary texts from Czech into English performed by English native speakers (L1 translations) and by Czech translators translating into English as into their second language (L2 translations). Based on the findings, the study further sought to identify the variance in the representation of the specific types of errors in the translations and to identify the types of errors which prevailingly occur in the L2 translations and could be related to the direction of translation. Finally, it examined a potential link between the directionality of the translation and the opinion of potential end-users on the respective translation. This aspect is also closely related to the ability of the target audience to distinguish texts translated by native speakers of the given language from texts translated by non-native speakers of the language, namely of English in the case of this study.
With respect to the aims of the thesis, the following research questions were formulated:
Does the quality of translation L1 translations differ from the quality of L2 translations? Consequently, does the quality of translation depend on the directionality of translation? Is the difference in the quality of L1 and L2 translations always the same or it differs depending on the text type? Providing the quality of translation does not depend on the directionality, what does it
13 depend on? And supposing that there are significant differences in the quality of
L2 translations, what are they caused by?
The research questions led to the formulation of the research hypotheses bellow, which proceeds from the premise that long held true in Translation
Studies, but which has been challenged by many scholars in the last decades: the premise that native translators always outperform translators who translate into their second language. The hypotheses which this thesis sets out to test are as follows:
Hypothesis 1: The quality of translation depends on the directionality of the translation; hence the error counts of the individual translations will be always higher in the case of L2 translations than in the case of L1 translations.
Hypothesis 2: In L2 translations, qualitative errors will have higher representation than quantitative errors; in the L1 translations, the ratio of quantitative errors will be higher than that of quantitative errors.
Hypothesis 3: The effect of the directionality of translation on the quality of translation differs according to the text type. The error count per 400 words of L1 translations of the general (journalistic) texts will be lower than in the case of the technical texts by a higher percentage than in the case of translations of L2 translations.
The last hypothesis relates to the presumption that L2 translations lack idiomaticity and are, therefore, less acceptable for the target audience.
Hypothesis 4: The end-users are able to distinguish L1 translations from L2 translations. Consequently, the acceptability and usability of L1 translations will be higher than that of L2 translations.
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3.1 Research Design, Materials, and Subjects
It has already been stated in the theoretical part of this thesis that non- literary translations represent approximately 90% of all translations performed these days (Newmark 2004). Since the study set out to test the actual impact of the directionality of translation on the translation quality in translation practice, it was necessary to obtain a set of non-literary texts translated by L1 translators as well as L2 translators. One of the methods which might be employed to get the set of translated texts is to create a corpus of already translated texts whose authors are known, the method used for example by Pokorn (2009) in her research. However, her research dealt with a comparison of results from translations of the several texts translated under different conditions and at different times. This might be seen as a usual approach, simply because it is almost impossible to get multiple translations of the same text. Finding suitable translated texts for the purpose of the study presented in this thesis would have been yet more difficult because it concentrates on non-literary translation, and multiple translations of non-literary texts are quite rare, leaving aside the fact that the texts would have to be provably translated by native as well as non-native speakers of English. Analysing a corpus of only a few or different texts is rather problematic: the differences in the texts and in the setting of the translation may influence the quality of the target texts while the lower number of translations to compare might not provide enough material for analysis and lead to results which are not indicative. Besides, it has already been mentioned in chapter 2.2 Literary vs Non-literary Translation that non-literary translations (translations of technical texts in particular) are often anonymous. Even if the author was known, it would be impossible to determine whether the text was edited by a reviewer or not, which would blur any potential
15 effect of the translation directionality on the quality of the translation.
Furthermore, the use of already translated text would make any analysis of the translators’ background practically impossible.
The study design, therefore, relied on translations performed by eleven translators, five English native speakers and six Czech native speakers who translated into
English, solely for the purpose of the study. Thus, it was possible to determine the factors influencing the quality of the translation from the side of the translators.
The number of translators was set to the minimum of ten translators in order to provide sufficient material for the analysis, yet it had to be limited to the maximum of fifteen translators for the safe of the feasibility of the study. Finally, eleven of the addressed professional translators participated in this study. Further information about the translators is provided in chapter 3.1.1 Subjects
Participating in the Study.
The translation task lay in translations of four source texts in Czech with the overall length of 655 words. These four source texts were translated into
English by each the participating translators, which resulted in a corpus of 44 target texts with the total of 7,205 words, of which twenty target texts were L1 translations with the overall length of 3,275 words and twenty-four were L2 translations; these amounted to 3,930 words in total. Apart from this task, the L2 translators were also asked to fill in a questionnaire regarding the process of
English language acquisition, their translation experience, and the translation tools they used for the task.
The next part of the study was designed to obtain the opinions of the potential end-users on the acceptability and usability of the translated texts and to test to which extent the native and non-native audience could identify the
16 directionality of translations in the case of non-literary texts translated from Czech into English. Thus, the translated texts were submitted to potential end-users and reviewers for evaluation (the end-users and reviewers are discussed in more details in chapter 3.1.1 Subjects Participating in the Study). The end-users were provided with the unedited version of the target texts and were asked to assess the texts with respect to their usability for the intended purpose and their acceptability by marking each text with one of the following grades:
1) Unreservedly acceptable
2) Acceptable after proofreading and editing
3) Unacceptable
The end-users did not obtain the source texts, which meant that they could only access the quality of the text per se and were not influenced by the quality of translation with the view of translation errors or potential shifts in meaning.
Finally, they should decide whether each text was translated by a native speaker of English or a Czech translator. Neither the number of translators nor the ratio of native to non-native translators was disclosed to the potential end-users.
At the same time, the translations were also passed to the reviewers, whose task was to correct the errors in the target texts and edit them in such a way so that they were suitable for the intended purpose. These alterations were made by three reviewers, a professional translator and proofreader and two experts of the field to which the texts were related. The first reviewer edited the target texts with respect to the idiomaticity and nativelike selection and fluency of the language used in the target texts and corrected semantic, grammatical, syntactical, and lexical errors.
The aim of these edits suggested by the first reviewer was to eliminate the language errors made by the translators and to make the target texts acceptable for
17 the intended purpose and acceptable for the end-users. The second reading was ensured by two experts from the field of civil engineering and architecture. These two reviewers corrected the shifts in meaning and the terminology used in the target texts. Finally, all the errors found by the reviewers were classified using the translation quality model described in chapter 3.3 Assessment of the Quality of the Target Texts by the author of this thesis. The target texts with the classified errors were subsequently subjected to quantitative data processing in order to provide statistics that would either confirm or disprove the hypotheses laid down in the previous chapter. The statistics and the results of the analysis are presented in chapter 4.5 Results and Discussion.
3.1.1 Subjects Participating in the Study
The study required participation of groups of L1 and L2 translators to translate the source texts from Czech into English, of reviewers to edit and assess the target texts, and of potential end-users of the target texts, who were asked to provide their opinions on the quality of the target texts and to decide whether each of the translations was carried out into or from the translator’s mother tongue. The following sub-chapters provide more details about the aforementioned participants in the study.
3.1.1.1 Translators
The study presented here was conducted in collaboration with a group of
11 professional translators. The group comprised both L1 and L2 translators – 5 native speakers of British or American English (L1 translators) and six native speakers of Czech, who have English as their second language (L2 translators). It
18 has been already mentioned that translators’ language competence must be considered when researching directionality. Saber Zahedi emphasises that the effect of language competence and translation experience on quality of translation should not be confused with the impact of translation direction (2013: 53).
Therefore, only professional translators were asked to participate in the study. It has to be stressed that neither novice translators nor translation students participated in the study in order to limit the effect of any potential lack of language or translation competence and translation experience, which could be subsequently misinterpreted as the impact of translation direction (see Zahedi
2013). All the translators participating in the study were selected from the publicly available lists of translators and interpreters provided by the Union of
Translators and Interpreters, Czech Register of Translation Companies, and other translator portals. Translation Agencies were not included in the study since many of the translators listed on the above-mentioned portals actually work for one or even more agencies and the Czech ‘bilingual’ translators who were born and
All the English native translators listed under the above-mentioned institutions were asked to translate the text (for more information about the exact numbers of the available English native translators for the respective language pair is presented in chapter 2.1 Directionality in Translation. The following five
English native translators finally participated in the study.
The first L1 translator (for the purposes of the analysis marked as L1_1) is a native speaker of American English. He passed State examination in
English/Czech for translators and has been working as a translator for more than 5 years. The second L1 translator (L1_2) is from Canada but has been working as an English teacher and translator in the Czech Republic for almost 20 years. The
19 third L1 translator (L1_L3) is of American origin. He specialises in technical translation but provides translations of general texts, too. He has been working as a translator for the last 4 years. The fourth L1 translator (L1_4) is a native speaker of British English and has been working as a translator for more than 20 years.
The last, fifth L1 translator (L1_5) is of British origin but comes from a Czech-
British bilingual family and has been already living in the Czech Republic for more than 25 years. He studied architecture, but he does not specialise in technical translation.
The number of non-native translators was set to be roughly the same as the number of L1 translators. They were selected randomly from the same lists as the
L1 translators.
The first L2 translator (L2_1) has been working as a translator specialising in technical translation for five years. He has a degree in teaching and studied
English in specialised courses as well as during a short-time stay in an English- speaking country. When carrying out the translation task for the study presented here, he used parallel corpora, dictionaries, spelling and grammar checker, and searched the internet for terms, phrases, and collocations.
The second L2 translator (L2_2) also specialises in technical translation and has been working as a translator for the last 8 years. She has a degree in
English language and literature, but she also graduated from a school of civil engineering and translation courses. In addition, she attended translation and language courses. She used parallel corpora, dictionaries, spelling and grammar checkers, and web searching to find terms, phrases, collocations, and longer segments of sentences to verify the idiomaticity of the used language.
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The third L2 translator (L2_3) specialises in technical translation as well, but he also translates business and literary texts. He lived in Scotland and did his
M.A. there. Apart from this, he also studied English in language courses. He is still in daily contact with English native speakers. For the translation task hereof, he used dictionaries and web search to find terms.
The fourth L2 translator (L2_4) focuses on translations of general and scientific texts. She has a degree in English language and literature and was living in the United Kingdom for more than 8 years. She is still in contact with English- native speakers several times per week. When working on the translation task for the study presented here, she checked terms, phrases, and collocations using monolingual and parallel corpora, dictionaries and web search.
The fifth L2 translator (L2_5) has been working as an English teacher and a part-time translator for 15 years. She is from a bilingual family and she studied
English in language courses. She also lived several years in the USA. She used dictionaries and web search to find terms, phrases, collocations, and to check whole sentences.
The last L2 translator (L2_6) has a degree in translation and in French language. She studied English in language courses and spent a year in the USA.
She is still in a daily contact with native speakers of English. She has been working as a translator for 5 years and provides translations of various types of texts including technical texts. She used both monolingual and parallel corpora, dictionaries, spelling and grammar checkers, and web searching to find terms and collocations.
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3.1.1.2 Reviewers
The subjects participating in the process of assessing the quality of the target texts included four persons. The first one was a translation industry partner, who edited the target texts. This professional proofreader and editor is a native speaker of British English with a ten-year experience in the field of editing translations of both general and technical texts. The technical aspects of the texts were assessed by two experts from the field of civil construction and architecture.
One of these two experts was a British architect and civil engineer with a substantial long experience in the field. The other expert was a Czech native speaker, an architect and civil engineer with a 40-year practice in the field, who is fluent in English and has been using English regularly over the last 25 years within the scope of his cooperation with foreign business partners and clients, both native and non-native speakers of English. Finally, the errors found by the three reviewers were classified and by the author of this thesis, a native speaker of
Czech with a qualification in civil engineering, a degree in English language and a previous seven-year experience in translation of various technical and general texts amounting to approximately eight thousands of translated pages, of which about 50% were translated into English.
3.1.1.3 End-users
This part of the study involved the participation of four subjects representing the potential end-users of the target texts, one native speaker of
English of British origin and three Czechs. All of them have a degree in civil constructions or architecture and work or worked in the respective field and the scope of their work includes reading and writing similar articles or reports in
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English. Moreover, their job responsibilities included assigning translations of texts to translators or translation agencies.
3.1.2 Selection of the Source Texts
The key material for the study were translations of four non-literary texts, of which two were technical, one was journalistic (a non-fiction book review) and one contained features of both types. Several shorter texts were chosen instead of a single longer text in order to ensure sufficient text length for analysis and a greater variability of the texts at the same time. The types of texts were chosen in order to identify potential differences in the quality of L2 translation of non- literary texts which might result from the nature of the texts. The function of the used technical texts is purely informative and does include the expressive or operative function (see Reiss, 2000). Since these texts mainly rely on terminology and ready-made units and their style is less creative, translators of such texts may benefit from expert knowledge rather than from literary and language skills. Thus, the advantage which the native translators are supposed to have may be lost and the differences in the translation output resulting from the directionality of the translation may be less apparent. Moreover, the information conveyed by the source text must be transferred exactly, which requires correct understanding and interpretation of the source text. This, again, might work in favour of the L2 translators (see also Kościuczuk). The technical texts used for the purpose of the survey contained some technical terms and, above all, passages which required precise interpretation. Three of the texts were of approximately the same length
(ranging from 150 to 153 words), only the fourth text was slightly longer (196 words).
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The journalistic text, on the other hand, did not contain any terminology and its function was both informative and expressive.
No specific rich points were determined for the individual texts since the evaluation treats each target text as a whole and evaluation of some specific places would not contribute to the
All texts were supposed to be read by global readership. Texts No. 2 and 3 are technical texts intended for experts, texts No. 1 and 4 were journalistic texts aimed at general public. All source texts used in the study are included in
Appendix A to this thesis.
3.1.2.1 Text No. 1
Text No. 1 is an excerpt from the press release issued by the Czech
Chamber of Architects in the CCA Bulletin. The article expresses the stance of the
Czech Chamber of Architects on the possibilities and feasibility of the reconstruction of Libeň Bridge in Prague. It generally describes the features of the bridge and informs about the potential approaches to its reconstruction. The text contains a sentence describing one of the potential methods of the bridge reconstruction, which required good understanding of the source text and its exact translation into the target language. This source text contains 150 words and its function is prevailingly informative.
3.1.2.2 Text No. 2
Text No. 2 presents a purely technical text. It is an extract from the article
‘Reconstruction of the Historical Building of the National Museum in Prague’ published in Stavebnictví, the Journal of Civil Engineers, Technicians and
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Entrepreneurs. The part of the article used for the translation deals with the underpinning of the historical building, which had to be done in order to allow a construction of a connecting corridor leading under this building. The article compares the original design with the final implementation of the construction works and provides technical information about the final design of the underpinning. This extract contains less technical terms than the other technical text used in the study, but the sentences are more demanding with respect to both sentence structure and the necessity to transfer the information correctly. The excerpt has 153 words and is strictly informative.
3.1.2.3 Text No. 3
The third source text was also technical and was taken from Stavebnictví, the Journal of Civil Engineers, Technicians and Entrepreneurs. The article from which the excerpt for translation was taken concentrated on the Bleilochtalsperre waterworks on the river Saale. The article informed about the history, design, and process of construction of the waterworks. The part of article used for the translation task focused on the description of the technical design of the waterworks’ dam. Although this text contained the most terms of all the source texts, it was not difficult to understand and did not include any complicated sentences which could hinder the translators from understanding the information conveyed by the text. This text was also purely informative and comprised 156 words.
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3.1.2.4 Text No. 4
The fourth text is an extract from a book review published in the CCA
Bulletin issued by the Czech Chamber of Architects. The reviewed book documents stories of 200 various cabins and huts built by their owners off the beaten tracks in search for a quiet place which would be hidden from the hectic pace of the present days. The excerpt used for the translation task has 196 words.
It contains only general language and has both informative and expressive functions.
3.1.3 Questionnaire Survey
The study also comprised a questionnaire survey aimed at the translator background of the L2 translators. It involved a self-administered written questionnaire (see Dörney), which was intended for the non-native translators only. The aim of the questionnaire survey was to find out more detailed information about the education of the L2 translators participating in the study, about the circumstances of their English language acquisition, their translator experience, and about the translation tools they used while working on the assigned translations. This information was taken into consideration in chapter 4.5
Discussion and Suggestions, where the potential correlations between the results of the translation quality assessment of the individual translations and the aspects of the translator background are discussed. The questionnaire was created using an online tool for the creation of questionnaires available from Survio.com. A link to the questionnaire was sent to all the six non-native translators who participated in the study. The questionnaire was filled in by all of them. The questions used in the questionnaire are presented in Appendix D to tis thesis. The
26 information found out by means of the questionnaire survey are presented in the introduction of each of the individual translators in sub-chapter 3.1.1.1
Translators.
3.2 Assessment of the Quality of the Target Texts
The approaches to translation quality assessment as well as potential TQA models were discussed in more details in chapter 2.3 Translation Quality
Assessment. In the view of the fact that the errors had to be statistically analysed, results provided by a quantitative model of translation quality assessment appeared to be more suitable for the purpose of the thesis.
The classification of errors used in the study presented in this thesis was carried out according to the American Translators Association’s framework for translation quality assessment (see chapter 2.3 Translation Quality Assessment), which employs a standardised error marking system explained in more details in chapter 3.2.1 Categorisation of Errors. For the purpose of the study presented herein, the categorisation system of the American Translators Association (ATA) was competed with several sub-categories which specify the errors for the need of the subsequent more detailed evaluation. The added subcategories are also discussed below in the sub-chapter 3.2.1 Categorisation of Errors. However, the second step of the ATA model, namely the error grading system applied by the
ATA, was not employed in this study because, as Mary Phelan points out about this system, it can be tricky for assessors to decide how serious that error is.
(2017: 197)
The next step included preparation of tables with the errors of the individual categories made by the individual translators as well as by the groups of
27 translators and the representation of errors in the individual texts was calculated.
The statistics of representation were compared in order to determine a potential impact of the directionality of translation on the quality of the translation. The error counts and representations of the individual error categories are presented in chapter 4. Results and Discussion.
3.2.1 Categorisation of Errors
All errors corrected in the target texts by the reviewers were assigned one of the following categories based on ATA categorisation of errors:
An addition error (A) is a category of errors which occur when the translator introduced a superfluous information or stylistic effect into the target text, which was originally not included in the source text.
An ambiguity error (AMB) is assigned to an error if either the source or target text segment allows for more than one semantic interpretation but its counterpart in the other language does not.
A capitalization error (C) includes errors which violate the conventions of the target language concerning the usage of upper- or lower-case letters.
A cohesion error (COH) refers to the parts of texts which are hard to follow because of inconsistent use of terminology, misuse of pronouns, inappropriate conjunctions, or other structural errors. Although cohesion is a feature of the text as a whole, only the individual element that disrupts the cohesion is marked as a cohesion error.
A faithfulness error (F) occurs when the target text does not respect the meaning of the source text as much as possible but probably not as a result of misunderstanding the source text (see the mistranslation error below).
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An error categorised as a false friend (FA) also known as faux ami occurs when words of similar form but dissimilar meaning across the language pair are confused.
A grammar error (G) occurs when a segment (a sentence or its part) in the target text violates the grammatical rules of the target language, such as the lack of agreement between subject and verb, incorrect use of plural/singular, verb inflections, and incorrect declension of nouns, pronouns, or adjectives. In the applicable cases, the ATA uses the sub-categories of SYN (Syntax), and WF/PS
(Word Form/Part of Speech) with these errors. Syntax errors include the cases when the arrangement of words or other elements of a sentence does not conform to the syntactic rules of the target language. A word form error occurs when the root of the word is correct, but the form of the word is incorrect or does not exist in the target language (e.g., “cubistic” instead of “cubist”) or when the grammatical form (adjective, adverb, verb, etc.) is incorrect (e.g. “arch” instead of
“arched”). An additional sub-category of plural/singular errors (PL) was added for the purpose of classification of errors in the target texts within the scope of the study presented here.
An indecision error (IND) refers to the cases when the translator provided more than one option for the respective translation unit.
A literalness (L) error is caused by a literal translation that follows the source text word for word, which finally results in awkward, unidiomatic, or incorrect renditions (also known as Czenglish in the case of Czech-English language pair).
Mistranslation errors (MT) of the source text segment arise either from a misunderstanding of the source text or from the use of incorrect word or term.
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These errors cause shifts in meaning and in the tables with errors are highlighted in pink (less serious shifts in meaning which do not prevent correct interpretation of the text or of its part by the target audience but which impact the cohesion and intelligibility of the text) or in red (serious shifts in meaning which distort the information conveyed by the source text significantly).
An omission error (O) is when an element of information in the source text is left out of the target text. According to the ATA rules, implication is permissible; only missing segments are marked as omission errors.
Punctuation error (P) are all cases when the conventions of the target language regarding punctuation are not observed. For the purpose of this study, these errors include incorrect use of quotation marks, commas, and semicolons.
For the purpose of the study presented here, a spelling error is such an error when a word or character in the translation is spelled incorrectly according to either BrE or AmE conventions. A spelling error that causes confusion about the intended meaning is classified as a qualitative error (see the explanation of categorisation regarding qualitative vs quantitative errors provided below in this chapter).
Style errors (ST) are occurrences of editorial interventions which performed to improve the fluency, unidiomatic use of language or appropriateness of the segment included in the target text, but which do not correct any error classified within the other error categories. These errors include the subcategory of wrong register (REG), when the language level or the degree of formality is not in accordance with the source text or is not appropriate for the target audience.
Terminology errors (T) include all segments where a term appropriate to a specific subject field is not used when the corresponding term is used in the
30 source text. This type of error applies to terms used in various technical fields but can also apply to more general texts. Within this study, this category is further divided into two sub-categories of errors in technical terms (TECH) and general
(GEN) which includes a misuse of a term or a word in the target text which has a different meaning in the source text.
The category of unfinished errors (UNF) applies to passages of the translation which have not been finished or to clearly unfinished words or sentences.
A usage error (U) occurs when conventions of wording in the target language are not followed, i.e. the correct and idiomatic usage of the target language is violated. This category includes several sub-categories, which deal with the use of prepositions (PREP) (e.g., “popular at” instead of “popular with”), collocations (COLL), and definite/indefinite articles (ART).
A verb tense error (VT) refers to every instance when the translation includes a verb in the grammatically correct form (person, number, gender, etc.) but conjugated in a tense (and/or mood, aspect, etc.) that conveys a different meaning from the source text. For example, “The CCA supports… for long time” instead of “The CCA has supported…for a long time”. If a verb was incorrectly inflected for person or number (plural/singular), etc., the error is classified a grammar error.
Other Errors are errors that do not clearly fit into any of the above- mentioned categories.
It has been already mentioned that the error grading system applied by the
ATA is too complicated and “risky” to be used for the study presented here.
Nevertheless, each error also needed to be marked with respect to its
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“seriousness” apart from the above-mentioned categories. Malcolm Williams suggests grading “seriousness” to circumvent the drawbacks of quantification. He recommends grading errors as major, minor, weak point, etc. However, he admits that it might be problematic to seek a consensus on what constitutes a major, as opposed to a minor, error. (2004). On that account, the system of qualitative and quantitative errors introduced by Zlata Kufnerová (2009) was employed instead of the ATA grading system, in the operationalisation as implemented by Filip
Drlík. Kufnerová describes qualitative errors as “mistakes in the true sense of the word” (Kufnerová 2009: 45). Drlík states that in the case of qualitative errors,
“there could be no doubt that the solution is wrong, therefore the corresponding activity of carried out by the editor is correction.” The quantitative errors, on the other hand, he defines as segments which are acceptable but need to be improved, not corrected. In the case of quantitative errors, the translator’s choice was not wrong but unidiomatic (2015: 22-23). Since the representation of occurrences of unidiomatic language in L2 translations in comparison to L2 translations is of a particular interest considering the aim of this thesis, this classification of the seriousness of errors into qualitative and quantitative fitted the purpose perfectly and was used to sort the errors for the purpose of their quantitative processing.
3.2.1.1 Editorial Interventions Omitted from the Analysis
The analysis of errors performed within the scope of this study did not take account of process-related errors, although such errors certainly contribute to the overall quality of the translation. The reason for omitting them from the analysis is that rather than by the directionality of the translation, they are caused by outer factors influencing the work of a translator (for example, the speed of translation
32 and the current mental or physical condition of the translator). The process-related errors which were disregarded in the analysis included typographical errors, untranslated words or segments in the target text or words missing in the target texts.
The assessment also did not take into consideration any corrections of
American English spelling made by the reviewers, who used British English, since the instructions given to the translators did neither specify the language of the target readership (see chapter 2.1 Directionality in Translation for details) nor prescribe the use of British English or American English, hence the use of
American English in the translation cannot be perceived as an error which influences the quality of the translation.
Another category of errors which desired a special approach was the one of terminology errors. Despite the fact that errors in terminology certainly affect the usability and acceptability of the target text, they can be avoided in practice by means of providing translators with terminology dictionaries, etc., and do not involve nativelike selection (Pawley and Syder 1983: 191) typical for translations into the first language. In addition, the number of occurrences of the given word in the specific text may significantly affect the total error count and thus the quality of the translation. One can, for instance, imagine that two translators select a wrong term for a translation of a specific source segment from the same source text, but the first translator uses a wrong term for translation of a word which occurred ten times in the source text, while the other translator uses a wrong term in the case of a word which is represented in the target text only once. Despite the fact that both the translators mistranslated a single term, the quality of the translation by the first translator would drop significantly while the quality of the
33 other translation would remain quite high. Therefore, terminology errors in words which occurred more than once in the respective text were counted as a single error in the final evaluation of the given translation.
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4. Results and Discussion
This chapter presents and discusses the results of the analyses of the evaluation of the target texts. The following sub-chapters bring overviews and comparisons of the error-rates and error representations in L1 translations and L2 translations as well as by individual texts and translators.
4.1 Error Count and Representation of Errors
This sub-chapter presents the overall counts and representations of qualitative and quantitative errors in the translated texts and provides analyses of the differences in the quality of the L1 translations and L2 translations with respect to this error categories.
The total number of occurrences of errors in the L1 translations regardless of the error category amounted to 131. Of these 91 were represented by qualitative errors and 40 by quantitative errors. Thus, the ratio of qualitative errors vs quantitative errors is 2.3:1. Table 2 shows the total number of qualitative and quantitative errors in the L1 translations and breaks them down by the individual texts.
Table 2: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors in L1 translations L1 translators Qualitative Quantitative Total errors errors
Text No. 1 13 10 23 Text No. 2 25 12 37 Text No. 3 26 10 36 Text No. 4 27 8 35 TTs in total 91 40 131
Since the total word count of the L1 texts was lower than in the case of the L2 texts, the error count had to be converted to the representation of qualitative and quantitative errors per 400 words of the translated text. As one can see in Table 4,
35 the total error count per 400 translated words of L1 translation was 16 and the total error counts of qualitative and quantitative errors were 11.1 and 4.9, respectively.
Table 4: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors per 400 Words of L1 Translation L1 translators Qualitative Quantitative Total errors errors Text No. 1 6.9 5.3 12.2 Text No. 2 13.1 6.3 19.4 Text No. 3 13.3 5.1 18.4 Text No. 4 11 3.2 14.2 TTs in total 11.1 4.9 16 In the case of the L2 translations, the total error count regardless of the error category was 201, of which 148 were represented by qualitative errors and 53 by quantitative errors, hence the ratio of qualitative errors vs quantitative errors is
2.8:1. Table 4 below shows the figures for the individual texts as well as the total error counts for the L2 translations.
Table 4: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors in L2 Translations L2 translators Qualitative Quantitative Total errors errors
Text No. 1 24 12 36 Text No. 2 38 15 53 Text No. 3 47 19 66 Text No. 4 39 7 46 TTs in total 148 53 201
The resulting figures after conversion to a number of occurrences per 400 words of translated text for the L2 translations are shown in Table 5. It shows that in the case of L2 translations, the total error count per 400 translated words regardless of the text type was 20.5, of which 15.1 represented the number of qualitative errors and 5.4 represented the number of quantitative errors.
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Table 5: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors per 400 Words of L2 Translation L2 translators Qualitative Quantitative Total errors errors Text No. 1 10.7 5.3 16 Text No. 2 16.6 6.5 23.1 Text No. 3 20.1 8.1 28.2 Text No. 4 13.2 2.4 15.6 TTs in total 15.1 5.4 20.5
If we compare the figures from Tables 4 and 5, they show that the average representation of quantitative errors in 400 words of translated text is approximately the same in both L1 and L2 translations. Specifically, the number of occurrences of quantitative errors is higher in L2 translations by 10.2%.
However, this percentage significantly rises to 36% if we look at the average representation of qualitative errors occurring per 400 translated words.
Looking at the differences in the error count per 400 translated words of each of the individual texts (see Figures 1 and 2 below), we can see that with the
L1 translations, the error count is higher in the case of the technical texts by
30.2% on average. In the case of L2 translations, the number of errors occurring per 400 words of translated technical texts was higher than in the journalistic texts by 38.5% on average. However, this difference seems to be caused rather by an increase in the number of errors in the technical texts translated by the L2 translators than by a low occurrence of errors in the journalistic texts translated by
L1 translators because the difference between the average number of occurrences of errors in the journalistic texts translated by the L1 translators (i.e. 13.2 errors per 400 translated words) and the average number of occurrences of errors in the journalistic texts translated by the L2 translators (i.e. 15.8 errors per 400 words of translated text) amounts to 2.6 errors per 400 translated words while in the case of technical texts, this difference rises to 6.8 words per 400 translated words
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(comparing the average of 18.9 errors in 400 words of technical texts translated by
L1 translators to the average of 25.7 errors per 400 words of technical text translated by the L2 translators).
Figure 1: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors per 400 Words of L1 Translation Representation of qualitative and quantitative errors per 400 words of L1 translation 25 20 15 10 5 0 Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4 TTs in total
Qualitative errors Quantitative errors Total
Figure 2: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors per 400 Words of L2 Translation Representation of qualitative and quantitative errors per 400 words of L1 translation 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4 TTs in total
Qualitative errors Quantitative errors Total
Although the results presented above seem to speak in favour of L1 translations when it comes to the quality of translation, in the case of technical texts in particular, the breakdown of the error counts by the individual translators allows to see them in a new light. Looking at Table 6 below, one can see that the total error count of two of the L2 translators (namely the translators L2_2 and
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L2_3 with the total error count of 23 and 25, respectively) was lower than the average error count achieved by the L1 translators (i.e. 26.2 errors). In addition, the total error count in the case of three of the L2 translations was lower or the same as the highest error count, which was achieved by three of the five L1 translators participating in the study (31 errors).
Table 6: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors by Translators
Translator Qualitative Quantitative Total errors errors
L1_1 20 11 31 L1_2 22 9 31 L1_3 11 6 17 L1_4 14 7 21 L1_5 24 7 31 L2_1 21 10 31 L2_2 15 8 23 L2_3 18 7 25 L2_4 42 5 47 L2_5 31 14 45 L2_6 20 10 30
The differences in the error counts by the individual translators are clearly visible from the graph in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Representation of Quantitative and Qualitative Errors by Translators Representation of errors by translators 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 L1_1 L1_2 L1_3 L1_4 L1_5 L2_1 L2_2 L2_3 L2_4 L2_5 L2_6
Qualitative errors Quantitative errors Total
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4.2 Qualitative Error Counts and Representations of Error Categories
This sub-chapter presents the counts and representations of specific types of qualitative errors made in the translations by the two groups of translators.
Examples of tables with counts and overviews of the errors occurring in the translations are in Appendix C to this thesis. Excel files containing complete tables with overviews of all the errors and corrections made in each of the forty- four translations as well as all graphs and tables with error counts and representations are provided in the MS Excel file uploaded on the CD enclosed to this thesis.
The total number of occurrences of qualitative errors in the L1 target texts amounted to 91, which converts to the average of 4.6 qualitative errors per target text translated by an English native translator. Table 7 below shows the representation of the qualitative errors in the target texts translated by L1 translators per individual categories and translated texts.
Table 7: Qualitative Errors in the L1 Translations by Types and Texts Error Type Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4 Total F 1 0 0 0 1 FA 0 0 0 5 5 G 0 1 0 2 3 G/PL 0 3 4 1 8 G/SYN 1 1 4 3 9 G/WF 0 0 1 0 1 MT 4 1 1 1 7 O 0 0 0 1 1 P 0 1 0 1 2 ST 1 0 0 0 1 T/GEN 1 1 3 6 11 T/TECH 0 6 2 0 8 U/ART 2 9 8 4 23 U/PREP 2 2 1 1 6 U 0 0 1 0 1 UNF 0 0 1 0 1 VT 1 0 0 2 3 Grand Total 13 25 26 27 91
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In the case of L2 translations, the total number of occurrences of qualitative errors in the target texts amounted to 148, which converts to the average of 6.2 qualitative errors per target text translated by a native translator translating into the second language, which is more than in the L1 translations by 34.8%. Table 8 below shows the representation of the qualitative errors in the target texts translated by the L2 translators broken down by the individual categories and translated texts.
Table 8: Qualitative Errors in the L2 Translations by Categories and Texts
Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4 Total C 2 0 0 0 2 FA 0 0 0 2 2 G 1 0 2 2 5 G/PL 0 0 3 1 4 G/SYN 0 2 5 2 9 G/WF 2 0 2 0 4 MT 2 3 0 0 5 O 0 0 0 1 1 P 1 3 1 1 6 SP 1 0 0 0 1 T/GEN 1 1 5 5 12 T/TECH 0 8 3 0 11 U/ART 4 10 19 11 44 U/PREP 5 8 2 6 21 U/G 1 0 0 0 1 U/T 0 0 0 2 2 U/SYN 0 0 0 3 4 U 1 2 4 0 7 UNF 0 0 1 0 1 VT 3 1 0 3 7 Grand Total 24 38 47 39 148
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The pie charts in Figures 4 and 5 show the proportional ratios of the representations of the individual qualitative errors per categories for the L1 and
L2 translations, respectively.
Figure 4: Representation of Types of Qualitative Errors in L1 Translations Representation of qualitative errors in L2 translations
F FA G G/PL G/SYN G/WF MT O P ST T/GEN T/TECH U/ART U/PREP U UNF VT
Figure 5: Representation of Types of Qualitative Errors in L2 Translations Representation of qualitative errors in L2 translations
C FA G G/PL G/SYN G/WF MT O P SP T/GEN T/TECH U/ART U/PREP U/G U/T U/SYN U UNF VT
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It is obvious from Tables 7 and 8 and the pie charts in Figures 4 and 5 above that the most frequently occurring type of qualitative error in both L2 and L1 translations is errors in the use of definite, indefinite or zero article (U/ART), although the occurrence was twice higher in the case of L2 translations (44 occurrences in L2 translations vs 23 occurrences in the L1 translations). Most often, the articles were missing in the target texts completely regardless of the direction of translation. The second most frequently occurring type of error within the errors in the use of articles was the use of an indefinite article instead of a definite article. An incorrect use of a definite article in place of an indefinite or zero article was by far less frequent.
The second highest representation in the case of L2 translations were the errors in the use of prepositions (U/PREP) with 21 occurrences in the L2 translations as opposed by only 6 occurrences in the L1 translations.
By contrast, false friend (FA) was the type of error which was present in all the L1 translations but only in two of the L2 translations. This error occurred in the same segment in all the translations. In all the cases, the translators made an error in the word kultovní iconic, which occurred in Text No. 4 and in the segment “iconic/classic book Walden; or Life in the Woods by Thoreau”, and which was in all the cases translated as ‘cult’, which rather refers to sects and worshiping.
The errors in terminology (T) present a special case. It has already been mentioned that the errors in technical terminology (T/TECH) do not constitute any real problem because in practice, they can usually be discussed with the client. Moreover, there are numerous technical dictionaries available on the market and most of the terms can be found on the internet. Nevertheless, they do
43 not seem to be depending on the directionality since the representation of this error type was approximately the same in both the L1 and L2 translations. What is more surprising is the fact that the representation of errors in general terms
(T/GEN) was higher than that of errors in technical terms (11 occurrences of
T/GEN errors as opposed to 8 occurrences of T/TECH in the L1 translations and
12 occurrences of T/GEN errors vs 11occurrences of T/TECH in the L2 translations).
Other types of errors were more or less evenly distributed within both the
L1 and L2 translations, with the exception of mistranslation errors (MT). The MA errors, which eventually lead to shifts in meaning, are discussed separately in the next sub-chapter.
Tables with a detailed breakdown of the error representations by individual translators are provided in Appendix C to this thesis.
4.2.1 Substantial and Less Serious Shifts in Meaning
While the overall error count slightly favoured the L1 translations, the ratio of errors made in the target texts completely differs when it comes to the MT errors, which eventually cause shifts in meaning. For the purpose of this study, the shifts in meaning which occurred in the target texts were divided into two categories: substantial shifts in meaning, i.e. shifts which distort the information conveyed by the text to such an extent that the target audience is not able to understand the information correctly, and less serious shifts in meaning, which misinterpret a segment to the extent that the target audience is aware of the error, but still able to understand the target text in line with the information from the source text. As the graph in Figure 6 demonstrates, the total number of
44 occurrences of substantial shifts in meaning is quite high in the case of L1 translations (11 occurrences of mistranslation).
Figure 6: Number of Shifts in Meaning in the Target Texts per Direction of Translation
Number of Shifts in Meaning in the Target Texts 25
20
15
10
5
0 Substantial shifts Less serious shifts Total
L1 translations L2 translations
It is also clear from Figure 6 that although the number of less serious shifts in meaning is higher with the L2 translations than in the case of the L1 translations (specifically, 16 occurrences in L2 translations vs. 11 occurrences in
L1 translations), the overall number of shifts in meaning remains higher in the case of L1 translations (22 occurrences in the L1 translations as opposed by 18 occurrences in L2 translations). This is particularly striking if we realize that the amount of translated text was smaller in the case of the L1 translations (the analysis included twenty L1 translations amounting to 3,275 words in total translated by native speakers of English compared to twenty-four L2 translations, i.e. 3,930 words translated by non-native speakers of English). Therefore, the above-mentioned results were converted to the number of occurrences of shifts in meaning per 400 words of translated text for both L1 and L2 translations, which provides a better illustration of the average representation of shifts in meaning in relation to the direction of the translation (see Figure 7).
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Figure 7: Representation of Shifts in Meaning per 400 Translated Words Number of Shifts in Meaning per 400 Translated Words 2
1,5
1
0,5
0 L1 translators L2 translators
Substantial shifts Less serious shifts
Figures 8 and 9 below show graphs with the breakdowns the total count of occurrences of shifts in meaning by individual texts. They illustrate the differences in the number of the mistranslated segments which occurred in the L1 and L2 translations of the individual texts.
Figure 8: Representation of Shifts in Meaning per Individual Texts Translated by L1 Translators Representation of Shifts in Meaning per Target Texts Translated by Native Translators
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4
Substantial shifts Less serious shift Total
46
Figure 9: Representation of Shifts in Meaning per Individual Texts Translated by L2 Translators Representation of Shifts in Meaning per Target Texts Translated by Non-native Translators 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4
Substantial shifts Less serious shift Total
It can be seen from the graphs in Figures 8 and 9 that in the case of L1 translations, the shifts in meaning occurred in all the types of texts and the representation of shifts in meaning is roughly the same in three of them, while in the case of L2 translations the shifts in meaning were less evenly distributed across the texts. The reason could be that while in the case of L1 translations the shifts were based on language competence in the source language, the reasons for the shifts occurring in the L2 translations were rather text-dependent. They also indicate that the representation of less serious shifts in meaning was more or less the same across all the texts in the case of L1 translations and the number of less serious shifts was high even in the case of Text No. 4. This text contained only general language and its function was more expressive, which had been assumed to favour the L1 translators. By contrast, most of the less serious shifts in meaning in the L2 translations concentrated into the two technical texts. This is closely related to the sub-type of error involved in the mistranslation. Whereas in the L2 translations 5 of the total of 16 shifts were caused by incorrectly used technical
47 terms, the same cause only led to the mistranslations in 2 cases of the total number of 11 mistranslated segments in the case of L1 directions.
Only 4 substantial shifts in meaning in the L1 translations out of the total number of 11 substantial shifts were caused by using a wrong term. Additionally, one of the wrong terms was not technical but general. Even though the three shifts could be prevented in practice by providing the translator with a list of the required terminology, the remaining 7 shifts obviously arose from a misunderstanding of the source text. For example, the most frequent MT error in the text No. 1 was caused by disregarding the Czech prefix ve-, which implies that something is inside, in the word vestavba a structure built inside another one.
Three out of the five native translators mistranslated this word as a mere
‘construction’ or ‘structure’ ( i.e. stavba in Czech), which finally resulted in the article informing about a construction of a completely new bridge structure, while the original preserved the existing bridge structure and only reinforced it with a steel framework built inside the existing structure of the bridge, not instead of it).
Table 9 below lists the substantial shifts in meaning from all the L1 and L2 translations.
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Tab 9: Substantial shifts in meaning in the L1 and L2 translations TT/ Erro Translato r r No. Original text Corrected text UNESCO's World T1_L1_2 7 Heritage List the list of cultural heritage sites for the instalment of a for the construction of a new steel structure built T1_L1_1 4 new steel construction inside the existing one construction of a new construction of a new steel bridge structure built T1_L1_2 4 steel bridge structure inside the existing one the installation of a new the construction of a new steel bridge structure T1_L1_5 1 steel bridge structure built inside the existing one creation of massive steel creation of massive pockets for placement of T2_L1_4 3 beam pockets steel beams T4_L1_6 14 Dozens Ten of these T3_L1_4 5 joints blocks T3_L1_5 1 abutted gravity T2_L1_1 5 supports beams T2_L1_5 2 supports beams T3_L1_5 5 foundation trench foundation base installation of a new steel construction of a new steel structure built inside T1_L2_4 5 construction the existing one T2_L2_2 4 at both ends at both sides
4.2.2 Counts and Representation of Qualitative Errors by Translators
This chapter presents the counts and representations of qualitative errors broken down by individual translators. As already noted in sub-chapter 2.2.1
Error Count and Representation of Errors, the results of both the groups of translators revealed significant differences in the error counts.
Table 10 below lists the counts and representations of errors by L1 translators. It clearly shows that the total numbers of qualitative errors which occurred in the translations carried out by the translators marked L1_3 and L1_4 were only a half of the total number of the qualitative errors which occurred in the translations carried out by the remaining three L1 translators. Looking at the graph in Figure 10, it is obvious that apart from errors in terminology, the higher error count in the case of the three translators is always caused by extremely high
49 number of occurrences of only a single error type, namely U/ART with the translators L1_1 and L1_2 and G/SYN with the translator L1_5.
Tab 10: Error Counts and Representations by Individual L1 translators Error type L1_1 L1_2 L1_3 L1_4 L1_5 F 0 1 0 0 0 FA 1 1 1 1 1 G 0 1 0 0 2 G/PL 2 3 1 1 1 G/SYN 2 1 1 0 5 G/WF 0 0 0 0 1 MT 2 1 0 2 2 O 0 0 0 0 1 P 0 0 1 0 1 ST 0 0 0 1 0 T/GEN 2 1 4 1 3 T/TECH 1 0 1 2 4 U/ART 7 11 0 2 3 U/PREP 1 1 2 2 0 U 0 1 0 0 0 UNF 1 0 0 0 0 VT 1 0 0 2 0 Total 20 22 11 14 24
Figure 10: Representations of Individual Categories of Qualitative Errors by L1 Translators Representation of Qualitative Errors by Types and L2 Translators 12
10
8
6
4
2
0 L1_1 L1_2 L1_3 L1_4 L1_5
F FA G G/PL G/SYN G/WF MT O P ST T/GEN T/TECH U/ART U/PREP U UNF VT
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Similarly, the results of the individual L2 translators broken down by individual error categories also show significant differences, as indicated in Table
11. In the case of L2 translators total error counts were substantially higher with the translators L2_4 and L2_5. Again, their results show a single error category with significantly higher representation, specifically U/ART (14 occurrences with the L2_4 translators and 10 occurrences with the L2_5 translator), as illustrated in the graph in Figure 11.
Tab 11: Error Counts and Representations by Individual L1 translators Error L2_1 L2_2 L2_3 L2_4 L2_5 L2_6 type C 0 0 0 0 2 0 FA 1 0 0 1 0 0 G 1 0 1 1 1 1 G/PL 0 1 1 1 1 0 G/SYN 1 0 0 5 1 2 G/WF 1 0 1 0 0 2 MT 2 1 1 1 0 0 O 1 0 0 0 0 0 P 1 0 2 2 1 0 SP 0 0 0 1 0 0 T/GEN 0 1 3 2 1 4 T/TECH 3 0 1 3 4 1 U/ART 4 6 4 14 10 6 U/PREP 4 6 4 6 2 0 U/G 0 0 0 0 1 0 U/T 0 0 0 1 0 1 U/SYN 0 0 0 0 1 2 U 1 0 0 3 2 1 UNF 0 0 0 0 1 0 VT 1 1 0 2 3 0 Total 21 16 18 43 31 20
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Figure 11: Representations of Individual Categories of Qualitative Errors by L2 Translators Representation of Qualitative Errors by Types and L2 Translators 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 L2_1 L2_2 L2_3 L2_4 L2_5 L2_6
C FA G G/PL G/SYN G/WF MT O P SP T/GEN T/TECH U/ART U/PREP U/G U/T U/SYN U UNF VT
4.3 Quantitative Errors in L1 and L2 translations
Leaving aside the occurrence of qualitative errors, which are considered to be errors in the true sense of the word (Kufnerová 2009: 45), the statistics are also interesting when comparing the occurrence of quantitative errors in the L1 and L2 translations. Quantitative errors usually represent the use of expressions that exist in the target language and are not incorrect but sound unidiomatic in the given context. Contrary to the average number of qualitative errors per translated text, which is higher in the case of L2 translations by 34.8%, the average number of quantitative errors per translated text is practically equal in the L1 translations
(2.0 error per text) as in the L2 translations (2.2 error per text).
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Figure 12: Comparison of Representation of Qualitative and Quantitative Errors in L1 and L2 Translations Comparison of qualitative and quantitative error counts in L1 and L2 translations 16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0 TTs in total L2 translations TTs in total
Qualitative errors Quantitative errors
4.4 End-user Assessment
The instructions for the potential end-users included two tasks. Firstly, they were asked to assess the acceptability and usability of the target texts. Since they were only provided with the target texts and not with the source texts, they could only access the acceptability and usability of the respective text for the given purpose (for example, they could not take account of potential mistranslations).
With each text, the potential end-users should decide whether the text is usable for the given purpose without reviewing, usable after a review or not usable at all.
The second task required the end-users to decide on the directionality of the translation for each text. They were also asked to comment on their decisions and
As for the first task, the opinion of the potential end-users was almost unequivocal: all of the translations but one were considered acceptable and useable after proofreading and editing. The one exception was the translation
T1_L2_5, which the English native end-user considered unusable due to the very
53 high number of mistakes. This reviewer assessed the text as very unidiomatic and generally badly written. This translation contained the highest number of errors among all translations of the given text (seven qualitative errors and two quantitative errors). Interestingly enough, a target text T3_L2_5 translated by the very same translator was perceived by the same end-user as having been written by a native speaker of English.
That all the other translations were considered acceptable and usable is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that all the translations were carried out by professional translators, hence their language and translation competence was assumed to be sufficient to provide acceptable translations (none of the translations was carried out by a student or novice translator). Nevertheless, none of the translations was considered to be usable without editing, not even the L1 translations. This, again, comes as no surprise since the technical nature of the texts required a revision performed by a specialist in the field. The same also applies to the journalistic texts (Texts No. 1 and No. 4) because these were intended for publishing and such texts always require editing regardless of the direction of the translation (it is the best practice to proofread and edit texts before they are published even in the case of original pieces of writing).
The potential end-users were also asked to decide whether the text was written by a native speaker of English or not. Being asked about the reasons for their decisions, they claimed that they had decided based on how easy the text was to read, how the text flew, how many errors occurred in the text, and whether the text contained any unusual expressions.
The end-users’ decisions were correct in 47.1% on average. The success- rate of the decisions of the English native end-user amounted to 59.3%, which is
54 slightly above the average achieved by the subjects participating in the study conducted by Pokorn (2009). In the case of the 8 of the 24 translations carried out by the L2 translators the English native end-user considered the text to be written by a native speaker of English. On the other hand, she considered 9 of the 20 texts translated by L1 translators to be written by a non-native speaker.
Table 10: End-users’ opinions on the directionality of translation by individual texts and translators. Column Cze indicates the number of end-users who thought that the text was not translated by an English native translator, column Eng shows the number of persons who believed the translation was done the translator of the given text was a native speaker of Enghlish. Text No. 1 Text No. 2 Text No. 3 Text No. 4 Translato Cze Eng Canno Cze Eng Canno Cze Eng Canno Cze Eng Canno r t tell t tell t tell t tell L1_1 1 3 0 4 0 0 1 3 0 3 1 0 L1_2 2 2 0 2 2 0 3 1 0 4 0 0 L1_3 0 4 0 2 2 0 2 2 0 0 4 0 L1_4 2 1 1 2 2 0 1 3 0 2 2 0 L1_5 2 2 0 2 2 0 2 2 0 0 4 0 L2_1 2 2 0 3 1 0 2 2 0 4 0 0 L2_2 2 1 1 3 0 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 L2_3 2 0 2 1 1 2 3 1 0 2 1 1 L2_4 2 2 0 2 2 0 2 2 0 1 2 1 L2_5 1 3 0 0 4 0 2 2 0 3 0 1 L2_6 0 4 0 2 2 0 2 2 0 2 2 0
4.5 Discussion and Suggestions
Despite the fact that the results presented in the previous chapter clearly indicate that the average count of the qualitative errors is higher in the case of translations into the non-mother tongue, the differences in the qualitative error counts of the individual translations within the groups of both L1 and L2 translators make it reasonable to think that the quality of translation does not depend on the directionality of translation, at least in the case of translation of non-literary texts from Czech to English. In the case four of the six non-native translators, the total error count was the same or even lower than with the majority
55 of the translators who translated into their mother tongue. Moreover, the target text with least reviewer interventions at all (a single correction in the translation of Text No. 1) was translated by one of the translators who translated into their non-mother tongue. In addition, the representation of the individual error categories by individual translators indicates that the problematic area is different with each translator. While in the case of the translations carried out by the translators L1_1 and L1_2 he the error counts which were significantly higher were that of the U/ART category, it was the category of G/SYN errors which had highest error count with the translator L1_5. Likewise, the counts of qualitative errors in the case of L2_4 and L2_5 stood out because of the high error count in the category of U/ART, which was more than double than that of the remaining four L2 translators in the case of the translator L2_5 and even more than three times higher with the L2_4. These results indicate that rather than on the direction of the translation, the quality of translation depends on the competences of the individual translators. Considering also the background information provided by the translators, these might result from language acquisition or attrition due to a long term stay in a foreign country, among others. The reason for this assumption is that the ‘best’ L2 translation was carried out by the translator marked L2_3, who lived and graduated from a university in the UK while the ‘worst’ L1 translation with the highest occurrence of qualitative errors and which displayed signs of ‘Czenglish’ was carried out by the translator marked L1_5, who comes from a Czech-English bilingual family and after his graduation in the UK, he moved to the Czech Republic, where he has been living for the last 27 years.
Thus, the quality of translation appears to be rather depending on the language and translation competence than on the directionality of translation per se.
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Another issue speaking in favour of L2 translations is the number of substantial shifts in meaning which occurred in the target texts translated by the native speakers of English. Although most of the shifts were related to the more technical information in the texts, it clearly did not pose such a problem to the L2 translators (despite the fact that only three of the six L2 translators specialise in technical translation). For example, a substantial shift in meaning in one segment of Text No. 1 only occurred in a single case in the L2 translations as opposed by the same shift in meaning in three out of the five L1 translations.
Looking back again at the specific categories of errors corrected in the texts, the most frequently occurring error was the omission of articles. It is obvious from the results presented in the previous chapter that the use of articles seems to be very problematic even for the translators who are native speakers of
English. On the other hand, the potential end-users reported missing articles as one of the features of the target texts due to which the target text lacked the nativelike fluency, and which made them consider the text to be written by a non- native translator.
One of the hypotheses of this thesis assumed that the difference in the quality between the L1 and L2 translations will depend on the type of the text and that it will be more significant in the case of journalistic (general) texts than in the case of technical texts, namely that there will be significantly fewer errors in the journalistic texts translated by the L1 translators. The assumption was that since the function of the journalistic texts was more expressive, they required better language skills on the side of the translators. Indeed, the total error count was lower in the translations of Text No. 1 and Text No.4 with both the groups of L1 and L2 translators by 29.6% and 38.3%, respectively. However, the reason was
57 not a lower error count of the journalistic texts translated by L1 translators, but the higher error count of the technical texts translated by the L2 translators, namely by 4.2 errors per 400 words of the translated text. One could expect that this difference is caused by an increase in the number of T/TECH category or G/SYN category due to a more complicated structure of the sentences. In fact, the higher error count was caused by a sharp increase in the U/ART error count with the translators L2_4 and L2_5, again three resp. two times in comparison with the average of the rest of the group of L2 translators. These results confirm the hypothesis that the quality of translation also depends on the text-type, nevertheless, the competences of the individual translators again play the key role.
Regarding the user-assessment, the main criteria for the end-users were the use of terms and the fluency of reading, i.e. the structure of the text and how it flew. However, these criteria seemed to be met by only some translators irrespectively of the direction of the translation since in 42% of cases the translations carried out by the L2 translators were considered by the end-users to be written by native speakers of English while in 51.2% the end-users believed that the translations carried out by the L1 translations were carried out by non- natives. The overall results are similar to those found out by other researchers. In any case, the average success rate did not exceed the average rate achieved by
Pokorn (2009). Although the group of end users was very small to provide any reliable results (as it was not the main focus of this thesis and, thus, any deeper research into this would not be feasible within this study), the results suggest that the typical end-users of non-literary texts intended for global audience cannot exactly distinguish whether the text was translated by a translator whose mother
58 tongue is English, hence the direction of the translation should not be the criterion for awarding translation jobs in practice.
Furthermore, the result of the analysis indicated which types of errors occur most frequently in translations into English carried out by Czechs in general. Specifically, the errors which occur most often are the errors in the use of articles, followed by the unidiomatic use of prepositions. These findings could be potentially used in L2 translation training to draw attention to the aspects of
English language which obviously pose a problem for any translator working into
English, regardless of the direction of translation. Moreover, these findings can serve as a guidance for L2 translators in, showing them which aspects of L2 translation are the riskiest with respect to the use of language. By focusing on these aspects of language both during translating and subsequent proofreading, they could increase the quality of their translations.
Finally, it must be noted that findings if this thesis regarding the dependence of the translation quality on the direction of translation of non-literary texts relate to translations from Czech into English. Since this study did not include any other language pairs, the results cannot be generalised as they may differ in the case of pairs of languages which are more closely related and share more features (such as Czech and Slovak or Spanish and French). These questions are beyond the scope of the study presented in this thesis but would be definitely worth further research.
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5. Conclusion
This thesis aimed to examine the potential differences in the quality of translations of non-literary texts translated from Czech to English by both native and non-native speakers of English.
Firstly, the theoretical findings in the areas related to the aim of the study and provided an overview of the research conducted so far in these areas were presented.
The next chapter of the thesis introduced the research method, which was designed to confirm or disprove the hypotheses. The study was designed to mirror the reality of translation practice as much as possible, therefore, only professional
L1 and L2 translations participated in the study.
In general, the total error count was higher in the L2 translations than in the L1 translations by 28.1% and the ratio of qualitative vs quantitative errors in the L2 translations is more in favour of qualitative errors than in the case of L1 translations (2.3:1 and 2.8:1 in the L1 translations and L2 translations, respectively). However, the results significantly varied with the individual translators of both the groups. In the majority of the individual translations the error count was similar for both L1 and L2 translations. The representation of errors in translations of three out of six L2 translators (namely) was practically the same as in most of the L1 translators. The higher total error count of the L2 translations resulted from a significantly higher number of errors in the case of two L2 translators; there were also important differences in the error count and error representations even within the group of L1 translations. Furthermore, the results of the analysis also showed that L1 translators have a significantly higher tendency to misinterpret or mistranslate the text than L1 translators. Therefore, it
60 can be concluded that the quality of translation depends rather on the language and translation competence than on the directionality of translation. Thus, hypothesis 1 was disproved as well as the part of hypothesis 2 assuming that in the L1 translations, the ratio of quantitative errors will be higher than that of qualitative errors; the part of hypothesis 2 assuming that in the L2 translations, the qualitative errors will have higher representation than quantitative errors was confirmed. The first part of the third hypothesis laid down in this thesis, i.e. that the effect of the directionality of translation on the quality of translation differs according to the text type, was proved since the results showed that there was a difference in the total error count of the technical texts and of the journalistic texts. However, the second part of the hypothesis, which assumed that the difference would be higher in the case of the L1 translations was disproved, since the total error count of the technical texts translated by the L2 translators was higher by 38.5% than the total error count of the journalistic texts translated by them while difference between the total error counts of the two types of texts only amounted to 30.2% in the case of L1 translations.
The last part of the survey dealt with the ability of the potential audience of the target texts to distinguish whether a specific text was translated by a native or non-native speaker of the target language. The result of the survey showed that the target audience was only able to tell the direction of translation of the respective texts correctly in 47.1% of the translations. Therefore, the last hypothesis related to the presumption that L2 translations lack idiomaticity and are, therefore, recognisable and less acceptable for the target audience, was also disproved.
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The thesis concludes with a discussion of the findings and potential drawbacks of the conducted survey. Furthermore, it provides some suggestions for further research and, above all, for translator training.
Taking into account all the aforementioned findings, it can be concluded that in the case of translation of non-literary texts from Czech into English the quality of translation does not generally depend on the directionality of translation and that in specific cases, L2 translations can be of better quality and more acceptable for the intended purpose and target audience than translations which the translators carried out into their mother tongue, in the case of technical texts in particular.
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Warren, Beatrice (2005). ‘A model of Idiomaticity’. Nordic Journal if English Studies, 4(1). Available on < http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/270. Accessed Aug 2018. Whyatt, Boguslawa (2018) ‘Old Habits Die Hard: Towards Understanding L2 Translation’. Full text available on rd_Towards_Understanding_L2_Translation. Accessed Oct 2018. Williams, Malcolm (2004). Translation Quality Assessment: An Argumentation- Centred Approach. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Zahedi, Saber (2013). ‘L2 Translation at the Periphery: A Meta-Analysis of Current Views on Translation Directionality’. TransCulturAl, 5.1 (2), 43-60. Zehnalová, Jitka et al. (2015). Kvalita a hodnocení překladu: Modely a aplikace. Olomouc: Palacký University Press. Zemanová, Tereza (2018). ‘ČKA podporuje rekonstrukci Libeňského mostu’ 68 Czech Chamber of Architects Supports Reconstruction of Libeň Bridge. Bulletin CKA, 25(3). Prague: Czech Chamber of Architects. p. 15. 69 7. Résumé 7.1 English The thesis examines the differences in the translation quality between L1 translation and L2 translation using a translation quality analysis of a set of forty- four translations of four different non-literary texts translated from Czech into English for the purpose of the thesis by a group of eleven translators, both native and non-native speakers of English. Subsequently, it focuses on the assessment of the target texts by potential end-users of the texts and their ability to recognise the direction of translation in the case of each target text. The theoretical part of the thesis presents the theory related to the directionality of translation, translation of literary and non-literary texts, and translation quality assessment and sums up the research conducted in the area of directionality in translation to these days. The practical part of the theses presents the aims and hypotheses of the research and introduces the research design. It formulates the model of error categorisation used for the subsequent analysis of the target text. The actual quality analysis of the target texts concentrates on the differences in the occurrence of various types of errors in the L1 and L2 translations. The calculations in the analysis were performed using basic statistic tools in Microsoft Excel. The results of the analysis as well as the end-users’ assessment of the target texts are then discussed with respect to the potential influence of directionality of translation on the quality of translation. Consequently, the thesis offers suggestions for L2 translator training and practice. The thesis concludes with a summary of the findings and relates them to the hypotheses laid down by the thesis. 70 7.2 Czech Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na identifikaci rozdílů v kvalitě překladu mezi překlady z a do mateřského jazyka. Studie zahrnuje analýzu kvality překladu souboru čtyřiceti čtyř překladů krátkých neliterárních textů přeložených pro potřeby studie z češtiny do angličtiny jedenácti překladateli, a to jak rodilými tak nerodilými mluvčími anglického jazyka. Práce se dále zaměřuje na hodnocení cílových textů potenciálními koncovými uživateli textu a na jejich schopnost poznat směr překladu u každého z cílových textů. V teoretické části práce je nastíněna teorie související se směrem překladu, překlady literárních a neliterárních textů a hodnocením kvality překladu. Dále tato část práce uvádí také stručný přehled výzkumu provedeného v oblasti směru překladu do současné doby. V praktické část práce jsou nejprve stanoveny cíle a hypotézy výzkumu. Dále tato část podrobně popisuje přístup k výzkumu a popisuje výzkumný model, včetně formulace modelu kategorizace chyb s popisem jednotlivých kategorií a podkategorií chyb. Vlastní analýza cílových textů se zaměřuje na kategorizaci a kvantifikaci chyb objevujících se v cílových textech přeložených z i do mateřského jazyka. Výpočty v rámci analýzy byly provedeny pomocí základních statistických nástrojů v programu Microsoft Excel. Výsledky analýzy a hodnocení cílových textů koncovými uživateli i další zjištěné jevy jsou následně interpretovány v diskuzi s ohledem na možnou souvislost kvality překladu se směrem překladu. Na základě výsledků práce předkládá návrhy pro výuku překladatelů zaměřenou na překlad do nemateřského jazyka i pro překladatelskou praxi. V závěru práce jsou shrnuty výsledky analýzy a uvedeny do souvislosti s formulovanými hypotézami. 71 8. Appendixes Appendix A: Source Texts Text No. 1 ČKA PODPORUJE REKONSTRUKCI LIBEŇSKÉHO MOSTU Česká komora architektů nadále sleduje vývoj dění kolem Libeňského mostu v Praze. Jednoznačně se vyslovuje pro zachování stávající podoby mostu a stojí na straně odborníků přinášejících konkrétní návrhy dokazující, že rekonstrukce je možná. ČKA nesouhlasí s tvrzeními, že Libeňský most je neopravitelný a je nutné jej nahradit mostem novým. To, že rekonstrukce mostu je možná, potvrzuje například návrh zpracovaný prof. Jiřím Witzanym z Fakulty stavební ČVUT v Praze. Tento návrh předpokládá vestavbu nové ocelové konstrukce mostu, při níž bude plně zachována původní historická betonová konstrukce. Vestavba může být provedena ve dvou etapách, tak aby nedošlo k ochromení dopravy mezi Prahou 7 a 8. Komora považuje tento návrh za dobrý příspěvek do věcné diskuse o budoucnosti Libeňského mostu. ČKA dlouhodobě upozorňuje na výlučnost této dopravní stavby. Pro kubistické prvky, tedy ryze české specifikum, jež nemá ve světě obdoby, podporovala zapsání mostu na seznam nemovitých kulturních památek. Text No. 2 Podchycení budovy Další ze zajímavých stavebních řešení se nachází v místech, kde spojovací chodba prochází pod historickou budovou Národního muzea. Podchycení stávající budovy nad spojovací chodbou bylo vzhledem ke geologii podloží velmi složitým procesem nejen ze stavebního hlediska. Bylo nutno navrhnout podchycení nosné 72 konstrukce budovy. Původní koncept podchycení ze zadávací dokumentace počítal s provedením masivních kapes v základovém zdivu pro uložení ocelových nosníků, které umožní realizovat spojovací chodbu přímo pod budovou. Pro zajištění stability zachované části základů byla navržena tlaková injektáž. Nové řešení však použilo dva železobetonové nosníky – prahy, které jsou oboustranně přisazeny k základovému zdivu, a to těsně pod úrovní terénu, čímž se minimalizují stavební zásahy do základových konstrukcí a celé řešení je tak k budově šetrnější. Tyto nosníky doplňuje série ocelových nosníků, které vynášejí původní nosné zdivo. Celá konstrukce podchycení je podepřena mikropilotami, které jsou zabetonovány do základových prahů a jsou součástí zajištění stavební jámy, v níž vede tubus spojovací chodby. Text No. 3 Technické řešení hráze Přehradní hráz vodního díla Bleilochtalsperre byla jako první v Německu navržena a realizována jako čistě betonová, tížná, půdorysně zakřivená hráz. Vzdušný líc má sklon 1 : 0,69, návodní je ve sklonu 1 : 0,005, tedy prakticky svislý. Základová spára na dně údolí je široká 45,0 m, výška koruny nad základovou spárou je 65,0 m, objem betonu hráze je 182 000 m3. Hráz byla podélně rozdělena na bloky. Dilatační spáry mezi bloky jsou těsněny měděným plechem s asfaltovou zálivkou. Dno dvou samostatných nátoků na turbíny, umístěných ve čtvrtém a pátém dilatačním bloku, je 15 m nad základovou spárou. Čtvercový vtok 8 x 8 m přechází postupně do kruhového tlakového přivaděče o průměru 4,8 m. 73 Uvnitř hráze jsou osazeny vodorovné i svislé kontrolní porézní trubky DN 100 mm zachycující a monitorující průsaky hrází, rovněž je zajištěno odvodnění základové spáry a tím snížení tlaku podzemní vody na úrovni základové spáry. Sleduje se tlak vody v podzákladí. Text No. 4 CABIN PORN – CHATY NA KONCI SVĚTA Touha uniknout z ruchu města do divočiny a vytvořit si zde přístřeší, v němž by se dalo žít v úzkém sepětí s přírodou, provází člověka od nepaměti. Pobývání daleko od civilizace bylo popsáno v desítkách odborných knih i beletrii, hřebíky potřebné ke stavbě chaty počítal i Thoreau ve své kultovní knize Walden aneb Život v lesích. V Čechách, kde je nyní asi nejčtenější knihou série rozhovorů Raději zešílet v divočině od Aleše Palána a které se mohou pyšnit jedním z největších procent chatařů a chalupářů vůbec, nás víkendový útěk do lesů a budování vlastního přístřešku z místních zdrojů možná nepřekvapí. Ale přesto. Málokomu z nás se daří skutečně vyhnout zrychlenému tepu doby a všudypřítomnému stresu. Majitelům chat z knihy Cabin Porn se to povedlo. Našli místo, kde se mohou ukrýt před světem, kde našli útočiště, kde je klid a mohou tam zvát své nejbližší, s nimiž mohou tyto hodnoty sdílet. Unikli na konec světa. Kniha dokumentuje příběhy 200 chat, srubů a přístřešků na skalách, pod zemí i v korunách stromů, postavených hlavně z materiálů nalezených v jejich bezprostředním okolí. Deseti z nich je věnován obsáhlejší materiál, jak textový, tak obrazový. 74 Appendix B: Target Texts with Corrected Errors (The pdf files with target texts with the proposed edits are uploaded on the enclosed CD.) 75 Appendix C: Examples of Tables with Categorised Errors by Individual Texts (The Excel files with tables and graphs are uploaded on the enclosed CD.) Table 1: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 1 translated by L1 translators Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q 1 The 0 U ART QUANT L1_1 2 The 0 U ART QUANT 3 0 the U ART QUAL 4 for the instalment of a new steel construction for the construction of a new inbuilt steel structure MT QUAL 5 Its cubist elements - which are uniquely Czech - are one-of-a-kind Due to its cubist elements, whic are uniquely Czech and one-of-akind ST QUAL 6 have helped put the bridge on the list of has supported having the bridge listed as MT QUAL 1 The 0 U ART QUANT 2 The 0 U ART QUANT 3 support supports G PL QUANT L1_2 4 construction of a new steel bridge structure construction of a new inbuilt steel bridge structure MT QUAL 5 as since ST QUANT 6 to on U PREP QUAL 7 UNESCO's World Heritage List the list of cultural heritage sites F QUAL L1_3 1 around concerning ST REG QUANT 2 art architectural T GEN QUAL 1 the 0 U ART QUANT L1_4 2 0 the U ART QUAL 3 by with U PREP QUAL 4 is has been VT QUAL 5 is calls ST QUAL L1_5 1 the installation of a new steel bridge structure the construction of a new inbuilt steel bridge structure MT QUAL 2 The chamber has for a long time drawn attention The Chamber has drawn attention…for a long time. G SYN QUAL 3 of this piece of transportation infrastructure of this transportation infrastructure A QUANT 76 Table 2: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 1 translated by L2 translators Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q 1 around concerning ST REG QUANT L2_1 2 takes part with stands behind MT QUAL 3 bringing in bringing U PREP QUAL 4 is non reparable is not reparable WF QUAL 5 the entering of the bridge having the bridge entered U OTH QUANT 1 sides the experts sides with the experts U PREP QUAL 2 confirmed, among others, by the design… confirmedby the design…, among others. G SYN QUANT 3 supposes a new inbuilt steel framework of the bridge supposes a new inbuilt steel framework for the bridge U PREP QUAL L2_2 4 considers this design a good topic considers this design to be a good topic ST QUANT 5 matter-of-fact substantive ST QUANT 6 the a U ART QUAL L2_3 Ř 1 can be preserving completely can be completely preserving G SYN QUANT 1 recommends to preserve recommends preserving G QUAL L2_4 2 irrepairable irreparable SP QUAL 3 confirmed for example by confirmed, for example, by P QUAL 4 0 the U ART QUAL 5 0 the U ART QUAL 6 installation of a new steel construction construction of a new inbuilt steel structure MT QUAL 7 was is VT QUAL 8 specific for specific to U PREP QUAL 77 Table 2: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 1 translated by L2 translators – Continuation Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q L2_5 1 0 The U ART QUAL 2 chamber Chamber C QUAL 3 its watching to watch U G QUAL 4 about concerning ST QUANT 5 Liben bridge Liben Bridge C QUAL 6 sides the experts sides with the experts U PREP QUAL 7 e.g. for example ST QUANT 8 CKA is pointing out in a long term CKA has long been pointing out VT QUAL 9 supported supports VT QUAL 10 of this peice of transportation infrastructure of this transportation infrastructure A QUANT L2_6 1 doesn't does not ST QUANT 2 may not cannot T GEN QUAL 3 This proposal supposes build in of new steel structures of the bridge This proposal supposes building new steel structures in the bridge U QUAL 4 Building in can be performed This can be performed ST QUANT 5 This proposal is considered by CCA as a good contribution CCA considers this proposal to be a good contribution ST QUANT 7 cubistic cubist G WF QUAL 78 Table 3: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 2 translated by L1 translators Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 process, not only process, and not only ST QUANT L1_1 2 an 0 U ART QUAL 3 concept of underpinning underpinning concept U QUANT 4 foundation's walling foundation walls U PHR QUANT 5 supports beams T TECH QUAL 6 foundation constructions foundation construction G PL QUAL 7 walling walls U QUANT 8 travels leads T GEN QUAL 1 an the U ART QUAL 2 0 the U ART QUAL 3 perspective; therefore, making it necessary perspective. This made it necessary ST QUANT L1_2 4 0 the U ART QUAL 5 construction solutions constuction solution G PL QUAL 6 micropiles concreted into micropiles, which are concreted into ST QUANT 7 a the U ART QUAL 8 a the U ART QUAL 9 0 the U ART QUAL 10 lead leads G PL QUAL L1_3 1 subsoil, not only subsoil, and not only ST QUANT 2 vertical shoring underpinning T TECH QUAL 3 more sparing on the building more sparing to the building U PREP QUAL 4 in which the tube through which the tube U PREP QUAL 5 is led leads VT QUANT 79 Table 3: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 2 translated by L1 translators - Continuation Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 complicated process, not only… complicated process, and not only… ST QUANT L1_4 2 to design a way of to design a method for ST REG QUANT 3 creation of massive steel beam pockets creation of massive pockets for placement of steel beams MT QUAL 4 ground beams grade beams SP QUANT 5 root piles micropiles T TECH QUAL 6 0 the U ART QUAL L1_5 1 the a U ART QUAL 2 supports beams T TECH QUAL 3 pressure injection was pressure injections were G PL QUAL 4 injections grouting T TECH QUANT 5 solution however made solution, however, made P QUAL 6 set on both sides into the foundation masonry set into the foundation masonry on both sides G SYN QUANT 7 foundation lintel grade beam T TECH QUAL 8 post holes foundation pit T TECH QUAL 80 Table 4: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 2 translated by L2 translators Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q 1 0 the U ART QUAL 2 vertical shoring underpinning T TECH QUAL L2_1 3 steel concrete reinforced concrete T TECH QUAL 4 minipiles micropiles T TECH QUANT 5 in which the tube through which the tube U PREP QUAL 6 through which the tube of the connecting passage tube is to be led through which the connecting passage tube leads MT QUAL 1 0 the U ART QUAL L2_2 2 as of from U PREP QUAL 3 placing of steal beams placing steal beams U PREP QUAL 4 at both ends at both sides MT QUAL 5 with micropiles; these are connected with micropiles. These are connected ST QUANT L2_3 1 a of U PREP QUAL 2 there where T GEN QUAL challenge, not only from the construction point of view, to 3 challenge not only from the construction point of view to underpin underpin P QUAL 4 to design underpinning the structure to design the underpinning of the structure G WF QUANT 5 concept of undepinning the structure concept for undepinning the structure U PREP QUAL 6 a the U ART QUAL 7 allow constructing the corridor allow the construction of the corridor G WF QUANT 8 0 the U ART QUAL 9 pressure injection pressure grouting T TECH QUANT 10 masonry support load-bearing masonry MT QUAL 81 Table 4: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 2 translated by L2 translators - Continuation Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q 1 in regard with regard U PREP QUAL was, with regard to the geology of the subsoil, a very L2_4 2 was in regard to the geology of the subsoil a very complicated... complicated... P QUAL 3 process… process, and… U NOC QUAL 4 concept of underpinning underpinning concept U PHR QUANT 5 with the creation on the creation U PREP QUAL 6 0 the U ART QUAL 7 laying out of steel beams laying out steal beams U PREP QUAL 8 pressure injection pressure grouting T TECH QUANT 9 thresholds grade beams T TECH QUAL 10 which are on both sides connected to the foundation masonry which are connected to the foundation masonry on both sides G SYN QUAL 11 cemented concreted T TECH QUAL 12 through which runs the tube of the connecting corridor through which the tube of the connecting corridor runs G SYN QUAL L2_5 1 Another of interesting building approaches Another interesting building approach ST QUANT 2 0 the U ART QUAL 3 had been was VT QUAL 4 process,… process, and… U NOC QUAL 5 concept of prop up underpinning concept U QUANT 6 prop up undepinning T TECH QUANT 7 recesses pockets T TECH QUAL 8 0 the U ART QUAL 9 design as a whole is design, as whole, is P QUAL 10 girders beams T TECH QUAL 11 thresholds grade beams T TECH QUAL 12 structure of prop up underpinning structure U QUANT 13 tube of connecting corridor connecting corridor tube U QUANT 82 Table 4: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 2 translated by L2 translators - Continuation Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q L2_6 1 0 the U ART QUAL 2 0 the U ART QUAL 3 frogs pockets T TECH QUAL 4 the 0 U ART QUAL 5 designed proposed T GEN QUANT 6 thoughtful building-friendly T GEN QUANT 7 the above beams the aforementioned beams OTH O QUANT 83 Table 5: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 3 translated by L1 translators Error Sub- Transl. No. Original text Corrected text type type Q/Q 1 circular-on-plan curved T GEN QUANT 2 footing bottom foundation base T TECH QUANT L1_1 3 0 the U ART QUAL 4 0 the U ART QUAL 5 block blocks G PL QUAL 6 čtvercový vtok square inlet UNF QUAL 7 vertical control porous pipes DN 100 vertical porous DN 100 control pipes G SYN QUAL 8 0 the U ART QUAL 9 0 the U ART QUAL 9 0 the U ART QUAL 10 water pressure is monitored in the subsoil water pressure in the subsoil is monitored QUAL 1 65.0 m, the volume of concrete 65.0 m, and the volume of concrete P QUANT 2 penstocks inlets T TECH QUANT 3 block blocks G PL QUAL L1_2 4 dams the dam G PL QUAL 5 0 the U ART QUAL 6 0 the U ART QUAL 7 0 the U ART QUAL 8 water pressure underground underground water pressure G SYN QUAL 9 then 0 U QUAL 84 Table 5: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 3 translated by L1 translators – Continuation Error Trans. No. Original text Corrected text type Subtype Q/Q L1_3 1 circular on plan curved T GEN QUANT 2 foundation joint foundation base T TECH QUANT 3 leakage seepage T GEN QUAL 4 dams the dam G PL QUAL 5 underground water groundwater T GEN QUAL L1_4 1 perpendicular vertical T GEN QUANT 2 influent conduit feeder T TECH QUAL 3 footing bottom foundation base T TECH QUANT 4 on in U PREP QUAL 5 joints blocks MT QUAL L1_5 1 abutted gravity T GEN QUAL 2 i.e. is almost vertical i.e. it is almost vertical G SYN QUAL 3 outer face downstream face T TECH QUANT 4 inner face upstream face T TECH QUANT inflows for the turbines location in the fourt and fifth dilation inflows for the turbines located in the fourt and fifth dilation 5 blocks blocks G WF QUAL 6 foundation trench foundation base T TECH QUAL 85 Table 6: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 3 translated by L2 translators Trans. No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 hydraulic structure waterworks T TECH QUANT L2_1 2 demi lune curved T GEN QUANT 3 65.0 m, the volume… 65.0 m, and the volume… U NOC QUAL 4 0 an U ART QUAL 1 hydraulic structure waterworks T TECH QUANT L2_2 2 the a U ART QUAL 3 change into pass into T GEN QUANT 4 the a U ART QUAL 5 damming dam T TECH QUANT 6 leakage seepage T GEN QUAL 7 monitored, too also monitored ST QUANT L2_3 1 water work waterworks G WF QUAL 2 axis layout T GEN QUAL 3 dam concrete volume dam's concrete volume G QUAL 4 pouring filler T TECH QUANT 5 block blocks G PL QUAL 6 conduit feeder T TECH QUAL 7 footing bottom foundation base T TECH QUANT 8 Inside the dam there Inside the dam, there P QUAL 9 underground water groundwater T GEN QUANT 86 Table 6: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 3 translated by L2 translators – Continuation Trans. No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 was as the first one in Germany designed was the first in Germany designed U QUAL L2_4 2 0 a U ART QUAL 3 slope face T TECH QUAL 4 0 an U ART QUAL 5 0 the U ART QUAL 6 0 an U ART QUAL 7 so practically vertical thus it is practically vertical ST QUANT 8 0 the U ART QUAL 9 footing bottom foundation base T TECH QUANT 10 65.0 m, the volume… 65.0 m, and the volume… U NOC QUAL 11 was lengthwise divided into blocks was divided lengthwise into blocks G SYN QUAL 12 0 the U ART QUAL 13 flows of water inlets T GEN QUAL 14 0 the U ART QUAL 15 the a U ART QUAL 16 Inside of the dam Inside the dam U PREP QUAL 17 vertical control porous pipes DN 100 mm vertical porous DN 100 mm control pipes G SYN QUAL 18 0 the U ART QUAL 19 dams dam G PL QUAL 87 Table 6: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 3 translated by L2 translators – Continuation Trans. No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q L2_5 1 artificial lake waterworks T GEN QUANT 2 lake Bleilochtalsperre Bleilochtalsperre waterworks G SYN QUAL 3 was for the first time in Germany designed was the first in Germany designed ST QUANT 4 0 a U ART QUAL 5 arch arched G WF QUANT 6 0 the U ART QUAL 7 0 is G QUAL 8 in fact practically ST QUANT 9 foundation footbase foundation base T TECH QUANT 10 65.0 m, the dam's volume 65.0 m, and the dam's volume U NOC QUAL 11 foundation foot foundaion base T TECH QUAL 12 penstocks inlets T TECH QUANT 13 0 the U ART QUAL 14 block blocks G PL QUAL 15 0 a U ART QUAL 16 of 4.8 m diameter with a diameter of 4.8 m U PREP QUAL 17 0 a U ART QUAL 18 0 0 UNF QUAL L2_6 1 hydraulic structure waterworks T TECH QUANT 2 hydraulic structure Bleilochtalsperre Bleilochtalsperre waterworks G SYN QUAL 3 water-face downstream T GEN QUANT 4 slope face T GEN QUAL 5 longwise lengthwise G WF QUAL 6 the a U ART QUAL 7 control pipes DN 100 mm DN 100 mm control pipes G SYN QUAL 8 leakage seepage T GEN QUAL 9 0 the U ART QUAL 88 Table 7: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 4 translated by L1 translators Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 cottages cabins T GEN QUAL L1_1 2 cult iconic FA QUAL 3 in a country a country U PREP QUAL 4 or and U QUANT 6 tempo pace T GEN QUANT 7 find found VT QUAL 1 cottages cabins T GEN QUAL 2 the 0 U ART QUAL 3 cult iconic FA QUAL L1_2 4 0 the U ART QUAL 5 managed succeeded T GEN QUANT L1_3 1 cottage cabin T GEN QUAL 2 cult classic classic FA QUAL 3 widely read book and which widely read book, and which P QUAL 4 and which and a country which ST QUANT 5 fast pace of today's times and the everpresent stress fast pace and the everpresent stress of today's times U SYN QUAL 1 Refuges Cabins T GEN QUAL 2 cult iconic FA QUAL 3 proportion proportions G PL QUAL L1_4 4 managed have managed VT QUAL 5 in order to to ST QUANT 89 Table 7: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 4 translated by L1 translators – Continuation Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q L1_5 1 chalets cabins T GEN QUAL 2 build there a shelter build a shleter there G SYN QUAL 3 in which where G NOC QUAL 4 were counted even by were even counted by G SYN QUAL 5 cult iconic FA QUAL 6 read widely-read O QUAL 7 interviews Raději zešílet interviews entitled Raději zešílet G QUAL 8 nature wilderness T GEN QUAL 9 0 the U ART QUAL 10 among one of T GEN QUANT 11 percentage percentages G PL QUANT 12 raw materials materials ST QUANT 13 0 the U ART QUAL 14 Dozens Ten of these MT QUAL 90 Table 8: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 4 translated by L2 translators Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 cottages cabins T GEN QUAL 2 a the U ART QUANT 3 in dozens of professional books and fiction in dozens of professional books and in fiction U PREP QUAL 4 fiction, fiction; P QUAL 5 cult iconic FA QUAL 6 interviews Raději zešílet interviews entitled Raději zešílet G QUAL L2_1 7 wilds wilderness T GEN QUANT 8 heartbeat pace T GEN QUANT 9 succeeded have succeeded VT QUAL 10 beloved loved ones T GEN QUANT 11 the these U ART QUANT 12 share the values with share the values U PREP QUAL 13 0 the U ART QUAL 14 0 in cliff faces O QUAL 15 0 the U ART QUAL 16 Ten of them are devoted a more extensive … material More extensive material … is devoted to ten of them. G SYN QUAL 1 0 the U ART QUAL L2_2 2 fictions fiction G PL QUAL 3 at all 0 U ART QUAL 4 succeeded have succeeded VT QUAL 5 succeeded in it succeeded U PREP QUAL L2_3 1 a 0 U ART QUAL 2 connection with connection to U PREP QUAL 3 the 0 U ART QUAL 4 chalets cabins T GEN QUAL 5 in the rocks on the rocks U PREP QUAL 91 Table 8: Overview of errors which occurred in the Text No. 4 translated by L2 translators – Continuation Translator No. Original text Corrected text Error type Subtype Q/Q 1 chalets cabins T GEN QUAL L2_4 2 a the U ART QUAL 3 tens dozens U T QUAL 4 built build VT QUAL 5 were counted also by were also counted by G SYN QUAL 6 cult iconic FA QUAL 7 where there is which has U QUANT 8 the a U ART QUAL 9 building of one's own shelter building one's own shelter U PREP QUAL L2_5 1 cottages cabins T GEN QUAL 2 the 0 U ART QUAL 3 pace of today's life and constant stress pace and constant stress of today's life U SYN QUAL 4 0 the U ART QUAL L2_6 1 the 0 U ART QUAL 2 tens dozens U T QUAL 3 popular iconic T GEN QUAL 4 interviews Raději zešílet interviews entitled Raději zešílet G QUAL 5 Nevertheless. Hardly anyone can Neverthless, hardly anyone can U SYN QUAL 6 pulse of this age and omnipresent stress pulse and omnipresent stress of this age U SYN QUAL 7 both text and image materials texts and images ST QUANT 92 Appendix D: Questionnaire for L2 Translators 1. How long have you been a translator?* • I am not a translator • Not yet started • Less than 1 year • 1 - 3 years • - 5 years • - 10 years • 10 - 15 years • 15 - 20 years • More than 20 years 2. What education level do you have? (Please select all that apply)* • University/college degree/certificate in translation • University/college degree/certificate in languages • Currently working on my university/college degree/certificate • University/college degree/certificate in other field • Other course / certificate in languages (e.g. a Cambridge certificate in English) • Other course / certificate in translation 3. How old were you when you started learning English?* • 6 years old or younger • 6 -15 years old • 16 - 20 years old • 21 years old or older 4. Which way did you learn English? Please select all that apply* • I live / lived in an English speaking country (immersion) • In language courses • I have a university degree in English • A course / stay in an English speaking country (immersion) • I'm from a bilingual family 5. Providing you learnt English by staying in an English speaking country, how long did you stay there?* • less than 1 month • 2 to 6 months • 7 to 12 months • 1 to 3 years • to 5 years • longer than 5 years • not applicable 6. What was your main activity there?* • Not applicable • Studying English • Studying something else • Working • Au pair • Other 7. How often are you confronted with English spoken / written by native speakers?* • Daily • Several times per week • Several times per month • Several times per year • Never 8. Which way? Please select all that apply* • I read texts (e.g. books, articles, magazines,... ) written by native speakers of English • I watch films / videos / etc. in English • I take lessons / courses / etc. • I work in English speaking environment • I live in an English speaking country • My family is bilingual (i.e. one of my parents or my spouse / partner is a native speaker) • Other 94 9. Which of the following means did you use when translating the given texts? Please select all that apply* • Monolingual corpora • Parallel corpora • Web search • Dictionaries • Spelling & grammar checkers (e.g. Grammarly) • other - please specify 10. When translating the assigned texts, which of the following did you look up? Please select all that apply.* • Single terms • Phrases • Collocations • Whole sentences or parts of sentences in the target language 95