1 A DICTIONARY OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING John Laver and Ian Mason 1 2 This dictionary began life as part of a much larger project: The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Speech and Language (General Editors John Laver and Ron Asher), involving nearly 40 authors and covering all fields in any way related to speech or language. The project, which from conception to completion lasted some 25 years, was finally delivered to the publisher in 2013. A contract had been signed but unfortunately, during a period of ill health of editor-in- chief John Laver, the publisher withdrew from the contract and copyright reverted to each individual contributor. Translation Studies does not lack encyclopaedic information. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias, handbooks and readers abound, offering full coverage of the field. Nevertheless, it did seem that it would be a pity that the vast array of scholarship that went into The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Speech and Language should come to nought. Consequently, we offer this small sub-part of the entire project as a free-to-use online resource in the hope that it will prove to be of some use, at least to undergraduate and postgraduate students of translation studies – and perhaps to others too. Each entry consists of a headword, followed by a grammatical categoriser and then a first sentence that is a definition of the headword. Entries are of variable length but an attempt is made to cover all areas of Translation Studies. At the end of many entries, cross-references (in SMALL CAPITALS) direct the reader to other, related entries. Clicking on these cross- references (highlight them and then use Control and right click) sends the reader directly to the corresponding headword. Occasionally, towards the end of an entry, synonyms (syn) or antonyms (ant) are offered. At the very end of each entry, initials indicate the contributor: JL = John Laver, IM = Ian Mason, JEM = Jim Miller. Inevitably, even the definitions themselves are to some extent subjective and reflect the general outlook of the authors (we do not subscribe to an essentialist view of language and meaning). We have endeavoured to be catholic in taste and eclectic in our coverage. All shortcomings are, of course, our own. Finally, a word of thanks to others who have assisted us. Prof. Jim Miller generously donated some entries from his Pragmatics sub-dictionary and has been supportive throughout. Other members of the editorial team, Profs. Mike MacMahon and Ron Asher, and Sandy Laver on behalf of Prof. John Laver, also encouraged us to bring this work to fruition. And my partner Miranda Stewart, translator, interpreter and erstwhile academic, has shared her expertise – both intellectual and technological - with me. To all, a big thank you. Ian Mason, November 2018 2 3 A-language n. an interpreter’s language of habitual use (most commonly the native language), preferred in either simultaneous or consecutive interpreting. An interpreter’s B- language is the foreign language at a high level of near-native skill, which can be used with equal facility as either a source-language or a target-language. A C-language is one that an interpreter can use only as a source language, without the ability to produce acceptable appropriate speech in that language. The same usages are also relevant for tasks of textual translation. JL abstracting => CONDENSING. abusive fidelity => ABUSIVE TRANSLATION. abusive translation n. a mode of translation that abandons the usual objective of creating a text that reads as if it were a domestic product of the target rather than the source culture. It instead deliberately incorporates elements that emphasise its foreign origin (particularly such elements that are to some degree incompatible with the dominant cultural values in the target language). In a perhaps yet more ‘abusive’ practice, elements are adopted that better fit the translator’s own ideological approach to the topic of the original. The motive for this forceful, sometimes violent treatment of the translation is experimental and provocative. It is usually aimed in part at bringing into question the normally-unquestioned values of the target culture by foregrounding the difference between the assumptions of the source text and those typifying the domestic culture. The concept was introduced in 1980 by Philip E. Lewis, the US translation theorist and an early translator of works by Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), the Algerian-born French literary philosopher. The US translation theorist Lawrence Venuti in 1995 called such a translation strategy resistancy because of its challenge to the cultural assumptions of the target language. A well-known instance is the term ‘terrorist’ in one culture being translated by a different culture as ‘freedom fighter’. An illuminating example of abusive translations arising from the need to reflect different ideological requirements is given by the US translation theorist Edwin Gentzler. He describes the clash of ideologies about appropriate translations in his account of the peace talks between the Mexican Government and the Zapatistas in 1995-96. Concepts such as ‘land’, ‘autonomy’, democracy’ and ‘representation’ took on quite different meanings ‘depending upon the different languages and cultures into which they were translated’. syn. neo-literal translation, foreignised translation, abusive fidelity. The first phrase was coined in 1993 by Marilyn Gaddis Rose, the US comparative literature and translation scholar, and the last two in 1995 by Lawrence Venuti. JL 3 4 acceptability n. the quality of a translated text that meets its readers’ expectations in terms of cohesion, coherence and relevance. Such acceptability (to native readers of the target language) is scalar. JL accessibility n. the quality of a translated product that has been produced in such a way that it becomes available to those with certain physical disabilities. The provision of (intra-lingual) subtitles or of sign-language interpreting for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing, and of audio description for those with sight impairment improves access to audio-visual products. Braille transcriptions, although not translations in the normal sense, also fall into the category of improving access. syn. inclusion. => INTERLINGUAL TRANSLATION, RE- SPEAKING SUBTITLING. IM accuracy n. the degree to which the specific information content of a target text matches that of the source text. A translation that succeeds in satisfying this constraint is often very difficult to achieve, because in a fully accurate translation the target text has to include the information content contributed by every single linguistic unit in the source text, at whatever level. An accurate translation in this sense is most likely to consist of a literal, word-by-word translation, and even then, depending on the complexity of the source text, the translator may be unable to avoid resorting to some minimum number of linguistic shifts. Fully accurate translations thus seldom deliver idiomatically fluent target texts. The evaluation of the accuracy of the translation is also difficult to establish, having to take account of the same constraint on full information-matching in the source and target texts. => LITERAL TRANSLATION. JL activism in translation n. a movement which is critical of the traditional assumption of the neutrality of translators and interpreters and calls for socio-political engagement in both the theory and practice of translation and interpreting, placing them at the service of the whole of society and not just of those who wield power and control. => BABELS, ECOS, ETHICS OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING, GRANADA DECLARATION, HUMAN RIGHTS AND TRANSLATION. IM actor-network theory n. an exploration of the way in which social networks are created, maintained, transformed or dissolved through the experience of participants themselves. Such networks constantly evolve in ever-changing relationships among the actors. The latter may be either human or non-human (ideas and processes, or institutions, for example). The term is associated with the work of Bruno Latour, the French philosopher and sociologist. The theory differs from that of Pierre Bourdieu in that it denies any a priori positing of social forces as explanations of social relationships. In translation studies, actor-network 4 5 theory has been seen as a way of exploring the relationships between participants in any act of translation, through accounts provided by the actors themselves. In this sense, it is more of a method than a theory, showing similarities with ethnomethodology. => BOURDIEUSIAN THEORY OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING. IM AD abbrev. audio description. adaptation1 n. the general process and result of translation where close fidelity to the original text has been subordinated to suitability for particular target readers, such as children. A more diffuse example is the adaptation of a play from a foreign language where the sequential pattern of the plot may have been closely respected but where the verbal translation has been adjusted for a better fit to the cultural assumptions of the target audience. This sense of ‘adaptation’ was listed in 1958 by the French-Canadian linguists and specialists in stylistics and translation studies Jean-Paul Vinay (1910-99) and Jean Darbelnet (1904-90) as one of their seven types of translation procedure. Another of their procedures, but using the same term in a different sense, was adaptation2, concerning the result of translation when, because a particular concept in the source text has no exact counterpart in the culture of the target readers, an only approximately comparable meaning has been used in the translated text. An instance would be translating the hyperbole of the US English ‘World Series’ (the competition between the two leading baseball leagues in the United States) into the more restrained implication of the French expression ‘championnat national’. => TRANSLATION PROCEDURE. JL adaptation2 => ADAPTATION1. addressee => AUDIENCE. adequacy1 n. fitness for purpose. A translation may be described as adequate if it reflects a source text in ways which are commensurate with the purpose specified in the translation commission.