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world), has finally resulted in the entire operation costing more to the end-user than it
would have cost before the use of TM's became generalized.
When these various translation memory programs (TM's) were first introduced
claims were made by the manufacturers that their systems would result in translations
being produced more quickly, due to repeated sentences being pre-translated. But now,
when the TM system is so frequently imposed on the translator, the TM systems are
found to slow up translation, particularly when translators are required to use some of
the more complicated TM ancillary systems.
Freelancers are nowadays even being asked occasionally to translate texts that are
already formatted in a TM-related system, where proof-reading and spell-checking
become something of a nightmare when lengthy texts are involved, as compared to a
Word format text.
Many experienced translators tend to dictate their translations either into a voice
recognition system which types the dictation directly on the computer screen or else by
emailing dictation to a typist, who types up the work and sends it back by email for
proof-reading and correction. Most translators can speak much faster than they can type,
so a great deal of time is saved ‒ and time in the translation business means money. An
experienced translator, working with a text which falls within his or her set of
specialities, can dictate up to 10,000 words per day.
Translators are often instructed to make strict use of the translation TM that they
are sent by the agency or client and thereby inferior or even incorrect translations may
be produced. All translations depend on context and it will be found when inspecting
almost any large translation memory by using the "concordance" icon that there can be
as many as 10 different translations made over the years for the same translation "unit".
A further complication factor comes from the use of TM system analysis systems for
computing word count and identifying direct and fuzzy matches. These are always
source-word based whereas some translators prefer for certain language combinations
(German>English for example) to price their work in target words. These analyses are
used as a basis for the translator to give discounts on account of what is in effect largely
fictitious time-saving. Thus the economies hoped for when TM's were first introduced
they have had the opposite effect ‒ costs have become higher to the translation agency
and the end-user (since translators had to increase their prices in order to live).
So what can be done to avoid this sort of problem? There is one translation agency
which is now researching with its in-house translators, with its entire team of freelance
translators and with its own customers, the possibility of fixing (and requiring from its
freelancers) a reduced price per word for translations where the use of a TM is not
needed.
Apart from the case of the highly standardized manuals mentioned above, the
language of which is particularly suitable for the use of translation memories, the
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extension of this policy in future might involve abandoning the use of a TM altogether,
since most documents do not contain enough repetition to justify the use of a TM. This
would undoubtedly save time for everyone concerned in the translation process ‒ it
would make more money per hour for the translator and also save money for translation
agencies and end-users.
Translation – tool in the process of cultural globalisation
BIANCA-OANA HAN
University of Tg. Mures, Romania. Published - October 2009
International symposium "Challenges of European Integration", Romania, 2008
People have always been living in a world governed by changes, either selfimposed, as the direct or indirect result of evolution and progress or externally imposed,
by different social, historical, cultural factors. Each of the cases implied people
understanding the need of circulation, communication of ideas, information, knowledge
from one culture to the other and back, i.e. synchronisation to the „atmosphere” of the
epoch, from all points of view that actually make a difference.
We came to agree to the existence of the so-called „cultural universals” that
enhance communication, change of ideas in order to achieve progress in all life
domains. Supporting this idea, the American sociolinguist and expert in cultural
antropology Eugene Nida reminds us that the interlinguistic communication between
people belonging to different or even to the same nation is always possible, but never
perfect in a world of permanent changes (Nida: 2004)... We are invited in the area of
those „cultural universals”, but also warned that communication is impossible if taken
out of the context it rightfully belongs to. Thus, Nida points out that it is the context that
transmits the message and clearifies the sense and the meaning, and not the word. „The
fundamental unit of meaning is still the text, which is organised according to the culture
it belongs to. Nevertheless, regardless of their culture, all texts are characterised from
the point of view of spatial-temporal and logical relations existent among their
component elements or of the existance of rhetorical procedures. Such considerations
are extremely relevant for translations, as it is performed and established at the text
level.” (Nida: 2004)
Moreover, translation seems to be the only possible way to „unite” all cultures in
order to create the cultural network, the cultural globalisation some people agree to
while some others run away from. By this cultural (linguistical, literary) globalisation
we mean the union of all the forms of culture that matter and that imprint their vlaues to
the art of the people. The people of the globe will never be one and only, as the tower of
Babel issue has its reasons, after all. But we believe that no particular culture of a
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particular people could be in the position to state that it is so self-sufficient that it can
not benefit from any type of contact to other cultures of other peoples.
Therefore, we strongly believe that „to translate means to circulate” (Crişan: 1979),
and this is what our world really needs: the freedom to find the right ways to express
itself, to understand and to be understood out there, by the Other. If done correctly,
translation has this prerogative of being the way and the means to make it happen.
...The isuue of correctness in a translation is indeed quite a delicate problem, which
stirred lots of opinions and counter-opinions. A clearly accepted fact would be that
translation is a necessity and it is performed at the language level. The fact that there is
only one human speices is explained by the posibility to transfer sense, meaning from
one language to the other, by means of the word, thus, by translation”. (Ricoeur, 2005)
On the other hand, Constantin Lupeanu (Lupeanu: 1987) considers that translations
have always enriched the national culture, but only those that respect the spirit and the
breath of the original even if the translations are not perfectly achieved. Moreover, he
also considers that “a less perfect, but true translation, which is able to transmit the
strength of the original and to bring some novelty to our culture is preferred to a perfect
but untrue book.”
Antoine Berman (Berman: 1984) sees translation as „an attempt of the foreigner”,
a fundamental experience which defines our relation to the Other, the Foreigner. The
natural reaction of the foreigner might be opposition, refusal, etnocentrism. Any culture,
thus any language, might consider itself to be self-sufficient and tends to enslave, attach
other cultures and languages. The attaching translation is the effect of this etnocentrist
tendency, of the superiority complex towards the foreigner, the foreign language, the
original text. Berman proposes a translation based not on a subordinate relation of the
foreign language by the receiving language, but on a equality raport, “a dialog between
the foreign language and native tongue.”
The truth that lies behind all this debate is that translation is indeed a tool in the
complex process of assimilation of information from another culture, of enrichment
with aesthetic values belonging to different other literatures, of both-ways borrowings
of linguistic treasures from the language of the Other. The only problem would, thus, be
to be able to achieve translation properly, so as not to betray neither the giver nor the
receiver.
"Can't We Talk?" (condensed from: You Just Don't Understand)
DEBORAH TANNEN
A married couple was in a car when the wife turned to her husband and asked,
"Would you like to stop for a coffee?" "No, thanks," he answered truthfully. So they
didn't stop. The result? The wife, who had indeed wanted to stop, became annoyed
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because she felt her preference had not been considered. The husband, seeing his wife
was angry, became frustrated. Why didn't she just say what she wanted?
Unfortunately, he failed to see that his wife was asking the question not to get an
instant decision, but to begin a negotiation. And the woman didn't realize that when her
husband said no, he was just expressing his preference, not making a ruling. When a
man and woman interpret the same interchange in such conflicting ways, it's no wonder
they can find themselves leveling angry charges of selfishness and obstinacy at each
other.
As a specialist in linguistics, I have studied how the conversational styles of men
and women differ. We cannot lump all men or all women into fixed categories. But the
seemingly senseless misunderstandings that haunt our relationships can in part be
explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play.
Learning about the different though equally valid conversational frequencies men
and women are tuned to can help banish the blame and help us truly talk to one another.
Here are some of the most common areas of conflict:
Status vs. Support. Men grow up in a world in which a conversation is often a
contest, either to achieve the upper hand or to prevent other people from pushing them
around. For women, however, talking is often a way to exchange confirmation and
support.Many men approach the world as a place where people try to achieve and
maintain status, women ‒ as a network of connections seeking support and consensus.
Independence vs. Intimacy. Since women often think in terms of closeness and
support, they struggle to preserve intimacy. Men, concerned with status, tend to focus
more on independence. These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views
of the same situation.
Advice vs. Understanding. The problem stemmed from a difference in approach.
To many men a complaint is a challenge to come up with a solution. But often women
are looking for emotional support, not solutions.When my mother tells my father she
doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is
disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do,
whereas she wants sympathy.
Information vs. Feelings. A cartoon shows a husband opening a newspaper and
asking his wife, "Is there anything you'd like to say to me before I start reading the
paper?" We know there isn't - but that as soon as the man begins reading, his wife will
think of something. The cartoon is funny because people recognize their own
experience in it. What's not funny is that many women are hurt when men don't talk to
them at home, and many men are frustrated when they disappoint their partners without
knowing why.
To avoid this kind of misunderstanding, both men and women can make
adjustments. A woman may observe a man's desire to read the paper without seeing it is
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a rejection. And a man can understand a woman's desire to talk without feeling it is a
manipulative intrusion.
Orders vs. Proposals. Diana often begins statements with "Let's." She might say
"Let's park over there" or "Let's clean up now, before lunch". This makes Nathan angry.
He has deciphered Diana's "Let's" as a command. Like most men, he resists being told
what to do. But to Diana, she is making suggestions, not demands. Like most women,
she formulates her requests as proposals rather than orders. Her style of talking is a way
of getting others to do what she wants ‒ but by winning agreement first.
With certain men, like Nathan, this tactic backfires. If they perceive someone is
trying to get them to do something indirectly, they feel manipulated and respond more
resentfully than they would to a straightforward request.
Conflict vs. Compromise. In trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to
oppose the will of others openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to
assert herself, even at the risk of conflict.
Dora was frustrated by a series of used cars she drove. It was she who commuted
to work, but her husband, Hank, who chose the cars. Hank always went for cars that
were "interesting" but in continual need of repair. After Dora was nearly killed when
her brakes failed, they were in the market for yet another used car. Dora wanted to buy a
late-model sedan from a friend. Hank fixed his sights on a 15-year-old sports car. She
tried to persuade Hank that it made more sense to buy the boring but dependable car,
but he would not be swayed. Previously she would have acceded to his wishes. This
time Dora bought the boring but dependable car and steeled herself for Hanks' anger. To
her amazement, he spoke not a word of remonstrance. When she later told him what she
had expected, he scoffed at her fears and said she should have done what she wanted
from the start if she felt that strongly about it. As Dora discovered, a little conflict won't
kill you. At the same time, men who habitually oppose others can adjust their style to
opt for less confrontation.
When we don't see style differences for what they are, we sometimes draw unfair
conclusions: "You're illogical," "You're self- centered," "You don't care about me." But
once we grasp the two characteristic approaches, we stand a better chance of preventing
disagreements from spiraling out of control.
Learning the other's ways of talking is a leap across the communication gap
between men and women, and a giant step towards genuine understanding.
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Creoles and pidgins
The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. Third edition 2010
A pidgin is a language which has arisen by a process of mixing a simplified form
of a language spoken by people who travelled and colonised extensively (such as
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch), with a simplified form of a language
of the people with whom they interacted repeatedly. Such languages often develop near
main shipping and trading routes (Trudgill 1974b: 166, 169–70): “English-based
pidgins were formerly found in North America, at both ends of the slave trade in Africa
and the Caribbean, in New Zealand and in China. They are still found in Australia, West
Africa, the Solomon Islands … and in New Guinea. … (Not all pidgin languages have
arisen in this way, though. Kituba, which is derived from Kikongo, a Bantu language, is
a pidgin widely used in western Zaire and adjoining areas. And Fanagolo, which is
based on Zulu, is a pidgin spoken in South Africa and adjoining countries, particularly
in the mines. There are several other indigenous pidgins in Africa and elsewhere.)
Pidgins also arose when Africans who did not share a language were working
together on plantations and chose to communicate using what they could glean of the
coloniser/ slave-owner’s language, to which they added elements of their own native
languages.
For second and subsequent generation users, pidgins may become a mother tongue,
a creole (Holm 1988: 6); ‘a language which has a jargon or a pidgin in its ancestry; it is
spoken natively by an entire speech community, often one whose ancestors were
displaced geographically so that their ties with their original language and sociocultural
identity were partly broken’. Examples of creoles include Sranan, an English-based
creole spoken in coastal areas of Surinam (Trudgill 1974b: 170), and the English-based
West Indian creoles used mainly by people of African origin in the Caribbean (Sutcliffe
1984: 219). Non-English-based creoles derived from other European languages include
French-based creoles spoken in, among other places, Haiti, Trinidad, Grenada, French
Guiana, Mauritius, the Seychelles and some parts of Louisiana. There are also creoles
based on Portuguese and Spanish (Trudgill 1974b: 170). A pidgin may become
creolised at any stage of its development.
Some generally fairly limited, anecdotal accounts of creoles and pidgins were
written by travellers, administrators and missionaries as long ago as the early sixteenth
century. Although some early reports were written with the explicit aim of teaching
Europeans something about the structure of a pidgin or creole so that they could use it
to communicate with its speakers (Romaine 1988: 7), the serious study of creoles and
pidgins began with Schuchardt’s series of papers on creole studies, Kreolische Studien,
published in the 1880s (Schuchardt 1882, 1883), and Schuchardt (1842–1927) is
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regarded by many as the founding father of pidgin and creole linguistics (Romaine
1988: 4).
However, creoles and pidgins tended to be regarded as merely inferior, corrupt
versions of donor languages (Romaine 1988: 6), and the study of them did not gain
generally perceived respectability until 1959, when the first international conference on
creole language studies was held in Jamaica by a group of scholars who recognised
themselves as creolists (Decamp 1971a), and the proceedings published (Le Page 1961).
Growing interest in the relationship between American Black English and pidgin and
creole English also helped establish the discipline as a proper academic concern, and the
publication in 1966 of the first undergraduate textbook on pidgins and creoles (Hall
1966) greatly helped to secure its place (Holm 1988: 55). A second conference was held
in Jamaica in 1968 (Hymes 1971b), and since then conferences on pidgin and creole
linguistics have been held regularly.
In the development of a pidgin language, the superstrate language typically
provides most of the vocabulary. The superstrate language will commonly be that of the
socially, economically and/or politically dominant group, and will be considered the
language that is being pidginised, so that a pidgin is often referred to as, for instance,
Pidgin English or Pidgin French. The other language or languages involved are referred
to as the substrate language(s). The pidgin tends to retain many of the grammatical
features of the substrate language(s). In spite of the fact that pidgins thus arise as two or
more languages are mixed, so that speakers of any one of these languages may perceive
the pidgin as a debased form of their own language (an attitude clearly expressed by the
superstrate-language-speaking authors of many early studies), it is important to note that
it is now generally agreed among scholars of pidgin languages that they have a structure
of their own which is independent of both the substrate and superstrate languages
involved in the original contact (Romaine 1988: 13).
How well does the world wide web represent human language?
The Economist. Jan 20th 2005
LINGUISTS must often correct lay people's misconceptions of what they do. Their
job is not to be experts in “correct” grammar, ready at any moment to smack your wrist
for a split infinitive. What they seek are the underlying rules of how language works in
the minds and mouths of its users. In the common shorthand, linguistics is descriptive,
not prescriptive. What actually sounds right and wrong to people, what they actually
write and say, is the linguist's raw material.
But that raw material is surprisingly elusive. Getting people to speak naturally in a
controlled study is hard. Eavesdropping is difficult, time-consuming and invasive of
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privacy. For these reasons, linguists often rely on a “corpus” of language, a body of
recorded speech and writing, nowadays usually computerised. But traditional corpora
have their disadvantages too. The British National Corpus contains 100m words, of
which 10m are speech and 90m writing. But it represents only British English, and
100m words is not so many when linguists search for rare usages. Other corpora, such
as the North American News Text Corpus, are bigger, but contain only formal writing
and speech.
Linguists, however, are slowly coming to discover the joys of a free and searchable
corpus of maybe 10 trillion words that is available to anyone with an internet
connection: the world wide web. The trend, predictably enough, is prevalent on the
internet itself. For example, a group of linguists write informally on a weblog called
Language Log. There, they use Google to discuss the frequency of non-standard usages
such as “far from” as an adverb (“He far from succeeded”), as opposed to more standard
usages such as “He didn't succeed – far from it”. A search of the blog itself shows that
354 Language Log pages use the word “Google”. The blog's authors clearly rely heavily
on it.
For several reasons, though, researchers are wary about using the web in more
formal research. One, as Mark Liberman, a Language Log contributor, warns
colleagues, is that “there are some mean texts out there”. The web is filled with words
intended to attract internet searches to gambling and pornography sites, and these can
muck up linguists' results. Originally, such sites would contain these words as lists, so
the makers of Google, the biggest search engine, fitted their product with a list filter that
would exclude hits without a correct syntactical context. In response, as Dr Liberman
notes, many offending websites have hired computational linguists to churn out
syntactically correct but meaningless verbiage including common search terms. “When
some sandbank over a super slots hibernates, a directness toward a progressive jackpot
earns frequent flier miles” is a typical example. Such pages are not filtered by Google,
and thus create noise in research data.
There are other problems as well. Search engines, unlike the tools linguists use to
analyse standard corpora, do not allow searching for a particular linguistic structure,
such as “[Noun phrase] far from [verb phrase]”. This requires indirect searching via
samples like “He far from succeeded”. But Philip Resnik, of the University of
Maryland, has created a “Linguist's Search Engine” (LSE) to overcome this. When
trying to answer, for example, whether a certain kind of verb is generally used with a
direct object, the LSE grabs a chunk of web pages (say a thousand, with perhaps a
million words) that each include an example of the verb. The LSE then parses the
sample, allowing the linguist to find examples of a given structure, such as the verb
without an object. In short, the LSE allows a user to create and analyse a custom-made
corpus within minutes.
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The web still has its drawbacks. Most of it is in English, limiting its use for other
languages (although Dr Resnik is working on a Chinese version of the LSE). And it is
mostly written, not spoken, making it tougher to gauge people's spontaneous use. But
since much web content is written by non-professional writers, it more clearly
represents informal and spoken English than a corpus such as the North American News
Text Corpus does.
Despite the problems, linguists are gradually warming to the web as a corpus for
formal research. An early paper on the subject, written in 2003 by Frank Keller and
Mirella Lapata, of Edinburgh and Sheffield Universities, showed that web searches for
rare two-word phrases correlated well with the frequency found in traditional corpora,
as well as with human judgments of whether those phrases were natural. What problems
the web throws up are seemingly outweighed by the advantages of its huge size. Such
evidence, along with tools such as Dr Resnik's, should convince more and more
linguists to turn to the corpus on their desktop. Young scholars seem particularly keen.
The easy availability of the web also serves another purpose: to democratise the way
linguists work. Allowing anyone to conduct his own impromptu linguistic research,
some linguists hope, will do more to popularise their notion of studying the intricacy
and charm of language as it really exists, not as killjoy prescriptivists think it should be.
READERS SAY THE BEST AGE TO BE IS...
Posted by Georgia Grimond, October 22nd 2013
Age, they say, is but a number ‒ but of all the ages, which is the best to be? In our
last Big Question, we asked six writers to choose their ideal time of life. Readers were
asked to cast their vote online, either endorsing our writers’ choices or making their
own. Their answer? Somewhere in the middle.
When the results came in, the biographer Michael Holroyd’s pitch – that life is best
at 40 – won the most votes (38%). When he was 40, he said, he was on his "gap year",
succumbing to the pace of Irish life in Dublin, while researching his book about George
Bernard Shaw. Robert Guest, United States editor of The Economist, chose his gap year
too. When he was 18, he was working dead-end jobs, embarking on adventures and
relishing his own immortality. In our poll, 20% of voters were equally misty-eyed for
that stage. The novelist Penelope Lively, who is in her 80s, had more years to choose
from than most. "Don't worry, you 40-somethings," she wrote, "the best is yet to be." In
her view it's 55, and 9% of readers agreed.
Ian Jack glimpsed his future career as a journalist at 16, a time of "excitement and
innocence". From his older brother and two new teachers he got an idea of "what I
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could do; perhaps even who I could be." His view landed 7% of the votes. Uta Frith, a
psychologist, went for a handful of years: between 65 and 70 she experienced an
"exhilarating sense of freedom", an acceptance of herself and greater tolerance of
others, and 6% of voters agreed. Boyhood was best for The Economist’s foreign editor,
Edward Carr. Aged 12, he was poised between innocence and transgression, camping
out with friends, smoking hay and boozing on cola. He persuaded 5% of the electorate.
Our writers passed over their 20s, but our readers didn't. Between 23 and 27, one
pointed out, "you are sexy, optimistic, enthusiastic and very much wanted." At 25,
another said, you can enjoy the combination of maturity and energy. A third reader said
that at 17 she felt "so lost, so owned and yet so utterly myself". Old age got a look-in, as
did childhood and the beginning of motherhood. But several readers came up with a
consoling thought: "if you can’t be the age you love, love the age you are".
Georgia Grimond is letters editor of Intelligent Life
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