Plenary Speakers

I am talking about the whole vexed question of whether visibility is always desirable in translations and whether foreignisation is always a good thing. I point out that the translations of authors which sell the most do NOT demonstrate the visibility of the translator, quite the reverse. I cite the first and the new translators of Asterix who insist that they must be invisible. I point out the over-simplification of Venuti's binary distinction between foreignisation and domestication, and I return to the terminology that Lefevere and I developed as to the role of the non-professional reader. Running through the talk is the question of how we evaluate a translation, and I refer to my own experience as a judge of many international prizes, also to the views of Horace Engdahl, former secretary of the Nobel prize committee. My conclusion asks why is it that scholars of translation and comparative literature have focussed so much on 'high' cultural texts, when evidence suggests that the texts which circulate most widely in translation are those read by non-professional readers.

Recent developments in the translation industry have led some commentators to claim that it no longer makes sense to distinguish between human and machine translation: the interdependence of the two modes in some production environments makes it difficult to tell machine outputs from human outputs, and for the purposes of quality assessment at least, the genesis of the translation might not make much difference anyway. At the same time, machine translation is encroaching upon areas that were previously held to be bastions of human translation and it may not be fanciful to suggest that we are now closer than ever to “a possible future when automated translation might very well function in a basic manner for all discourse, even the literary” (Raley 2003). Claims are increasingly being made that attribute human-like understanding of language to computers, with machine translation engines being credited with the ability to “learn metaphors” and “find cultural equivalents” (Packer 2016). The discursive construction of translation is changing in line with these trends: labels such as “human/machine translation” refrain from indicating who or what is assisting whom or what, and schematic representations of translation workflows are shifting from linear to radial formations, where human translators are seen as hubs rather than endpoints. Against this background of flux, it is fitting to ask how such changes impact on our very understanding of translation and translators, and how we, as translation sholars, teachers and practitioners, might position ourselves for the future. In this paper, I attempt to address these issues, drawing on industry views and academic scholarship in translation studies and related areas. I attempt to systematize existing scholarship in the area, to ask what we agree on, and where technology-alert translation scholarship is likely to take us over the next decade or so.

Las aportaciones de la pragmática a la lingüística (enunciación, modalidad, actos de habla, implicaturas, proceso inferencial...) han permitido abordar un nuevo ámbito de la combinatoria: la sintaxis de enunciados. Coordina procesos codificados e inferenciales y se propone como objetivo explicar construcciones superiores tales como períodos y microdiscursos. Se parte de una hipótesis inicial (el microdiscurso no puede ser un montón de enunciados) y se intenta buscar las relaciones que intervienen en la formación de su estructura. El método utilizado es funcional-relacional.

Advertising texts are intended to persuade readers to buy a specific product or service. In order to fulfill this purpose, several strategies are employed. As well as direct appellative statements (such as recommendations or invitations), these texts include referential, expressive and phatic elements in order to achieve their persuasive goal. According to Jakobson (1960), the phatic function has a main role in the communicative medium; it is a very important means when establishing contact between sender and receiver. When the communication medium fails, the advertising message cannot reach the receiver. Taking as an example a corpus of advertising texts published in England, Spain and Germany, the phatic elements used to achieve a persuasive function will be analysed.

Translation studies scholars have traditionally studied texts that are called translations in the receiving cultures. And scholars in that field have traditionally been nearly perfectly bi-lingual and bi-cultural, literary and/or linguistic scholars of the highest order. "Accuracy" of the translation remains the dominant critical criterion.

But in the age of mass media, blogs, online journals, reader reviews, and fan fiction, accuracy in translational is not always the most important factor. Instead, social and political insight moves to the forefront.New forms of translated "texts" are circulating, sometimes called versions, adaptations, and rewritings, are often only tangentially related to the "original." Many of the rewriters and reviewers today have limited language skills and base their "translations" on previous versions.

This talk discusses the "politics" of such a movement, looking first at rewritings, adaptations, and sequels, often in film, theater and music, but also in history, politics, and philosophy; and second at post-translation repercussions, how translations can introduce new ideas and forms, thereby effecting social change. While some ts scholars are skeptical of including such a wide range of texts in the ts corpora, I suggest that this democratization of the field helps move it from the halls of academia and into that lively social arena where social and political change is possible.

This presentation will focus on the importance of historical studies within translation studies. The influence of translation history on several theoretical approaches developed in the field (descriptive, cultural, sociological) will be underlined. More specifically, the relation between the above-mentioned theoretical approaches and a historiographic methodology will be explored. After analysing a range of historiographic studies and theoretical models while focusing on Hispano-American examples (foundational documents of the emancipation period, spiritual conquest, pro-independence press and travellers), rigour and subjectivity in historiographic research will be dealt with. Special importance will be placed on the fact that it is necessary to use localised concepts, Latin American in this case, in order to counterbalance the Eurocentric vision of Latin American history. Lesser-known concepts such as “intercultural transference” and telos will also be mentioned.