Translation Studies 12. Translation into the second language Krisztina Károly, Spring, 2006 Source: Campbell, 1998

Aim of book: “to explore how individuals develop the competence to translate into a second language, and to show that a key aspect – textual competence – is developed in a systematic way.” (p.2) Importance of a translator-centered view on translation (focus on process; the translator in context)

Problems in translation to L2 are related to: second language acquisition (acquisition of L2 skills and strategies, L development) interlanguage (output = a stage in L acquisition) organization of L above the sentence level (DA: production of stylistically authentic texts; textual skills in L2) levels of L competence (translation standards)

Recent studies on translation competence (TC): Toury (1984): bilinguals have “an innate translation competence comprising bilingual and interlingual ability” as well as “transfer competence” (pp ) Bell (1991): “ideal bilingual competence”; “expert system”; “communicative competence” (Canale and Swain, 1980: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic) Kiraly (1990): stresses the importance of the process of second language acquisition in teaching translation into FLs

Recent studies cont. Hewson and Martin (1991): “acquired interlinguistic competence” (comp. in 2 Ls and 2 cultures); “dissimilative competence”; “transferred competence” (translation auxiliaries) Nord (1992): competence of text reception and analysis, research competence, transfer competence, competence of text production, competence of translation quality assessment, linguistic and cultural competence (both on the source and target side)  text-analytical perspective Pym (1992): ability to generate a target-text series + select only one target text from this series as a replacement of source text for a specific purpose and reader  behavioral perspective

Possible approaches to conceptualizing TC (depending on purpose): psychological modeling of the T process (inferring mental constructs from empirical data – TAP: at different levels of translator ability or longitudinally in student translators)  focus on translator, text, readers translation quality assessment (the quality of the translated text is a reflection of the translator’s competence)  focus on text, readers and the relationship of the two translation pedagogy (importance of discourse/translation analysis, intertextuality, interference, lack of student-centered view)  focus on theories of teaching and learning

Translation into the second language (vs. first language) TC in an interlanguage framework (following Selinker, 1992 and Larsen- Freeman and Long, 1991) contrastive analysis error analysis performance analysis discourse analysis

Purpose of a pedagogical model of TC identify underlying components of TC to aid curricula describe developmental pathway taken in learning how to translate to aid sequencing of curricula include means for describing quality differences between translations to aid the development of assessment techniques

Towards a model of translation competence (into L2)  based on empirical research 3 components in Campbell’s (1998) model:

3 components in Campbell’s (1998) model cont. (1) TL textual competence (the ability to manipulate the genre potential of the TL, by deploying grammar and lexis above the sentence level) - substrandard - pretextual - textual

3 components in Campbell’s (1998) model cont. (2) Disposition (individual characteristics of the translator, unrelated to L competence) - risk-taking vs. prudent - persistent vs. capitulating

3 components in Campbell’s (1998) model cont. (3) Monitoring competence - low awareness of quality of output  ineffective editing strategies - high awareness of quality of output  effective editing strategies

Characteristics of the model shows that TC is divisible into components + shows the relative independence of the components developmental dimension (in learning how to translate): only the textual competence component can be considered developmentally! describes differences between translators  can be used in assessment of translation/translator quality ***