TRANSLATION STUDIES IN FRANCE AND CANADA

Background to Literary Translation in Canada
Jacques Cartier
1534
Iroquois
BNA Act of 1867 - The British North America Act
English-Canadian and Quebec literary production

1971 the Canada Council Translation Grant program
1975 the Literary Translators' Association
Ellipse (1969), Meta (1966), and TTR (1987)
Philip Stratford's 1977 Bibliography of Canadian Books in Translation: French to English and English to French

Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet
Jean Darbelnet (1904-1990)
Paris
the Sorbonne
Wales, Edinburgh and Manchester
1938-39 at Harvard
1940 Canada McGill University
Bowdoin College and Laval University

Jean-Paul Vinay (1910-1999)
Paris the Sorbonne
MA in Phonetics and Philology 1937
French army 1939-40 liaison officer with the British Expeditionary Forces
1946 Canada the University of Montréal professor and head of the department of Linguistics and Translation
the bilingual Canadian Dictionary 1962
a television course Speaking French
1967 the University of Victoria in British Columbia

. Comparative Stylistics of French and English
Direct methods of translating
Borrowing
Calque
literal translation

Procedure 1: Borrowing
To overcome a lacuna, usually a metalinguistic one (e.g. a new technical process, unknown concept)
borrowing is the simplest of all translation method
Many borrowings enter a language through translation, just like semantic borrowings or faux amis, whose pitfalls translators must carefully avoid.

Procedure 2: Loan translation
a special kind of borrowing whereby a language borrows an expression form of another, but then translates literally each of its elements.
lexical loan
structural loan

Procedure 3: Literal translation
Literal, or word for word, translation is the direct transfer of a source text into a grammatically and idiomatically appropriate target language text in which the translator’s task is limited to observing the adherence to the linguistic servitude of the target text.

Oblique methods of translating
transposition (change from one part of speech in the ST to another in the TT),
modulation (change in semantics and point of view)
equivalence (different languages describing a situation by different means, e.g. idioms)
adaptation (changing cultural reference).

model of translation
identification of translation units
analysis of these units in the SL
reconstruction of metalinguistic context
stylistic analysis
production and revision of TT.

Georges Mounin (1910-1993)
pseudonym de Louis Leboucher
French linguist , professor of linguistics
Les Belles infidèles. Essai sur la traduction 1955
Les Problèmes théoriques de la traduction, 1963
La Machine à traduire, 1964.
Linguistique et traduction, 1976.

The Interpretive Theory of Translation Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer
Études traductologiques : en hommage à Danica Seleskovitch, textes réunis par Marianne Lederer, Lettres modernes, 1990.
Fortunato Israël et Marianne Lederer (eds) La Théorie Interprétative de la Traduction (Vol. I: genèse et développement, Vol.II. convergences, mises en perspectives, Vol.III. de la formation ... à la pratique professionnelle), lettres modernes minard, 2005.
Anne-Marie Widlund-Fantini, Danica Seleskovitch - Interprète et témoin du XXe siècle, éditions de l'Age d'Homme, 2007

Danica Seleskovitch (1921-2001)
teacher of conference interpreting
a researcher and theorist
She founded the interpretation wing of the École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) at the University of Paris

Interpretation/interpreting is generally defined as oral translation and perceived as a more or less mechanical activity consisting in a series of encoding and decoding operations.
“It is not the oral translation of words” - interpreting/interpretation is a complex and demanding activity: “it uncovers a meaning and makes it explicit for others.
Interpretation is communication, i.e. analysis of the original message and its conversion.

three stages of the process:
1. Auditory perception of a linguistic utterance which carries meaning. Apprehension of the language and comprehension of the message through a process of analysis and exegesis.
2. Immediate and deliberate discarding of the wording and retention of the mental representation of the message (concepts, ideas, etc.)
3. Production of a new utterance in the target language which must meet a dual requirement: it must express the original message in its entirety and it must be geared to the recipient.”

Meaning in interpretation is dependent, according to Seleskovitch’s theory “not only on us but also on the person we are addressing and on the context in which we both find ourselves.”

types of memory
substantive memory retains/stores what has previously been understood/processed
verbatim memory retains words

Comprehension/processing of the meaning is difficult in either mode of interpreting, i.e. consecutive or simultaneous, owing to the oral nature of the message. In simultaneous, however, it seems impossible to achieve.
Simultaneous interpreting makes it almost impossible for the interpreter to dissociate source language from target language. Being intensely exposed to the former and having to produce the latter almost instantly, the interpreter has no time to process meaning and therefore he is most liable to translate words instead of meaning.

operations of the interpreter
a) hearing; b) understanding the language;
c) conceptualizing (building a cognitive reminiscence by integrating sequences of connected speech into pre-existing knowledge);
d) enunciating (what has been stored in the substantive memory);
e) getting/being aware of the interpreting situation;
f) checking audio-equipment;
g) transferring;
h) recalling of particular signifiers

Comprehension is what occurs when new information ties in with related knowledge. If such knowledge is absent the new information is ignore
The Interpretive Theory is built upon four pillars:
1) command of the native language,
2) command of the source language,
3) command of relevant world and background knowledge,
4) command of interpreting methodology.

Interpretive Theory posits that methodologically the process of translating requires an understanding of sense (language meaning + cognitive complements) and a formulation of the translation on the basis of the synecdoche principle
synecdoche
A part of something may stand for the whole.
A single item may represent a whole group.
A concept may represent a connected concept.

Dr. Jean Delisle
FRSC Professor of Translation and Interpretation University of Ottawa

eight classes of translations on the basis of four characteristics:
a) According to the function of the source text - pragmatic translation and literary translation
b) According to the degree of specialization in the source text - general translation and specialized translation
c) According to the general purpose of translating - academic translation and professional translation
d) According to the translation approach used in producing the target text - transcoding and translation (proper)