Conference report- summary
Day one: Translation Quality Assessment: past and present.
A lecture by professor Julian House
Hellenic American Univercity.
Venue: Conference Room, Faculty of Human Sciences
Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech
11th March,2019
The lecture started with the introduction of Professor Julian House by Dr. Hassan Darir as one of the most renowned scholars of modern translation theory. She is a German linguist and translation studies scholar who is not only specialized in translation quality assessment but also in various areas such as contrastive pragmatics, discourse analysis, politeness theory, English as a lingua franca, international communication, and global business communication. Professor House is also president of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). Dr. Darir then listed a number of her publications and let her the floor for an informative lecture.
Professor House started her lecture by thanking Professor Abdelhamid Zahid and professor Hassan Darir presidents of the Knowledge Integration and Translation laboratory and Al kindi Center for Translation and Training respectively for inviting her. She expressed her happiness for being in Morocco for the first time in her life. She then, proceeded by introducing the menu of her lecture.
Professor House argues that translation is fundamentally a linguistic operation and equivalence stands at the core of Translation quality assessment. She briefly described and critically analyzed previous approaches to TQA and grouped them into categories such as “ psycho_social “, “response based“ and “text and discourse-oriented“. She then talked about some recent proposals for TQA.
After laying the conceptual foundation, professor House explained how are the two previous models of TQA were constructed and applied to various texts to prove and demonstrate their validity. Her first model was proposed in 1977 when the predominant studies were into functions of the language, so the functional perspective was noticeable in this model. The second model is a revision of the first one in which she integrated the Hallidayan register concepts of field, tenor and mode along with the concept of genre. This revision is significant for a number of reasons; it places the text within its context for a three-dimensional analysis (language/text, register, genre), and it helps clarify the concepts of her first model. For instance, she further explained the distinction between covert and overt translation via concepts like “ frame “ and “discourse world“. In the same respect, the distinction between a translation and a version is explained through the concept “ genre“.
In her newest model, professor House gave more attention to the intercultural and social aspects as well as the cognitive process of translation. House’s first model is basically qualitative, in her newest model however, she embraces corpora as an important tool in translation research. She also stressed the importance of the disciplines of contrastive pragmatics, and finally, she briefly introduced the role of psycholinguistic experiment and Neuro-linguistic research for translations and translators as a teaser for the second-day lecture ‘Towards a New linguistic-cognitive Orientation in Translation Studies’.
Conference report- summary
Day two : Towards a New linguistic-cognitive Orientation in Translation Studies.
A lecture by professor Julian House
Hellenic American Univercity.
Venue: Conference Room, Faculty of Human Sciences
Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech
12th March,2019
In her second lecture entitled ‘Towards a New linguistic-cognitive Orientation in Translation Studies’, Juliane House started with the translation as an Art: the cult of the individual, the social, and the cultural. She stressed on the importance of the translator‘s moral-ethical stance, and her ideological, political, historical, post-colonial, feminist and attitudes. For her, translation is the tranlator‘s creation, the art of manipulation and interpretation. Therefore, the translator’s individuallity is prioritized over the text. That is why there is a plea for new linguistic-cognitive orientation. The rationale behind this cognitive-linguistic orientation is that ranslation is more than personal and socially situated expression. The focus is on translation as an operation on language/ text to balance pre-occupation with external factors outwardly impinging on translation and to explore translator’s ‚bilingual mode. House suggested that this orientation needs to describe and explain processes of linguistic-textual comprehension, transfer and re-constitution in the bilingual mind.
House also talked about the problems with previous process research. She states that ‘despite many attempts to refine Thinking Aloud and Retrospective Methodology via preparatory training to optimize subjects’ verbalizations, the general assumption behind this research must still be questioned. There are some unresolved problems in Intro-/Retrospection. As Translators have control over their mental processes these being at least partially accessible to them, i.e. open to conscious inspection. As a way of dilemma, she suggested behavioral experiments. The relevance of this neuro-imaging studies for translation is based on Paradis’s (2009) model. For Paradis, ‘the use of any task other than the natural use of language (including natural switching) has the same consequence as using single words: The task does not tap the normal automatic processes that sustain the natural use of language, including the contribution of pragmatics and its neural underpinnings“. House suggests Paradi’s model, which is: bilinguals have two subsets of neuronal connections, one for each language, these are activated/inhibited independently. Also a larger set from which items of either language can be drawn. All selections are automatically (unconsciously) driven by activation threshold levels.
At the end, House presented two translation types: overt and covert. In overt translation, the target text recipients not directly addressed; embedded in new context but simultaneously signaling ‚foreign origin‘. Overt translation is a case of‚ language mention‘. It enables TT recipients to appreciate ST in new frame and discourse world. In covert translation the status of an original in TL context, not marked pragmatically as translation. There is no co-activation of pragmatics of ST and TT. There is often massive interventions on levels language/text, register, genre due to allowances for TT pragmatics via use of a cultural filter.
Conference report- summary
Day 03
Theme: English as a Global Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingualism ?
A lecture by Professor Juliane House
Hellenic American University
At Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech
13th March, 2019
Introduction
This report summarizes the lecture of Professor Juliane House about English as Lingua Franca (ELF), is it a threat to multlingulalism ? The conference is convened by Al Kindi center for translation and training , Knowledge Integration and Translation Laboratory with the support of Cadi Ayyad university, in Marrakech, Morocco on 13th March, 2019.
Conference Objectives
The objectives of today’s lecture were:
- To investigate the influence of English on other languages through Anglicism , linguistic imperialism and De Swaan’s Q-value.
- To ascertain that English does not belong to anyone.
- To provide a platform for discussion about the ways ELF can enrich translation research and industry.
Background
This lecture is a follow up to two high-level lectures, translation quality assessment and cognitive translation.
The underlying hypothesis is that English influences other languages and threatens its existence. Professor Juliane House started by defining the term lingua franca as a default language used by speakers of different L1s for specific purposes. Professor quoted that a lingua franca is Characterized by “Great variability and instability”, ( Firth 2009).
Professor Juliane House argues against the superiority often shared among native speakers of English, and advocates the use of a lingua franca that does not belong to anyone. A flexible language that is mainly used for communication and does not reduce the role of mother tongues use for identification.
Professor had also elaborated on the use of a corpus to investigate whether English “contaminates” (House 2003) other languages in particular European languages. Her team carried out a practical project entitled “Covert Translation”. The project posits that due to ELF global prestige, English influences norms and preferences in other languages.
Participation
The conference brought together around 90 participants mostly from Morocco but also some exchange students from the European Union. Participants representing Master for Translation technology and specialized translation, Translation department from Ecole Nationale Superieure, researchers from different departments.
Questions for discussion
- Professor Darir Hassane evoked the limited validity of any corpus over time.
- Professor Abdelhamid Zahid observed that English as a lingua franca is context bound. If it is a threat to multingualism in the west, it is rather conceived as a need in the Arab world.
Outcomes and results
This conference was the first of its kind to invite a well-known scholar – Professor Juliane House- in the field of Translation at a regional and national level. The aim was to discuss the most recent findings in the field of translation and to improve research quality at the university. The conference had also as its ultimate objective to share experiences, inspire students, build networks and take action on improving translation training and studies.
