The Efficacy of Using State-of-the-art Translation Resources in Translating into a Non-mother Tongue
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/nvts.2009.15Keywords:
acceptability of translations into a non-mother tongue, state-of-the-art translation resources and technologies, teaching translation, translator trainingAbstract
The thesis addresses the question of the acceptability of translations into a non-mother tongue. It involves a study on two translation tasks undertaken by two groups of third-year undergraduate students of translation at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, all of whom have had at least three years of experience in translating into a non-mother tongue. The study was designed to test the main premise of the thesis maintaining that the application of modern translation tools has a positive impact on the translation process as far as the translators’ speed and efficiency is concerned; in addition, it is also argued that the translations where no restriction on the use of translation tools and resources is made are more acceptable to the target audience than those where such restriction is imposed.
Trainee translators were asked to translate two short promotional texts from Slovene, their mother tongue, into English. For Text One, Group 1 was allowed to complete their translations only with the aid of paper resources, while for Text Two, both paper and electronic resources were made available. Reverse conditions applied to Group 2. Students and not professional translators were selected, as we wanted the subjects to be familiar with the state-of-the-art translation tools such as electronic dictionaries and reference materials, online corpora and other online resources, translation memories and similar.
Competent native speakers of English, involved in the teaching of translation and/or linguistics, and professional Slovene translators were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing the benefits of the application of state-of-the-art resources in translation. By triangulating this method with the results obtained by the Translog computer programme and Think-aloud Protocols, problems concerning the application of modern tools and resources could be ascertained and the acceptability of the given translations established, with the main objective being to identify their impact on the translation process.
While the data obtained by Translog and TAPs showed no conclusive difference in speed when trainee translators worked with or without all the resources available, and their efficiency seemed to be highly idiosyncratic, the results of the questionnaire assessing the acceptability of selected translations to the target language and target culture community corroborated the main hypothesis that the use of electronic tools has a positive impact on the quality and acceptability of translations into a non-mother tongue.