Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective views

Cuprins

*** *** — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:42:50 +0300

Cuprins

TRADUIRE LES JEUX DE MOTS, ENTRE DEFI, COURAGE ET (MAL)ADRESSE

Carmen ANDREI — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:53:04 +0300

Les jeux de mots sont un phénomène très répandu dans la presse, la publicité, la littérature, la communication quotidienne. Ils sont mentionnés, les calembours surtout, dans les ouvrages de rhétorique classique et ont fait également l’objet d’études ponctuelles en psychanalyse1. Spécialistes en linguistique et écrivains ne se mettent pas d’accord sur la
pratique des jeux de mots, la fonction et l’effet sur auditeurs et lecteurs, de sorte que certains les considèrent injustement comme des figures tout à fait méprisables et caractéristiques d’un niveau de langue des plus vulgaires.

TECHNICAL WORDS, CORPORA AND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Ionela BATOG — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:59:25 +0300

The present study aims at offering a short insight into the applications of corpora in
specialised translation together with predicting future advances in text analysis and
translation. Nowadays, given the scientific and technological progress, as well as the higher
and higher complexity of the cultural, social and political context we live in, the translator’s
task of translating specialised texts becomes more and more difficult. So are the obstacles
(s)he has to face and overcome in crossing the linguistic and cultural borders. Thus, one of
the aspects which are worthwhile mentioning is that most of the new terms and collocations which are very frequent in the contemporary literature specific to a field are not included in the bilingual or multilingual dictionaries, the translator’s task being so much the more complex and challenging.

“THEREFORE, YOU CLOWN, ABANDON, - WHICH IS IN THE VULGAR, LEAVE” – SPEECH VARIATION IN ENGLISH-GEORGIAN TRANSLATIONS

Khatuna BERIDZE — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 13:05:20 +0300

The translation norms concerning transposition of the speech variation markers are still a
controversial issue among the translation theoreticians. Culture specific address forms as
part of the intercultural communication are of special interest in the era of globalization.
Moreover, not many studies have been devoted 1 to the critical analysis of sociolinguistic and
sociocultural aspects of translation, and the same holds valid as regards the comparable
correlatives between Georgian and English languages which reflect social roles and contextdependent speech variation.

On EXILE AS ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE IN TRANSLATION

Ruxandra BONTILĂ — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 13:20:08 +0300

Paul Ricœur, the twentieth-century thinker, has long been considered a diplomat of philosophical exchange between most often irreconcilable viewpoints on philosophy, ethics,
history, literary theory, religion, and politics. Hence, his lessons on translation (On Translation, 2004/2006) are not just practical theory but telling examples of good practice of dialogue based on depth of conviction and acuity of evaluation in equal measure. His thinking —that of a dialogic/ diacritical hermeneutist, as Richard Kearney (2006) qualifies him—represents both philosophy as translation and the philosophy of translation (2006: ix-x).

SYNCHRONISME VS. FORMES SANS FOND DANS DES TRADUCTIONS POETIQUES ROUMAINES DE LA PERIODE DE 1848

Ana Elena CONSTANDACHE — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:53:56 +0300

Depuis le XIXe siècle, la littérature roumaine a démontré une ouverture constante vers l’horizon culturel « universel », aspirant continuellement à une synchronisation avec les produits littéraires et les « productions » considérées comme valeureuses à ce moment. Se situant à la confluence du monde occidental, oriental et balkanique, la culture roumaine a connu des changements au niveau de l’influence et des interférences avec la littérature occidentale. À partir de cette idée, en se frayant un chemin «national» et en s’adaptant aux
particularités de la pensée esthétique européenne par imitation ou « importation mécanique» (Vârgolici 1985 : 25), les écrivains de la génération de 1848 ont réussi la réinvention d’une
littérature vraiment moderne.

PROVERBS: CULTURALLY DISTINCTIVE LINGUISTIC FORMS OF IDENTITY IN TRANSLATION

Elena Croitoru — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:32:46 +0300

Language and communication are aspects of the production of a wide variety of identities expressed at many levels. Identities are linguistically constructed through the use of particular linguistic forms associated with specific national, ethnic, or other identities, and through the use of communicative practices.
A specific area is that of proverbs, which are culturally distinctive linguistic forms of expressing identity. The study of proverbs is closely connected with language ideology since they link verbal peculiarities to specific social, historical and cultural contexts. In this respect, “ideology stands in useful contrast to framings of talk as social practice to deal with situated interactional perspective and social values, which can vary and shift between contexts and communities. This is a particularly important issue in scenes of social and linguistic contact, conflict, and change, where unrecognized and misrecognized differences in modes of
interactional engagement arise” (Errington 2001, in Duranti 2001: 111).

APPROACHING CULTURAL RELATIONS FOR TRANSLATION PURPOSES

Daniel DEJICA — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:45:15 +0300

‘Raising cultural awareness’, ‘translating across cultures’ or ‘cultural proficiency’ have become common words in translating and interpreting. The concept of culture has constituted recently the main subject of many translation books and scientific articles (Tannen 1985; Triandis 1994; Hatim and Mason 1997; Katan 2004; Croitoru 2006, 2008). Likewise, the concept of intercultural communication (the process of exchanging meaningful and unambiguous information across cultural boundaries, in a way that preserves mutual respect and minimises antagonism – Wikipedia) has become a key concept in everyday communication practices and especially in translation or interpreting. According to the Journal of Intercultural Communication, communication needs to be “… as constructive as possible, without misunderstandings and breakdowns. It is our belief that research on the nature of linguistic and cultural similarities and differences here can play a positive and constructive role.” (http://www.immi.se/intercultural/).

STRATEGIES USED IN TRANSLATING SYNTACTIC IRREGULARITIES IN SHAKESPEARE’S “THE TWELFTH NIGHT”

Gabriela DIMA — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:56:16 +0300

Translation theorists and practitioners such as Nida (1964), Newmark (1988a, 1993), Baker (2006), have launched operational concepts to be used in understanding and performing translation both as a cultural act and a linguistic exercise. Strategy, procedure, method are generally the most frequent concepts used in designing translation methodological patterns. Translation strategy/procedure is seen either as a conscious plan, the “translator‘s potentially conscious plans for solving concrete translation problems in the framework of a concrete translation task” (Krings: 1986) or task, translation strategies: “involve the basic tasks of choosing the foreign text to be translated and developing a method to translate it” (Venuti 1998: 240).

TRYING TO KEEP FAITHFUL TO THE ORIGINAL IN THE ROMANIAN TRANSLATIONS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS DALLOWAY, THE YEARS

Irina-Ana DROBOT — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:02:10 +0300

During her lifetime, Virginia Woolf preferred that her novels were translated by not making use of too much creativity, as that would change her original intentions. This was the case of Marguerite Yourcenar’s translation of The Waves, where she made use of too much creativity, being a writer herself.
A faithful translation as far as Woolf’s novels are concerned is a good solution. Woolf
herself believed that:
‘When you have changed every word in a sentence... have thereby altered the sense a little, the sound, weight and accent of the words in relation to each other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version of the sense’ (‘The Russian Point of View’, Common Reader 1).

SUR LES VERTUS DE L’EXERCICE DE TRADUCTION

Anca GÂȚĂ — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:09:32 +0300

Cette contribution concerne le français langue étrangère, enseigné en milieu académique aux étudiants en français langue étrangère (FLE), licence Lettres, licence Langues modernes appliquées et master Discours spécialisé – Traductions – Terminologies (Université Dunărea de Jos de Galaţi, Roumanie). Les observations visent la pratique de la langue à travers des exercices de traduction. On fait ainsi une distinction essentielle entre, d’une part, des ‘traductions’ – ou la pratique (professionnelle) de la traduction, dont le but social est bien déterminé en fonction des divers domaines d’activité professionnelle – et, d’autre part, l’exercice de traduction, pratique didactique, ayant comme but non nécessairement l’obtention d’un résultat ou d’un produit fini, mais, à un premier niveau, la recherche d’équivalents multiples en langue cible, et à un deuxième niveau, l’acquisition par les étudiants des mécanismes linguistiques et discursifs caractéristiques d’une langue étrangère/seconde. Dans la deuxième partie de l’article sont présentées des observations concernant les correspondances inter-langagières dans le domaine des expressions à valeur évidentielle (ou
médiative) permettant au locuteur de faire référence à la source de l’information intégrée au contenu propositionnel de son énoncé.

POSSIBLE CRITERIA FOR THE CRITICISM OF TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

Vesna LAZOVIĆ — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:15:45 +0300

In the era of globalization, when the need for almost instant translation is evident, there emerge more and more examples of inadequate and unacceptable translations into English in all the media, and hence the necessity for translation criticism arises. Generally speaking, translation criticism links translation theory with its practice since it takes into account all the factors and elements in the process of translation (e.g.
intention, function, register, strategies, principles, constraints, audience, etc.). Translation criticism is the complex and complicated process, not just a mere identification of errors nor subjective and intuitive judgement of translation as good, bad, adequate, incorrect, faithful, etc. This process involves thorough analysis and interpretation of errors as well as the quest for talent in writing, sensitivity to language, internal consistency, semantic, structural and dynamic equivalence, creative recreation of the cultural allusions, the spirit of the original, precision in and mastery of style and grammar, idiomatic usage, fidelity to the intent of the original author and the text type (Reiss 1971).

Translation Strategies for English and Romanian Conventionalized Similes

Nadia Nicoleta MORĂRAȘU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:48:32 +0300

Similes are treated by most linguists as comparison-based phrases that function as adjectives
and belong to several semantic fields. Most similes contain a term that represents a prototype
of the quality attributed by the adjective: as white as snow/ a sheet/ chalk /ivory/ lily/ fleece/
porcelain/ lime/ salt (alb ca varul/ marmura/ creta/ zăpada/ laptele); as red as a turkey-cock
(roşu ca moţul/mărgelele curcanului); as red as a cherry (rumen ca un bujor) etc.

PUN TRANSLATION OR THE BEST OF THE WORST

Mariana NEAGU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:51:46 +0300

One of the key questions facing humour theorists is the role of incongruity, and its
resolution, in achieving the humorous effect of a joke. The notion of incongruity refers
to some degree of absurdity, illogicality or violation of expectation. An incongruity is, very
roughly, the cognitive conflict that arises when something unexpected happens or is
being said.

SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE TRANSLATION PROCESS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS

Elena NIKOLAJOVÁ KUPFERSCHMIDTOVÁ — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:56:13 +0300

Nowadays, the European Union represents the scene of most sustained and intense cultural
transfers. Within the European zone, every country works in one or several languages, which
are either chosen or imposed by circumstance, and thus translation is an inevitable and
necessary aspect of all exchanges.

NON SERVIAM: REFUSAL OF TRANSLATING CULTURES IN KIRAN DESAI’S THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS

Ecaterina PĂTRAŞCU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 11:58:45 +0300

Kiran Desai’s most appraised novel The Inheritance of Loss, is generally acknowledged as an
“immigrant novel” (Das 2009: 62), “intelligently postcolonial” (Moseley 2008: 295), dealing with
the issues of class, race, and ethnicity. It moves back and forth between Kalimpong, in the
northeastern Himalayas, and New York, the desperate realm of the illegal immigrants
populating the grubby basement kitchens of its restaurants, “knitting varied moods and
textures” (Hiremath 2007: 2). The sharp and gloomy, not at all heartening, manner of tackling
with such issues confers Desai’s novel its particularity on the stage of postcolonial writing.
As Mishra puts it,
Desai seems far from writers like Zadie Smith and Hari Kunzru, whose fiction takes a
generally optimistic view of what Salman Rushdie has called ‘hybridity, impurity,
intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human
beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs’ (Mishra 2006).

INTERPRETATION AND TRANSLATION IN ROMANIAN - ENGLISH FAIRY-TALES

Anca-Mariana PEGULESCU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:32:42 +0300

Irrespective of the many attitudes, points of view, studies and works of reference, the term
‘translation’ remains in itself, if not a mystery, at least a challenge. The concept, as the
definition of the term ‘translation’ displayed several other terms more or less related: an art,
a science, a craft. There is no doubt that these terms are complementary ones.

TECHNICAL TRANSLATION:

Ioan-Lucian Popa — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:36:15 +0300

Technical translation (TT) is the semiotic process of conveying meaning of a very specialized
nature from a source language (SL) into a target language (TL). The objective of technical
translation is to present new technical information to a new audience as a response to a very
explicit demand for technical information which should be easily accessible, i.e.,
comprehensible, clear and rapidly available. “Technical translation is fundamentally
domesticating: intended to support scientific research, geopolitical negotiation, and economic
exchange, it is constrained by the exigencies of communication and therefore renders foreign
texts in standard dialects and terminologies to ensure immediate intelligibility“(L. Venuti, in
Baker 2001: 244).

TRANSLATING ENGLISH MATHEMATICAL EPONYMS

Floriana POPESCU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 13:06:34 +0300

The current study pertains to a comprehensive project so designed as to follow two major
directions. On the one hand, English eponyms are described both in general and in particular
terms, starting from their evolving definitions and presenting possible classification criteria as well
as in approaching details, focusing on structures and meanings. In addition they are compared
with their Romanian meaningfully corresponding patterns and are analyzed in terms of the
solutions advanced by reliable sources of documentation regarding the translation of personal names derived lexemes or lexical formations which pertain to science terminologies. To the same
extent, this current study is a sequel to a descriptive approach of the English mathematical
eponyms (Popescu 2009a).

ROMANIA’S PAST ON FILM. THE CHALLENGES OF SUBTITLING

Michaela PRAISLER — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 13:12:45 +0300

In Romanian history, the darkest corners remain those in which communism crept in
unawares and, slowly but surely, grew hideously. The film Nuntă mută … şi întunericul a
venit de la răsărit… [Dumb Wedding … and the darkness came from the East…], directed by
Horaţiu Mălăele and released in 2008, captures one such moment with its impact on
individual lives. It goes against the grain (that is against the tradition of Romanian filmmaking, with its emphasis on brave monarchs and glorious events) and exposes the passive
acceptance of the disease which was to contaminate the Eastern European space for decades.

UNFAITHFUL TRANSLATORS AND TRANSLATION INFIDELITY

Daniela ȘORCARU — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 13:18:30 +0300

Understanding a literary work as a whole (in our particular case prose) means understanding not only the language but also the intrinsic elements of the story (theme, plot, characterization, and setting), the symbolism, the metaphors, the author’s style and cultural background. This means that, at the stage of analyzing the text, a translator must take all the aspects above into account. A very small misinterpretation of the work may cause a wrong perception. As a result, the target language (TL) reader will also misinterpret the story. When translating a text, especially a literary work, the translator requires broader background knowledge. S/he cannot depend on the text and the dictionary alone. The cultural background that contributes to the creation of the text must be studied before working on the translation itself. A careless decision in choosing equivalent expressions to be used in the translated text may cause various problems, such as loss, gain and gap of meaning.

PROSPECTIVITY AND RETROSPECTIVITY AS POLARITY ITEMS IN TRANSLATION

Titela VÎLCEANU — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:17:01 +0300

A broad intellectual topography of translation theories allows us to go beyond more
traditionally defined zones (for instance, Holmes’ (1972) far-reaching tripartite division of
translation studies into descriptive, theoretical and applied ones) to an osmotic model,
incorporating comparative literature, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, anthropology,
ethnography, sociology, cultural studies and communication sciences. Furthermore, Holmes’
terminological distinction between translating (understood as the process of translation) and
translation (the product) seems to have become blurred due the fact that the product
dimension has gained increased importance, being the most visible part of translation as
design-oriented, precise and measurable (complying with specification).

TRANSLATION BETWEEN PRETENSION AND ‘INNOVATION’:

George VOLCEANOV — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 10:54:57 +0300

This paper is a sequel to last year’s article, in which I discussed a few aspects of my new
Romanian version of The Tempest, the first play to be issued by Editura Art in its forthcoming
Shakespeare series in November 2009. This year I will examine the strategies used by Ioana
Ieronim in her translation of the same play 1, her outspoken convictions underlying these
strategies, the way in which, and the extent to which, she fulfils her readers’ expectations. I
will assess the faithfulness of her recent version to the original text and / or the translator’s
acts of betrayal, illustrating it / them with several examples regarding prosody, vocabulary,
style, denotation and connotation, etc. As every new translation is inevitably related to the
history of previous translations, in a gesture of either acceptance or rejection of earlier texts, I
will also tackle the translator’s moral principles, mirrored by her unacknowledged attitude
toward her precursors (actually, toward Leon Levitchi’s influential version, which has been the
canonical translation of The Tempest in Romania for the past fifty years) – an attitude ranging
from complete disrespect to previous translations to subtle ways of plagiarizing her illustrious
precursor. And, insofar as Shakespeare himself has come to be considered a commodity in the
supply side of culture (cf. Michael Bristol et al.), I am also intent on evaluating the short-term
and the long-term impact of this translation in the Romanian book-market and theatre as well
as in the Romanian academe.

GERDI. The Great English-Romanian Dictionary of Idioms. Bucureşti: Editura Coresi 2007 by SĂILEANU Cristian, POENARU Vasile

Elena Croitoru, Mariana NEAGU — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 08:42:12 +0300

The work under review is co-authored by Vasile Poenaru, writer, translator and
lexicographer and Cristian Săileanu, a writer and teacher of English in the United States. In
their Foreword, Poenaru tells the reader how the dictionary was born, how his friend living in
California, Săileanu, has, for two decades, worked on a kind of ‘survival kit’, an enormous
collection of English idiomatic expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs, verbal clichés, dicta,
famous quotations, proverbs and sayings. That was “everything he needed in order to
integrate himself seamlessly in the American culture and be able to teach English to the
native speakers of the language in their own country.” Compiling the dictionary proper took
the two authors “another seven years of extremely strenuous and dedicated efforts” (p. 8).
We can only think of the hard work of separating idioms from other multiword lexical units
to make an idea of a part of the whole undertaking.