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De l’éthique à la relationalité : repenser la traduction littéraire en contexte colonial

Arianne Des Rochers
This article explores some of the ethical and political issues raised by the translation of Indigenous literatures into English and French in Canada. Considering the settler colonial linguistic context that determines literary translation in Canada, as well as the positionality of non-Indigenous translators in relation to these literatures, the article attempts to answer the age-old question of how to translate well. The article turns to some of the concepts and tools offered by the ethical turn in translation studies, in particular those of Antoine Berman and Lawrence Venuti, whose limits it demonstrates in a settler colonial context like Canada. Arguing that the ethics of translation alone cannot guide us through the delicate enterprise that is the translation of Indigenous literatures in a settler colonial context, the article explores a different line of thought, that of relationality. Drawing on the work of Édouard Glissant as well as on the concept of relationality in the Indigenous epistemologies of Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Lauren Tynan, this paper suggests prioritizing decolonial methodologies, which insist on the centrality of relationships and collaborations in work processes, rather than on an assessment of a project based on a (textual) analysis of its finished product.

De l’Antiquité romaine à la galanterie française. Jean de La Chapelle, traducteur de Catulle

France Schils
This article proposes an analysis of the mediation and translation strategies used by author and translator Jean de La Chapelle (1655-1723) in the transmission of the works of Roman poet Catullus to the French seventeenth century. His approach and visibility as a translator will be studied through a close reading of Les Amours de Catulle (1680), publication in which a selection of the poems of Catullus is inserted in a novelized and romanticized biography of the author. Les Amours will be contextualized historically and linked to the precepts of free translation, one of the prevalent translation practices in the classical period, and to the galant aesthetic. We will demonstrate how the culture of translation to which La Chapelle adheres grants him a particular agency, allowing him to move away from the source text, to underline the galant traits of Catullus’ poetry, and, at the same time, to bridge the gap between the (at times) vulgar language and obscure nature of the poems, on the one hand, and, on the other, the expectations of his contemporary audience.

La traduction de l’oralité narrative dans la version espagnole et la version italienne de Zazie dans le métro (Raymond Queneau 1959)

José Luis Aja Sánchez
Translating a novel like Zazie in the Metro (Raymond Queneau 1959) presents a significant challenge due to its unique cultural context and, above all, the linguistic revolution represented using neo-French. A comparative analysis of the Italian (1960) and Spanish (1978) versions of the novel allows for an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between linguistic innovation, orality, writing, and translation, approached from a medial perspective (Koch and Oesterreicher 1990/2007), as well as from a pragmatic and translation studies angle (Hatim and Mason 1990/1995; Chesterman 1997). This analysis also paves the way for observing other metadiscursive elements such as non-verbal language or “conversational noise” in translation.

Palabras que construyen mundos narrativos: ¿son los conceptos ficcionales o irrealia solo nombres propios?

María del Carmen Moreno Paz
Even though academic literature has devoted much of its attention to literary translation, there is a lack of studies in the field of translation on the discursive and lexical characterization of the units that refer to fictional concepts. It is common to find denominations such as “proper names” or “neologisms,” which prove to be incompatible with the definitions provided by linguistics or philosophy of language to name these lexical units. Hence, we intend to address the question of whether fictional particulars can be considered exclusively as “names” or “proper names” of fiction. This will eventually allow us to identify whether irrealia can be presented in the form of other lexical categories. Based on the three main narrative works by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion), which constitute a representative sample of irrealia (3343 different units in total), an analysis of the lexical categories used to name fictional concepts will be carried out (both in the original works and in the translations into Spanish and French), so as to determine if irrealia can be associated only with proper nouns or whether, on the contrary, other lexical categories can be found.

The shifting reception of Jean-Paul Sartre in the People's Republic of China during the Cold War: A case study of the journal Shijie Wenxue (1953-1991)

Yingmei Liu and Brian James Baer
This research investigates the reception of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the Cold War by focusing on the journal Shijie Wenxue, which was the only journal to publish translations under the PRC’s Communist regime until 1978. The article analyses the selection and de-selection of Sartre’s works for translation and publication in this journal, the triangulated translation of Sartre’s play La Putain respectueuse [The Respectful Prostitute] and the paratextual framing of Sartre and his works. This research adopts Lefevere’s (1992) theory of ideology and patronage, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Baker’s (2016) narrative theory as theoretical frameworks. The researchers found ideology and politics influenced the reception of Sartre’s works in the PRC. We did not detect any translations or introductory articles which ran counter to the meta-narratives of the PRC during the Cold War. Instead, it was found that the actors (translators and editors) used a reframing strategy that involved adding an introductory text to the Chinese translations and further manipulating the texts, such as changing the ending of the stories, in order to enhance certain narratives while foreclosing others. The researchers also found that the public narratives on Sartre in the PRC underwent several shifts during this period.

Cross-cultural communication of medical knowledge in 19th century China: A corpus-based perspective through grammatical metaphor

Rui Fan and Alex Chengyu Fang
This study explores shifts in discourse strategies in the cross-cultural communication of medical knowledge from Britain to China in the 19th century. The study adopts a novel perspective via grammatical metaphor that encodes the cognitive construal of medical knowledge. A parallel corpus was constructed containing both the original text in English and the translated text in Chinese. Extensive linguistic annotation of the corpus was carried out to identify metaphor-congruency shifts encoded grammatically as noun-to-verb and noun-to-adjective shifts between the source language and the target language. Based on empirical observations, the study uncovers important differences in communication strategies across the two texts through metaphor-congruency changes as a meaning-making choice for knowledge construal. To us, such shifts in the semiotic representation as communication strategies might represent cultural adaptations necessary for the smooth transmission of disciplinary knowledge across British and Chinese cultures. The study suggests that the cognitive underpinning of linguistic encodings is specific to explicitation and local experience, which influence how ideas and concepts are perceived and represented in medical discourse in particular and cross-cultural communication in general.

COVID-19 en Côte d’Ivoire : analyse terminologique et sensibilisation en langue agni

Assouan Pierre Andredou and Allou Serge Yannick Allou
The COVID-19 pandemic, which first emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, rapidly spread across the globe, severely impacting the African continent. In French-speaking West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire stood out as one of the most affected countries, recording a significant number of confirmed cases. In response to this unprecedented health crisis, various local strategies were developed to curb the spread of the virus. However, some endogenous solutions implemented within communities did not always receive recognition from international bodies. In the eastern part of the country, the Agni territory, which extends from the southeast to the northeast in a forested region crossed by the Comoé River, developed its own approaches to managing the pandemic. This study seeks to examine how Agni populations have navigated this health crisis through the lens of language. More specifically, it focuses on the terminology used in awareness-raising discourse, shedding light on the lexical formation mechanisms employed. By analyzing lexical morphology, this research aims to understand how language adapts to new health realities and facilitates the dissemination of prevention messages within the concerned communities.

Pourquoi enseigner la néologie juridique aux juristes et aux linguistes : l’apport de la jurilinguistique affective

Corina Veleanu
This study is based on different experiences of teaching legal neology which include translation as a privileged exercise. The subject of legal neology is mainly covered in translation and terminology courses, legal or non-legal, as well as through jurilinguistics conferences, workshops and seminars. The subject of neology is sometimes addressed in law courses, through explanations relating to the origins, mutations and challenges of new legal terms. Lexical acquisition in the fields of teaching legal languages, comparative law and the history of law today benefits from mixed, legal-linguistic approaches combining linguistic elements and extra-linguistic elements. This study examines the prerequisites and expectations of the targeted student groups, and lays out various approaches and exercises. It also discusses the results and consequences of these educational experiences, specifically focusing on the affective valence of new terms.

Rewriting meat: Lab-grown meat in Türkiye

Sezen Ergin Zengin
With recent technological advances, lab-grown meat has been touted as a non-violent, environmentally friendly meat alternative. However, the success of lab-grown meat depends on how it is framed and perceived. This paper argues that lab-grown meat is a metaphorical translation, a rewriting, that aims to function in Turkish society. To investigate the manipulation of the patronage and the reception of lab-grown meat, a thematic analysis is conducted on a corpus of data representing public perception and the positions of various social actors that may influence the acceptance of lab-grown meat. The data includes public social media posts, news media articles, government announcements and interviews with scientists, as well as blog posts and videos from science YouTubers. The findings suggest that while political actors often engage in “translation as resistance,” effectively hindering the acceptance of lab-grown meat, the media and intellectuals play a pivotal role of “translation as mediation.” They work to recontextualize lab-grown meat positively, thereby crafting a more favorable public perception. This dynamic results in a spectrum of responses within Türkiye, ranging from opposition to acceptance. This paper argues that the metaphor of translation offers broader insights into the challenges of introducing novel foods, highlighting various cultural and political factors involved in the process. Translation can play an immense role in redefining the exploitative aspects of our food production and has the potential to reshape or perpetuate existing norms within the food industry.

How are prosodic features processed cognitively? A case study of the multimodal cognitive dynamics in simultaneous interpreting with text

Meng Du and Binhua Wang
This paper examines the effect of prosodic features on trainee interpreters’ cognitive effort, cognitive coordination and interpreting output in simultaneous interpreting with text. Sixteen trainee interpreters were recruited and randomly divided into two conditions to simultaneously interpret 27 sentences from English (L2) to Chinese (L1), with controlled prosodic features. Their interpreting output and eye-movements were recorded with the Eyelink 1000 Plus eye-tracking system. Various eye-metrics and temporal measures (i.e., ear-voice span, eye-voice span and ear-eye span) were analysed. The Simplified Chinese LIWC2015 Dictionary was employed to analyse the impact of prosodic features on the interpreting output. The findings indicate that prosodic features mitigate cognitive effort and facilitate the integration of auditory and visual inputs, as evidenced by the eye-tracking measures. While some prosodic features function as a predictive cue for content shifts, enhancing cognitive coordination and information processing efficiency, others hinder the coordination process due to their signalling of uncertainty or emphasis. This study reveals the role of prosodic features in enabling interpreters to produce linguistically and thematically rich outputs, indicating that interpreters interpret not only the linguistic meaning but also the underlying sense.

Automatic live captioning in simultaneous interpreting: A comparative analysis of quality

Meng Guo, Yuxing Xie, Lili Han, Victoria Lai Cheng Lei and Defeng Li
The increasing availability of automatic live captioning (ALC) technology offers new possibilities for its application in simultaneous interpreting (SI). However, its effectiveness in SI contexts requires further investigation, particularly compared to conventional SI modes. This study addresses this gap by conducting a comparative analysis of four interpreting modes: SI without text, SI with text, sight translation and SI with ALC. We evaluated the performance of 27 interpreter trainees from three perspectives: human raters’ assessment of interpreting quality, interpreters’ self-perceived performance and local interpreting quality in relation to specific problem triggers and automatic speech recognition (ASR) errors. Results indicate that interpreters in SI with ALC perform at an intermediate quality level, surpassing SI without text, but not matching the quality achieved in SI with text or sight translation. Our analysis of problem triggers and ASR errors reveals a nuanced relationship between technological assistance and interpreter performance, highlighting both the benefits and challenges of SI with ALC. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on SI with ALC by examining the specific role and impact of ALC in SI, offering insights for computer-assisted interpreting development and suggesting potential applications in interpreter training programs.

Accessing communication: An analysis of the quality of RTVE’s automatic live subtitles

Ana Iglesias-Pérez
Nowadays, deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers should have equal access to audiovisual media and, likewise, the promotion of Galician as a minoritised language should be key for public broadcasters. Therefore, both of them should be compatible, allowing viewers with and without hearing impairments to have access to audiovisual contents in Galician. This paper presents the results of the assessment of the quality of the automatic subtitles being tested in the territorial news programs broadcast by RTVE Spanish TV channel in Galicia and considers the harmonisation of accessibility and standardisation in Galician subtitling. The analysis consisted of 10 five-minute samples in Galician and it was carried out by applying the NER model (Romero-Fresco 2011). The results provide, on the one hand, data on the accuracy of the subtitles and, on the other hand, information on the correction of errors by the speech recognition software used in an attempt to reconcile accessibility and standardisation in Galician subtitling (Romero-Fresco 2021). Finally, the paper concludes with some suggestions for possible improvements to be made to the speech recognition machine in order to accomplish the acceptable threshold of quality and, therefore, provide equal access for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.

Dore, Margherita, ed. (2022): Humour in Self-Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 278 p.

Dirk Delabastita

Delisle, Jean, avec la participation de Le Blanc, Charles et d’Otis, Alain (2021) : Notions d’histoire de la traduction. Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 510 p.

Nicolas Froeliger

Almanna, Ali et House, Juliane (2024) : Linguistics for Translators. Londres/New York : Routledge, 274 p.

Etienne Lehoux-Jobin

Carl, Michael, Ed. (2021): Explorations in Empirical Translation Process Research (Vol. 3). Cham: Springer, 412 p.

Hong Xu

Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (2024): 16th conference of the association for machine translation in the Americas. Chicago: AMTA. Online:

Elliott Macklovitch