How do you do it anyway?

268 Pages·2005·2.13 MB·English

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS
Stockholm Slavic Studies 30
How do you do it anyway?
A longitudinal Study of Three Translator Students
Translating from Russian into Swedish
Morena Azbel Schmidt
Härifrån och upp ska SU loggan ligga!
Almqvist & Wiksell International
Stockholm
A dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Stockholm University Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
S-106 91 Stockholm
Morena Azbel Schmidt
How do you do it anyway?
A longitudinal Study of three Translator Students translating from Russian into Swedish
Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Stockholm Slavic Studies 30
Stockholm 2005, 261 pp. ISSN 0585-3575 ISBN 91-85445-19-3
ABSTRACT
This study investigates the translation process of three translator students and their production
of translated non-fiction texts. The students are followed from an initial examination task over
a period of time of 5 years. The translated texts produced during this period are analysed with
selected methods of text analysis, which is compared to their source texts. The text analysis
focuses on certain grammatical features that are known to generate problems for translators
with the language pair Russian – Swedish.
The results of the analysis show that the systematic differences in the languages
involved are not as problematic as expected for the participants. Writing skills in the TL,
translation principles and initial beliefs as well as the individual’s approach concerning the
task of a translator turn out to have the most significant influences on the participants’
performance. In a complementary analysis, introspection data obtained from concurrent
verbalisations are analysed according to a model that allows indicating and classifying
marked processing in the translations. The role of contrastive language knowledge is
especially emphasised in this part of the study.
The results are put in relation to each other to obtain a picture of the individual
development of the participating translator students. The three case studies show that each
participant developed his/her competence during the time of the study. They also show that
this development stays within a conceptual frame set by the participants before they started
their training as translators.
The implications for translator training that can be drawn from this study are mainly
concerned with the importance of writing skills in the TL, contrastive language knowledge
and the importance of questioning individual beliefs and principles concerning the task of the
translator as well as approaches to translating.
Key words: Russian linguistics, Translation studies, Swedish, participles, converbs,
translation process, psycholinguistics, information processing, text analysis, text organisation
Cover design by Vadim Azbel
© Morena Azbel Schmidt 2005
Printed in Sweden by Intellecta Docusys, Nacka
Distribution Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm
In memoriam
Jens Bergsten
1970-2000

Contents
Acknowledgements iv
1 Introduction 1
2 Languages in contrast 6
2.1 Introduction to the structural peculiarities of Russian and Swedish6
2.1.1 Implications for translating 8
2.2 Converbs and participles as grammatical categories 10
2.2.1 Russian converbs 12
2.2.2 Swedish participles 14
2.2.3 Translating Russian converbs and participles
into Swedish 15
2.3 Text linguistics 17
2.3.1 Information structure 19
2.3.2 Quasi-correctness 20
3 Theoretical framework 21
3.1 TAPs in studies of the translation process 21
3.2 Models of information processing 26
3.3 Translator competence 28
3.4 Norms and purpose 32
3.5 Introspection, verbalisations and texts 34
4 Methods and materials 41
4.1 Methods for text analysis 42
4.2 Introspection as a method of data collection 44
4.3 Key-stroke-logging of the writing process 45
4.4 Portraits of the participants 47
4.5 Translation tasks 49
4.5.1 First task 50
4.5.2 Second task 51
4.5.3 Third task 52
4.5.4 Fourth task 53
5 Analyzing the source and target texts 55
5.1 Why comparative text analysis? 55
5.2 Text coherence and information structuring in the STs and TTs 57
5.2.1 Entrance test 59
5.2.2 Sputnik 70
5.2.3 Contract 75
i
5.2.4 School certificate & University certificate 79
5.2.5 Ševčenko 83
5.2.6 Letter of Attorney 91
5.2.7 Grossman 94
5.3 Quality vs. Quantity 104
5.4 Participles and converbs and their translation 112
5.5 Summary and discussion 127
6 Verbalisations, TAP and ScriptLog 130
6.1 Modifying the model 131
6.2 The three phases of the translation process 138
6.3 Verbalisations about participles and converbs 161
6.4 Discussion 166
7 Translators’ profiles 173
7.1 Ellinor 173
7.2 Fredrik 181
7.3 Lennart 189
7.4 Discussion 194
8 Summary 196
8.1 General conclusions 197
8.2 Consequences for teaching translation 200
Bibliography 203
Tables
Table 5.1: The STs in quantitative terms 106
Table 5.2: Entrance test TTs in quantitative terms 107
Table 5.3: Task 2 TTs in quantitative terms 108
Table 5.4: Task 3 TTs in quantitative terms 110
Table 5.5: Task 4 TTs in quantitative terms 111
Table 5.6: Entrance test: converbs and participles 113/114
Table 5.7: Sputnik text: converbs and participles 116/117
Table 5.8. Contract text; participles 118
Table 5.9: Certificate texts: participles 118
Table 5.10: Ševčenko text: converbs and participles 119/120
Table 5.11: Letter of Attorney: converbs and participles 123
Table 5.12: Grossman text: converbs and participles 124/125
Table 6.1: ScriptLog pauses with pause time longer than 1 sec.
Final versions. Total pause time. . 136
Table 7.1: Interview in TAP 941119 175/176
Table 7.2: Warming-up in TAP 940216 182/183
ii
Table 7.3: Ševčenko text in numbers 185
Table 7.4: TAP 941111 185
Table 7.5: TAP 980812 186/187
Table 7:6: Grossman text 188
Table 7.7:Interview from TAP 940225 191
Table 7.8 Warming-up from TAP 941018 192/193
Abbreviations
ST = source text
SL = source language
TT = target text
TL = target language
TAP = Think-aloud-protocols
SLA = Second Language Acquisition
L1 = a speaker’s first or strongest language, mostly acquired in childhood
L2 = any other language (apart from the first one) that a speaker has mastered
≈ meaning approximately
= meaning exactly
⇒ direction of translation
iii
Acknowledgements
Looking back at the end of a long journey that finally resulted in this book,
a number of people come to mind to whom I owe gratitude for their
engagemant and participation in the process. First of all, my supervisors, Prof.
Barbro Nilsson and Doc. Birgitta Englund Dimitrova for their professional
support. My fellow TRAPROS members, Alexander Künzli and Ulf Norberg,
who showed me the way to go by finishing their own dissertations long before
me and all my colleagues at the Institute for Interpretation and Translation
Studies who followed this work with interest and encouragement, from the
very first to the very last steps.
I am also indebted to my very good friends, the Swedish Aunties: Annika
Rosing, Alicija Korszunowa, Elicia Moura Lindekrantz, Helene Mårtenson,
Marja Ruohomäki and Vivi Havia, for all their involvement in this work and
their support as well as the long walks and talks and the birthday parties that
we share. And to Alison M. Fisher, for being the best long distant friend ever
as well as the person, who cleared my foggy English in the most professional
way. A special thank you goes to Natasha Ringblom, who checked the
Russian texts in the last minute.
Writing a thesis is hard work and one has to live and eat as well, while
doing it. During my years as a doctoral student, I was part of the Research
programme ”Translation and Interpretation as a Meeting between Languages
and Cultures”, a “joint venture” of Stockholm University and Uppsala
University. I am very grateful for the financial support I was granted by the
Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Fund, being part of this programme. The
Swedish Institute provided me with a travel grant for a longer stay at St.
Petersburg State University in Russia at the very beginning of this journey.
Contributions from Helge A:son Johnsons stipendiestiftelse and Birger
Callemans stipendiefond enabled me to finish the work.
Finally, my thanks go to my family: my husband Vadim for all the patience
and support in times of trouble, my children Lowe, Agnes and Jakob, who
never minded growing up with lectures about grammar at the dinner table and
to our Babushka, Anastasia Steinman, who always takes care of us all.
Stockholm, november 2005
Morena Azbel Schmidt
iv
1 Introduction
The aim of this empirical study is to explore and map the translation
process of non-professional translators. The main focus of this exploration
is the development of routines, skills, and thus competence over time. The
study is further concerned with the exploration of translating processes as
they take place in a translator’s head and how these processes are reflected
as patterns in the translation products. Also, it aims at gathering
information about the translators’ individual behaviour related to
translating, as well as beliefs concerning the activity and the product of
translating. This study is a data-driven longitudinal investigation into this
process, where the collected material determined the methods and the
course the study was to take. The primary goal was to investigate how the
actual processing is carried out and how the individual’s approach changes
over time. Certain linguistic features, gaps, and other differences in the
languages involved were chosen to serve as indicators for these changes. It
was assumed that the changes would become evident in an analysis of the
produced texts as well as in the material gathered and analysed with other
methods.
Translation in general can be described as a creative problem-solving
activity. Training, experience, and the eventually emerging competence
transform a beginner-translator into an expert-translator, given that a
certain amount of time passes and that relevant translation tasks are
performed. This study is concerned with translation on the basis of material
obtained from Russian⇒Swedish translations, while also including the
dimension of Russian and Swedish as complex linguistic systems. The
relationship between the two fields, i.e. translation studies and contrastive
linguistics, consists in the fact that translation is concerned with at least
two different languages, which never completely match each other while
possessing various contrasting features. The absence of complete
correspondence as well as one-to-one mapping that characterizes the
relationship of two languages can give rise to gaps in meaning (lexicon and
semantics) and/or form (grammar and syntax). Gaps or multiple mappings
that exist between two languages will generate problematic items, units, or
features for a translator and therefore be traceable for the researcher,
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presumably and most clearly in the products but also in the process
material. Therefore it seemed necessary for this study to first examine how
the translating process is reflected in the translation products. As a
consequence a large part of the study is directed towards analysing the
produced texts and comparing them to their textual sources in order to
generate a basic material that can be related to the analysis of the
processing-related material.
The focus in the analysis of the translated texts, i.e. the product study
is on the treatment of certain grammatical and textual categories in the STs,
that are known to constitute problems because they are not comparable or
directly translatable, and their subsequent rendering in the TTs, while the
analysis of the process material concentrates more on the mapping and
description of different processes that surfaced during the processing. It
was assumed that concentrating on concrete and tangible categories will
limit the sheer amount of data to be analysed, and that the combination of
different methods would help to overcome the difficulty of comparing
different texts and text types that essentially cannot be compared in other
ways.
Problems and difficulties that occur while translating are generally
tackled with translation-specific problem-solving activities and strategies.
The nature of these problem-solving activities and strategies does change
over time and can therefore be followed in the translation products and in
the processing material, providing a picture of the translator’s individual
development process. It was assumed that it would be possible to detect
these activities and strategies through the analysis of the processing
materials as well as in the translation product because they tend to appear
as visible patterns in both. Furthermore, it was assumed that they would
materialise in the concrete actions and expressed beliefs of the
translators/participants.
The question of how translators tackle problems also concerns the
individual’s skill and competence and their development over time. These
are skills and routines either developed unconsciously, in which case they
evolve out of a given situation, or trained consciously. A longitudinal study
of translation as mental processing should therefore also consider translator
skill and competence and how these are developed. Unfortunately, the
translation process itself, cannot be observed taking place inside a human
translator’s head and brain or measured while it is taking place. It must be
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