Category Archives: Students

Special Issue of New Voices in Translation Studies – with Guest Editors from LINCS

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by Pedro Castillo, Penny Karanasiou, Marwa Shamy and Lee Williamson

We are delighted to announce the publication of the Special Issue (number 12) of New Voices in Translation Studies.

The issue includes a selection of the best papers submitted after IPCITI 2013, organised in Heriot-Watt, and it is the result of the long standing collaboration between IPCITI and New Voices in Translation Studies.

This Special Issue of New Voices in Translation Studies results from the 9th International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting (IPCITI), which was held at Heriot-Watt University in 2013. We, as Guest Editors of this special issue, are proud to have been involved in the editing and publication process of this journal. The 18 months between the release of the Call for Papers and the final publication have been among the most enriching experiences in our early academic careers. The papers that feature in this special issue reflect the aims of the IPCITI 2013 conference. These were twofold: on the one hand, the conference sought to promote greater participation in Translation and Interpreting (T&I) research by addressing salient issues in the field; and on the other, to foster a supportive environment in which young researchers could exchange ideas on current themes and issues in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

IPCITI 2013 was a great success, with 40 paper and poster presentations from 32 universities across 11 countries. The overall attendance included 82 delegates from universities across Europe (58), Asia (8), Africa (1), and the Americas (4). The range of papers and posters covered such diverse areas of T&I as Translation Theory, Pedagogy, Literary Translation, Interpreting (spoken and sign language) and Audiovisual Translation (AVT). The papers accepted underwent a rigorous peer-review process, and we believe that the authors present fresh perspectives on T&I, displaying both originality and methodological rigour.

We hope the readers of this special issue will appreciate the valuable contribution that these four papers make to pushing the boundaries of knowledge in Translation and Interpreting Studies, but also the opportunities that journals such as New Voices in Translation Studies offer to new researchers in allowing them to disseminate the results of their research more widely.

Happy reading!

Pedro Castillo, Penny Karanasiou, Marwa Shamy and Lee Williamson
The IPCITI Special Issue Guest Editors

2nd Year General Linguistics Poster Session: Bridging the gap between UG and PG research

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by Nicola Bermingham and Sara Brennan

A 2nd Year General Linguistics Poster Session took place on 18th and 19th February in LINCS. This was the first poster session for 2nd year General Linguistics students and the results were impressive, to say the least. This was part of the students’ assessment and the topics were chosen based on their General Linguistics lectures, but the event also worked towards bridging the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate research.

The posters addressed topics from a wide variety of geographical terrains, from Scots, Gaelic, and British Sign Language here in Scotland to language policy in Germany, France, Belgium, and Portugal. The students employed a range of methodological approaches, including qualitative interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and conversation analysis of audio-visually recorded data. They were also encouraged to produce original research while showing an understanding of existing literature and key theoretical concepts.

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The event was widely publicised and both members of staff and postgraduate research students from LINCS attended. This meant that students experienced the process of a poster session at a real academic conference, since they also presented their posters to the assessors and other staff in LINCS and then fielded questions about their research.

The result? Not just nice food and networking. Many of the students expressed a keen interest in further developing their topics and pursuing more advanced sociolinguistic research.

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A selection of posters is now on display outside the interpreting labs in Henry Prais building.

Special thanks to PhD students Nicola Bermingham and Sara Brennan from LINCS for organising a most successful poster session!

Introducing our new PhD students

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Our vibrant PhD cohort is growing!

Yanmei Wu has joined LINCS as a PhD student in Heritage and Performance. Her study will look into Chinese Kunqu Opera as intangible heritage, as well as its recent revival in 21st century China. Her supervisors are Dr Chris Tinker and Dr Kerstin Pfeiffer.

Yanmei studied ethnomusicology at SOAS, visual anthropology at Goldsmith’s and teaching Chinese as a foreign language at Sheffield. She taught Chinese at Manchester Metropolitan University for three years before deciding to pursue her PhD studies in Heriot-Watt.

In addition to her teaching career and study, Yanmei has worked extensively as a performing artist. Originally from Jiangsu province in China, she was trained in traditional Chinese dance and music from an early age. She performs different styles of trasitinoal Chinese dance as well as zheng, the Chinese zither.

Heather Mole has also joined us this year to embark on her PhD research on sign language interpreting. Her supervisors are Prof Jemina Napier and Dr Katerina Strani.

Heather’s background includes BSL/English interpreting (a degree in Deaf Studies from Bristol University) and a Masters in Disability Studies from Leeds University.

She has worked as an adviser to disabled students in a university setting for 8 years. In that time, Heather reflected on the power dynamics of service provision and interpreting. She has also been fascinated by the concept of “white privilege” and the transposition of this onto “hearing privilege”. Heather hopes to research these two dimensions to see what impact they may or may not have on the interpreter.

For more information on our PhD programmes in LINCS, you can visit this page for research on Translation and Interpreting and this page for intercultural research.

IPCITI 2014 Call For Papers

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Author: IPCITI Organising Team

IPCITI 2014

10th Anniversary – International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting

 

Intersect, Innovate, Interact

New Directions in Translation and Interpreting Studies

 

29-31 October 2014

 

The IPCITI Conference is the result of a long-term collaboration between Dublin City University, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester. IPCITI is designed to provide new researchers from all areas of translation and interpreting studies with the opportunity to share their research with peers in a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment. This year’s conference will engage with existing and new perspectives and interactions within and beyond Translation and Interpreting studies that are shaping the future of the discipline.Following the success of the 9th IPCITI conference held at Heriot-Watt University, the University of Manchester is pleased to host the 10th anniversary conference which will take place from 29-31 October 2014.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS

 

We particularly welcome abstracts which address (but need not be limited to) the following topics:

 

Intersect

 

In line with Maria Tymoczko’s theorisation of translation as a ‘cluster concept’, it can be argued that Translation and Interpreting Studies is a discipline formed at the intersections, namely through its interplay with other subject areas. We are interested in the ever-evolving dialogical relationship between T&I Studies and:

 

  • Intercultural Studies
  • Sociology and Politics
  • Media and Visual Studies
  • Science and Technology
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies

 

 

Innovate

 

With the explosion of social media since the inception of the IPCITI enterprise, it is vital to examine how new media and new technologies influence both how we interpret and translate on a practical level, and how we think about interpreting and translation on a conceptual level. We would like to consider how the discipline engages with:

 

  • New media and technologies
  • New theoretical frameworks
  • New methodological approaches
  • New challenges

 

 

 

Interact

 

Increasingly globalised, technology-driven societies are witnessing the emergence of new modes of translating and interpreting and, in parallel with this, an enlarged conception of who we consider as being translators and interpreters. Understanding the ways in which existing and emerging communities of translators and interpreters interact with one another (as well as with those who theorise on their activities) is crucial for the future of T&I studies. At the conference we would like to discuss the different modes of interaction between:

 

 

 

•Professional translators/ interpreters and volunteers (including activists, fansubbers, etc.)

•Academics and translators/interpreters

•The translator/interpreter and the ‘self’ (i.e. the growing acknowledgment of the role that the translator’s/interpreter’s own subjectivity plays in these forms of interlingual and intercultural mediation)

 

 

INVITED CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

 

 

Keynote Speakers           Prof. Barbara Moser-Mercer (Université de Genève)

 

Dr. Sue-Ann Harding (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)

 

 

Workshop Leaders          Dr. Rebecca Tipton (University of Manchester)

 

Dr. Gabriela Saldanha (University of Birmingham)

 

 

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

 

 

IPCITI 2014 welcomes abstracts for paper and poster presentations:

 

  • Papers are allotted 20-minute slots to be followed by 10 minutes of discussion (total 30 minutes each presenter).
  • Poster presenters will be required to explain their research in a more informal setting to small groups during our dedicated poster session.

 

 

Both paper and poster abstracts should be submitted in English and should not exceed 300 words.

 

Abstracts should include:

 

  • The presenter’s name
  • The presenter’s affiliation
  • The presenter’s academic status and current year of study
  • Title for the paper/poster to be presented
  • Three keywords that best encapsulate the content of the paper/poster to be presented
  • An indication of the theoretical framework and/or research methodology employed or to be employed
  • A brief summary of outcomes or pursued outcomes

 

 

Please submit your abstract to: abstracts.ipciti2014@gmail.com

 

 

KEY DATES

 

Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday 30 April 2014

 

Notification of acceptance: Friday 4 July 2014

 

Registration deadline: Friday 26 September 2014

 

Information and Contact Details

Enquiries concerning the conference should be directed to: info.ipciti2014@gmail.com

Information on the University of Manchester: www.manchester.ac.uk

General information on Manchester can be found at: www.visitmanchester.com

Further information concerning accommodation and directions to the conference venue will be available shortly at: www.ipciti.org.uk

 

Whose Job is it to make you a translator?

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It’s a common complaint. A number of students graduate from translation and interpreting courses only to find, to their horror, that their courses have prepared them for the technical and linguistic aspects of translation and interpreting but have not assured their career success. Outside of the feathered nest of a university program, they find, to their horror that clients are not clamouring to work them and (shock!) they must find ways to get clients themselves.

It is very easy to blame the universities for this. It might seem perfectly reasonable for students to think that, if they are paying for a translation degree, that their degree will make them translators. It will not.

The truth is that, even in four year degrees, there simply isn’t time to give students all the skills they will need to establish their career in translation or interpreting. Besides language skills, research ability and flexibility, freelancers need to understand and use marketing, negotiation, pricing, accounting, networking, presentation skills, writing, and much more besides. Many of these will even be used differently in different sectors of the same industry.

It’s is unfair to expect students to emerge from any degree as a complete freelancer, ready to face the world. The reality is that they have much more learning to do, even after getting their first job or first project.

This, of course, does not entirely exonerate universities from any responsibilities. There are good reasons why students should expect that their degrees will at least introduce them to market realities and that their course will have some sort of connection to the world they will enter when they graduate.

Hence why Heriot-Watt University, like many in the UK, is pleased to hold (in partnership with ITI) Starting Work as a Translator or Interpreter events every year for final year and masters students. At such events, students can get vital introductions to freelancing, and even staff work. Rather than filling in gaps that “should” be in the degree, such events show that it is possible for academia and the market to cooperate in making sure that students are ready for their next stage of learning.

The key to all this is partnership. In most countries, even the biggest professional associations have neither the time nor the expertise to create the infrastructure for providing full training for hundreds of students every year. Universities do. They also find it much easier to accept the inevitable fact that not all students trained as translators or interpreters will ever find their way into these professions.

On the other hand, universities, due to resource restrictions, are not able to provide the kind of career-long support to professionals that their associations are increasingly offering. In fact, such support is, quite correctly, normally not within their remit.

The point is that no one becomes a translator or interpreter simply by getting a degree. It takes time, perseverance and, crucially, a decision to take part in your local (or not so local) professional community. All of this takes places as students and new professionals learn to apply their university training to real-life realities and to make decisions on further training. We are trained in the classroom but become professionals at the wordface.

Vow of Silence: Day 4

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Having committed to a week of silence to demonstrate solidarity with the UK’s Deaf sign language users, Professor Graham Turner has made it to Thursday without a squeak. Will everyone else’s luck run out before the weekend?

Imagine you’re completely blind. Can you do that? It’s not too difficult: you start by closing your eyes…

Now imagine you’re stone deaf. Not just a wee bit fuzzy round the edges, like your granddad or when you come out of a loud gig. Deaf as a post.

You can’t, can you? We don’t have ear-lids. You can’t switch your hearing off, no matter how hard you try.

This is at the root of the hearing world’s inability to comprehend what Deaf people are on about. Three key things follow from being Deaf.

One, everything the hearing world takes for granted about receive incoming information from the world through hearing, doesn’t apply. I’m on a train. The tannoy says the café closes in five minutes. If I’m Deaf, it could be a long, stomach-rumbling journey to Edinburgh.

Two, fortunately, the eye is a fantastic device. Persuasive evidence shows that Deaf people’s eyes are sharper and wired more responsively to their brains than hearing people’s. The way Deaf people do ‘being alive’ is re-jigged from top to bottom to exploit their different biological make-up.

Notice: not ‘deficient’ – just DIFFERENT.

Three, the kind of language that perfectly suits the bodies of Deaf people is signed language. British Sign Language has evolved naturally over centuries to match Deaf capabilities. Just as spoken languages work for the hearing, signing is perfectly designed to exploit the visual nature of Deaf people.

My ‘vow of silence’ hasn’t turned me into a Deaf person. If I had a heart attack right now, I can confidently predict that I wouldn’t wait for an interpreter to show up before communicating with the paramedics. I’d speak. (And I can’t NOT know that the café has now closed. Fear not: I brought my own biscuits.)

But as I can sign, and I’ve taken the time to learn from Deaf people what their experiences are like, I can get that much closer than most to seeing the world from a Deaf perspective. Our languages powerfully influence the way we think. Language both shapes and reflects our identities. I’m not Deaf, but – bearing in mind that it’s taken me over 25 years to develop my understanding – I do begin to ‘get’ what it means to be Deaf.

What about that heart attack scenario I just envisaged, though? The hearing world has often treated Deaf people as being in need of medical treatment. The urge to ‘fix’ those different ears runs deep… Deaf people say – SHOUT – “Leave us alone! We’re perfectly OK! We don’t need to be cured!”

But when a Deaf person suffers a heart attack, the real nightmares begin. The British Deaf Association’s discussion paper, launched yesterday, reports again  on the life-threatening barriers BSL users face when they actually do need healthcare.

However, it being the 21st century, new ways are being found to bridge this communication gap with Deaf people. In Scotland, NHS24 has piloted the use of video technology to bring ‘remote interpreters’ into the frame. It can work, but of course it depends upon a supply of competent interpreters.

They’ve thought of that, too.

In a UK ‘first’, NHS24 is seconding a group of its staff to Heriot-Watt University’s BSL interpreting degree. That’s a commendable commitment on the part of the service. Investing in four years’ full-time training per student underscores a really serious response to the problem.

And it shows that they know it’s THEIR responsibility to make healthcare properly accessible to BSL users.

That perfectly illustrates what we need to see across the board. Public services – health, education, social services, the legal system – facing their lawful obligation to ENSURE their own accessibility.

Not just by hoping for the best, but by nurturing skilled professional interpreters. And, when it makes sense to use limited resources in this way, to provide frontline practitioners who can sign, fluently and directly, with Deaf citizens.

It’s not a pipedream. It’s a perfectly achievable goal, as other countries have already shown. It just means paying attention to informed advice, especially from the BDA, which represents BSL users nationwide. And then, when you say you will treat Deaf people fairly, it means putting your money where your mouth is.

Now that’s what I call using your imagination.

Author: Graham Turner

Vow of Silence: Day 2

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Surgery performed on Deaf people without their consent. Signers unemployed or under-employed, their talents wasted. Shockingly frequent mental health problems as Deaf people struggle to live within a hostile social system. Deaf children in classrooms where they can’t understand the language of instruction. Police, prisons, banks, Inland Revenue – an endless list of institutions not bothering to make sure they are communicating effectively with British Sign Language users.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

In a publication some years ago (alluding to a comparison with the struggle for racial equality), I described this picture as ‘institutional audism’. These things don’t happen because individual non-signing hearing people want Deaf people to suffer. They happen because the social world we inhabit is designed to suit hearing people.

So how could things be changed? Today, the British Deaf Association launches a report www.bda.org.uk pressing to enhance the legal status of BSL (and, because it’s used in parts of the UK, Irish Sign Language). Drawing on extensive research, and sources including the range of international Deaf and hearing students on Heriot-Watt University’s programmes (eg www.eumasli.eu),  I’ve been a member of the task group assembling this discussion document over several months. What alternatives does it offer?

  • Portugal, Uganda and Venezuela have recognised their signed languages within their constitutions.
  • Pro-sign acts of parliament have been passed in Brazil, Poland and Slovakia.
  • Robust official recognition has reached Estonia, Iceland, Latvia and New Zealand.
  • Austria, Finland and Hungary exemplify best practice by meeting the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

And Westminster’s response? ‘We already have adequate legislation’.

Oh really? If you’ve got it covered, how come people wait for days in hospital before anyone thinks to book an interpreter? How come child after child is struggling to follow their lessons because no decent support staff can be found?

And how come no-one who knows the first thing about the linguistic richness and complexity of BSL gets to talk to parents before they’re expected to offer up their children – when they’re just a few months old – for expensive, invasive cochlear implant surgery (initiating years of speech training and neglect of their prime time to learn to sign)?

Why aren’t you ensuring that those children get to know Deaf adults who will inspire them with the confidence that a Deaf life is a good life?

It’s not as if BSL users have failed to tell you what you’re missing. We want the right to live secure, culturally Deaf lives, and to pass on this heritage to deaf children – even those born into hearing families. We want ‘equal access’ to mean what it says: nothing more, nothing less. And we want you to take seriously your obligations to us as citizens, always.

The National Union of the Deaf told you in the 1970s that your approach amounted to linguistic genocide. The BDA issued a manifesto in the 1980s, articulating the case for BSL as Britain’s fourth indigenous language. The Federation of Deaf People marched in protest through the UK’s major cities at the turn of the millennium. Here we come again. We’re not going quietly.

Why so frightened to learn from those who obviously understand best what it means to be Deaf?

Author: Graham Turner

New Competition: Sign the Anthem

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Today’s blog posting announces a competition being run by the Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS), this Department’s longest-established research centre. It’s a translation challenge, and it’s open to all. Let me explain.

In case you didn’t know, 2014 is a big year for Scotland.

Of course, there’s the small matter of a referendum on independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. There’s the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh will be hosting festival after festival, as it always does. No wonder it’s been designated a year of Homecoming.

We at Heriot-Watt are looking forward to a major step forward for Scotland’s users of British Sign Language (BSL). Because a Member of the Scottish Parliament, Mark Griffin, plans to introduce legislation in our Parliament advancing the cause of BSL nationwide.
We’re doing our bit, working with the Scottish Government’s BSL & Linguistic Access Working Group.

But here’s one thing we’d like to see that won’t need an Act of Parliament.
And we want your help right now to make this happen.

Scotland is rightly proud of its cultural heritage. One of the ways in which a community displays that pride is through national symbols: a flag – Scots wave the Saltire – national dress, an anthem, and so on.

But what do Deaf people do when the nation sings, when hearts fill with fierce emotion and passion?

Well, a great example has just been set in the USA. The biggest event in the American Football calendar, the Superbowl, took place on 2nd February 2014. Before the game, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ rang out around the stadium. And this year, sponsored () by PepsiCo, a young Deaf American actress, Amber Zion, delivered the anthem in eloquent, visually arresting American Sign Language.

And so here is our challenge to you. We think it’s time for a BSL performer to match Amber Zion’s awesome ASL delivery.

It could be you.

Scotland’s anthem on such occasions is ‘Flower of Scotland‘. (If you want to hear it at stadium volume, try this!)

We would like to see your translations of this great song. You can upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or elsewhere and post a link here. Or you can send them to the Director of CTISS, Professor Graham Turner. Or contact us to arrange an alternative. Either way, be sure to include details about yourself (particularly your age, whether you’re hearing or deaf, and how long you’ve been signing) and your e-mail address. A panel of Scottish BSL experts will select the best.

And, who knows? You might make history.

Author: Graham Turner

Machine Translation will not take your job, honest!

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It’s a common theme. In [5, 10, 20] years, machine translation (MT) will be so good that there will be no human translators left. And, indeed, there are some trends that make this idea look tempting. The move towards statistical machine translation has allowed machines to learn from the texts they are given, allowing them to process at higher levels and produce more convincing results. But this won’t mean that they will replace humans, let’s see why.

The first reason that human translators will still have is that human language is slippery. Even if you were to compile a massive database (or “corpus”, to give it its technical name) of all the language used everywhere on the internet today, it would be out of date within 24 hours.

Why? Because as humans we love to play with, subvert and even break our own linguistic rules. Even people who hate languages love to make up new words and repurpose old ones. The biggest corpus in the world can only tell you how people used language yesterday, not how they are using it today and definitely not how they will use it tomorrow.

The basis of Statistical machine translation is that the way language has been used on previous occasions is a good guide as to how it should be used this time. Hence why Google Translate famously translated “le président des Etats-Unis” [the president of the United States] as “George W. Bush” months after President Obama was elected. The logic behind this decision is that if “George W. Bush” was used in that space enough times, it must mean that that phrase can be used all the time – a mistake that no human good human translator would ever make!

Add to this the fact that meanings of words change (something that has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog) and things look much worse for MT. It gets worse though, since language is bound so tightly to culture, “literal” translations are often incredibly misleading.

Here is a really simple example. In English, we have a set number of phrases we use to sign off a formal letter. We might use “Yours sincerely” or “Yours faithfully” or maybe “Kind regards”. In French, formal letter sign-offs are much longer and one of them might literally be translated as “Waiting for your response, I ask you to accept, Sir, the expression of my distinguished salutations”.

Now, statistical machine translation experts will rightly tell you that a good, trained package would not translate this literally but would look for an English equivalent. The problem is that the English “equivalent” would be different for different contexts and would involve looking much wider than MT normally looks. The decision here is linked to the context of the letter (specifically whether or not you know the name of the person you are sending it to) and not to language considerations themselves.

There are lots of translation decisions that are context-based like this one and it is in these kinds of decisions that MT will always flail around helplessly. It is in these kinds of context-based decisions that good human translators will always triumph.

So where might the future lead? Well, just as human translators are becoming more specialised, so will MT engines. Research presented at the recent IPCITI conference showed that there are ways that MT and precisely, post-edited MT can work. Perhaps one area where MT will work is in specialised fields, which use consistent language. Another view is that human translators will be called upon to make more use of their knowledge of the world, which adds justification to universities like Heriot-Watt who train their students in areas like international organisations and research skills alongside their technical training in translation and interpreting.

The future is bright, but the future certainly isn’t Machine Translation taking over completely from humans.