ABSTRACTS

1st Nottingham PG conference on Translation Studies

Panel 1
Burcin Mustafa (School of Oriental and African Studies): The political manipulation of translation
and the use of translation to affect the political field: The role of translation in mediating the post
9/11 conflicts
Last years (May 20011) publication of a translation of an al-Qaeda communiqu confirming the death of bin
Laden is symbolic of the role the translation process has played in supporting the post 9/11 narratives such as
the war and terror and the clash of civilizations. Similarly, translations have been integral in building
justifications for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Furthermore, through the translation process
dominant media organizations have not only influenced the western discourse regarding these conflicts but
fundamentally the perception of the other cultures involved. However, the translations of key speeches given
by Arab leaders in the build-up to war have had a paradoxical effect; rather than challenging western
narratives as the originals did they have been used to support them. This suggests, in the realm of mediating
conflicts, the translation process is also affected by political pressures and can be used to further legitimize and
propagate state sanctioned narratives by changing the political orientation of the target text.

Therefore,

considering the ramifications of this notion my research sets out two answer two fundamental questions: to
what degree is translation manipulated by political factors and how is translation used to affect the wider social
and political field? In this regard my main working hypothesis is that translation can function similar to other
mediums of representation such as film, theatre and literature and thus can be employed as an apparatus of
statecraft to further political objectives. This research will include a development of narrative theory to
illuminate the indirect manner political entities influence mediums of representation, including translation. Also
my research will draw from international relations theory to develop a model that can not only account for the
states interaction with translation but also how translation is used by political entities in the periphery.
Wang Jun (University of Edinburgh): Censoring of language in the authorized Chinese version of
Brokeback Mountain published in Mainland China
"Brokeback Mountain" is a homosexual-themed short story written by American writer Annie Proulx. Due to the
fact that the short story deals with homosexual love which is still a sensitive topic in the Mainland China, the
publication of the authorized Chinese version of "Brokeback Mountain" that is put forward by People's
Literature Publishing House -- the official literary publisher in the Mainland China -- has been caught in a delay.
Also, compared with the original text, the (homo)sexual elements in the official translation have been diluted. I
think both the process of the official translation of "Brokeback Mountain" getting published and the
homosexuality-soften orientation reflected in the authorized translated version in the Mainland China have in a
sense demonstrated the effect of "censoring of language" (Allan & Burridge, 2006: 24, the notion of the
censoring of language encompasses censorship and self-censorship) on translating a gay story.
In the research, I try to detail the influence of censoring of language on the authorized Chinese version of
"Brokeback Mountain" from three perspectives: translating camp talk, translating sexual references and the
impact of the publisher. When discussing camp talk, I have focused on the homosexual identities mirrored in
camp and aimed to analyze how self-censorship may influence the transmission of homosexual identities to the
target culture in the translation. When discussing sexual references, I have paid attention to how moral and
ethical criteria developed in the traditional Chinese culture may intervene in translator's specific strategies of
dealing with sexual references, which may accordingly lead to self-censorship. When discussing the impact of
the publisher, I have looked at the winding process of the official Chinese version of Brokeback Mountain
being published and tried to explore publishers gay-homophobic attitudes mirrored in the censored version.

Kyung Hye Kim (University of Manchester): Discourse shifts in translation: News discourses about
North Korea
This paper examines American news stories about North Korea published in mainstream news media between
1998 and 2010 and the texts chosen for translation into Korean, in order to identify specific ways in which
North Korea is constructed in the US media and to examine the discourse shifts in translation which begin with
the selection of texts to be translated. The English corpus (69,000,175 tokens) consists of all texts featuring in
Newsweek, CNN International, and The New York Times that include the words North Korea and were
published during the period 1998 to 2010, regardless of their topics, i.e. the texts are not limited to political
reports but also incorporate sports reports, editorials and letters from readers. The English ST corpus (366,862
tokens) consists of texts originally produced in English between 1998 and 2010 for Newsweek International
and between 2008 and 2010 for CNN International that have been translated into Korean.
Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus techniques in order to analyse news media articles and their
translations, this study analyses the collocational profiles of the English corpus and of the English Source Text
(ST) corpus, with a view to identifying the extent to which the patterns identified through the analysis of the
English ST corpus overlap with or deviate from those identified in the analysis of the English corpus, as a
prelude to discussing potential shifts in the Korean translations and their significance. The main point to note
here is that the analysis of the English ST corpus is part of the analysis of the Korean Target Texts (TT) corpus,
and is not intended to compare the English ST corpus with the English corpus as an end in itself.
The analysis of the collocate lists of the English corpus reveals that North Korea and Iran are closely associated
in the reporting of three US news outlets, and that the US media divide the world into certain sets of countries
based on their political leanings towards the US. The analysis of the collocate list of the English ST corpus,
however, reveals the countries having more direct relationships with North Korea, such as China and South
Korea, are either moved higher on the collocate list, whilst other countries that have less relationships with
North Korea, including Iran and Libya, are moved lower down the list. The countries having unfavourable
relationships with the US, but have no direct link with North Korea, such as Cuba and Syria, position higher on
the collocate list of North Korea of the English corpus; however, they do not appear on the collocate list of the
English ST corpus. The differences between the English ST corpus and the English corpus reflect what Korean
media institutions, in this case Newsweek Hangukpan and CNN Hangeul News, value most; and it is hoped that
this study will enhance our understanding of some of the ways in which particular media discourses are
constructed, disseminated and mediated via translation.
Marcella Frisani (EHESS Paris): Translation as a tool of French cultural diplomacy in the UK: A
sociological approach
My thesis aims to investigate the social conditions under which French and Francophone intellectual production
circulates in the UK, by focusing on the role played by translation as a tool of cultural diplomacy.
Drawing from Pierre Bourdieus concept of field and by using the methods of a sociology of translation, as
developed by some of Bourdieus scholars (Sapiro, 2008, 2010; Johann Heilbron, 2010, 2011), I attempt to
show how such an approach helps to outline the structure of the different fields in which translation is
embedded (economic, cultural and political), by focusing on the role played by mediators.
Moreover the purpose of my investigation is to intervene in the debate concerning the territorial boundaries on
which the global book market is built, by showing how nation-states contribute to create an economy of
symbolic goods, how they take part in their circulation and how they are value-producers for books.

Based on empirical material, collected through 50 in-depth semi-directive interviews, conducted in France and
in the U.K. between 2010 and 2012, my paper will analyze the current practices of the main agents involved in
this transfer, i.e.:

the cultural services within the French Embassy in London;

the U.K. publishers;

the translators;

the foreign rights departments within French publishing houses and / or the literary agents;

the Arts Council England and its action in the field of literature in translation;

literary editors in chief of the main U.K. newspapers

Panel 2
Birgit Friedrich (University of Nottingham): The unfaithful original and its faithful translation:
Unter Schnee (2001) and Snowed Under (2007)
An original can be unfaithful to a translation (in: Kristal, 2002, p.1). Borges inversion of the two terms
deconstructs through its paradox the pre-established and hierarchical relationships between the original and
its reproduction in that it challenges preconceived notions of equivalence, as a search for sameness of signs,
structures and meanings.
Based on this premises of deconstruction my thesis has two main objectives. Firstly, it will take up the notion
of unfaithfulness to demonstrate the theoretical and analytical potential of deconstruction with reference to the
German post-Unification novel Unter Schnee (2001) by Antje Ravic Strubel, and secondly, it will investigate the
relation to the translation Snowed Under (2007) by Zaia Alexander in the light of Venutis theory of
foreignization and feminist translation theory.
Strubel is of particular interest in this context of translation because like Venuti her novel is based on the
premises that dominant languages construct dominant discourses and use foreignizing as a strategic
construction (Venuti, 2008, p.15) to disrupt cultural norms prevailing at the time of writing/translating within
the source culture or target culture.
The main intention of this analysis is to demonstrate that one of the difficulties of translating this particular
example of GDR-related fiction derives from the inner German foreignness constructed in the German source
text as the result of the deconstruction of gendered identities i.e. femininity and masculinity causing a level of
double foreignness within the translation.
Raja AlGhamdi (University of Leeds): Outlining modern translation theories: The nature of
translation and the role of the translator
In this talk I will, in general, explore eminent translation theories in defining the nature of translation and the
role of the translator. In particular, I will examine, on the one hand, similarities and differences between
translation schools in approaching the notion of meaning, ambiguity, text function and audience. On the other
hand, I will explore theorists' identification of the translator's job and intervention when dealing with texts.
Examples from both Arabic and English Languages will be provided.
Renata Seredynska-Abou Eid (University of Nottingham): A cultural translation questionnaire:
Measuring cultural translation among Polish migrants in the UK
Cultural Translation refers to a range of issues that occur in relation to migration. Translating culture is not
necessarily equal to linguistic translation where a particular meaning must be expressed in the target

language, though it includes language as its component. Migrants are often referred to as translated people as
they need to balance between their native culture and the culture(s) of the receiving country. Multiculturalism
does not entirely apply to cultural translation as the latter is a kind of a hybrid state where individuals must be
able to understand and translate both/all cultures.

This work-in-progress presentation/paper refers to the issue of cultural translation among Polish migrants in
the United Kingdom (UK). A sample of a recently designed questionnaire will be presented. The focus point of
the questionnaire is the translation of the Polish culture into the British lives of Polish migrants and the
interpretation of the British culture(s) by newcomers who until 2004 had a different migration status.
The mutual influence of the English and Polish languages is part of the analysis. Since 1990, English is taught
in schools across Poland. Previously, the language was taught in just a few schools and on private language
courses; however, the youngest Polish generations should be relatively fluent in English and should have a
better grasp of the British culture than older generations. Therefore, the language is an important, but not the
only element of the analysis of cultural translation among Polish migrants in the UK.
Jennifer Arnold (University of Birmingham): Translating national identity: The translation and
reception of Catalan literature in English
My PhD thesis examines the representation and reception of Catalan national identity through literary
translation into English. The main focus of my project is on reception and how this is constructed at all stages
of the translation process, from the choices of texts to be translated to the way in which a reader reads and
interprets the text. My approach is threefold; I firstly give an overview of the Catalan case as a particularly
clear example of how national institutions can use translation as a way of promoting a certain conceptualisation
of national identity. Secondly I choose a text representative of this identity and examine the way in which such
issues as identity, language and culture have been dealt with within the translation process, looking at these
both at a textual and para-textual level. Thirdly, drawing on theories from classical reception studies, readerresponse theory, sociological approaches to reading and sociological approaches to translation, I analyse the
way in which the text is received, firstly at an critical and academic level and then at a commercial level and
then at the level of the individual readers themselves. This paper will present an overview of the aims and
objectives of my thesis and describe the methodology I am using to carry out my research.

Panel 3
Fatima

Ibraheem

(Durham

University):

Critical

analysis

of

translation's

insufficiency

as

demonstrated in Rislat al-Huqq

My MA dissertation revolves around an analytical study of translations done on a classical Arabic text entitled
Rislat al- uqq. The ST is comprised of public and private rights about what constitutes a just society,
translated as the Doctrine/Charter of Rights or, sometimes, the Treatise on Rights. Authored fourteen centuries
ago by Prophet Mo ammads direct second grandson during the Abbasid era, the text is universal,
transcending geographic space and specific timeframe, holding humanitarian values that are not restricted to a
specific culture. Like a diamond, it embraces several facades, be it social, legal, philosophical, religious or
merely aesthetic, each reflecting a different sunray at the same time; however, when the text is translated into
English, the text appears to be no more than a single sheet of glass only reflecting one angle. Therefore, I
question the translators role after I lay the responsibility on the human factor for producing optimal
translations (House 1996), whose flaw lies within his/her ignorance about the nature of such multifaceted
text. My research will closely study the level in which the word has been transferred i.e. denotation vs.
connotation, and the consequences incurred when they are not given equal consideration. By using theories

that conceptualise authors minimal degree of significance, such as Venutis translators invisibility, Roland
Barthes death of the author along with Michel Foucaults what is an author, I pinpoint my hypothesis: that
the original author not translator - should be more verbose in the translatum, as he is the only entity that
can adequately transfer the currency and weight of the universal words from which life has been consequently
lost throughout the translation process, retrieving latent value of the original text. After posing the problem
forwards, alternatives are offered based on a solid criterion wherein the very description of translation becomes
the determinant.
Elizabeth Goodwin-Andersson (University of Edinburgh): One translation fits all? A comparison of
British, American and Mid-Atlantic translations of Scandinavian childrens literature
In her 2010 book on the role of translators in childrens literature, Gillian Lathey presents evidence regarding
the divergence of practice between translations produced in the UK and US (Lathey 2010: 143). From these
findings, Lathey suggests a possible trend in which US translations are closer to source texts and where UK
translations are usually more domesticated (ibid.). Yet sometimes an English translation is the same text for
both nations, a so-called mid-Atlantic translation. Such translations are initiated by one nation and sold to the
other thus creating a single translation which strives for simultaneous transatlantic success across a dual
readership. This paper will present initial findings on an attempt to uncover the frequency of texts translated
for both nations and also the occurrence of the mid-Atlantic translation within the context of Scandinavian
childrens literature. The findings focus on Scandinavian childrens literature because of its proven perennial
contribution to the genre of childrens literature and its exceptional success in translation. Furthermore,
childrens literature itself presents its own unique challenges in translation. According to Katharina Reiss there
are three important criteria to consider in the translation of childrens literature which may lead to deviation
from the source text: "(1) children's imperfect linguistic competence, (2) the avoidance of breaking taboos
which educationally minded adults might want to uphold, (3) the limited world knowledge of young readers."
(Reiss in Tabbert, 2002: 314). Reinbert Tabbert adds a fourth dimension to this: that of the publishers
commercial interest (ibid.). Through a series of case studies 1 , my research will compare the application of
these four criteria in UK and US translations, and in mid-Atlantic translations. To what extent are these four
criteria considered in translations done for both countries, and how do these compare? If the application of the
criteria does differ between the UK and the US what then are the implications for single mid-Atlantic
translations? Ultimately my research aims to ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of publishing
bespoke translations for Anglophone countries over the streamlined compromise of a mid-Atlantic translation.
Ali Tarbosh (University of Sheffield): Translating taboo: challenges to translate transsexual, gay
and lesbian genders into Arabic language
This study is very important because it is new and touching an area that has not been explored before. To the
best of my knowledge, there are no studies that have been dedicated to the translatability of transsexual, gay
and lesbian genders from English into Arabic. Discussing issues related to the translatability of those genders
will be helpful to both those interested in studying language and gender in general, and those involved in the
translation arena in particular. Finally, I think it would contribute heavily to the body of knowledge in the field
of translation and to solve the problems of representing transsexual, gay and lesbian genders into Arabic. The
purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which transsexual, gay and lesbian genders through the
translation into Arabic. It aims to investigate what challenges translators face when rendering aspects of
Michael Luongos Gay travels in the Muslim world and its use of genders into Arabic. Moreover, it ascertains
that the difficulty in translating those genders into Arabic because they are treated as taboos. The linguistics,
social, religious and cultural meanings for the term taboo has been comprehensively defined. This topic is just

The authors covered in the case studies will be Astrid Lindgren, Jostein Gaarder, Sven Nordqvist and Henning Mankell.

one chapter of my dissertation which is still under investigation and research. The conclusions are not clear
yet, however, the researcher aims to investigate proper translation strategies to translate taboos in Arabic.

Panel 4
Xiaofei Sun (University of Nottingham): A domesticating translation tradition in China
Situated at the crossroads of translation, cultural and marketing studies, the PhD project aims to investigate
the legitimacy of the use of non-localized source language in commercial webpages. Non-localisation
(henceforth NL) can extend Venutis framework to justify the call for objective introduction of cultural
differences into China which is less hegemonic compared with Anglo-American cultures. Venuti examined key
historical translations into English and found that they were generally domesticating, resulting in a preference
for fluent translation.
Regarded as a foreignizing translation strategy, the project aims to fit NL into Venutis framework to achieve
culture objectives. Thus, it is important to identify the domesticating trend of Chinese translation tradition.
Moreover, to what extent the source culture had been domesticated should also be examined.
This paper, functioned as a early contextual chapter in the PhD thesis, originally evaluates most key
translations, translation theorists and their views on translation throughout the 2000-year translation history in
China. Four major periods are included. In each period, translation and its historical background are evaluated
from a domestication/foreignization perspective. Different trends in each period and their relevance to
protective norms or culture openness are analysed. Specifically, it looks at the domesticating trend in modern
and contemporary China in which the discourse of cultural protectionism and stereotypical views on foreign
cultures is reinforced.
Jiali Luo (University of Sheffield): Manga Translation Strategies Oriented by Fan Community
Subculture
Manga, which refers to Japanese comic strip, has been translated into different languages with the emergence
of mass media and globalisation of Japanese A-C-G (animation-comic-game) culture. As a new media form
with promising market and specific audience, manga has been studied by researchers in comic translation
studies and audiovisual translation studies. The strategies such as adaptation and localisation are the
traditional and updating focus of manga translation studies. However, as the industry of manga develops with
new technologies such as online sharing platform and image processing software, manga fan subculture plays
more important role in manga translation and changes the traditional strategies, which have been adopted by
professional manga translators for printed manga in 1980s-90s. My MA dissertation aims to investigate three
research questions:
-

Difference between Current and Traditional Manga Translation Strategies

Current Translation Strategies Adopted by Manga Fan Translators

Role of Manga Fan Subculture in Orienting Translation Practices

Qualitative research is the main methodology adopted in my dissertation. Assumptions would be provided as
research questions and examples of English/Chinese transaltions of Japanese manga would be analysed as
data to justify the assumptions generated in research questions. Different pairs of source texts selected from
different manga would be provided to argue for the hypothesis that fan translators, compared to professional
translators, would not only focus on authorship or readership but also involve their own interpretation of the

source text and understanding of the target market. More recent versions of translated manga would be given
as examples to show how current translation strategies adopted by fan translators differ from those proposed
by

scholars

based

on

translation

theories

such

as skopos

theory and

domestication/foreignisation. Also, examples would be selected from different genres of manga to argue the
hypothesis that amateur fan translators would be easily affected by their own interests in one or two genres of
manga when they are dealing with a genre which they are not interested in at all. Amateur fan translators
choices of strategies in manga translation practices would be the point to investigate for the discussion of the
role that fan subculture plays in manga translation.
According to my preliminary results, although qualitative researches can fill the gap suggested by O'Hagan
(2008) that a larger scale study of fan translation samples are needed to provide more generalized results that
may gain insight into translation approaches adopted by fans, the limitation of my research is the absence of
quantatative researches such as surveys or interviews to fan translators or fan readers of manga, which is not
included in my MA dissertation.
Frances McGonigle (University of Surrey): Semiotics and visual impairment: Approaches to film
signs in audio description
This research explores the transference of the technical and stylistic elements of mainstream films into audio
description (AD) for visually-impaired audiences, looking specifically at the semiotics of film and the
intersemiotic translation of signs. Traditionally, the AD of film has been a means of filling in the gaps between
character dialogue and sounds to provide visually-impaired audiences with a coherent story that makes sense
in the context of what can be heard. However, films are semiotic systems, communicating to audiences via a
matrix of visual and auditory signs, so while current practice in AD may respond to the legal requirement of
access for all, the means of access may not be equivalent to that of sighted viewers if signs are excluded or
inadequately transferred. This presentation will be based on three sources of data, which are being used to
explore the benefit of incorporating signs in film AD: the early indications of a qualitative study analysing AD
and film content; the experimental testing of alternative forms of film AD; and data from a semi-structured
interview with informants. The findings of each dimension of the analysis will be presented and discussed.

Panel 5
Wan Hu (University of Nottingham): The integration of academic and vocational approaches in
translation and interpreting teaching between Mandarin and English courses: Syllabi and
suggestions for improvement
As translation and interpreting becomes more frequent, important and necessary in international business,
journalism, science, and technology and as the demand for high quality translators and interpreters grows, it is
the most appropriate time for translation educators to develop a sound approach to translation and interpreting
(T&I, hereafter) training programmes. In other words, T&I teaching needs to be upgraded in response to the
constantly changing market needs.
Numerous literatures discuss the relationship between professional and academic T&I training. Many approve
that T&I training in Higher Educational (HE, hereafter) institutions should reflect market needs. However, the
empirical data is still largely unexplored in this area, especially lacking in the correlation of professional criteria
and academic syllabi. Thus, my research attempts to fill this gap, which will investigate the possibility of
integrating academic and vocational approaches in syllabi to T&I education.
This presentation aims to examine the whether the syllabi in HE institutions in the contexts of China and the
UK are responsive to the needs of the market, with the hope that it can offer suggestions for improvement on
the optimisation of T&I programmes between Mandarin and English Courses, and among other language pairs

in the future. Three parts of the presentation are addressed. First, the presenter calibrates the T&I syllabi from
eight sample universities in both contexts-four of each, and compares the syllabi and learning outcomes of all
the programmes with current vocational criteria for translators and interpreters. The lack of correlation
between professional standards and academic syllabi is the major limitation for the T&I programmes in both
contexts. Second, suggestions are discussed for innovative syllabus design in professionalism, cultural
competence, subject area competence, T&I related skills and translating into foreign languages. Finally,
reflections on preparation of teaching materials and classroom activities are illustrated from the perspective of
authentic teaching materials and real-life activities in the classroom in T&I training process.
Quique Cerezo Herrero (Universitat de Valncia) : The teaching of foreign languages for translation
trainees in Spain
Translation studies constitute a relatively new discipline in the Spanish university system. This late entry,
however, is not in keeping with the vast number of investigations that try to decipher their nature. However,
most of these investigations generally focus on technical aspects relative to different translation areas such as
legal or scientific translation, and there seems to be a bibliographic void when it comes to the teaching of
foreign languages within the framework of these studies, an aspect which, to date, neither the research into
the didactics of foreign languages nor the translation theories have tackled.
On the one hand, language and translation have been fighting a longstanding battle for quite a long time now.
The Grammar-Translation Method has undoubtedly been the methodology that reigned over all the others until
the 80s. Nevertheless, the introduction of new and more communicative language teaching methodologies
seems to have broken the bond between language and translation. New methodologies are based on the
conviction that students learn, or acquire, languages best if the teaching adjusts to the way in which a child
acquires its mother tongue. This tenet implies that coordinate bilingualism, that is, a person whose linguistic
systems are interwoven, is the ideal option. Notwithstanding this, research shows that coordinate bilinguals are
not always the best translators, as language interference is commonplace. Therefore, foreign languages should
be taught taking into consideration that languages live together in translators minds and that compound
bilingualism is usually preferred. Translation departments seem to be aware of the need to implement a
methodology that caters to the students needs. Proof of this can be found in the name that language subjects
are given in the new curriculum of various Spanish universities.
On the other hand, there seems to be a cooperation problem, too. In most cases, Philology departments
assume the teaching of languages. Most of the lectures are not acquainted with the requirements that the
modern translation market imposes on translators and, as a result, adhere to general language programs
which do not aim to find a solution to the very specific linguistic needs that translation students have. If
students are to translate legal documents, they need to be familiar with legal terminology both in their mother
and foreign language. Few foreign language teaching books contain units devoted to specialized fields, and
when they do, these are usually touched upon briefly. When Translation departments assume the teaching of
languages, other problems arise. Lectures usually have a background in Translation and, despite having a
thorough knowledge of the students needs, they are just language users, and that does not necessarily imply
the ability to give an explanation to every nuance of the linguistic system. The teaching of languages should,
therefore, be shared by both groups through a cooperation principle.
Research into language teaching for translation purposes is an area in urgent need of research. Only a few
publications account for the ever-increasing importance of these subjects in the translation curriculum; hence,
the necessity to redirect the efforts to develop the specific linguistic and cultural skills of these prospective
professionals.
Meini Demasi (University of Leicester): Use of cohesive devices in Finnish to English L2
translations

The aim of my research is to look at L2 translation, or translation into a non-mother tongue, and specifically at how
native Finnish-speaker translators use certain cohesive devices when translating three different non-literary text
types. The starting point and an important aim for this study stems from practical translation work. Generally,
English and Finnish use different means to indicate the logical structure of the text, with Finnish usually favouring
less explicit and less frequent cohesive devices, while English typically requires clearer and more frequent indications.
This means that it is often very difficult to render the logical structure and progress of thought of the Finnish source
text fluently and naturally in the English translation, and thus both native and non-native revisers and editors
constantly have to make many corrections and comment on this aspect. Therefore it is very useful to define and
analyse the issue more in depth and start to develop practical aids for real translation work, in order to help the
translators keep this aspect in mind when translating and to avoid observed pitfalls, thus reducing the corrections in
the editing phase. Moreover, this information and awareness of these issues could also be of benefit in translator
training.

Panel 6
Lorenzo Mastropierro (University of Nottingham): Corpus stylistics and translation studies: The
representation of African natives in Conrads Heart of Darkness and in its Italian translations
This paper reports on findings that are part of a larger study which seeks to explore the possible crossroads
between Corpus Stylistics and Translation Studies. This interdisciplinary field has only recently started to be
explored, as demonstrated by the scarceness of relevant studies (Oakes & Ji, forthcoming). Adopting a corpus
stylistic approach, this paper aims to show how dominant and/or very influential interpretations of an author
influence the translation of his/her works and, consequently, his/her reception in a foreign context. In
particular, the present analysis deals with the relationship between Conrads Heart of Darkness (1902) and two
1990s Italian translations, focusing on the potential manipulative effects resulting from Achebe's (1975)
accusation of racism to Conrad and Heart of Darkness. Being a question almost totally ignored by early
criticism (for instance Curle, 1914; Waugh, 1919), racism-related issues in Conrad have been regarded as a
central topic in the interpretation of Heart of Darkness since Achebes lecture. This interpretation has
substantially influenced the way in which Conrad has been read since (North, 1994; Said, 1994). In Italy, the
reception of the novel has been almost totally mediated through its translations. The Italian translators could
have been influenced, consciously or not, by this new turning point in the reading of the short novel,
consequently manipulating the reception of the author in the Italian literary system (Even-Zohar, 1990). Thus,
starting from Achebes lecture on Heart of Darkness, this study adopts a corpus-based methodology to
investigate how African people are represented in the novel. Informed by Baker and Gabrielatos investigation
on discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press (Baker & Gabrielatos, 2008), this
analysis begins by looking at words with potentially racist connotation (i.e. nigger, negro, black, savage,
brute), proving their statistical significance and exploring their semantic prosody. Then, these data are used as
a starting point to examine how these lexical items have been dealt with by the Italian translators to
investigate whether a racist semantic prosody has been maintained or not.
Performing both quantitative and qualitative analyses that take into consideration word frequencies, keywords,
collocations and semantic prosodies, this paper tries to provide textual evidence of the hypothesis according to
which Achebes reading of Heart of Darkness affected, directly or not, these two Italian translations of the
novel. Generally speaking, this study on the one hand intends to show the advantages of adopting a corpusassisted approach to the analysis of literary texts and their translations; on the other hand, it seeks to provide
relatively objective, empirical evidence of the assumption that translation is always a manipulation of the
source text (Lefevere, 1992).

Marco Brunello (University of Leeds): Genre and domain dependency in corpora for machine
translation: An exploratory study
In the last few decades the advances in Natural Language Processing led to a massive use of corpora in many
areas of the language studies. Talking about translation studies, the exploitation of parallel corpora for machine
translation became common practice in this field as well. This is true especially when talking about corpusbased paradigms, in particular Statistical Machine Translation (Brown et al., 1993).
However, although monolingual corpora are widely studied under the point of view of their composition (in
order to understand the text varieties of the documents contained in them, especially with regards to web
corpora, see Mehler, Sharoff, & Santini, (2010)), very few attention has been put in this direction when dealing
with parallel corpora. This is probably due to the fact that parallel corpora are not available in large quantity
and variety such as their monolingual counterparts, in a way that this situation led the researchers in this field
to rather study ways to maximise the use of the available resources - above all the well-known Europarl
(Koehn, 2005) - when dealing with different translation necessities (e.g. training data not matching the text
variety of to-be-translated data), like domain adaptation (Daum III & Jagarlamudi, 2011). However, it is our
opinion that having a clear knowledge of the kind of documents that compose a corpus under the point of view
of their genre and/or domain can be still very useful, e.g. for the selection of subsets to be used as
implementation for training data in specific machine translation tasks or as translation memories for fuzzy
matches in computer-assisted translation. This possibilities are explored analysing existing and web-crawled
parallel corpora, giving also examples of how several strategies to mine the web for parallel data could be used
in specific SMT situations.
Jinsil Choi (University of Leicester): A corpus-based genre analysis of institutional translation in
Korea
The aim of this study is to investigate the translation process of three government institutions in Korea, to
identify linguistic and generic characteristics found in the translation products of the institutions, and to
analyse frequent changes made during the translations. Amongst various Korean government institutions,
translating practices are most actively performed in the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Office of the President. The translating environment or circumstances of the
institutions are quite unique compared to other genres of translations such as novels, in that initiators or
distributors of the target texts are the institutions that also initiate productions of the source texts. The data of
this study are selectively chosen in accordance with four criteria, (i) the translation direction from Korean into
English, (ii) regularity of delivery of the speech type, (iii) public accessibility to both source texts and target
texts, and (iv) representativeness. Data that fulfil these criteria include: the web-magazine of the National
Museum of Contemporary Art, press briefings by the spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the annual speeches made by the Korean president. This paper
shows that the methodology of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies can be used effectively to reveal genre
characteristics and changes made in translations in a combination of a quantitative with a qualitative analysis.
The quantitative analysis is based on a personally compiled corpus (a parallel corpus of the originals and their
translations) and the Wordsmith Tools 6 concordancing programme. It shows that the translation processes of
the three institutions vary and not all of them publicise their translation processes. The translations of the webmagazine of the National Museum of Contemporary Art are outsourced to translation agencies while the
translations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are generally done by in-house translators and pass
through several stages of editing by subject experts. It is also found that not all of the texts available in
Korean are translated into English. The case study of the presidential speeches shows that frequent changes
made in the translations of each genre are distinguishable and this characterises the translation of that genre.

Panel 7
Jill Bates (University of Nottingham): Translating Othello under Stalin: The case of Anna Radlova
This paper will examine the translation of Othello by Anna Radlova, one of the first translators to undertake
working on Shakespeare in the Stalinist period. Othello was the most performed of Shakespeares plays during
this time, popular with both audiences and the authorities.
For Radlova, the translator was first and foremost a communicator, a mouthpiece through which the greats of
foreign literature and drama could speak to the Soviet people. She argued the need for new Russian-language
versions of Shakespeare, which could be truly understood and appreciated by Soviet audiences.
Setting Radlovas work in the context of the history of Shakespeare in Russia, the paper will demonstrate the
different tactics that Radlova employed to produce this newly accessible Soviet Shakespeare, as well as
discussing the aspects of translation theory which can be used to analyse the choices of a translator working
under Stalins increasingly oppressive regime.
Katie McAllister (University of Manchester): Drama translation as renarration
The capacity of drama to bring about social and political change - long-recognised within theatre and
performance studies - remains relatively unexplored within translation studies, in spite of the fact that many
productions and performances are in part enabled by translation, and in spite of the fact that critical attention
to translation activism has increased significantly within the field in recent years. Narrative theory has been
employed effectively in work exploring political commitment and activism either constituted or facilitated by
translation, but the majority of this work is primarily concerned with non-literary texts and as yet there has
been no study which applies the theory to drama.
In an attempt to both expand the use of narrative theory to data which may be deemed literary and to explore
further the many forms that translation activism may take, this research entails a narrative enquiry into
translations between Spanish and English of dramatic texts that seek to inspire action, that advocate a clear
political position or that acquire one through translation, and the narrative context of their production. Analysis
of the data aims to assess the capacity of ontological narrativity to illuminate activism in the form of translated
dramatic text and performance.
The production of drama is both a collaborative process and an immediate form of art that is crucially defined
by performance as well as text. Narrative enquiry into this medium permits an integration of text analysis with
an equally important analysis of how these texts express and relate to the much broader process of theatrical
production and performance, and in turn how cultural production exists within the complex interrelationship of
the public narratives to which we subscribe, contribute and which we may resist.
Although a distinction between social and literary narrative theory is often referred to in the literature, the
theoretical framework developed here aims for a synthesis of the two with the intention of interrogating the
dichotomy between the political and the aesthetic.

Special Performance
Heather Connelly, (Loughborough University): This is me: Speaking through the Voice of Another
VII
I would like to present a sound work in progress, which explores subjectivity and performativity in translation.
The piece uses the spoken word and consists of five audio tracks (played via a surround sound system) and
myself performing live. It comprises of various translations and back translations of the phrase this is me and
includes many different voices and languages and thereby exemplifies the polyvocal nature of translation. I

have gathered these translations and voices over the past month in person and via skype from multilingual
speakers and translators, at international conferences, language cafes and through internet discussions. The
audio tracks have been mixed, structured, layered and repeated to create a polyphonic audio sound piece,
which oscillates between sense and nonsense, where the linguistic and sonic qualities of language merge
together.
The phrase This is me has become central to my PhD research (which explores How art practice be used to
provoke new ways of thinking about the transformations and transitions that happen in linguistic
translation?) because it employs particular linguistic devices that become problematic in translation and
amplify the shifts that happen in the process. Thereby exemplifying the unstable nature of cultural
communication. This uncertainty has often been considered as negative, something that needs to be overcome,
however I propose that this fuzziness should be embraced as a positive attribute and can be used as a
creative and reflexive tool, which provokes questions in and of the source language as much as the target
language and thus has the ability to provoke new ways of thinking.