Machine-assisted translation of literary text

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Toral ◽  
Andy Way
Keyword(s):  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Time To Build ◽  
Technical Translation ◽  
Statistical Mt ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

Contrary to perceived wisdom, we explore the role of machine translation (MT) in assisting with the translation of literary texts, considering both its limitations and its potential. Our motivations to explore this subject are twofold, arising from: (1) recent research advances in MT, and (2) the recent emergence of the ebook, which together allow us for the first time to build literature-specific MT systems by training statistical MT models on novels and their professional translations. A key challenge in literary translation is that one needs to preserve not only the meaning (as in other domains such as technical translation) but also the reading experience, so a literary translator needs to carefully select from the possible translation options. We explore the role of translation options in literary translation, especially in the context of the relatedness of the languages involved. We take Camus’ L’Étranger in the original French language and provide qualitative and quantitative analyses for its translations into English (a less-related language) and Italian (more closely related). Unsurprisingly, the MT output for Italian seems more straightforward to be post-edited. We also show that the performance of MT has improved over the last two years for this particular book, and that the applicability of MT does not only depend on the text to be translated but also on the type of translation that we are trying to produce. We then translate a novel from Spanish-to-Catalan with a literature-specific MT system. We assess the potential of this approach by discussing the translation quality of several representative passages.

Moving music for moving source texts

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Naranjo Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Creative Behaviour ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Sad Music ◽  
Positive Effect

Abstract Based on previous findings about the role of music as an emotional stimulus, as well as the potential benefits of music-driven emotional engagement in written production and creative behaviour, the present study investigates the impact of emotional background music on translation quality and creativity. A translation experiment in two different conditions (music vs. silence) was conducted in a controlled environment. Participants translated two literary texts of opposing emotional contents (happy vs. sad) while they listened to an emotionally-matching soundtrack. Statistical analysis of within- and between-group comparisons only revealed conclusive results for the sad condition, showing a positive effect of sad music on translation creativity and a negative effect on accuracy.

Can music inspire translators?

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Naranjo
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Beneficial Effect ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Emotional Involvement ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Narrative Engagement ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Emotional Level

Abstract This article examines the role of musically-triggered narrative engagement in translation performance. An experimental study was conducted to investigate the potential of music to induce narrative engagement (NE), based on findings that suggest the influence of NE-relevant dimensions such as visualization and emotional involvement in translation. Participants translated two literary texts with opposing emotional content (happy and sad) in two different sound conditions (with and without music). Three hypotheses were formulated predicting a beneficial effect of music for narrative engagement as well as positive correlations between narrative engagement and translation quality and creativity. Results suggest an increase of visualization in the music condition and a correlation between visualization levels and accuracy scores. Retrospective questionnaires indicate a positive appraisal of the experience of translating with music at both the cognitive and emotional level, although further investigations is needed to validate the scale and confirm its reliability.

scholarly journals Transcultural memory and literary translation: Mapping the Field (with a case study on Lydie Salvayre’s Pas pleurer and its Spanish translation)

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802098876
Author(s):  
Claudia Jünke
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Spanish Translation ◽  
Literary Memory ◽  
State Of Research

The purpose of this article is to map the role of translation in literary and cultural memory studies and of memory dynamics in transcultural contexts. “Translation” is understood both as interlingual translation, that is the rephrasing of a literary text in another language, and in a broader and more metaphorical sense as transfer, transmission and relocation across different kinds of spatial and temporal borders. The first part gives an overview of the state of research, presents basic theoretical and conceptual reflections regarding the intersections of literary memory and translation, and proposes a general framework for analyses of literary texts and their translation that want to elucidate the role of translation for transcultural memory circulation. The second part is dedicated to a particular case study: the translational aspects of the literary memory of the Spanish Civil War, the anarchist revolution and exile in Lydie Salvayre’s novel Pas pleurer and the role of Javier Albiñana’s Spanish translation No llorar as a medium of transcultural memory.

Gender, Technology and the New Woman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wånggren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Woman ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Grant Allen

This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the fin de siècle cultural archetype of early feminism, became the focal figure for key nineteenth-century debates concerning issues such as gender and sexuality, evolution and degeneration, science, empire and modernity. While the New Woman is located in the debates concerning the ‘crisis in gender’ or ‘sexual anarchy’ of the time, the period also saw an upsurge of new technologies of communication, transport and medicine. This book explores the interlinking of gender and technology in writings by overlooked authors such as Grant Allen, Tom Gallon, H. G. Wells, Margaret Todd and Mathias McDonnell Bodkin. As the book demonstrates, literature of the time is inevitably caught up in a technological modernity: technologies such as the typewriter, the bicycle, and medical technologies, through literary texts come to work as freedom machines, as harbingers of female emancipation.

TRANSLATION AS MENTAL INTERPRETATION ACTIVITY IN LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (28) ◽  
pp. 43-53
Author(s):  
Svitlana Gruschko
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Cross Language

In the article the phenomenon of translation is regarded as mental interpretation activity not only in linguistics, but also in literary criticism. The literary work and its translation are most vivid guides to mental and cultural life of people, an example of intercultural communication. An adequate perception of non-native culture depends on communicators’ general fund of knowledge. The essential part of such fund of knowledge is native language, and translation, being a mediator, is a means of cross-language and cross-cultural communication. Mastering another language through literature, a person is mastering new world and its culture. The process of literary texts’ translation requires language creativity of the translator, who becomes so-called “co-author” of the work. Translation activity is a result of the interpreter’s creativity and a sort of language activity: language units are being selected according to language units of the original text. This kind of approach actualizes linguistic researching of real translation facts: balance between language and speech units of the translated work (i.e. translationinterpretation, author’s made-up words, or revised language peculiarities of the characters). The process of literary translation by itself should be considered within the dimension of a dialogue between cultures. Such a dialogue takes place in the frame of different national stereotypes of thinking and communicational behavior, which influences mutual understanding between the communicators with the help of literary work being a mediator. So, modern linguistics actualizes the research of language activities during the process of literary work’s creating. This problem has to be studied furthermore, it can be considered as one of the central ones to be under consideration while dealing with cultural dimension of the translation process, including the process of solving the problems of cross-cultural communication.

Quantitative Conditions and Convergent Operations That Are Compatible With the Universe as a Persistent Generator of Successive Simulations

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4178-4187
Author(s):  
Michael A Persinger ◽  
Stanley A Koren
Keyword(s):  
Structural Organization ◽  
Total Duration ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Electron Orbit ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Massive Information ◽  
The Universe

                The capacity for computer-like simulations to be generated by massive information processing from electron-spin potentials supports Bostrom’s hypothesis that matter and human cognition might reflect simulations. Quantitative analyses of the basic assumptions indicate the universe may display properties of a simulation where photons behave as pixels and gravitons control the structural organization. The Lorentz solution for the square of the light and entanglement velocities converges with the duration of a single electron orbit that ultimately defines properties of matter. The approximately one trillion potential states within the same space with respect to the final epoch of the universe indicate that a different simulation, each with intrinsic properties, has been and will be generated as a type of tractrix defined by ±2 to 3 days (total duration 5 to 6 days). It may define the causal limits within a simulation. Because of the intrinsic role of photons as the pixel unit, phenomena within which flux densities are enhanced, such as human cognition (particularly dreaming) and the cerebral regions associated with those functions, create the conditions for entanglement or excess correlations between contiguous simulations. The consistent quantitative convergence of operations indicates potential validity for this approach. The emergent solutions offer alternative explanations for the limits of predictions for multivariate phenomena that could be coupled to more distal simulations.

Writing and Ritual in Deuteronomy 28

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Ritual Process ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Ritual Context

This chapter argue that ritual behaviours might be just as good a source as literary texts for the diffusion of traditional cursing and treaty material across different cultures in the ancient Near East. In particular, the role of ad hoc oral Targum in the ritual process could have been an important means by which traditions were shared between different language communities. Recognition of the ritual context of this material also provides insights for the comparative method, the dating and authorship of Deuteronomy 28, and the subversive impetus thought to have stood behind its composition. Ultimately, the function of the written word in a largely oral world is shown to be fundamental to understanding the composition, function and the early history of the curses in the book of Deuteronomy.

scholarly journals Supranational Assessment of the Quality of Probiotics: Collaborative Initiative between Independent Accredited Testing Laboratories

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1456
Author(s):  
Jean-Pol Warzée ◽  
Marina Elli ◽  
Abdoulaye Fall ◽  
Daniela Cattivelli ◽  
Jean-Yves François
Keyword(s):  
Daily Basis ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Quality Label ◽  
Accredited Laboratories ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Quality Of Food ◽  
The Eu

Recent acquisitions about the role of the microbiota in the functioning of the human body make it possible to envisage an increasing use of beneficial microbes, and more particularly of probiotics as well as their metabolites, as nutritional supplements. National and EU authorities are engaged in assuring the safety and quality of food supplements and in defining rules to assess and communicate their efficacy on human health. The quality of probiotics, intended as strains’ identification, viability, and stability over time, is a crucial factor of credibility with consumers and health professionals. Analytical technologies for the quality control of probiotics must also be adapted to new preparations, such as those including new multistrains complex combinations. Accredited laboratories face this relevant challenge on a daily basis. Through its close collaboration with the laboratory commissioned to produce the specifications for its ESLP quality label (identification and quantitative analyses) together with its scientific committee, the ESLP has been focusing on this issue for 10 years. Recently, as part of the internationalization of the ESLP quality label, a new and unique initiative in Europe for the evaluation of the quality of probiotic preparations has been carried out. The collaboration between two accredited laboratories in Belgium and in Italy represented a concrete example of supranational collaboration in the assessment of the quality of probiotic preparations. Results show that both laboratories are in line as expected in terms of performance. Common approaches to the qualitative assessment of probiotic preparations, especially for complex and composite recipes, in terms of number of strains and included substances, should be encouraged and promoted all over the EU.

The role of the registered nurse first assistant within the perioperative setting

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-153
Author(s):  
Roland Pika ◽  
Brid O'Brien ◽  
Jill Murphy ◽  
Kathleen Markey ◽  
Claire O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Registered Nurse ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Surgical Interventions ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Nursing Role ◽  
Perioperative Nursing ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Provision Of Care

Perioperative setting registered nurse first assistants (RNFAs) are described as non-medical practitioners who perform surgical interventions during surgery. They provide medical care to perioperative patients under the supervision of a consultant surgeon. First assistants in surgery can be an expanded perioperative nursing role. A review of the literature illuminates the need for continuous learning in developing skills in becoming competent RNFA practitioners and how they utilise acquired skills to assist, mentor and teach their colleagues within the perioperative setting. The RNFA is an advanced and expanded practice role. RNFAs contribute significantly to the provision of care within all phases of perioperative care (preoperative, intraoperative, postoperative). There is little literature on the role of the RNFA due to its relatively recent emergence in the healthcare sector and the small number of countries where it is implemented.

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