Language Arts & Disciplines

Immigration at University Level: Rethinking Policies, Approaches and Implementations establishes a framework for higher education institutions hoping to create French immersion program.

French immersion came to life in a primary school in the suburbs of Montreal in the 1960s. This was done to meet the needs of anglophone children who had to live in the new francophone context in Québec. While immersion spread rapidly in primary and secondary institutions in Canada, it remains, to this day, almost inexistant at the university level. However, Graham Fraser, the Commissioner of Official Languages—the federal spokesperson with regards to the promotion and protection of linguistic rights—recommended on multiple occasions that immersion continue at the post-secondary level.

This volume revisits this recommendation; indeed, the title of this book alludes to the highly political nature of any linguistic accommodation, especially in a bilingual or plurilingual context. Graham Fraser's preface places the concept of immersion in a historical perspective of language debates in Canada.

The book presents language policies and French immersion programs in higher education institutions in Canadian universities, and more specifically those at the University of Ottawa. It offers a valuable frame of reference for higher education institutions in Canada and abroad.

Great poets like Shelley and Goethe have made the claim that translating poems is impossible. And yet, poems are translated; not only that, but the metrical systems of English, French, Italian, German, Russian and Czech have been shaped by the translation of poems. Our poetic traditions are inspired by translations of Homer, Dante, Goethe and Baudelaire. How can we explain this paradox?

James W. Underhill responds by offering an informed account of meter, rhythm, rhyme, and versification. But more than that, the author stresses that what is important in the poem—and what must be preserved in the translated poem—is the voice that emerges in the versification.

Underhill’s book draws on the author’s translation experience from French, Czech and German. His comparative analysis of the versifications of French and English have enabled him to revise the key terms involved in translating the poetic voice and transposing the poem’s versification. The theories of versification from the Prague School of Linguistics, the French and Swiss schools of versification, and recent scholarship in metrics and rhythm in the UK and in the USA have been integrated into this synthetic but rigorously coherent approach to translating poems. The extensive glossary at the end of the book will prove useful for both students and teachers alike. And the detailed case studies on translating poems by Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson allow the author to categorize and appraise the various poetic and aesthetic strategies and theories that are brought to bear in translating Baudelaire into English, and Dickinson into French.

Published in English.

The translation of poetry has always fascinated the theorists, as the chances of "replicating" in another language the one-off resonance of music, imagery, and truth values of a poem are vanishingly small. Translation is often envisaged as a matter of mapping over into the target language the surface features or semiotic structures of the source poem. Little wonder, then, that the vast majority of translations fail to be poetry in their own right.

These essays focus on the poetically viable translation - the derived poem that, while resonating with the original, really is a poem. They proceed from a writerly perspective, eschewing both the theoretical overkill that spawns mice out of mountains and the ideological misappropriation that uses poetry as a way to push agendas. The emphasis throughout is on process and the poem-to-come.

Published in English.

The texts collected in this volume unveil the practice and the methods of the translators and scholars who contributed to the reemergence of Yiddish in contemporary Canada. Each of the personalities discussed enlarged the historical position and interpreted various aspects of the Yiddish language in Montreal that until recently remained obscure or inaccessible.

Bilingual Edition.

While translation history in Canada is well documented, the history of the translation of Canadian fiction outside the nation remains obscure. Les Belles Étrangères examines the translation of Canadian English-language fiction in France. This book considers the history of this practice, the reasons for the move away from Quebec translators as well as the process and perils involved in this detour.

Within a theoretical framework and drawing on primary sources, this study considers the historical, theoretical, and concrete aspects of this practice through the study of the translations of authors such as Robertson Davies, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Alistair MacLeod.

The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of English-language novels, poetry, and plays published and translated in France over the past 240 years.

Published in English.

This volume in honour of Ingrid Meyer is a tribute to her work in the interrelated fields of lexicography, terminology and translation. One key thing shared by these fields is that they all deal with text. Accordingly, the essays in this collection are united by the fact that they too are all "text-based" in some way.

In the majority of essays, electronic corpora serve as the textual basis for investigations. Chapters focusing on electronic corpora include a description of a tool that can be used to help build specialized corpora in a semi-automatic fashion; corpus-based investigations of terminological knowledge patterns, terminological implantation, lexicographic information and translation solutions; comparisons of corpora to conventional resources such as dictionaries; and analyses of corpus processing tools such as translation memory systems. In several essays, notably those dealing with historical or literary documents, the texts in question are specific manuscripts that have been studied with a view to learning more about lexicographic and translation practice. The volume is rounded out with a chapter on audiovisual translation that takes a non-conventional view of text, where "text" includes film.

Published in English.

In order to ensure its absolute authority, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–1948), the Japanese counterpart of the Nuremberg Trial, adopted a three-tier structure for its interpreting: Japanese nationals interpreted the proceedings, second-generation Japanese-Americans monitored the interpreting, and Caucasian U.S. military officers arbitrated the disputes.

The first extensive study on the subject in English, this book explores the historical and political contexts of the trial as well as the social and cultural backgrounds of the linguists through trial transcripts in English and Japanese, archival documents and recordings, and interviews with those who were involved in the interpreting. In addition to a detailed account of the interpreting, the book examines the reasons for the three-tier system, how the interpreting procedures were established over the course of the trial, and the unique difficulties faced by the Japanese-American monitors.

This original case study of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal illuminates how complex issues such as trust, power, control and race affect interpreting at international tribunals in times of conflict.

Published in English.

Over the last 30 years there has been a substantial increase in the study of the history of translation. Both well-known and lesser-known specialists in translation studies have worked tirelessly to give the history of translation its rightful place. Clearly, progress has been made, and the history of translation has become a viable independent research area.

This book aims at claiming such autonomy for the field with a renewed vigour. It seeks to explore issues related to methodology as well as a variety of discourses on history with a view to laying the groundwork for new avenues, new models, new methods. It aspires to challenge existing theoretical and ideological frameworks. It looks toward the future of history. It is an attempt to address shortcomings that have prevented translation history from reaching its full disciplinary potential. From microhistory, archaeology, periodization, to issues of subjectivity and postmodernism, methodological lacunae are being filled. Contributors to this volume go far beyond the text to uncover the role translation has played in many different times and settings such as Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle-East and Asia from the 6th century to the 20th.

These contributions, which deal variously with the discourses on methodology and history, recast the discipline of translation history in a new light and pave the way to the future of research and teaching in the field.

Published in English.

Lynne Bowker introduces the world of technology to the world of translation in this unique book, the first of its kind. Bowker reveals the role of technology in translation and how to use this ever-developing tool.

Published in English.

How to Write a Précis is designed to teach students how to read and comprehend a text, and then reduce its length without omitting the essential details or radically altering the style of the original. It contains theoretical background, practical step-by-step instructions on how to write a précis, sample précis, and a variety of exercises. How to Write a Précis is designed to teach students how to read and comprehend a text, and then reduce its length without omitting the essential details or radically altering the style of the original. It contains theoretical background, practical step-by-step instructions on how to write a précis, sample précis, and a variety of exercises. Also included are sections on popularizing and abstracting. Its tightly organized structure and straightforward, direct style make How to Write a Précis the ideal text for students and teachers of translation, of English as a second language, and of all types of English Composition. It is intended for use in universities, community colleges, high schools, and in adult education. The exercises have been carefully chosen and organized so as to provide optimum hands-on learning experience for the reader; they vary in difficulty, so that the teacher may select those that suit the level of proficiency and the special interests of a particular group of students. Published in English.

Translating Women explores women in translation in many contexts, whether they are translators, authors, or characters. Together the contributors show that feminist theory can apply to translation in many new and unexplored ways and that it deserves the full attention of the discipline that helped it become internationally influential. Feminist theory has been widely translated, influencing the humanities and social sciences in many languages and cultures. However, these theories have not made as much of an impact on the discipline that made their dissemination possible: many translators and translation scholars still remain unaware of the practices, purposes and possibilities of gender in translation. Translating Women revives the exploration of gender in translation begun in the 1990s by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s Re-belle et infidèle/The Body Bilingual (1992), Sherry Simon’s Gender in Translation (1996), and Luise von Flotow’s Translation and Gender (1997).

Translating Women complements those seminal texts by providing a wide variety of examples of how feminist theory can inform the study and practice of translation. Looking at such diverse topics as North American chick lit and medieval Arabic, Translating Women explores women in translation in many contexts, whether they are women translators, women authors, or women characters. Together the contributors show that feminist theory can apply to translation in many new and unexplored ways and that it deserves the full attention of the discipline that helped it become internationally influential.

Published in English.

Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wright is a hybrid text, innovatively combining literary criticism, experimental translation, and scholarly commentary. This work centres on a German-language prose text by Yoko Tawada entitled ‘Portrait of a Tongue’ [‘Porträt einer Zunge’, 2002]. Yoko Tawada is a native speaker of Japanese who learned German as an adult.

Portrait of a Tongue is a portrait of a German woman—referred to only as P—who has lived in the United States for many years and whose German has become inflected by English. The text is the first-person narrator’s declaration of love for P and for her language, a ‘thinking-out-loud’ about language(s), and a self-reflexive commentary.

Chantal Wright offers a critical response and a new approach to the translation process by interweaving Tawada’s text and the translator’s dialogue, creating a side-by-side reading experience that encourages the reader to move seamlessly between the two parts. Chantal Wright’s technique models what happens when translators read and responds to calls within Translation Studies for translators to claim visibility, to practice “thick translation”, and to develop their own creative voices. This experimental translation addresses a readership within the academic disciplines of Translation Studies, Germanic Studies, and related fields.

Published in English.

The Makura no Sôshi, or The Pillow Book as it is generally known in English, is a collection of personal reflections and anecdotes about life in the Japanese royal court composed around the turn of the eleventh century by a woman known as Sei Shônagon. Its opening section, which begins haru wa akebono, or “spring, dawn,” is arguably the single most famous passage in Japanese literature. Throughout its long life, The Pillow Book has been translated countless times. It has captured the European imagination with its lyrical style, compelling images and the striking personal voice of its author. Worlding Sei Shônagon guides the reader through the remarkable translation history of The Pillow Book in the West, gathering almost fifty translations of the “spring, dawn” passage, which span one-hundred-and-thirty-five years and sixteen languages.

Many of the translations are made readily available for the first time in this study. The versions collected in Worlding Sei Shônagon are an enlightening example of the many ways in which translations can differ from their source text, undermining the idea of translation as the straightforward transfer of meaning from one language to another, one culture to another.

Published in English.

This book looks at the role played throughout history by translators and interpreters in international relations. It considers how political linguistics function and have functioned throughout history.

It fills a gap left by political historians, who seldom ask themselves in what language the political negotiations they describe were conducted.

Published in English.

Translation and Gender places recent work in translation against the background of the women's movement and its critique of "patriarchal" language.

It explains translation practices derived from experimental feminist writing, the development of openly interventionist translation practices, the initiative to retranslate fundamental texts such as the Bible, translating as a way of recuperating writings "lost" in patriarchy, and translation history as a means of focusing on women translators of the past.

Published in English.

Outlining an original, discourse-based model for translation quality assessment that goes beyond conventional microtextual error analysis, Malcolm Williams explores the potential of transferring reasoning and argument as the prime criterion of translation quality. Assessment through error analysis is inevitably based on an error count—an unsatisfactory means of establishing, and justifying, differences in quality that forces the evaluator to focus on subsentence elements rather than the key messages of the source text. Williams counters that a judgment of translation quality should be based primarily on the success with which the translator has rendered the reasoning, or argument structure. Six aspects for assessment are proposed: argument macrostructure, propositional functions, conjunctives, types of arguments, figures of speech, and narrative strategy. Williams illustrates the approach using three different types of examples: letters, statistical reports, and argumentative articles for publication. Translation Quality Assessment offers translators a new set of flexible and modular standards.

Published in English.

This book offers the first complete analysis of the emergence of simultaneous interpretation at the Nuremburg Trail and the individuals who made the process possible. Francesca Gaiba offers new insight into this monumental event based on extensive archival research and interviews with interpreters, who worked at the trial.

This work provides an overview of the specific linguistic needs of the trial and examines the recruiting of interpreters and the technical support available to them.

Published in English.

While many professional translators believe the ability to translate is a gift that one either has or does not have, Allison Beeby Lonsdale questions this view.

In her innovative book, Beeby Lonsdale demonstrates how teachers can guide their students by showing them how insights from communication theory, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and semiotics can illuminate the translation process. Using Spanish to English translation as her example, she presents the basic principles of translation through 29 teaching units, which are prefaced by objectives, tasks, and commentaries for the teacher, and through 48 task sheets, which show how to present the material to students.

Published in English.