Social Roles of Translators in Localization and Translation Memory Environment - Term Paper Example

 Social Roles of Translators in Localization And Translation Memory Environment Abstract This paper looks into the history of translation first as a profession and then its development as a business; afterwards, it discusses the social role of translators in globalizing and localizing languages and the impact of IT development leading to the use of machine translation (MT) to translation memory systems (also referred as TMs) by professional translators, the advantages and disadvantages of TMs and in the end, this paper concludes the needs and importance of TMs in the present environment and future business prospects. Introduction Language translation is probably on of the most suitable example to explain the development of IT products and its services to mankind. As Ignacio Garcia (2009), emphasizing on the importance of technical development, has written in his article: The digital age has affected all professions, but change has been felt by translators more keenly than most. Like the rest of the ‘knowledge sector,’ translators are obliged to work on computer screens and do their research using the web. Unlike their colleagues however, they have been propagating this new work environment and fomenting change precisely by their role in translating it. The most significant tool used until now by translators in the digital work environment is Translation Memory software, or TM. By putting the developments of the last 20 years in historical perspective and with particular attention to events over the last two, this article argues that TM is reaching its use-by date. It also examines the strong re-emergence of Machine Translation (MT) in response to TM's inability to cope with the increasing translating needs of today’s digital age. (p. 199) As the businesses expended over continents and industrial revolution took place, the need for communication in other languages increased ever so greatly and this is beautifully summarized by Ignacio Garcia (2009) in his article as he continued to define translation and its history. According to him, translation profession is a development of new times. Historically, translators were actually bilinguals, particularly able to transfer text between the languages. For example physicians, public servants, theologians, writers and poets translated the work of their respective fields. (p. 200) The grooming of translation as a profession is based on a century’s time period but shaping translation into a new form of business is a story of recent times, as this paper looks at the work of some of the modern authors, Brian Mossop (2006) is no exception. According to him, “most changes over the past 20 years have been changes in translation as a business”. (p. 788) Further more, he has written that now days, there are now translations companies provide services internationally and deal with remotely located translators worldwide. He also gave his point of view on localization and wrote: Translation is starting to become a big business, increasingly integrating as suppliers the traditional cottage industry of freelances. The activity known as ‘localization’ has been added to existing translation business sectors, and it is also one of several sectors where practitioners are in the process of acquiring distinct professional status (along with court and community interpreters). That said, it nay be noted in passing that ‘localization’ of Web page textual content is often just a new label for an old activity, namely free translation / adaptation. (p.788-789) According to Brian Mossop (2006), “some of the changes under way in the world of translation are not related to information technology at all”. He has used English translation as a global auxiliary language example. He also regarded this development as a new chapter in the history of lingua francas. (p. 788-792) As this paper looks into the work of modern writers and authors, one can not ignore Anthony Pym’s work on globalization and contribution to translation as a subject. In his revised article in 2006, he explored the impact of globalization on translation and defines globalization, “As an economic process that has certain consequences for the social role of translation”. He further stated: Those consequences will then be seen as affecting the political organization of Translation Studies as a scholarly discipline. The general economic process is held to have certain elements of irreversibility thanks to its grounding in technological change. Translators will mostly have to come to terms with those elements, as will scholars and everyone else. Inducing a new element of politics to the globalization of translation, Pym explained: There are, however, properly political processes that build on globalization but should not be identified with it. Those processes also have consequences for translation, but they are not to be considered inevitable. Some of them can be resisted or influenced by the use or non-use of translation. Those political processes can be indirectly affected by a scholarly Translation Studies, which might thus develop its own politics with respect to globalization. This means that Translation Studies should seek to understand and explain the effects of globalization, without pretending to resist them all. At the same time, it should attempt to influence the more negative political processes within its reach, developing political agendas and cultivating its own political organization. In this, the dialectics play out between the technological and the political, between the things we must live with and the things we should try to change. Only with this double vision should we attempt to take a position with respect to globalization. this paper now discusses the impact of globalization and how it is different to localization and other terms by disussing the work of various authors. Peter Sandrini (2005) has quoted in his article: Localization today is used in conjunction with the terms internationalization, which means the preparation of a product to make it suitable for efficient localization, and globalization signifies the global design of a product. Website localization is thus defined as the "process of modifying a website for a specific locale" (Yunker 2002: 17). He further discussed that the translation process has its significant impact on linguistics and cultural transfer involving adaptation of texts etc. According to him: Website localization places the text in the background and focuses on multimedia aspects. Nevertheless, the text still remains a key information assets within a webpage. Translation - as a task - has a century-long history, whereas localization is a phenomenon of the last 20 years – maybe just a new name, a specific type of translation. In that case translation would then be the broader concept. In the literature there are indications for both assumptions: on the one hand, there are specific training courses for localization professionals (LRC), associations for professional localizers to support the notion of a new strong localization profession, and on the other hand, translation training institutes offering courses on localization and translators working in the localization industry even though translation studies may be rather slow in measuring up to the challenges is new field of research. In any case it may be useful for both fields to learn from each other instead of trying to re-invent the wheel on the one side or be reduced to a mere text substitution process within a broader localization concept on the other hand. (p. 2-7) As translation has a fairly short history, most of its theories are from within the last 100 years, especially in the last two decades or so, this paper will look at two of the most well known theories on translation. So the first one will be by Katherine Reiss, as per Venuti’s edition in 2004, she focused on the type, kind and individuality of text: decision making in translation. She begins by defining interlingual translation as follows: 1. Interlingual translation may be defined as a bilingual mediated process of communication, which ordinarily aims at the production of a target language text that is functionally equivalent to source language (2 media: SL and TL + 1 medium: the translator, who becomes a secondary sender; thus translating: secondary communication.) 2. Written texts and texts put in writing (material for translating purposes) are to be characterized as “one-way communication” (Glinz 1973). This means, on the one hand, that non-linguistic elements contributing to oral communication (gestures, facial expressions, speed of speech, intonation, etc.) are partly verbalized (= alleviation of the text analysis). On the other hand, the text analysis is made more difficult by the limitation of the possibilities of explicit verbalization of such elements as well as by the spatio-temporal separation between addresser and addressee and the lack of feedback during the act of communication; these factors lead, among other reasons, to variable understanding of the given text. 3. Language is (among other factors) a temporal phenomenon and thus subject to conditions of time. This also applies to language in written texts and therefore to these texts themselves, a factor which is significant for translating. (p. 168-170) The second most reliable theory is by Hans Vermeer called Skopostheorie. As C. Nord (1997) mentions the work of Hans Vermeer (1978) in his book, explained that: Vermeer ([1978] 1983:48) claims that since Skopostheorie is a general theory of translation, it applies to both translating and interpreting is seen in the fact that a translation is potentially correctable after it is written down, whereas the result of orally resented source text must be regarded as complete at the moment of text production. Vermeer (1986) also argued that: Any form of translational action, including therefore translation itself, may be conceived as an action, as the name implies. Any action has an aim, a purpose. The word skopos is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation. Further: an action leads to a result, a new situation or event, and possibly to a new object. Translational action leads to a translatum (i.e. the resulting translated text), as a particular variety of target text. The aim of any translational action, and the mode in which it is to be realized, are negotiated with the client who commissions the action. A precise specification of aim and mode is essential for the translator. This is of course analogously true of translation proper: skopos and mode of realization must be adequately defined if the text- translator is to fulfil his task successfully. (Venuti 2004, p. 168-179) As translation progressed in the form of profession and than business, the need to establish the norms of profession deepened and people with linguistic skills started developing their careers as professional translators. According to Nord, “Translators enable communications to take place between members of different communities. They bridge the gap between situations where differences in verbal and non-verbal behaviour, expectations, knowledge and perspectives are such that there is not enough common ground for the sender and receiver to communicate effectively by themselves” (Nord 1997) In his paper, Gerald Dennett (1995) wrote that: Whilst it is true that many translators are not great enthusiasts for exploiting IS applications in their work, most informed translators believe that it will no longer be possible to survive in the marketplace without becoming more aware of and familiar with document production technology. Since finished document production has migrated to the workstation level through the impetus given by DTP technology, translators are increasingly being asked to produce final copy, with layout, illustrations, etc. Consequently, professional translators are becoming increasingly familiar with the opportunities for enhanced productivity and efficiency opening up to them as a result of the application of IT to the task of natural language translation. The natural result of this increasing awareness is a demand for more and better tools to assist the translator. He further critically discussed the role of translators as, “There are, therefore, many translators who are not only competent in relatively complex tasks relating to document production, but also is making further demands on the translation tools available to them from an informed and knowledgeable position”. As the translation profession grew, the need for technical applications increased and by the time IT industry started to prosper, the need to communicate efficiently and effectively also increased. As Daniel Benito explained and introduced translation memory in his article, wrote: The basic ideas behind TM technology arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as part of work done on “translator workstations” (Hutchins, 1998). As opposed to the utopian goal of fully automated machine translation, the aim of these workstations was to provide translators with a number of different resources that would allow them to carry out their work more accurately and efficiently. In addition to the more obvious utility of term banks and glossaries, early researchers had already envisioned the use of translation archives as a reference tool. Translators would be able to quickly consult past translations to see how certain terms, phrases and even sentences had been translated in the past. He further stated that with the development and growth of computer industry, a lot of technical tools were introduced to store large data bases leading to the concept of TM system. As with other technologies, TMs also have some uses and drawbacks. One of these uses is highlighted by Daniel Benito in his article where he commented on other authors’ work that: As the use of TMs spread throughout the translation industry during the 1990s, technology vendors realized that TM technology could be marketed further up the chain of production, with the promise of a considerable reduction in translation costs (Gordon, 1996). While the initial focus of the research into translation aids had been primarily on extending the capabilities of the user, the emphasis soon shifted from increasing the efficiency of translators to reducing costs – first for LSPs (Language Service Providers) and eventually for translation buyers (LISA, 2004). This change is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the emergence of de facto standard discount schemes based on the results of TM pre-processing: words that appear in segments which have a corresponding exact or fuzzy match in the TM are charged at lower rates. Daniel Benito (2009) pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of the use of TMs in the following words: This is not surprising, given that the commercial adoption of any new technology must be driven primarily by quantifiable measures of return on investment. However, the advent of the Internet, the resulting growth in the demand for translations, and the corresponding growth of the translation industry led, in turn, to an increase in the availability of TM vendors to such an extent that the technology became commoditized, and LSPs and translation buyers turned to workflow automation as the next area on which to focus their cost-cutting efforts. The main obstacle in the road to fully exploiting the capabilities offered by Translation Memory is the fact that the translation industry is still focused on applying TM technology at the segment level, foregoing the advantages offered by treating translation databases as large parallel corpora. The most obvious reason for this is that special pricing schemes involving discounts for TM matches are only reasonable at the segment level, if at all. Any advantages obtained by applying TM technology at the subsegment level are therefore only of immediate value to the freelance translator, since they cannot be automated by the LSP. Additionally, given the nature of the translation tool market – where the specific software used by the freelance translator is often imposed by the LSP – freelancers have very little power as consumers when it comes to influencing the evolution of commercial TM tools. Together, these two idiosyncrasies of the translation industry have effectively resulted in a stagnation of the commercial research and development efforts towards improving and expanding the use of TM technology. Conclusion This paper has discussed various social aspects and role of translation and translators and has highlighted the use and role of TMs in localizing and almost eliminating the language barriers. According to Daniel Benito, though TM technology has taken translation to new heights but it has its own draw backs, it has its own complex technical issues and it is bound to the general perceptions of the translation industry. References Benito, D. (2009) Future trends in translation memory. Retrieved December 10, 2010, from http://webs2002.uab.es/tradumatica/revista/num7/articles/07/07.pdf Dennett, G. (1995) Translation Memory: Concept, products, impact and prospects. London: South Bank University. Garcia, I. (2009). Beyond translation memory: Computers and the professional translator. The journal of specialised translation, 12, (pp. 199-214) Mossop, B. (2006). Has computerization changed translation? Meta 36, (pp. 787-805) Nord, C. (1997). Translating as a purposeful activity. Manchester: St Jerome Pym, A. (2006). What localization models can learn from translation theory. Retrieved December 10 , 2010, from http://www.tinet.cat/~apym/on-line/translation/localization_translation_theory.pdf Reiss, K. (2004[1981]) Type, kind and individuality of text: Decision making in translation. In Venuti, L. (Ed.), The Translation Studies Reader (pp. 168-179). New York and London: Routledge. Sandrini, P. (2005) Website localization and translation. MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings. Vermeer, H.J. (2004[1989]) Skopos and commission in translational action. In Venuti, L. (Ed.), The translation studies reader (pp. 227-238). New York and London: Routledge.   Read More