Abstracts
Abstract
Shop signs, in the Jordanian public commercial environment, have invariably been studied from linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic perspectives, but they have been utterly ignored from a translational point of view. This study, the first of its kind, investigates various problems and inadequacies pertinent to the subject under discussion. Shop signs are selected here from a number of heterogeneous cities, and the translation errors therein, committed by communicators, were empirically analyzed and categorized. Language and culture are, of necessity, inextricably intertwined, and this nexus is particularly apparent in the world of local commercial shop signs, and thus it has been tackled for its direct relevance to the translation of these signs. This investigation, therefore, highlights the linguistic (e.g., word-order, wrong lexical choice, and reductionist strategies), and extralinguistic (i.e., sociocultural and promotional) factors that have turned out to lead to translation inappropriateness and unparallelisms, information skewing, and, consequently, serious semantic-conceptual problems in the produced TLTs. This study may, in a way, provide educated insight into the trendiest translation practices in this field, and the way shop signs are most often verbalized, mishandled, and mistranslated.
Keywords/Mots-clés:
- shop signs,
- translation equivalence,
- practices of commercial translation,
- information skewing,
- sociocultural factors
Résumé
Les panneaux de magasins, nombreux dans le contexte commercial public en Jordanie, ont été largement étudiés d’un point de vue linguistique, sociolinguistique et pragmatique, mais jamais ils n’ont été abordés sur le plan de leur traduction. Cette étude, la première de son genre, aborde les problèmes et insuffisances liés au sujet en question. Les panneaux commerciaux ont été sélectionnés à partir d’un certain nombre de paramètres hétérogènes. Quant aux erreurs de traduction commises par les interlocuteurs, elles ont été empiriquement analysées et classées par catégorie. Étant donné que la langue et la culture sont inextricablement liées, le lien entre elles s’avère encore plus évident lorsqu’il s’agit des panneaux commerciaux locaux. Le sujet a été ainsi abordé en raison de son rapport direct avec la traduction de ces signes. Cette recherche met donc l’accent sur les facteurs à la fois linguistiques (e.g. l’ordre des mots, les choix lexicaux, les stratégies réductionnistes) et extralinguistiques (e.g. facteurs socioculturels et promotionnels) qui ont été à l’origine de l’inexactitude et l’inadéquation de la traduction, d’une part, et du détournement de l’information, d’autre part. Ce qui mène, en conséquence, à de graves problèmes sémantico-conceptuels sur le plan des traductions en question. Cette étude pourrait, d’une certaine manière, fournir un aperçu instruit des différentes tendances de traduction pratiquées dans le domaine ainsi que de la manière dont les panneaux commerciaux sont souvent exprimés, malmenés et, notamment, mal traduits.
Appendices
References
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10.7202/004123ar