Abstracts
Abstract
Expertise as an indicator of a translator’s competence has experienced a growing amount of research interest recently, but little attention has been paid to the role of registerial expertise, especially in medical translation. This study aims to carry out a systemic functional investigation of the role that a translator’s registerial expertise plays, namely medical expertise, in the translations of Huang Di Nei Jing, the most ancient and important medical classic in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The focus is on the logical choices made by both clinician and non-clinician translators. The findings report a few interesting patterns in the translators’ logical choices in relation to their medical expertise. Firstly, clinician translators tend to have a higher degree of intervention through their strategic logical choices, and their translations tend to be more grammatically intricate. They are also found to have a stronger sense of the logical relationships in modelling medical events according to their importance. Further, although mother tongue is found to be impactful on the translators’ logical choices to some degree, it is the registerial expertise that has been found to play the major role. The evidence reported in this study suggests that the translator’s registerial expertise should be included as an important component of translator training.
Keywords:
- registerial expertise,
- logical choice,
- medical translation,
- systemic functional linguistics (SFL),
- Huang Di Nei Jing
Résumé
L’expertise, en tant qu’indicateur de la compétence traductionnelle, a récemment fait l’objet d’un intérêt croissant de la part des chercheurs, toutefois ils n’ont guère prêté attention au rôle de l’expertise scientifique, en particulier en traduction médicale. La présente étude est une recherche fonctionnelle systémique du rôle de l’expertise scientifique, expertise médicale, dans les traductions de Huang Di Nei Jing, le plus ancien et le plus important classique de la médecine traditionnelle chinoise (MTC). Elle se fonde sur les choix logiques effectués par des traducteurs cliniciens et non-cliniciens, et conclut sur quelques modèles intéressants des relations entre les choix logiques des traducteurs et leur expertise médicale. Tout d’abord, les traducteurs cliniciens, par leur choix logiques et stratégiques, tendent à intervenir davantage et leurs traductions sont grammaticalement plus complexes. Ils manifestant aussi un sens plus aigu des relations logiques en relatant les événements médicaux selon leur importance. Ensuite, bien que la langue maternelle exerce une influence considérable sur les choix logiques des traducteurs, c’est l’expérience scientifique qui a le plus d’impact. Les résultats de la présente étude suggèrent que l’expertise scientifique devrait constituer une composante majeure de la formation des traducteurs.
Mots-clés :
- expertise scientifique,
- choix logique,
- traduction médicale,
- linguistique fonctionnelle systémique (LFS),
- Huang Di Nei Jing
Resumen
La experticia, como indicador de la competencia, es objeto de un interés creciente por parte de los investigadores, sin embargo, no se ha prestado la debida atención al papel de la experticia científica, en particular en la traducción médica. El presente estudio apunta a una investigación sistémica funcional del papel de la experticia científica médica en la traducción de Huang Di Nei Jing, el clásico más antiguo y más importante de la medicina tradicional china (MTC). Pone el énfasis en las elecciones lógicas que hacen los traductores clínicos y los no clínicos. El estudio revela algunos modelos interesantes de las relaciones entre las elecciones lógicas de los traductores y su experticia médica. En primer lugar, con sus elecciones lógicas estratégicas, los traductores clínicos tienden a mayores intervenciones y sus traducciones son gramaticalmente más complejas. Además, manifiestan un sentido más agudo de las relaciones lógicas al presentar los acontecimientos médicos según su importancia. Luego, aunque la lengua maternal suele ejercer una gran influencia en las elecciones lógicas de los traductores, es la experticia científica la que tiene el mayor impacto. Los resultados del estudio sugieren que la experticia científica debería ser un componente importante de la formación de los traductores.
Palabras clave:
- experticia científica,
- elección lógica,
- traducción médica,
- lingüística sistémica functional (LSF),
- Huang Di Nei Jing
Appendices
Bibliography
- Amador, Yohanna (2019): The translation task: ITCR students with no expertise in translation. Revista de Lenguas Modernas. 31:43-61.
- Antonini, Rachele and Bucaria, Chiara (2016): Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in the Media. Berlin: Peter Lang.
- Barbe, Katharina (1996): The dichotomy free and literal translation. Meta. 41(3):328-337.
- Baker, Mona (2009): Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge.
- Baker, Mona (2013): Translation as an alternative space for political action. Social Movement Studies. 12(1):23-47.
- Bisiada, Mario (2013): From hypotaxis to parataxis: an investigation of English-German syntactic convergence in translation. Doctoral dissertation, unpublished. Manchester: University of Manchester.
- Butt, David and Webster, Jonathan (2017): The logical metafunction in systemic functional linguistics. In: Tom Bartlett and Gerard O’Grady, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics. London/New York: Routledge, 96-114.
- Darzikola, Shahla (2013): The Iceberg Principle and the Portrait of Common People in Hemingway’s Works. English Language and Literature Studies. 3(3):8-15.
- Xu, Duo and Xu, Jun (2019): 中国典籍对外传播中的 “译出行为” 及批评探索—兼评《 杨宪益翻译研究》 [“Translating Out” Chinese classics-on Xianyi Yang’s translation study]. Chinese Translators Journal. 5:19.
- Eggins, Suzanne (1994): An Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar. London: Pinter.
- En, Michael and En, Boka (2019): “Coming out”… as a translator? Expertise, identities and knowledge practices in an LGBTIQ migrant community translation project. Translation Studies. 12(2):213-230.
- Eszenyi, Réka (2016): What Makes a Professional Translator? The Profile of the Modern Translator. In: Ildikó Horvath, ed. The Modern translator and Interpreter. Budapest: Eotvos University Press, 17-27.
- Göpferich, Susanne (2009): Towards a model of translation competence and its acquisition: the longitudinal study TransComp. In: Susanne Göpferich, Arnt Jakobsen, and Inger Mees, eds. Behind the Mind: Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur Press, 11-37.
- Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanislaw (2016): The role of generic competence and professional expertise in legal translation. The case of English and Polish probate documents. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric. 45(1):51-67.
- Halliday, Michael (2009): Methods—techniques—problems. In: Michael Halliday and Jonathan Webster, eds. Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics. New York: Continuum, 59-86.
- Halliday, Michael and Matthiessen, Christian (1999): Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. London: Continuum.
- Halliday, Michael and Matthiessen, Christian (1985/2014): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 4th ed. London/New York: Routledge.
- Hatim, Basil and Mason, Ian (1990/2014): Discourse and the Translator. London/New York: Routledge.
- Herling, Richard (2000): Operational definitions of expertise and competence. Advances in Developing Human Resources. 2(1):8-21.
- Heritage, John and Raymond, Geoffrey (2005): The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly. 68(1):15-38.
- Holt-Reynold, Diane (1999): Good readers, good teachers? Subject matter expertise as a challenge in learning to teach. Harvard Educational Review. 69(1):29-50.
- House, Juliane (2001): Translation quality assessment: linguistic description versus social evaluation. Meta. 46(2):243-257.
- Huang, Hen-Hsen, Sun, Chuen-Tsai, and Chen, Hsin-His (2010): Classical Chinese Sentence Segmentation. In: Le Sun and Keh-Jiann Chen, eds. Proceedings of CIPS-SIGHAN Joint Conference on Chinese Language Processing. (CLP 2010: CIPS-SIGHAN Joint Conference on Chinese Language Processing, Beijing, 28-29 August 2010). Beijing: Chinese Information Processing Society of China. Consulted on 14 November 2021, https://aclanthology.org/W10-4103.pdf.
- Jia, Yanli (2009): 《内经》误读质疑 [Doubts on the sentence segmentation of Neijing]. Journal of Chinese medicine. 5:476-477.
- Jiang, Xiaohua (2010): Indeterminacy, multivalence and disjointed translation. Target. 22(2):331-346.
- Khalil, Assi (2011): Parataxis, Hypotaxis, Style and Translation. Journal of the College of Basic Education. 16(68):9-18.
- Khoshsaligheh, Masood and Ameri, Saeed (2017): Translator’s Agency and Features of Non-professional Translation of Video Games (A Case Study of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End). Language Related Research. 8(5):181-204.
- Kies, Daniel (1990): Indeterminacy in sentence structure. Linguistics and Education. 2(3):231-258.
- Liu, David (1983): Parallel structures in the canon of Chinese poetry: The Shih Ching. Poetics Today. 4(4):639-653.
- Liu, Wei and Lin, Wenjuan (2015): A Comparative Study of Terminology between Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine in the Perspectives of Parataxis and Hypotaxis and Hypotaxis in Chinese and English Medical Terms. Medicine and Philosophy. 13:85-88.
- Luo, Shibiao (2005): 说医解字 [Interpreting medicine and the language]. Beijing: Beijing Book Co.
- Maciocia, Giovanni (1989/2015): The Foundations of Chinese Medicine: A Comprehensive Text. 3rd ed. London: Elsevier Health Sciences.
- Matthiessen, Christian (2002): Combining clauses into clause complexes. In: Joan Bybee and Michael Noonan, eds. Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse: Essays in honour of Sandra A. Thompson. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 235-319.
- Matthiessen, Christian (2009): Meaning in the making: Meaning Potential Emerging from Acts of Meaning. Language Learning. 59(s1):206-229.
- Macarthy, Kathtyn and Goldman, Susan (2019): Constructing interpretive inferences about literary text: The role of domain-specific knowledge. Learning and Instruction. 60:245-251.
- Niederdeppe, Jeffrey (2005): Syntactic indeterminacy, perceived message sensation value-enhancing features, and message processing in the context of anti-tobacco advertisements. Communication Monographs. 72(3):324-344.
- Pavlovic, Nataša (2007): Directionality in collaborative translation processes. Doctoral dissertation, unpublished. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
- Popovic, Vesna (2004): Expertise development in product design—strategic and domain-specific knowledge connections. Design Studies. 25(5):527-545.
- Pym, Anthony (2003): Redefining translation competence in an electronic age. In defence of a minimalist approach. Meta. 48(4):481-497.
- Redelinghuys, Karien and Kruger, Haidee (2015): Using the features of translated language to investigate translation expertise: A corpus-based study. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 20(3):293-325.
- Rodríguez-Castro, Monica (2018): An integrated curricular design for computer-assisted translation tools: developing technical expertise. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer. 12(4):355-374.
- Rojo, Ana and Ramos, Marina (2018): The role of expertise in emotion regulation. In: Isabel Lacruz and Riitta Jaaskelainen, eds. Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 105-130.
- Russell, Bertrand (1923): Vagueness. The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy. 1(2):84-92.
- Santos, Diana (1998): The relevance of vagueness for translation: Examples from English to Portuguese. TradTerem. 5(1):71-98.
- Steiner, Erich (1998): A register-based translation evaluation: an advertisement as a case in point. Target. 10(2):291-318.
- Shreve, Gregory (2006): The deliberate practice: translation and expertise. Journal of Translation Studies. 9(1):27-42.
- Shreve, Gregory (2018): Levels of Explanation and Translation Expertise. HERMES. 57:97-108.
- Shreve, Gregory, Angelone, Erik, and Lacruz, Isabel (2018): Are Expertise and Translation Competence the Same? In: Isabel Lacruz and Ritta Jaaskelainen, eds. Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 37-54.
- Shreve, Gregory and Lacruz, Isabel (2017): Aspects of a cognitive model of translation. In: John Schwieter and Aline Ferreira, eds. The Handbook of Translation and Cognition. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 127-143.
- Stivers, Tanya (2005): Modified repeats: One method for asserting primary rights from second position. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 38(2):131-158.
- Stivers, Tanya, Mondada, Lorenza, and Steensig, Jacob (2011): Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In: Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, eds. The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-24.
- Spranger, Michael and Loetzsch, Martin (2011): Syntactic indeterminacy and semantic ambiguity: A case study for German spatial phrases. In: Luc Steels, ed. Design Patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 265-298.
- Tesseur, Wine (2017): The translation challenges of INGOs: professional and non-professional translation at Amnesty International. Translation Spaces. 6(2):209-229.
- Thompson, Sandra (1987): Subordination and narrative event structure. In: Russells Tomlin, ed. Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 435-454.
- Tiselius, Elisabet (2013): Experience and expertise in conference interpreting: an investigation of Swedish conference interpreters. Doctoral dissertation, unpublished. Bergen: The University of Bergen.
- Tiselius, Elisabet and Hild, Adelina (2017): Expertise and Competence in Translation and Interpreting. In: John Schwieter and Aline Ferreira, eds. The Handbook of Translation and Cognition. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 423-444.
- Trueswell, John, Tanenhaus, Michael, and Garnsey, Susan (1994): Semantic influences on parsing: Use of thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language. 33(3):285-318.
- Tse, Yiu-Kay (2010): Parataxis and hypotaxis in the Chinese language. International Journal of Arts & Sciences. 3(16):351-359.
- Venuti, Lawrence (1995/2017): The Translator’s Invisibility. 2nd ed. London/New York: Routledge.
- Wang, Baorong (2011): Translation practices and the issue of directionality in China. Meta. 56(4):896-914.
- Weatherson, Brian (2010): Vagueness as indeterminacy. In: Richard Dietz and Sebastiano Moruzzi, eds. Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, its Nature and its Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 77-90.
- Whyatt, Boguslawa (2012): Translation as a Human Skill. From Predisposition to Expertise. Poznaniu: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.
- Whyatt, Boguslawa (2018): Testing Indicators of Translation Expertise in an Intralingual Task. HERMES. 57:63-78.
- Williamson, Timothy (2003): Vagueness in reality. In: Michael Loux and Dean Zimmerman, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 690-715.
- Wu, Canzhong (2000): Modelling linguistic resources: a systemic functional approach. Doctoral dissertation, unpublished. Sydney: Macquarie University.
- Xu, Han, Wang, Hongsu, Zhang, Sanqian, et al. (2019): Sentence segmentation for classical Chinese based on LSTM with radical embedding. Journal of China Post and Telecommunications. 26(2):1-8.
- Ye, Xiao and Dong, Min-hua (2017): A review on different English versions of an ancient classic of Chinese medicine: Huang Di Nei Jing. Journal of Integrative Medicine. 15(1):11-18.
- Yu, Ning (1993): Chinese as a paratactic language. Journal of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. 1:1-15.
- Zhang, Grace (2015): Elastic Language: How and Why we Stretch our Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Zhang, Xiaomin, Kruger, Haidee, and Jing, Fang (2020): Explicitation in children’s literature translated from English to Chinese: a corpus-based study of personal pronouns. Perspectives. 28(5):717-736.
10.7202/001968ar