Abstract: The scientific study of translation, translatology, is behind linguistics in the study ... more Abstract: The scientific study of translation, translatology, is behind linguistics in the study of data. While linguistics has reached out to include all speech acts within its proper study, the data of translatology remain, almost exclusively, professionally authored texts. The proper ...
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist,... more The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist, translator and futurist Karel Čapek ( 1890-1938); second to alert users of machine translation (MT), who are often naïve and too cost-conscious; and third to apply Čapek's prescience to MT.
Two previous articles, Harris (1973) and Harris (1977), have argued that the data for translatolo... more Two previous articles, Harris (1973) and Harris (1977), have argued that the data for translatology (the scientific study of translating) should come primarily from natural translation rather than from literary, technical and other professional or semi-professional branches of translation as in the past. Natural translation was defined as: “The translating done in everyday circumstances by people who have had no special training for it.”
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
Proceedings of the 1969 conference on Computational linguistics -, 1969
There are grounds for questioning whether translation done by computer should resemble closely, e... more There are grounds for questioning whether translation done by computer should resemble closely, either in process or in product, translation done manually. Several workers in machine translation have proposed radical departures from the naively adopted goal of simulating manual translation mechanically. Because they saw a similarity between their mechanically feasible output and the pidgin languages that have arisen naturally in some parts of the world, they dubbed their proposals 'pidgin translation'.
Abstract: The scientific study of translation, translatology, is behind linguistics in the study ... more Abstract: The scientific study of translation, translatology, is behind linguistics in the study of data. While linguistics has reached out to include all speech acts within its proper study, the data of translatology remain, almost exclusively, professionally authored texts. The proper ...
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist,... more The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist, translator and futurist Karel Čapek ( 1890-1938); second to alert users of machine translation (MT), who are often naïve and too cost-conscious; and third to apply Čapek's prescience to MT.
Two previous articles, Harris (1973) and Harris (1977), have argued that the data for translatolo... more Two previous articles, Harris (1973) and Harris (1977), have argued that the data for translatology (the scientific study of translating) should come primarily from natural translation rather than from literary, technical and other professional or semi-professional branches of translation as in the past. Natural translation was defined as: “The translating done in everyday circumstances by people who have had no special training for it.”
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
Proceedings of the 1969 conference on Computational linguistics -, 1969
There are grounds for questioning whether translation done by computer should resemble closely, e... more There are grounds for questioning whether translation done by computer should resemble closely, either in process or in product, translation done manually. Several workers in machine translation have proposed radical departures from the naively adopted goal of simulating manual translation mechanically. Because they saw a similarity between their mechanically feasible output and the pidgin languages that have arisen naturally in some parts of the world, they dubbed their proposals 'pidgin translation'.
Authors and papers of the Conference held at Wintherthur, Switzerland, in May 2016 under the ausp... more Authors and papers of the Conference held at Wintherthur, Switzerland, in May 2016 under the auspices of ZHAW,
This paper is an expanded compendium of posts that appeared on the blog Unprofessional Translatio... more This paper is an expanded compendium of posts that appeared on the blog Unprofessional Translation in late 2021 and early 2022. It deals briefly with three qualities of literary translation that are often overlooked by reviewers, critics and students. Emotion It is widely assumed that the main function of language, its raison d'être, is to express and communicate our thoughts. That may be, but it also has other functions, conscious or unconscious.
Bilingualism is not confined to the natural languages like English. If artificial languages like ... more Bilingualism is not confined to the natural languages like English. If artificial languages like mathematics are added, the proportion of bilinguals in the world approaches totality.
This brief paper appeared originally as a post on the blog Unprofessional Translation. I am repro... more This brief paper appeared originally as a post on the blog Unprofessional Translation. I am reproducing it here because I have noticed that people who mention the Natural Translation Hypothesis often do so by referring to publications from the early days of the hypothesis in the 1970s. Though much in those early papers is still valid, there has been a significant expansion of the hypothesis. It is therefore desirable that a succinct but more up-to-date statement of it be readily available. Here it is. Translating is a quasi-universal human capability. "Quasi" because it has a prerequisite, namely bilingualism, that not all humans possess; but it is universal in bilinguals. It should therefore be mentioned in any description of human language capability.
As the European colonisers pressed westward during the nineteenth century, they needed interpret... more As the European colonisers pressed westward during the nineteenth century, they needed interpreters in order to communicate with the peoples they encountered in their many languages. Most of the interpreters were recruited from the native peoples. This paper emphasises that many of the interpreters were women.
This was the author's acceptance speech when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Universi... more This was the author's acceptance speech when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Malaga, Spain, in February 2020. It recounts yhe inception of the Natural Translation Hypothesis.
Though there were occasional conference interpreters before the twentieth century, the modern pro... more Though there were occasional conference interpreters before the twentieth century, the modern profession of conference interpreter dates from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Its star interpreter was a French historian turned military interpreter named Paul Mantoux, later an influential official at the League of Nations. His influence was felt in the widespread use of full consecutive interpreting using note-taking and in the high prestige of conference interpreting. Eventually, through his colleague Antoine Velleman, it led to the foundation of the school of interpreters at Geneva.
Of the early English translators of the key works of communism by Marx and Engels, only Eleanor M... more Of the early English translators of the key works of communism by Marx and Engels, only Eleanor Marx was a professional. Helen Macfarlane, Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling were NPIT Native (i.e. self-trained) Translators. Two were women: the radical activist Helen Macfarlane and Marx's own daughter Eleanor. Without these translators, communism would not have spread so fast and so far as it did.
Predictions by seasoned Spanish political commentator Iñaki Gabilondo about what is likely to hap... more Predictions by seasoned Spanish political commentator Iñaki Gabilondo about what is likely to happen this week if the government of Catalonia declares independence.
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist,... more The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to pay tribute to the outstanding Czech dramatist, translator and futurist Karel Čapek ( 1890-1938); second to alert users of machine translation (MT), who are often naïve and too cost-conscious; and third to apply Čapek's prescience to MT.
This article is a compilation of two posts that appeared on the blog " Unprofessional Translation... more This article is a compilation of two posts that appeared on the blog " Unprofessional Translation " in 2010 and 2016 respectively. 'Earliest depiction' does not mean earliest ever, but the primacy of spoken language over written makes it certain that there were interpreters before there were translators of written texts. Furthermore the interpreters in these depictions would seem to have been experts, but if there were bilinguals before 3000BCE (able for instance to speak both Sumerian and Akkadian), then according to the Natural Translation Hypothesis there were natural interpreters.
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