Documentary research in specialised translation studies

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Documentary research in specialised translation
studies
Geneviève Bordet Paris Diderot University ,
Sorbonne Paris Cité, CLILLAC-ARP EA 3967
F-75205, Paris, France
Terminologija i specijalizirano prevodenje u
službi medukulturne strukovne Komunikacij
August 22-23 2014 University of Zadar
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Outline

• 1 What is the point of documentary research for
  translation?
• - why is it necessary
• - a double objective for a double corpus
• - information as data for translation
• 2 How does it work?
• - identifying a domain and discovering a
  documentary landscape
• - 5WH a methodology
• - tools and techniques
• 3 How is documentary research applied to
  translation?
• Terminology
• Translation problem solving
• Using process tracing to become a translator

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1. Documentary research and specialized
translation

• Why is it necessary?
• What is specialized translation transfer from
  one langue-culture to another for the
  transmission of information via a text
• Requires the collection and assimilation of
  textual information as to a specialized domain
  and a discourse community
• The langue-culture is made of a specific
  vocabulary but also a specific handling of
  general language, and terms combinations

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1. Documentary research and specialized
translation

• A twofold objective
• Collect, connect information required for the
  understanding of a field of human activity
  (scientific, technical, economic, ...)
• Collect a corpus made of documents that are
  representative of the diversity of the discursive
  production of the considered field of activity

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1. Documentary research and specialized
translation

• A twofold corpus
• Popularization and didactic documents, images,
  videos, charts etc
• A comparable corpus of specialized documents in
  the source and the target language

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1. Documentary research and specialized
translation

• Collected data as a material for translation
  decisions
• Identification of the specific terms
• Identification of the specific use of general
  language terms (including verbs)
• Identification of terms recurrent combinations
  (collocations, colligations)
• Identification of specific clausal and textual
  structures that are representative of the studied
  domain

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1. Documentary research and specialized
translation

• Collected data as a material for translation
  decisions
• Identification of the specific terms
• Identification of the specific use of general
  language terms (including verbs)
• Identification of terms recurrent combinations
  (collocations, colligations)
• Identification of specific clausal and textual
  structures that are representative of the studied
  domain

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2. The documentary research process

• A circular process
• Domain Terminology
  Translation
• A complex process
• Complexity of a domain made up of a diversity of
  actors, interests, issues and discursive genres
• The 5 Ws and 1H methodology
• A domain representative corpus
• Validation of terminological information sources

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2. The documentary research process

• What is conflict diamonds trade?
• Who is involved? Who are the actors?
• Where does it take place?
• When (or since when) does it happen (exist)?
• Why does it happen (exist)?
• How how does it work?

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2. Part of the research process establishing the
documentary landscape
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2. Part of the research process establishing the
documentary landscape
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2. Part of the research process establishing the
documentary landscape
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2. The documentary research process

• A wide range of tools
• The Web and the libraries
• Databases (ex repec.org for economy) and search
  engines (Google Scholar)
• Open and off-campus access resources
• An interrogation syntax
• Research equations
• ex   monetary funds  AND regulation AND date
  gt2005 ET (types of documents periodical papers
  OR reports)
• Database interrogation tools

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2. Research process Google search tools

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2. Research process Googles advanced search

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2. Research process advanced search results

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2. Research process Googles instant search

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2. Research process Google Images

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2. Research process Google Scholar

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2. Research process a human sciences search
engine

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2. Research process off-campus access to
library resources

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2. Research process national network of
university libraries

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2. Research process Factiva a news database

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2. Research process Revues.org open-access
database

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2. The documentary research process

• An adequate choice of terminology for requests

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2. Research process the experts

• Consultation with technical experts oral and
  written resources (synonymy, neology)

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2. Research process information watch

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Establishment of a specialized terminology
• Creation of definitions and technical remarks
• Example
• Definition of credit intermediation
• a funding process in which an institutional unit
  acquires financial assets and at the same time
  invests them on the market through credit,
  maturity or liquidity transformation
• Additional remark
• The definition applies both to the shadow banking
  system and the traditional banking system.
  Although the credit intermediation in the
  traditional banking system is performed in an
  integrated way, the shadow banking credit
  intermediation is performed through a multi-step
  process in which each shadow bank has a
  particular role to play and uses specific
  techniques.

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Creation of tree diagrams based on the
  understanding of each terms semantic status
• Remark financial intermediation" (intermediation
  performed by financial entities), together with
  "banking intermediation", is part of the "credit
  intermediation".
• However, banking intermediation refers
  exclusively to the intermediation performed by
  banks and is rarely used by American authors (the
  US financial system relying less on banking
  institutions than the European financial system).
  
• ? financial / banking intermediation are the
  meronyms of credit intermediation

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Identification of collocations
• Ex to perform / to conduct a credit
  intermediation
• Like the traditional banking system, the shadow
  banking system conducts credit intermediation .
  However, unlike the traditional banking system,
  where credit intermediation is performed under
  one roofthat of a bankin the shadow banking
  system.

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Identification of various types of synonyms
• Ex credit transformation / credit enhancement
• Comment
• "credit enhancement" has a more general meaning
  than "credit transformation" and refers to the
  attempts by a financial institution to reduce the
  credit risks of its assets, thereby improving its
  credit worthiness collaterals, credit risk
  transfer or credit tranformation are credit
  enhancing tools.

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Comparing terms shadow bank / nonbank

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Comparing terms shadow bank / non bank

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Translation problem solving making decisions
• In the domain of mergers and acquisitions,
  translating from French to American English
• Knowledge of the institutional context helps
  filling in the gaps for the target audience so as
  to make up for cultural differences

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Taking into account cultural and economic
  specificities
• Ex Translating the word concentration from
  French to English
• Problem
• concentration (French) is a process
• Ex réaliser (to realize) une concentration
• - concentration (English) is either a process
• Ex to realize a concentration
• Or a result
• Ex a newly merged concentration

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3. Application to specialized translation

• The students comment
• After learning much more about merger control and
  competition law, and spending much more time
  studying the corpora, I realized that in English,
  occurrences of concentration as a process only
  seemed to appear in European texts.
• The European use of the word concentration in
  English actually corresponds to what North
  American authors refer to as mergers and
  acquisitions (MA)

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Conclusion
• Since the text is a French paper dealing with the
  European situation the translations targeted
  audience is American
• the French term concentration
  should be translated by mergers and
  acquisitions
• Decision comparative analysis of economic
  context identification of the translations
  targeted audience

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Translating a neologism
• In the domain of celebrity marketing
• (as in Nespresso with George Clooney!)
• Translating the following sentence
• In a co-branding situation, either between two
  product brands or between a product and a human
  brand, the separate relevant brand attributes
  tied to each brand come together.
• Problem the term human brand has no exact
  equivalent in French

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3. Application to specialized translation

• Solution
• The student coins a new term marque
  célébrité based on the study of the corpus
  using a concordancer
• Avoids the ambiguity in French of marque
  humaine
• Reproduces the observed recurrent structure in
  French
• marque x
• Confirmed by an expert who uses this neonym in an
  essay included in the corpus

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3. Application to specialized translation
process tracing

• A process tracing approach to become a translator
• A 3 parts report
• Documentation commentary
• Terminology dictionary and commentary
• Translation aligned translation and commentary

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3. Application to specialized translation
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3. Process tracing extracts of a students report
Choosing a Field of Study At that point, I was
not aware that this subject incorporated a
significant legal aspect. Once I started to
translate small parts of the article to see
exactly what kinds of issues I might have with
terminology, I realized that there were many
references to legal matters and texts. Little by
little I discovered that I was dealing with an
interdisciplinary field called competition law.
It included several different sub-fields of
economics, and the administrative bodies that
regulate the economy in France and the European
Union. I would have to learn basic concepts from
several of these different subjects and put them
all together to get a good enough understanding
of the relevant issues in order to translate an
article about them.
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3. Process tracing extracts of a students report
Search Methods Online Resources Since the
article to be translated was from an academic
journal, I wanted to find a lot of texts from the
same kind of documents written in the same
register. For this reason, I chose to use search
engines such as Google Scholar, the Catalogue
search function on the Université Paris Diderot
website, Sudoc, and the CAIRN and Science
Direct17 databases. Search terms were first
chosen based on the article to be translated. The
following are some examples of the first ones I
used competition law mergers "industrial
organization" "competition policy" contrôle
des concentrations économie industrielle
concentrations droit de la concurrence
fusions 
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3. Process tracing extracts of a students report
Types of Documents Available in the Field It is
not surprising that the most documents produced
about French merger control and competition
policies come from the government agencies
responsible for monitoring markets in that
country. The Autorité de la concurrence issues
opinions about the state of competition, and
makes decisions regarding proposed mergers and
acquisitions. They also issue press releases
about the result of certain cases, or their
recommendations for improving the state of
markets in certain industries. Everything that
comes from the Autorité is important to those
working in the field of competition law, and the
firms affected by that law because it sets the
tone for what is considered acceptable and what
is not.
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3. Process tracing extracts of a students report
CONCLUSION () Although one could hardly say
that the terminology in the field is volatile,
this mix of subjects in the context of the
European Union creates a confusing situation for
the use of terms in English. Once I realized
this, it definitely affected the way I did my
research and decided which documents to take into
account when choosing terms. In this way, I was
confronted with the reality of translating in a
country that is part of a larger framework where
languages meet and mix, resulting in often very
unique English vocabulary that is not necessarily
understood by those who are not familiar with it.
It makes me wonder how often translators with
deadlines who are not familiar with these
differences use vocabulary from the European
Commission when it may not be the best choice if
ones goal is widespread comprehension.
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Conclusion

• information
  research
• document collection
• specialised language discourse
  community domain

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Conclusion

Corpus Terminological
/ phraseological query
Translation
decision

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On-line resources

• My course http//www.eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr
  /enseignement/lea/cours/rech-documentaire/gbordet2
  
• A selection of useful resources
  http//www.eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr/enseignement
  /lea/cours/rech-documentaire/l3
• Research methodology for the Internet
  http//ccfd.crosemont.qc.ca/cours/trousse/carte/in
  dex.html

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Hvala na vašoj pozornosti!
Documentary research in specialized translation
studies
Geneviève Bordet Paris Diderot University ,
Sorbonne Paris Cité, CLILLAC-ARP EA 3967
F-75205, Paris, France gbordet_at_eila.univ-paris-di
derot.fr
Terminologija i specijalizirano prevodenje u
službi medukulturne strukovne Komunikacij
August 22-23 2014 University of Zadar