TY - JOUR
T1 - Professionals’ views on the concepts of translation
T2 - the challenge of categorisation
AU - Dam, Helle V.
AU - Zethsen, Karen Korning
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - In this article, we analyse and discuss translation professionals’ views on the concepts of their trade: the concept of translation itself but also adjacent notions such as subtitling, interpreting, localisation and transcreation. Through focus groups with translators and translation project managers working for a translation agency, we explore how practitioners understand the concepts of translation, how they categorise and why they categorise as they do. Data were analysed by means of prototype theory, and results show that the focus-group participants understand prototypical translation rather narrowly as source-text oriented, written, interlingual transfer, but also that they have a broad and nuanced understanding of translation as a category. Beyond the prototype, they use ‘translation’ as a cover term for a wide variety of tasks that involve different degrees of intervention, transformation and creativity. Interestingly, the analyses show that the practitioners in the study categorise quite differently than translation scholars do. They draw on a fluctuating set of criteria for categorisation, some of which are highly pragmatic (e.g. pricing), and their definitions are much more floating and context-sensitive. In fact, they operate with different concepts depending on whom they interact with: clients, colleagues–or scholars.
AB - In this article, we analyse and discuss translation professionals’ views on the concepts of their trade: the concept of translation itself but also adjacent notions such as subtitling, interpreting, localisation and transcreation. Through focus groups with translators and translation project managers working for a translation agency, we explore how practitioners understand the concepts of translation, how they categorise and why they categorise as they do. Data were analysed by means of prototype theory, and results show that the focus-group participants understand prototypical translation rather narrowly as source-text oriented, written, interlingual transfer, but also that they have a broad and nuanced understanding of translation as a category. Beyond the prototype, they use ‘translation’ as a cover term for a wide variety of tasks that involve different degrees of intervention, transformation and creativity. Interestingly, the analyses show that the practitioners in the study categorise quite differently than translation scholars do. They draw on a fluctuating set of criteria for categorisation, some of which are highly pragmatic (e.g. pricing), and their definitions are much more floating and context-sensitive. In fact, they operate with different concepts depending on whom they interact with: clients, colleagues–or scholars.
KW - categorisation
KW - definition
KW - prototype theory
KW - translation concepts
KW - Translation practice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85188292674&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13556509.2024.2320953
DO - 10.1080/13556509.2024.2320953
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85188292674
SN - 1355-6509
VL - 30
SP - 388
EP - 406
JO - The Translator
JF - The Translator
IS - 3
ER -