Sight Translation

1. Sight Translation Nina Nikolaenko PhD TPU International Cooperation Department (Translation Office)

2. What does the term "interpretation" mean in translation context? • Differences in the process of T & I teaching • Pre-exercises • Suggested types of exercises • Possible problems • Conclusions

3. What is "interpretation“? • SIMULTANEOUS • CONSECUTIVE • or LIAISON INTERPRETATION

4. Sight translation (ST) has mostly been considered as a supportive interpretation method for simultaneous and consecutive interpretation

5. Jean Herbert (1952): sight translation is a type of simultaneous interpreting

6. In sight translation the translator READS a written text, whereas the interpreter, in both consecutive and the simultaneous modes, LISTENS to a speaker

7. Differences in the process will change • the methods • and strategies that an interpreter trainee uses in sight translation

8. Some suggestions for sight translation teaching 2 basic principles of ST teaching • ST is NOT a supportive method for SI and CI • ST is a sole interpretation method

9. ST suggested exercises • aim at enabling students to produce correct, coherent and fluent translations • are in-class activities. It is obvious that real-life conditions will be different and sometimes more difficult

10. The students should be prepared to solve various problems before they work in real-world conditions

11. Pre-Exercises • fast reading • skimming • scanning and reading comprehension activities

12. Suggested ST Exercises (3 phases)

13. PHASE 1 • Reading a text (250-300 words) in the L1 for 20-30 seconds. • General questions about the subject of the text

14. PHASE 2 • More specific questions (such as names, dates, places, etc.) • Reading the text for the second time • 15-20 seconds to find the specific information

15. PHASE 3 • Reading in-depth • Comprehension questions

16. The same exercise is repeated with the texts written in L2. The aim of this exercise is to develop reading comprehension and fast reading skills

17. Exercise 2: texts from various fields • The teacher gives only the titles of the texts and asks students to use their passive knowledge on the subject

18. NB! THE STUDENTS • produce keywords by brainstorming • use their passive knowledge and make logical connections THE INSTRUCTOR • randomly chooses keywords from the text • asks students to make logical connections between keywords and form a bold outline of the text

19. Exercise 3: detailed text analysis • What is the type of the text? • Is it informative? • Is it vocative? • How is the form of the text? • Does it include titles, subtitles, articles, tables, graphs, etc? • What is the message of the text? • Does the text include technical words, jargon, abbreviations, etc? • Are the sentences complex?

20. This exercise will • adequately prepare the student for the translation process • develop their strategies to deal with language-specific problems

21. Exercise 4: how to deal with unknown words

22. ST strategies : • To focus on the message of the sentence/paragraph rather than the meaning of the word • To guess the meaning of the word by using contextual clues

23. Exercise 5:"parsing" and "chunking"when dealing with complex sentence structures THE STUDENTS • parse each sentence • determine the smallest semantic units in each sentence • restructure their sentences • re-formulate it in the TL

24. The aim is not to usethe same grammatical structure but to give the same message in the target language

25. Exercise 6: paraphrasing THE STUDENTS • use their own words to give the same message • try to re-express each sentence in 2-3 different ways without changing the meaning • make additions and omissions, • break a long sentence into smaller sentences • combine short sentences and make a longer sentence and to change the sentence structure The only rule is not to change the meaning

26. ST: Possible problems • The text to be sight translated may be handwritten • The text to be sight translated may involve ungrammatical sentence structures and poor punctuation • The text to be sight translated may be incoherent, or poorly organized • The text to be sight translated may involve graphs, tables, pictures or diagrams

27. Problem 1: ‘undecipherable’ handwriting • POSSIBLE SOLUTION Hence, in order to familiarize the student with various handwritings, in-class activities should include handwritten texts

28. Problem 2: poor grammar and punctuation • POSSIBLE SOLUTION Use of texts written by non-native-speakers who are unfamiliar with the rules of grammar and punctuation

29. Problem 3: poor text organization • POSSIBLE SOLUTION In such a case, the student should be able to detect shortcomings and correct them in the shortest time

30. Problem 4: graphs, tables, pictures or diagrams • POSSIBLE SOLUTION Practise the students in reading and interpreting visual-aided texts and slide presentations

31. 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1999 20002001 200220032004 Gas recoverymln cubic metres 3575 3715 3720 3925 2400 540

32. Suggestions for ST text selection texts of considerable difficulty and complexity: • Knowledge area • Vocabulary • Syntax • Background information

33. Text types for a ST course (1) • Commercial and economic texts: • real-world texts on current world economics • financial issues • international trade • business

34. Text types for a ST course (2) • Scientific and technical texts • medicine • environment • computer science • journal articles • manuals • patents • political and legal texts

35. Conclusion • training time is the time to introduce students to the real-life process of translation • there are many factors which may act as constraints on the ST process • Students’ role is to make certain decisions in order to maneuver among those factors

36. THANK YOU (3822) 563-884 intra@tpu.ru hester@rambler.ru