Q1: Sum up the procedures of the SI, CI, ST tests conducted during Agrifoglio’s experiment highlighting the problems and errors, observations, and conclusions.
ReemAlharthi999
TRA430week31.pptxSummary and Sight Translation
Agrifoglio (2004) pp 50-61
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ENG 201: English Grammar I
The Experiment of Agrifoglio
Three texts from English to Spanish
The professional interpreter can read and comprehend with the average rate of 110 wpm (word per minute)
SI test: texts were tape-recorded, and the interpreters listened to the speeches through headphones
CI test: the speech was read aloud with reader pausing every 3-4 minutes to give the interpreter time to translate. Oralizing the text: colons are indicated by “this means”; parentheses are indicated by “in other words”
ST test: interpreters had less than 5 minutes to read the text before starting to translate it aloud.
Errors were divided into meaning and expression failures
Meaning failures: meaning, omissions, incomplete sentences
Expression failures: syntax, style problems, grammatical mistakes (subject verb agreement, pronouns and nouns agreements ), lexical problems (inappropriate terminology, collocations, calques).
Results of the experiment
All interpreters had fewer meaning problems and more expression problems in ST than in SI or CI.
Meaning failures are more in CI than in ST
Expression failures are more in ST than in CI
There is a greater linguistic interference from the source text in ST
Failures comparison
ST
Interpreters suffered from coordination problems and short-term memory failures.
Ex, they lost the referent, forgot the gender, number and person.
The perceptual span in reading is no more than 15 typographical spaces to the right and 4 to the left, so the interpreter’s eye may not grasp every word of a sentence while s/he is reformulating it aloud at the same time.
memory effort is critical to ensure coherence and cohesion
Higher source-text interference cause: expression problems such as false cognates
Some interpreters had difficulty coordinating the silent reading and oral production
SI
Most failures consisted of omissions: nouns, modifiers, short subordinate clauses, numbers, proper nouns
changes in meaning: cased by comprehension problem insufficient capacity for the Listening effort and/or Memory effort.
Chain reaction = deficit in Memory effort
Expression problems: less frequent here (syntax, and grammatical mistakes) possibly caused by short-term memory failures.
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CI
Omission: the most failure observed
In CI interpreters sometimes omitted entire passages
Most omissions and changes in meaning were due to note-taking failure= trouble understanding their own notes
Cohesive ties pose serious problems: subjects recall ideas and words, but sometimes forgot the exact relationship between them.
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CI
Changes in meaning are substantial; target version faintly resemble the content of the original.
Thee were fewer expression problems in CI due to the separation of the production phase from the reception and analysis phase.
Changes in meaning occur in dense complex texts; numbers (dates, percentages) figures were substituted with “almost, nearly, a lot, of”
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Conclusion
There are important differences between the constraints involved in ST and in interpreting from an oral source
In SI and CI, saturation and note-taking problems are the source for failures observed.
Visual interference (caused by presence of source text) seems to be stronger than audio interference
Sight translator rely on short-term memory to retrieve information
Conclusion
Effective Coping tactics in ST:
Mark key elements
Segment units during the preparation phase
Use slashes and brackets to separate subordinate clauses from main clauses
Use active voice (reduce errors due to inflectional and gender differences.)
Summary Translation
Summary Translation
The aim of a summary translation is usually to allow the reader to understand the key points of the original document.
It is not a word-for-word translation of the original
if a document is found to be irrelevant then there is no need for a full translation. For this case, a summary translation is the most cost-effective option.
in situations where the turnaround time is very tight.
is not ideal for publishing or distribution
Process of Summary Translation
A professional translator will read through a document (skimming)
Assess the most important points. (Mark key elements, identify main verbs and subjects, …)
Segment units. (use slashes and brackets to separate subordinate clauses from main clauses, …)
The document is then summarized and
Then translated into the target language.
Terminology Issue
may also be known as “gist” translation or preliminary translation. However, this these terms are not standardized within the translation industry
Some translation agencies can take gist translation to mean simply a machine translation. For others, a preliminary translation can be a draft.
That is, when the document first gets translated by the translator. A review by the editor and proofreader has still not been performed. It should be noted that these types of translations are usually intended for in-house use, not publication.
