New pedagogy for studying literature in translation

In the last several decades, literary works from around the world have made their way onto the reading lists of American university and college courses in an increasingly wide variety of disciplines. This is a cause for rejoicing. Through works in translation, students in our mostly monolingual society are at last becoming acquainted with the multilingual and multicultural world in which they will live and work. Many instructors have expanded their reach to teach texts that originate from across the globe. Unfortunately, literature in English translation is frequently taught as if it had been written in English, and students are not made familiar with the cultural, linguistic, and literary context in which that literature was produced. As a result, they submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not reap the benefits of intercultural communication.

Here a true challenge arises for an instructor. Books in translation seldom contain introductory information about the mediation that translation implies or the stakes involved in the transfer of cultural information. Instructors are often left to find their own material about the author or the culture of the source text. Lacking the appropriate pedagogical tools, they struggle to provide information about either the original work or about translation itself, and they might feel uneasy about teaching material for which they lack adequate preparation. Consequently, they restrict themselves to well-known works in translation or works from other countries originally written in English.

Literature in Translation: Teaching Issues and Reading Practices squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. The book's sixteen essays provide for instructors a context in which to teach works from a variety of languages and cultures in ways that highlight the effects of linguistic and cultural transfers.

The complex nuances of interpreting generate a continuous demand for detailed curricula to enhance instruction. The latest addition to the Interpreter Education series New Approaches to Interpreter Education expands the tools available to instructors with seven new, vital chapters on new curricula and creative teaching methods. Series editor Cynthia B. Roy, Associate Professor in the Department of Interpretation at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, called upon the expertise of nine other renowned interpreter educators to create this incisive collection. David Sawyer begins the volume with the foreword in which he emphasizes the importance of integrating theory and practice in order to improve the quality of interpreter education. Risa Shaw, Steven D. Collins, and Melanie Metzger follow with a description of the process for establishing a bachelor of arts program in interpreting at Gallaudet University distinct from the already existent masters program. that outlines the positive results from the use of a discourse-oriented curriculum for educating interpreters. In the second chapter, Claudia Angelelli outlines the bottom-line principles for teaching effective health-care interpreting, postulating a model that depends upon the development of skills in six critical areas: cognitive-processing, interpersonal, linguistics, professional, setting-specific, and sociocultural. Helen Slatyer delineates the use of an action research methodology in the third chapter to establish a curriculum for teaching ad hoc interpreters of languages used by small population segments in Australia. In the fourth chapter, Jemina Napier blends three techniques for instructing signed language interpreters in Australia: synthesizing sign and spoken language interpreting curricula; integrating various interpreting concepts into a theoretical framework; and combining online and face-to-face instruction. David Sawyer adopts a holistic perspective in his chapter on training interpreters in less frequently taught language combinations, to offer models and methods for interpreters in areas such as the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Doug Bowen-Bailey describes how to apply theories of discourse-based interpreter education in specific contexts by producing customized videos. Finally, Mary Mooney addresses issues of ethnicity, cultural awareness, and intercultural communication skills among interpreters, interpreter educators, and interpreter education programs in the sign language community, to enhance competency for working within these diverse communities. All of these innovative concepts for creating curricula for interpreter training combine to ensure New Approaches to Interpreter Education as the state-of-the-art standard in this intricate discipline.

Perspectives on Translation and Interpretation in Cameroon is the first volume of a book series of the Advanced School of Translators and Interpreters (ASTI) of the University of Buea. It opens a window into the wide dynamic and interesting area of translation and interpretation in a multilingual Cameroon that had on the eve of independence and unification opted for official bilingualism in French and English. The book comprises contributions from scholars of translation in the broad area of translation, comprising: the concept of translation and its pedagogy, the history of translation and, the state of the art of translation as a discipline, profession and practice. The book also focuses on acquisition of translation competences through training, and chronicles the history of translation in Cameroon through the contributions of both Cameroonian and European actors from the German through the French and English colonial periods to the postcolonial present in their minutia. Rich, original and comprehensive, the book is a timely and invaluable contribution to the growing community of translators and interpreters in Africa and globally.

In interpreting, professionals must be able to convey to their clients the rhythm, stress, and length of phrases used by the communicating parties to indicate their respective emotional states. Such subtleties, which can signal sarcasm and irony or whether a statement is a question or a command, are defined in linguistics as prosody. Brenda Nicodemus’s new volume, the fifth in the Studies in Interpretation series, discusses the prosodic features of spoken and signed languages, and reports the findings of her groundbreaking research on prosodic markers in ASL interpretation. In her study, Nicodemus videotaped five highly skilled interpreters as they interpreted a spoken English lecture into ASL. Fifty Deaf individuals viewed the videotaped interpretations and indicated perceived boundaries in the interpreted discourse. These identified points were then examined for the presence of prosodic markers that might be responsible for the perception of a boundary. Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries reports on the characteristics of the ASL markers, including their frequency, number, duration, and timing. Among other findings, the results show that interpreters produce an average of seven prosodic markers at each boundary point. The markers are produced both sequentially and simultaneously and under conditions of highly precise timing. Further, the results suggest that the type of prosodic markers used by interpreters are both systematic and stylistic.

Concise and visual in effect, word sonnets are fourteen line poems, with one word per line. Frequently allusive and imagistic, they can also be irreverent and playful. While informed by other short poetry forms such as the Haiku, Mayne’s word sonnets are deeply influenced by the Talmudic tradition of maxims, proverbs and images that instruct and inform everyday life.

Presented with an excellent translation of the poems into French, Ricochet is a unique volume that showcases this innovative new form. The collection also includes a short preface by the poet and an introductory essay by the translator on the challenges of translating word sonnets.

Ricochet est un recueil bilingue de sonnets d’un mot écrits par l’un des principaux innovateurs de cette forme poétique, Seymour Mayne. On y trouve trois séries de poèmes piquants et évocateurs, qui recèlent des moments de perception aiguë, tout en attirant l’attention sur des instants d’humour surgissant tout à coup dans la vie quotidienne.

Les sonnets d’un mot sont des poèmes de quatorze lignes, concis, ayant un mot par ligne, et à l’effet visuel certain. Souvent elliptiques et imagés, ils s’avèrent aussi parfois irrévérencieux et taquins. Bien qu’inspirés par d’autres formes de courts poèmes, comme le haïku, les sonnets de Seymour Mayne sont profondément liés à la tradition talmudique des maximes, proverbes et images qui éclairent la vie quotidienne.

Présentant une excellente traduction des poèmes en français, Ricochet est un livre unique qui met en valeur cette nouvelle forme littéraire. L’ouvrage comprend également une courte préface du poète et une introduction de la traductrice sur les défis que comporte la traduction de sonnets d’un mot.

The translation of poetry has always fascinated the theorists, as the chances of "replicating" in another language the one-off resonance of music, imagery, and truth values of a poem are vanishingly small. Translation is often envisaged as a matter of mapping over into the target language the surface features or semiotic structures of the source poem. Little wonder, then, that the vast majority of translations fail to be poetry in their own right. These essays focus on the poetically viable translation - the derived poem that, while resonating with the original, really is a poem. They proceed from a writerly perspective, eschewing both the theoretical overkill that spawns mice out of mountains and the ideological misappropriation that uses poetry as a way to push agendas. The emphasis throughout is on process and the poem-to-come.

Institutions of higher learning around the nation have embraced the concept of student civic engagement as part of their curricula, a movement that has spurred administrators in various fields to initiate programs as part of their disciplines. In response, sign language interpreting educators are attempting to devise service-learning programs aimed at Deaf communities. Except for a smattering of journal articles, however, they have had no primary guide for fashioning these programs. Sherry Shaw remedies this in her new book Service Learning in Interpreter Education: Strategies for Extending Student Involvement in the Deaf Community. Shaw begins by outlining how to extend student involvement beyond the field experience of an internship or practicum and suggests how to overcome student resistance to a course that seems atypical. She introduces the educational strategy behind service-learning, explaining it as a tool for re-centering the Deaf community in interpreter education. She then provides the framework for a service-learning course syllabus, including establishing Deaf community partnerships and how to conduct student assessments. Service Learning in Interpreter Education concludes with first-person accounts from students and community members who recount their personal and professional experiences with service learning. With this thorough guide, interpreter education programs can develop stand-alone courses or modules within existing coursework.