When the apprentice wants to become the master. Several remarks on the quality of the translation of specialist texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/RP.2012.010Keywords
translation of special texts, translation errorAbstract
Most students pursuing postgraduate courses in specialized translation are oft en convinced that they will complete them as professionals. However, should they be led to believe it is possible to train a specialist within a year or two? An analysis of translations of a memorandum of association submitted by the students of such a course taught at two universities in Toruń has shown the target texts to be far from perfect. In the theoretical part of the article, the author presents various definitions of legal translation as a type of specialist translation and the features of a well-translated text, with a particular focus on the mistake typologies described by Tomaszkiewicz (1996), Hejwowski (2004), and Kim (2009). In the practical part, she uses Tomaszkiewicz’s typology to analyse the translation and language mistakes made by the students. Due to wrong interpretation of the text, lack of translation competence and expert knowledge, they used interference, changed the sense of various parts of the source text, transferred the English syntax into the Polish text, and even made spelling mistakes. The last part of the article presents several remarks on how to remedy these problems. Thus, the author claims that translation teachers should encourage their students to: improve their language skills to understand a foreign text and use their mother tongue appropriately, learn how to use various translation tools (dictionaries, corpora, specialist literature), analyse teacher’s assessment of their translations, and carefully perform all stages of the translation process (interpretation, deverbalisation, and revision), treating them as a retrospective-prospective process (Lorscher 1991).
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