Issues discussed relate to improving translations or stages of the translation process, improving the theory and practice of translations especially regarding synonymy, and improving instruments such as dictionaries that help translators. (10 references) (LB)

Considers the problems related to the translation of names, nicknames, and titles. Discusses the general challenges requiring extensive cultural background, along with special challenges revealing an author's subjective intentions in the form of humor, invention, allusion, or distortion. Provides a method for dealing with such translational…

Discusses the effects of translating televised foreign language materials, including changes in mode and timing. Outlines the necessary skills by which successful subtitlers overcome these complexities. Suggests nine basic fields to consider when creating and evaluating interlingual subtitles. (HB)

Outlines advantages and disadvantages of the Foreign Language Education Forum (FLEFO) on the CompuServe Service. Discusses the future information superhighway and the future of large multilingual global translation projects. (SR)

Describes the conditions affecting the translation and borrowing of acronyms (such as "VHS") among other languages, concluding that the major difficulty in translating acronyms is in balancing intended expressed meaning, represented technicality or potential for common usage, articulation, and perceived acceptability of "foreign" terms. (20…

Recounts how portions of the Bible were translated into E-Prime (English without the verb "to be") by a professor and his students. Cites some passages in the new E-Prime version of the Bible. (PA)

Studied two procedures for detecting potentially flawed items in translated tests with small samples: (1) conditional item "p" value comparisons; and (2) delta plots. Varied several factors in this simulation study. Findings show that the two procedures can be valuable in identifying flawed test items, especially when the size of the…

In response to two papers on translation and norms, this article reflects on the role of norms and research on norms in the field of interpreting and refers to a case study which shows that norms should be considered in one type of empirical research where they have been neglected so far (norms in interpreting research). (SM)

Despite calls over several decades for theory development, there remains no overarching knowledge-translation theory. However, a range of models and theoretical perspectives focused on narrower and related areas have been available for some time. We provide an overview of selected perspectives that we believe are particularly useful for developing…

It is much debated whether translation is semantically mediated or based on word-word associations at the lexical level. In 2 experiments with Dutch (L1)-French (L2) bilinguals, the authors showed that there is a semantic number magnitude effect in both forward and backward translation of number words: It takes longer to translate number words…

Google at times is a librarian's best friend--quickly locating lots of helpful information for the students libraries serve. Other times, it is a librarian's worst enemy, since many kids believe that they can find everything they need by simply using one search engine. It is important to remind kids that it is also important to look in the…

How do interpreters manage to cope with the adverse effects of concurrent articulation while trying to comprehend the message in the source language? In Experiments 1-3, we explored three possible working memory (WM) functions that may underlie the ability to simultaneously comprehend and produce in the interpreters: WM storage capacity,…

The concept of "the object of activity" plays a key role in research based on activity theory. However, the usefulness of this concept is somewhat undermined by the fact that a number of problems related to its meaning and its contexts of use remain unsolved. This article is an attempt to address some of these problems. The article focuses on 3…

How others see the United States will always be influenced by its actions abroad, but through well-written books, children in other countries can gain a more balanced view of America. Translators play a crucial role in transmitting a more realistic and balanced view of the United States to other parts of the world. In Japan, the role of the…

The influence of different instructional presentations upon meaning and pronunciation acquisition in character learning was examined. High school students learned to identify a series of characters in terms of their associated pinyin and English translation prompts. Acquisition was shown to proceed more rapidly when the Chinese character was…