A Pragmatic Tool in Self-Evaluative Activities for Higher Translation Quality
4. The methodology
The ideas proposed for the translation class have been taken from the process writ ing approach, that is: “reading and writing are seen as interacting linguistic forces through which students will develop their overall academic proficiency. Students are guided through numerous reading strategies that extract information from the printed page and then, through a process writing approach, they are shown that the act of writing itself helps to create, develop, and refine thinking processes.” (Brown, Cohen
& O’Day 1991: vii).
In order to apply Ruuskanen’s model and to make students improve the quality of the final copy, the “process translating” activities were divided into three “meet
ings”, a week apart from each other.
First meeting - teacher talks about the activities
- students get the jokes to be translated at home Second meeting - peer-review following teacher’s guidelines
- students write a report based on their discussions in class
- teacher collects this report to prepare guidelines for the coming session
- students “re-do” translation at home using peers’
suggestions
Third meeting - peer-review following teacher’s guidelines
- do the final draft at home following peers’ suggestions
In order to carry out this investigation, fourth-year college students from a 4-year translation course were asked to translate jokes into Portuguese following the teacher’s instructions. Fourteen students took part in it.
The students were supposed to translate the jokes taking the following chart into account:
Adauri Brezolin
The first activity was performed in a way somewhat similar to what generally takes place in a translation class, that is, the students were supposed to translate a
Client Publishing House
Audience Brazilian readers at different ages
Time One (1) week
Register Everyday situations
Genre Humorous
Style Colloquial
text or a piece of text without a close guidance from the teacher. However, the inclu
sion of the table containing those factors highlighted by Ruuskanen prompted the further comments the teacher made to the students. Besides this, the result of this activity would be important when compared with the final draft, which would have been worked on by the students.
Having done the first activity at home and having prepared their translations in two copies, students were paired off so that a classmate would review his/her transla
tion. The second activity contained guidelines previously prepared by the teacher.
These guidelines covertly referred to a specific topic included in CATLEGS, they intended, in this case, to remind the students of genre, that is, all these texts had to be necessarily humorous. These guidelines somewhat supplied the students with a generic, though theoretical, idea of what humor is about, but still leaving them the chance of “discovering” what should be caught in the joke so that it would not go flat.
In sum, the idea was to help the students, but not to spoon-feed them. Moreover, students were instructed to write a report based on the comments provided by their peers. The students were free to include whatever they thought would be relevant.
These reports, collected on the same day by the teacher, were later used to prepare guidelines for the coming session. After this, the students collected their translations back and were supposed to work on them changing whatever they found necessary based on their peers’ comments.
The third activity contained guidelines which worked like an overall and final review. Again, by reinforcing the ideas contained in CATLEGS, the teacher is able to remind the students of certain topics. In this case, genre is once more emphasized by the inclusion of some theory on humor, the guidelines present more details on the incongruity theory (Morreall 1983) as far as the mechanisms to create humor are concerned. It is a way to guarantee that they (the mechanisms) are going to be observed and kept in the target language. Besides this, the teacher is drawing atten
tion to another topic highlighted by Ruuskanen: the audience. We can say that by this time the students are concentrated on the final version of the text, or rather, the final product that is supposed to be “published”.
This way, due to the insertion of Ruuskanen’s ideas in the beginning, we think that all these “hints” given to the students were more easily introduced. By applying these factors, the teacher is better equipped to maintain rapport with the students.
Section 1. Users’ Expectations
This model seems to be a very important tool teachers can resort to, mainly because of the opportunity it gives the teacher and the students to negotiate. This negotia
tion, based on this pragmatic view, makes the students more aware of the character
istics and problems underlying translation. This activity, according to Delisle (1988),
“is a skill (of interpretation and re-expression) based on knowledge (of language and facts)”. By applying this practice of peer-review and self-evaluation, the teacher has the opportunity to demand more from the novice translators, drawing attention to aspects of the language that they might not have learned or have simply forgotten.
Apart from this linguistic “exchange”, the teacher is able to discuss cultural elements, for instance. Through this continuous and more effective dialog, the teacher can force the students to think over the ideas presented in the text, leading them to have not only one interpretation, but many interpretations prompted by their peers. And still, by reading someone else’s translations, they are able to improve their own expression or “re-expression”.
5. Conclusions
The following chart gives us an overview of what has been done by the students.
The chart shows whether or not the students improved the first draft and whether the result was satisfactory; consequently, acceptable.
Did the student improve the first draft in joke ... giving it a satisfactory result?
Student 1 2 3 4 5 6
S 1 yes no no no no no
S 2 yes yes no yes no yes
S 3 yes yes no no no no
S 4 yes yes no no no yes
S 5 yes yes no no no yes
S 6 yes yes yes no yes no
S 7 no yes yes no no yes
S & yes yes yes no yes yes
S 9 yes yes yes no yes yes
S 10 yes yes no no no yes
S 11 yes yes no yes no no
S12 yes yes yes no yes yes
yes yes yes no yes yes
Chart 1: Improvementon the firstdraftto reach asatisfactory result
As can be seen, we are just considering improvements that really resulted in a sat
isfactory outcome. Out of 78 jokes (13 students x 6 jokes), 46 (58,9%) were
consid-Adauri Brezolin
ered satisfactory. These results somewhat frustrate our initial expectations, for we thought that this kind of practice would increase the acceptability level substantially.
On the other hand, the activity made the students more aware of the difficulties faced by a translator and, maybe if applied systematically, it can really improve the transla
tion quality on a long-term basis.
Considering that translation is an intellectual activity interconnected with com
prehension, general knowledge, language and re-expression, we can conclude that applying Ruuskanen’s model at the beginning of the text to be translated arouses greater concerns in the students. This could be observed by means of the comments made by the students when they realized how difficult and complex translating is, and more specifically, translating jokes. Translation is a process which goes beyond the sheer manipulation of dictionaries: it requires a lot of effort, imagination and creativ
ity. By proposing these peer-reviews and self-evaluations resulting from the applica
tion of such a model, the students are being confronted with their limitations, which may be overcome after discussing relevant points with their peers. It was clear that by reminding students of CATLEGS, they noticed that something had to be done so that the result would be improved. It does not mean, however, that all problems can be solved; but students become more aware of the complexity of such an activity (translating). Moreover, if we change the answers to the questions in Ruuskanen’s model, we are also changing the result of the translation. So, it is imperative that we take the establishment of such criteria into account not only when translating, but also when assessing the final text. The final product is purpose-dependent and directly connected with the preferred method of translation. It is interesting to note that some students offered a certain resistance to adapting and re-creating, we think that they were either afraid to take risks or unaccustomed to negotiating with their peers or teacher. On the other hand, maybe because of the freedom provided by the peer- reviews and teacher-guided discussions, some students really “went overboard”. As a consequence, even considering that the translation activity should not be authori
tarian, the result of the final text in some cases left much to be desired.
Due to the specificity of jokes, this kind of practice gives the students time to reach a certain maturity and, then, to be able to express themselves in a more ade
quate manner. Translating jokes requires reasoning, common sense and creativity.
When it comes to creativity, we inevitably have to mention “re-creation”, which seems to be the solution to many cases. Again, by reviewing their peers’ choices, the students are also having the chance to develop a certain amount of common sense. Criticizing and evaluating someone else’s task makes us feel more observant and fault-finding;
this way, we can also see “our own” faults and; consequently, we can try to improve our text. Unfortunately, some students did not show much progress as far as com
mon sense is concerned. It seems that we need more activities like this in the class
room. As mentioned before, we need to apply this kind of practice systematically.
On the other hand, we can say that a greater number of translations done by the stu
dents in this project can only be accepted because they went through this kind of activity. Besides this, other pieces of translation, which were discarded, might have demanded a closer intervention from the teacher, who, in fear of being overbearing, stepped back leaving the students on their own. This is, of course, an easily reversible attitude in future classes. Here goes a suggestion: find a wise and helpful way to inter
vene without “throwing a wet blanket” on the students’ creative solutions. This can
Section 1. Users’ Expectations
be done by the establishment of certain criteria even before the activity gets started.
These criteria should be based on concepts of the translating process that the teacher believes are the most suitable and that can be of real help to the students.
As far as translation quality is concerned, we can say that assessing a translation is also very complex and subjective, for there are many possible acceptable solutions, mainly if we are dealing with humorous texts. In sum, an acceptable translation should reveal that the translator: (a) knows both the languages involved and the facts under
lying the texts; (b) has interpreted and understood the content using judgement and intelligence and (c) has expressed him/herself taking into account not only the stan
dards of the target language, but also the needs of the audience addressed. Translation and its evaluation must result from a descriptive perspective, for there is no ready
made formula, each text and translation is unique.
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