Didactics of specialized translation - experiences and observations on student translation errors in the case of a wine-related document

Dobnik, Nadja (author)

Languages for specific purposes and technical terminology are key to developing professional competencies in future translators. During their undergraduate translation studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, students work with a broad range of texts, reaching from general-purpose to specialized texts (from economics, law, tourism etc.). Previous experience shows that while inexperienced translators and students feel a great deal of apprehension and uncertainty when faced with demanding technical texts, they nevertheless translate them successfully, primarily because the fear of the text motivates them to conduct in-depth research and seek solutions carefully. On the other hand, with general informative texts, which they do not perceive as technically challenging, they often overlook technical and culture-specific items, leading to severe translation errors. In order to verify this presumption, we analysed the translations of select technical and culture-specific terms in the text “Caractéristiques des vins d’Alsace” (Characteristics of the wines of Alsace). We were interested to see whether students working with a text that provides general information on different types of wine would identify its technical and culture-specific terms, and what solutions they would use in their translations.

• Language: English
• Keywords: didactics of translation, error analysis, specialized translation, translation of culture-specific terms, LSP
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2019
• Number of pages: Str. 49-69, 73
• Numbering: Vol. 14, iss. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-117708
• UDC: 81
• ISSN on article: 1854-2042
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25467366
• Publication date in RUL: 22.07.2020

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Scripta manent
• Publisher: Slovensko društvo učiteljev tujega strokovnega jezika
• ISSN: 1854-2042
• COBISS.SI-ID: 219704576

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Description: A Creative Commons license that bans commercial use and requires the user to release any modified works under this license.
• Licensing start date: 22.07.2020