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Host: University of Joensuu
Description:
The question of translation universals has been a bone of contention in translation studies since about the mid-nineties. To
what extent is it possible - or even useful - to talk about 'universal' features in connection with translation? Is there
something that translations (and translation processes) tend to share, independently of the particular languages, the social
circumstances and the specific cognitive determinants involved? A number of hypotheses have been suggested that might
account for linguistic features of translated language, some verging on the cognitive processes involved. In the last few
years, the issues have increasingly been put to empirical test by using electronic corpora, either consisting of comparable
corpora (in one language) or parallel corpora (with source texts and their translations).
The Savonlinna School of Translation studies has compiled a comparable corpus of translated and untranslated Finnish, with a group of researchers seeking answers to the plausibility of claims about linguistic translation universals as well as exploring the specificities of translated Finnish. We are organising this conference to engage in dialogue with colleagues concerned with similar questions from different perspectives. The emphasis will be on product-oriented studies of potential linguistic features on the one hand, and on cognitively-based process studies on the other, but we also welcome alternative viewpoints and different methodological and theoretical approaches.
Speakers: Gideon Toury, University of Tel Aviv; Mona Baker, UMIST; Andrew Chesterman, University of Helsinki
Date received: December 12, 2000
© 2008 Atlas Conferences Inc.