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Papers by Gholamreza Medadian

Abstract: Shifts are one of the universals of translation. Vinay & Darbelnet (1997) implicitly di... more Abstract: Shifts are one of the universals of translation. Vinay &
Darbelnet (1997) implicitly divide shifts into obligatory or nonobligatory.
Obligatory shifts are the results of the inevitable systembased
differences between source text (ST) and target text (TT),
whereas non-obligatory shifts (NOS) are related to individual
translators’ cultural, stylistic and normative choices. In this study, the
NOSs of three professional Iranian translators in three translated novels
were identified and their drivers and cumulative impacts were discussed
and accounted for. The common NOSs were found to be (1) frequent
use of nativized Arabic lexical and functional items, (2) tendency to use
various doublets instead of single items (3) style-mixing (4) styleshifting
and (5) frequent use of colloquial culture-specific idioms. Iran's
long tradition of poetry and poetic prose (nasr-e-mosaja), leakage of
contemporary author-translators' styles (their linguistic signatures) and
the dominant cultural-linguistic norms of the Iranian community are
thought to be the underlying causes of these NOSs

The broad purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the use of pragmatics by no... more The broad purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the use of pragmatics by non-native and native speakers of English in their e-mail requests: A study which bridged the quantitative and qualitative methodologies. It drew upon exploring per-locutionary effect and politeness level of requests. In this study, 40 non-native and native speakers of English volunteered to participate and provided the researchers with their e-mail requests to their professors. The data were collected, coded and analyzed in order to determine the e-mails' per-locutionary effect and politeness level. The results demonstrated that non-native speakers' e-mail requests were too polite with low per-locutionary effect, while native speakers' requests were found to be polite enough with high per-loctionary effect.

—This study aimed to investigate the Iranian language learners' ideas of the ideal English lesson... more —This study aimed to investigate the Iranian language learners' ideas of the ideal English lesson. Two kinds of English lessons, form-focused and communicative were taken into account. Moreover, the current study set out to investigate the relationship between the learners' conceptions of ideal lesson and their gender. The collection of data was accomplished by administering a modified 10-item survey questionnaire to 100 advanced English learners of a language institute in Hamedan. The participants were randomly selected to complete the questionnaire, reflecting their opinions regarding the ideal English lesson. Accordingly, the results of the study indicated that advanced Iranian learners preferred communicative activities such as having lots of active discussions, working independently of the teacher, doing funny activities (e.g., singing happy songs and playing games) and using real-life materials (e.g., TV, magazines) more than form-focused activities such as teaching items of language (e.g., grammar and vocabulary), correct pronunciation, revising grammar, correcting most of the grammatical mistakes and guiding most of what they do. It was also found that there is a significant difference in learners' orientations towards communicative activities based on their gender, with males scoring higher on those items.

When translators come across a mismatch or a problematic concept in the source text in the transl... more When translators come across a mismatch or a problematic concept in the source text in the translation process, they may modify that concept one way or another in order to comply with the prevalent norms of target society. This study's main concern is twofold: (1) identifying the problematic concepts present in Hollywoodian movies subtitled into Persian from Iranian culture and norm systems perspective (2) finding the strategies resorted to by the subtitlers to address these problematic concepts. After careful watching and analyzing eight randomly chosen subtitled movies available in the Iranian market, the most frequent problematic concepts in the Hollywoodian movies were found to be morality related concepts. In addition, nine frequent modification strategies resorted to by the translators were identified in the corpus. Among those strategies, omission and zero-translation were found to be the most frequently applied ones.

Dubbing TV series which include many characters with different idiolects and intra-linguistic var... more Dubbing TV series which include many characters with different idiolects and intra-linguistic variations is a very demanding task for every dubbing team. Although dubbing directors are aware of the existence of various idiolects in their projects and try to reflect the variations, this can be done in a more organized fashion which can improve the quality of the dubbing. This paper set outs to propose a table of specifications for every character " s idiolect, to act as a road map to guide dubbing teams and the translation trainees to render source idiolects efficiently into target language idiolects. In the case study conducted on the dubbed version of The Prison Break serial, distinctive verbal and paralinguistic idiosyncrasies in the characters " idiolects were found to be the mostly neglected features of speech in the dubbing process. Based on this table, the paper also proposes a methodology for dubbing quality assessment from idiolectal variations point of view drawing on the comparative-descriptive methodology of Gideon Toury (1995). Film uses language variation and accent to draw characters quickly, building on established preconceived notions associated with specific regional loyalties, ethnic, racial, or economic alliances. (Lippi-Green, 1997, p. 80) 1. Introduction Dubbing popular prime time Hollywood TV series has become very widespread due to their worldwide acceptance on the side of the audience. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is a dubbing country (as classified by Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 1997:244), has followed the same line and some domestic private home video corporations have recently dubbed some of these series into Persian, from among which one can refer to 24, The Lost and more recently The Prison Break. In addition, the Islamic Republic of Iran " s broadcasting TV started to dub The Prison Break for its channel 3, but the dubbing project stopped after only two episodes for some unknown reasons (Asriran Newspaper, 2009). The inclination of the channel 3 for dubbing such a serial indicates its great popularity in Iran.

Various scholars from different schools of thought have proposed criteria and/ or models or trans... more Various scholars from different schools of thought have proposed criteria and/ or models or translation assessment. Surprisingly, almost none of them are tailor-made for a manageable summative evaluation of student translation. That is why most translation teachers still draw on holistic and traditional methods of translation evaluation in their exams. These methods are either too holistic or too detailed (and complex) for translation evaluation purposes in educational settings. The holistic approaches that verge on subjectivity are quite manageable for a teacher who is to evaluate of a score of students, whereas the detailed and quantitative models, which are highly demanding on the limited resources of a classroom teacher, are considered highly objective. Feeling the need for a model, which is both manageable and objective, this study aims at reaching a compromise between the subjectivity and the complexity of these approaches to translation evaluation. Our proposed model draws on and combines the five linguistic equivalences introduced by Koller (1979) and the five-leveled holistic scheme for translation evaluation proposed by Waddington (2001).

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English Lithuanian adverb placement audiovisual translation collocation distance learning institutional register language evolution language teaching lietuvių kalba metaphor motivation multilingualism needs analysis pleonasm subtitling tertiary education translation translation strategies vertimas vertimo paradigma
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Home > No 24 (2014) > Medadian
Educating Autonomous Translators in Distance Learning: a Neglected Area in the ‘Map’ of Translation Studies
Gholamreza Medadian, Saeed Ketabi

Abstract

Surprisingly, translator training in distance learning is under-researched in Translation Studies and the scholars in the field have simply ignored the fundamental differences between distance and traditional modes of translator training. This study is a preliminary attempt to draw attention to this neglected area of research. Firstly, the study made an attempt to determine a set of criteria for educating functional and autonomous translation trainees in distance learning through a contrastive and critical review of the related literature. Taking a functionalist-communicative stance, ideas were borrowed from distance learning, second language teaching and translation theories for this purpose. The most important criteria must be learner-orientedness, process-orientedness and use of authentic real-life translation tasks. Later, the criteria were employed to evaluate a self-instructional translation textbook. The evaluation showed that these criteria could serve as a roadmap for assessing and/or designing self-instructional textbooks for distance learning mode. Finally, it was suggested to add translation training in distance mode to the applied branch of the so-called map of Translation Studies to promote further research in this area.

Abstract: Shifts are one of the universals of translation. Vinay & Darbelnet (1997) implicitly di... more Abstract: Shifts are one of the universals of translation. Vinay &
Darbelnet (1997) implicitly divide shifts into obligatory or nonobligatory.
Obligatory shifts are the results of the inevitable systembased
differences between source text (ST) and target text (TT),
whereas non-obligatory shifts (NOS) are related to individual
translators’ cultural, stylistic and normative choices. In this study, the
NOSs of three professional Iranian translators in three translated novels
were identified and their drivers and cumulative impacts were discussed
and accounted for. The common NOSs were found to be (1) frequent
use of nativized Arabic lexical and functional items, (2) tendency to use
various doublets instead of single items (3) style-mixing (4) styleshifting
and (5) frequent use of colloquial culture-specific idioms. Iran's
long tradition of poetry and poetic prose (nasr-e-mosaja), leakage of
contemporary author-translators' styles (their linguistic signatures) and
the dominant cultural-linguistic norms of the Iranian community are
thought to be the underlying causes of these NOSs

The broad purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the use of pragmatics by no... more The broad purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the use of pragmatics by non-native and native speakers of English in their e-mail requests: A study which bridged the quantitative and qualitative methodologies. It drew upon exploring per-locutionary effect and politeness level of requests. In this study, 40 non-native and native speakers of English volunteered to participate and provided the researchers with their e-mail requests to their professors. The data were collected, coded and analyzed in order to determine the e-mails' per-locutionary effect and politeness level. The results demonstrated that non-native speakers' e-mail requests were too polite with low per-locutionary effect, while native speakers' requests were found to be polite enough with high per-loctionary effect.

—This study aimed to investigate the Iranian language learners' ideas of the ideal English lesson... more —This study aimed to investigate the Iranian language learners' ideas of the ideal English lesson. Two kinds of English lessons, form-focused and communicative were taken into account. Moreover, the current study set out to investigate the relationship between the learners' conceptions of ideal lesson and their gender. The collection of data was accomplished by administering a modified 10-item survey questionnaire to 100 advanced English learners of a language institute in Hamedan. The participants were randomly selected to complete the questionnaire, reflecting their opinions regarding the ideal English lesson. Accordingly, the results of the study indicated that advanced Iranian learners preferred communicative activities such as having lots of active discussions, working independently of the teacher, doing funny activities (e.g., singing happy songs and playing games) and using real-life materials (e.g., TV, magazines) more than form-focused activities such as teaching items of language (e.g., grammar and vocabulary), correct pronunciation, revising grammar, correcting most of the grammatical mistakes and guiding most of what they do. It was also found that there is a significant difference in learners' orientations towards communicative activities based on their gender, with males scoring higher on those items.

When translators come across a mismatch or a problematic concept in the source text in the transl... more When translators come across a mismatch or a problematic concept in the source text in the translation process, they may modify that concept one way or another in order to comply with the prevalent norms of target society. This study's main concern is twofold: (1) identifying the problematic concepts present in Hollywoodian movies subtitled into Persian from Iranian culture and norm systems perspective (2) finding the strategies resorted to by the subtitlers to address these problematic concepts. After careful watching and analyzing eight randomly chosen subtitled movies available in the Iranian market, the most frequent problematic concepts in the Hollywoodian movies were found to be morality related concepts. In addition, nine frequent modification strategies resorted to by the translators were identified in the corpus. Among those strategies, omission and zero-translation were found to be the most frequently applied ones.

Dubbing TV series which include many characters with different idiolects and intra-linguistic var... more Dubbing TV series which include many characters with different idiolects and intra-linguistic variations is a very demanding task for every dubbing team. Although dubbing directors are aware of the existence of various idiolects in their projects and try to reflect the variations, this can be done in a more organized fashion which can improve the quality of the dubbing. This paper set outs to propose a table of specifications for every character " s idiolect, to act as a road map to guide dubbing teams and the translation trainees to render source idiolects efficiently into target language idiolects. In the case study conducted on the dubbed version of The Prison Break serial, distinctive verbal and paralinguistic idiosyncrasies in the characters " idiolects were found to be the mostly neglected features of speech in the dubbing process. Based on this table, the paper also proposes a methodology for dubbing quality assessment from idiolectal variations point of view drawing on the comparative-descriptive methodology of Gideon Toury (1995). Film uses language variation and accent to draw characters quickly, building on established preconceived notions associated with specific regional loyalties, ethnic, racial, or economic alliances. (Lippi-Green, 1997, p. 80) 1. Introduction Dubbing popular prime time Hollywood TV series has become very widespread due to their worldwide acceptance on the side of the audience. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is a dubbing country (as classified by Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 1997:244), has followed the same line and some domestic private home video corporations have recently dubbed some of these series into Persian, from among which one can refer to 24, The Lost and more recently The Prison Break. In addition, the Islamic Republic of Iran " s broadcasting TV started to dub The Prison Break for its channel 3, but the dubbing project stopped after only two episodes for some unknown reasons (Asriran Newspaper, 2009). The inclination of the channel 3 for dubbing such a serial indicates its great popularity in Iran.

Various scholars from different schools of thought have proposed criteria and/ or models or trans... more Various scholars from different schools of thought have proposed criteria and/ or models or translation assessment. Surprisingly, almost none of them are tailor-made for a manageable summative evaluation of student translation. That is why most translation teachers still draw on holistic and traditional methods of translation evaluation in their exams. These methods are either too holistic or too detailed (and complex) for translation evaluation purposes in educational settings. The holistic approaches that verge on subjectivity are quite manageable for a teacher who is to evaluate of a score of students, whereas the detailed and quantitative models, which are highly demanding on the limited resources of a classroom teacher, are considered highly objective. Feeling the need for a model, which is both manageable and objective, this study aims at reaching a compromise between the subjectivity and the complexity of these approaches to translation evaluation. Our proposed model draws on and combines the five linguistic equivalences introduced by Koller (1979) and the five-leveled holistic scheme for translation evaluation proposed by Waddington (2001).

Page Header Journal Help USER You are logged in as... gholamreza My Journals My Profile Log Out... more Page Header

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Search

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FONT SIZE
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INFORMATION
For Readers
For Authors
For Librarians
KEYWORDS
English Lithuanian adverb placement audiovisual translation collocation distance learning institutional register language evolution language teaching lietuvių kalba metaphor motivation multilingualism needs analysis pleonasm subtitling tertiary education translation translation strategies vertimas vertimo paradigma
crossref crosscheck
iThenticate
HOME ABOUT USER HOME SEARCH CURRENT ARCHIVES PUBLICATION STATEMENT
Home > No 24 (2014) > Medadian
Educating Autonomous Translators in Distance Learning: a Neglected Area in the ‘Map’ of Translation Studies
Gholamreza Medadian, Saeed Ketabi

Abstract

Surprisingly, translator training in distance learning is under-researched in Translation Studies and the scholars in the field have simply ignored the fundamental differences between distance and traditional modes of translator training. This study is a preliminary attempt to draw attention to this neglected area of research. Firstly, the study made an attempt to determine a set of criteria for educating functional and autonomous translation trainees in distance learning through a contrastive and critical review of the related literature. Taking a functionalist-communicative stance, ideas were borrowed from distance learning, second language teaching and translation theories for this purpose. The most important criteria must be learner-orientedness, process-orientedness and use of authentic real-life translation tasks. Later, the criteria were employed to evaluate a self-instructional translation textbook. The evaluation showed that these criteria could serve as a roadmap for assessing and/or designing self-instructional textbooks for distance learning mode. Finally, it was suggested to add translation training in distance mode to the applied branch of the so-called map of Translation Studies to promote further research in this area.