Quality aspects in institutional translation

Tomáš Svoboda   Łucja Biel   Krzysztof Łoboda  

Synopsis

The purpose of this volume is to explore key issues, approaches and challenges to quality in institutional translation by confronting academics’ and practitioners’ perspectives. What the reader will find in this book is an interplay of two approaches: academic contributions providing the conceptual and theoretical background for discussing quality on the one hand, and chapters exploring selected aspects of quality and case studies from both academics and practitioners on the other. Our aim is to present these two approaches as a breeding ground for testing one vis-à-vis the other.

This book studies institutional translation mostly through the lens of the European Union (EU) reality, and, more specifically, of EU institutions and bodies, due to the unprecedented scale of their multilingual operations and the legal and political importance of translation. Thus, it is concerned with the supranational (international) level, deliberately leaving national and other contexts aside. Quality in supranational institutions is explored both in terms of translation processes and their products – the translated texts.

Chapters

  • Quality aspects in institutional translation
    Introduction
    Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel, Krzysztof Łoboda
  • Translation product quality
    A conceptual analysis
    Sonia Vandepitte
  • Quality in institutional EU translation
    Parameters, policies and practices
    Łucja Biel
  • The evolving role of institutional translation service managers in quality assurance
    Profiles and challenges
    Fernando Prieto Ramos
  • Translation manuals and style guides as quality assurance indicators
    The case of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation
    Tomáš Svoboda
  • Terminology work in the European Commission
    Ensuring high-quality translation in a multilingual environment
    Karolina Stefaniak
  • Evaluation of outsourced translations
    State of play in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DGT)
    Ingemar Strandvik
  • Quality assurance at the Council of the EU’s translation service
    Jan Hanzl, John Beaven
  • A two-tiered approach to quality assurance in legal translation at the Court of Justice of the European Union
    Dariusz Koźbiał

Reviews

  • Review in The Journal of Specialised Translation by JC Penet published January 31, 2019
    ... With its focus on institutional translation in general, and on EU translation in particular, this book seems to present a dramatic update to Arturo Tosi’s Crossing Barriers and Bridging Cultures: The Challenges of Multilingual Translation for the European Union published in 2002. The greater emphasis on translation quality should come as no surprise with the emergence of industry standards (e.g. EN 15038:2006 and ISO 17100:2005) since Tosi’s publication. Even though these standards do not apply to EU translation, they have had an impact on quality control in the EU’s translation services at a time of increased workload and budgetary pressure. This is something this book documents very well by showing a rewriting of the narrative of quality discourse among most EU institutions. Despite being primarily descriptive, this book is therefore extremely valuable to all scholars with an interest in the latest developments in EU translation.
  • Review in Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica by Tereza Marková published December 5, 2018
    ... Systematicky koncipovaný sborník nabízí vhled do stávající praxe zejména v Evropské unii, identifikuje otázky, kterým by se v budoucnu bylo záhodno věnovat, a otevírá tak široké možnosti pro další výzkumníky. Díky různému odbornému zázemí autorů je kniha přínosná jak pro akademiky, tak pro překladatele a manažery pohybující se v prostředí institucionálního překladu i zájemce o tyto pozice. ...
  • Review in Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, Vol. 44 No. 1 by Martina Bajčić published December 21, 2018
    . . . Knjiga Quality aspects of institutional translation koristan je i dobrodošao pregled dosadašnjih istraživanja kvalitete prijevoda ponajprije u okviru institucija EU-a. Devet poglavlja knjige na jednome mjestu donosi radove priznatih autora u području pravnoga prevođenja ukorijenjene u suvremene teorijske pravce te službenika institucija EU-a koji se svakodnevno bave kvalitetom prijevoda, pružajući čitatelju dragocjen pogled iznutra i izvana. . . .
  • Review in Hermeneus by Cristián Cámara Outes published December 20, 2019
    En definitiva, una de las mejores cosas que se puede decir acerca de este libro colectivo es que cumple perfectamente con todo lo que promete en su título y presenta un prisma amplio de acercamientos diversos al fenómeno estudiado. Gracias a ello, reúne todas las bazas para convertirse en una referencia inexcusable dentro de un ámbito que hasta ahora poco estudiado, a pesar de su indudable interés. Además, el ajustado equilibrio que mantiene entre la reflexión teórico -académica y la detallada observación y acopio de datos hará que el libro resulte útil por igual tanto a investigadores como a profesionales que desarrollen su actividad en este sector o sectores afines.

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Biographies

Tomáš Svoboda

Tomáš Svoboda is Head of German Department in the Institute of Translation Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, from which he graduated in English and German translation. He earned his Ph.D. in Translation Studies in 2004. From 2004 to 2007 Tomáš Svoboda worked as an in-house translator and training coordinator for the Czech Language Department of the Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, Luxembourg, and subsequently for four years as a contractor for the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany. He lectures on technical and institutional translation, tools and technologies, and translation history in the Institute of Translation Studies. He is an active translator and auditor under the ISO 17100 standard. His publications cover translation quality, institutional and technical translation, translation technology, future of the translation profession as well as translation history. Tomáš is member of the Executive Board of the Czech Union of Translators and Interpreters, a coordinator of FIT Europe (Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs) Technology Group, and Board Member of the European Masters in Translation (EMT) network.

 

Łucja Biel

Łucja Biel is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland, where she teaches and researches legal translation. She is Secretary General of the European Society of Translation Studies (EST) and a deputy editor of the Journal of Specialised Translation. She was a Visiting Lecturer on the MA in Legal Translation at City University London from 2009 to 2014. She holds an MA in Translation Studies (Jagiellonian University of Kraków), PhD in Linguistics (University of Gdańsk), and Diploma in English and EU Law (University of Cambridge) and a School of American Law diploma (Chicago-Kent School of Law and University of Gdańsk). She has participated in a number of internationally and nationally funded research projects and has published widely in the area of EU/legal translation, translator training and corpus linguistics, including a book Lost in the Eurofog. The Textual Fit of Translated Law (Peter Lang, 2014).

Krzysztof Łoboda

Krzysztof Łoboda is a translator trainer and researcher at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he earned an MA in Translation Studies to further continue PhD studies in linguistics. He has also completed postgraduate studies in Research Project Management and other courses such as Term Extraction and Management at Imperial College London. He is a member of the PKN Technical Committee 256 on Terminology, Other Language Resources and Content Management. Since 2004 Krzysztof has been an external translator/reviser of documents issued by EU institutions (mostly EC, but also EP, CoR and EESC). His research interests include translation technology, specialized translation, and e-learning in translator training. He is currently involved in developing TRALICE consortium of translation professionals and researchers, a regional platform to facilitate cooperation between business and academia.

Published

October 2, 2017
LaTeX source on GitHub
Cite as
Svoboda, Tomáš, Biel, Łucja & Łoboda, Krzysztof (eds.). 2017. Quality aspects in institutional translation. (Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing 8). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1048173

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ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-946234-83-8

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2017-12-18

doi

10.5281/zenodo.1048173

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978-3-96110-021-7