Indirect translation: Main trends in practice and research

Abstract

This article concerns indirect translation (ITr), understood broadly as translation of translation, and has the aim of facilitating systematic research on this long-standing, widespread yet underexplored phenomenon. The article thus provides an overview of some of the main patterns in ITr practice and research and explores suggestions for related future studies. The overview follows the 'Five W's and One H' approach. The what question concerns terminological and conceptual issues related to ITr and explores the relevance of systematic studies on ITr. The who question considers the profile of agents involved in ITr processesas well as the profile of ITr researchers. The where question relates to the spatial dimension of ITr as well as to the geographic spread of ITr research. The when question concerns the time coordinates of ITr practice as well as the diachronic evolution of ITr studies. The why questions looks into the motivations for ITr and into the historical neglect in the Translation Studies discipline. Finally, the how question considers selected details of ITr processes as well as the methods used in identifying most probable mediating texts and languages. The article ends with a brief consideration of prospects for research on ITr training. The what question concerns terminological and conceptual issues related to ITr and explores the relevance of systematic studies on ITr. The who question considers the profile of agents involved in ITr processes as well as the profile of ITr researchers. The where question relates to the spatial dimension of ITr as well as to the geographic spread of ITr research. The when question concerns the time coordinates of ITr practice as well as the diachronic evolution of ITr studies. The why questions looks into the motivations for ITr and into the historical neglect in the Translation Studies discipline. Finally, the how question considers selected details of ITr processes as well as the methods used in identifying most probable mediating texts and languages. The article ends with a brief consideration of prospects for research on ITr training.

Indirect literary translation and intercultural communication: crossing borders in the Neighbours with a Go-Between project

“…Indirect translation, also known as 'second-hand translation' (Toury, 1995), 'relay translation' (Dollerup, 2000), 'mediated translation' (Pym, 2011) or 'intermediary translation' (Stroilova & Dmitriev, 2016), means that a text is not translated directly from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL), but instead from SL into an intermediary language, and then from this intermediary language into TL. As Pokorn (2013), Li (2017) and Pięta (2019) point out, indirect translation has always been a common practice but has received surprisingly little attention in theoretical literature. When it is discussed in translation studies, particularly in relation to literary translation, it is typically seen as detrimental to the quality of the text, and especially so in terms of conveying cultural elements (e.g.…”

Towards a machine learning approach to the analysis of indirect translation

“…Indirect translation, also termed relay translation (Ringmar 2012), refers to the practice of producing target texts (TT) in a target language (TL) from source texts (ST) in a source language (SL) via mediating texts (MT) in a third language, the so-called mediating language (ML). 1 It has a long-standing history and widespread use in today's society (Pięta 2019;Rosa, Pięta, and Bueno Maia 2017). In an increasingly globalized world, indirect translation may help alleviate the lack of qualified translators for less common language combinations and reduce costs in highly multilingual settings, such as in international organizations.…”

Relay Translation of Traditional Javanese Advices From Butir-ButirBudaya Jawa’s Book

“…The translation experts have their own terminology to mention the relay translation. The experts who called it as indirect translation (ITr) [12], [6], [7], [15], [39], [21], [30], [29], and [22]. Meanwhile, [38] call it as second hand translation.…”

“…Why a relay translation happen? First, both lack of knowledge and lack of translator who has a good competencies to do direct translation [26], [40], and [22]. Second, lack of access to the source language [25].…”

“…From those reasons, a relay translation happens which involves three different languages [12], [29], [15], [32], [26], [4], [22], and [33]. Those three different languages has their own position namely source text (ST), mediated text (MT), and target text (TT).…”