Unwanted Literal Translation: An Underdiscussed Problem in International Achievement Studies

Arffman, Inga

doi:10.1155/2012/503824

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Literal translation is the starting point of translation because each word is translated directly (Fang & Lu, 2012, p. 743). It cannot be avoided because it is the default translation technique (Arffman, 2012), and it serves as the basis of all other translation techniques (Mustafa & Kholid, 2019, p. 141).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translation techniques used in translating a smartphone user manual

Mustafa

Aziz

Khabri

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As many smartphones are imported from overseas and the user manuals are written in English, the translation of a user manual is, therefore, very important for the Indonesian customers whose English is not their second language. Good translation results are then very essential in order that the customers understand the information easily and clearly. The focus of this research is the bilingual English-Indonesian Samsung’s GT-19500 user manual. This research aims to find translation techniques applied in the book. In this descriptive research, the sentences were the tokens that were recorded in Microsoft Excel. The tokens were then analyzed based on the categories of translation techniques in question. It was found that there were nine translation techniques used in the user manual. The translation techniques used in Samsung’s GT-19500 user manual are borrowing (41%), literal translation (25%), calque (13%), transposition (7%), equivalence (6%), adaptation (5.3%), modulation (3%), and omission (2%). Therefore, the techniques used in translating a smartphone user manual are unique to this type of document because the document consists of many terms without Indonesian equivalence.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translation techniques used in translating a smartphone user manual

Mustafa

Aziz

Khabri

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The translatability assessment and cognitive debriefing interview processes were incorporated into the overall translation of the instrument, because literal translations potentially can pose problems with the validity and interpretability of the PRO measure. 11 , 12 No significant modifications after changes made in accordance with the translatability assessments were required to improve the integrity and quality of the IBS-D PRO instrument in any of the languages evaluated. The usefulness of translatability assessments prior to the actual translation has previously been documented and is commonly accepted.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural adaptation: translatability assessment and linguistic validation of the patient-reported outcome instrument for irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea

Delgado-Herrera

Lasch

Popielnicki³

et al. 2016

PROM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background and objectiveFollowing a 2009 US Food and Drug Administration guidance, a new patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument was developed to support end points in multinational clinical trials assessing irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D) symptom severity. Our objective was to assess the translatability of the IBS-D PRO instrument into ten languages, and subsequently perform a cultural adaptation/linguistic validation of the questionnaire into Japanese and US Spanish.Materials and methodsTranslatability assessments of the US English version of the IBS-D PRO were performed by experienced PRO translators who were native speakers of each target language and currently residing in target-language countries. Languages were Chinese (People’s Republic of China), Dutch (the Netherlands), French (Belgium), German (Germany), Japanese (Japan), Polish (Poland), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico), and Spanish (US). The project team assessed the instrument to identify potential linguistic and/or cultural adaptation issues. After the issues identified were resolved, the instrument was translated into Spanish (US) and Japanese through a process of two forward translations, one reconciled translation, and one backward translation. The project team reviewed the translated versions before the instruments were evaluated by cognitive debriefing interviews with samples of five Spanish (US) and five Japanese IBS-D patients.ResultsLinguistic and cultural adaptation concerns identified during the translatability assessment required minor revisions, mainly the presentation of dates/times and word structure. During the cognitive debriefing interviews, two of five Spanish respondents misunderstood the term “bowel movement” to mean only diarrhea in the Spanish version. Consequently, the term was changed from “movimiento intestinal” to “evacuaciones”. None of the Japanese respondents identified issues with the Japanese version.ConclusionThe translatability of the IBS-D PRO instrument into ten target languages was confirmed, with only minor changes made to the translations of the instrument. The translation and linguistic validation into Spanish (US) and Japanese provide evidence that this instrument can be used in multinational trials and clinical settings.

show abstract

“…In contrast, inexperienced or untrained translators tend to translate literally because they might feel safer or more comfortable to stay close to the source text. A good level of translation training and experience is required to know how to stay close to the source text's meaning despite applying a certain degree of freedom (Arffman 2012). Experienced translators usually recognize easily that, in some cases, a direct translation is not sufficient to transfer the meaning from the source to the target context.…”

Section: Translation Strategies In Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Translate Wisely! An Evaluation of Close and Adaptive Translation Procedures in an Experiment Involving Questionnaire Translation

Repke

Dorer

2021

International Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To challenge the commonly made assumption in cross-national survey projects that close translation yields more comparable data than adaptation, we implemented a translation experiment in the CROss-National Online Survey Panel. The English source questionnaire was split into three batches of 20 items each and was translated by three translation teams into Estonian and three teams into Slovene. The teams received specific instructions on how to translate each batch (either closely or adaptively) so that, by design, the teams translated two batches following one approach and one following the other approach. Respondents in the two countries (Estonia and Slovenia) were randomly assigned to three distinct questionnaire versions based on the same source questionnaire, each consisting of translations by all three teams and including close and adaptive translations. We developed an analytical framework to assess the translation potential of the source items (i.e., all theoretically possible translations of a specific item) and the actual translation scores (i.e., the degree of closeness vs. adaptiveness of a specific translation). We show that some items are more sensitive to the wording (small linguistic changes result in a different response behavior) while others are more robust (the meaning of the concept is retained despite linguistic changes).

show abstract

Unwanted Literal Translation: An Underdiscussed Problem in International Achievement Studies

Cited by 9 publications

References 16 publications

Translation techniques used in translating a smartphone user manual

Translation techniques used in translating a smartphone user manual

Cultural adaptation: translatability assessment and linguistic validation of the patient-reported outcome instrument for irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea

Translate Wisely! An Evaluation of Close and Adaptive Translation Procedures in an Experiment Involving Questionnaire Translation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About