Serving Two Masters: Determining the Difference between a Translator and a Bilingual

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2013
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
Wei (2007) claims that natural bilinguals have difficulty translating. This paper explores the reasons for this difficulty by comparing the demands placed on translators with the day-today experiences of being bilingual. According to Romaine (1989) and De Bot (1992), bilinguals are not typically required to keep their speech free of influence from other languages they speak, and can mix elements from various languages unconsciously. Like monolinguals, bilinguals produce their language automatically, as described by Levelt (1989). Translators, however, work for an audience that has a low tolerance for deviations from the monolingual norm. This external pressure causes translators to monitor their speech production more closely, which they are able to do because translation does not require speech to be produced in real time. The present work covers translation, not interpretation - work with written texts, not speech. Taking examples of translations and mistranslations from Russian, Chinese, and English, I will outline the forms of interference often faced by translators in terms of morpho syntactic structure and lexical items. By choosing translation examples that are as unambiguous as possible, I will intentionally avoid many of the traditional concerns of translation theory, such as audience and authorial intent. Functional structures from Lexical-Functional Grammar are provided for sentential examples to illustrate in a formal, organized way how a good translation keeps meaning and grammatical relations constant and faithful during the transfer from one language to another. The conclusions of this paper will aid aspiring translators in understanding the demands of translation and any .. 1 necessary trammg.
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