Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Table: 1

In this text 23 students out of 36 made more than 4 recognition errors and 6 students provided no answer whatsoever.

Text 2	Number of students making recognition errors	Percentage
one recognition error	0
two recognition errors	0
three recognition errors	1	2.7%
four recognition errors	10	27.7%
five recognition errors	12	33.3%
six recognition errors	2	5.5%
No answer	11	30.5%

Table: 2

In this text 24 students out of 36 made more than 4 recognition errors and 11 students failed to provide any answer

Text 3	Number of students making recognition errors	Percentage
one recognition error	0
two recognition errors	0
three recognition errors	3	83.3%
No answer	6	16.6%

Table: 3

In this text 30 students out of 36 made 3 recognition errors and 6 students provided no answer.

2. 
   The students’ feedback:
   

After finishing the error recognition pre-tests, the testees were asked to justify their answers in written. Quite strikingly, many students gave no justification for their answers. Only 8 students (22. 2%) justified their answers for text 3; 6 students (16. 6) justified their answers for text 2, and
11 students (30. 5%) for text 1.

Text	Number of students justifying their answers	Percentage
Text 1	11	30.5%
Text 2	6	16.6%
Text 3	8	22.5%

Table: 4

Some justification samples by students are given below: Student 1:
(Text1) The change is necessary because the speech here is a
conversation between two close friends; so the language should be informal.
(Text2) In this text, the language should be very formal; so we change the informal expressions into formal expressions to suit the situation. Example: “… is sorry to tell …” becomes “… is sorry to inform”.
Student 2:
(Text1) We should replace “I wonder if it would be possible” because it is formal and there is no formality between friends.
Student 3:
(Text 1) It is about an informal situation. (Text 2) It is about a very formal situation. (Text 3) It is about a formal situation.
Student 4:
(Text 1) Too formal expressions in an informal conversation. (Text 3) The nature of the text is legal.

3. 
   Interpretation of the results:
   

The figures in the tables above clearly show that students have a big problem recognizing errors of register in the ST. For table 1 and table 2, the students who made four or more recognition errors account for 63.7% and 66.5% respectively. As for those who produced no answer, they represent 16.6% and 30.5% respectively. The situation is much worse in table 3 where 83.3% made recognition errors and 16.6 % gave no answer. Moreover, only 8 students justified their answers for text 2. Is this a symptom of the intuitive thinking dominating rational thinking?
These are most alarming results and do demonstrate that the students’ knowledge of register is not well-developed. One can thus only expect that their translations will be faulty at this level of context.

4. 
   Evaluation of the testees’ translations:
   

As it was predicted from the reading of the tables 1 to 4 above, the testees’ unawareness of the importance of the situational context resulted in translations which did not match the ST register. Most of the translations were literal either because the testees failed to relate the words on the page to their context of situation, or because having possibly identified the particular situational context, they were unable to find and use the most appropriate word for this context. Thus, for text 3, i.e. the Lufthansa announcement, the verb “tell” and the clause “until we contact you later”, are rendered literally instead of the more formal verb ήΒΨΗ and the more impersonal expression ϖΣϻ ϝΎμΗ΍ ϰΘΣ. The expression in the ST, “Lufthansa is sorry to tell you” was translated as
* ϢϜϟ ϝϮϘΗ ϥ΃ ΍ΰϧΎΘϓϮϟ Δϛήη ϒγΆϳ. In Text 1, the word here and the verb phrase « makes a promise » are rendered literally as ΎϨϫ and Ϊόϳ respectively instead of ΍άϬΑ and ΪϬόΘϳ. Such inadequate translations are the outcome of a failure to appreciate the place of formulaic expressions, such as I hereby, in the ST.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ):

1. 
   Evaluation and interpretation of the students’ translation errors The number of students taking this pre-test is 36. The most suitable
   

answers for the MCQ are: 1-c, 2-c, 3-a and 4-b. The following table gives the number of students choosing the correct answer for each sentence and the number of those choosing the wrong answer for each sentence.

Sentences	Number of students choosing the correct answer	Percentage	Number of students choosing the wrong answer	Percentage
Sentence 1	11	30.5%	4	11.11%
Sentence 2	11	30.5%	9	25%
Sentence 3	11	30.5%	1	2.7%
Sentence 4	11	30.5%	9	25%