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Specialized Translation-Kim Grego The rationale behind the perspective proposed in the following pages is a modular conception of translation as a multidimensional container that provides space for all contributions to the field and can be adapted to supply solutions catering for the different needs of its different users (professionals, trainers, students, purchasers of linguistic services). In practice, a tri- dimensional conception of translation as a product, a process and a practice, is proposed here. 1.Reflections on translation In spite of its long tradition as an oral and written practice performed by peoples worldwide, translation has often been called a "recent", "new" or "young discipline". However, the phrase 'recent discipline ' itself, can be said to be inaccurate for more than one reason or, rather, to provide only a partial view of the phenomenon. Trans1ation is indeed a discipline, i.e. a practical activity that requires leaming, training and practising. The term ‘discipline' alone, then, would not take into account the entire theoretical reflection on the subject. In fact, translation has also been called a "form", a "science", an "activity", a "process", a "field". None of these definitions alone, however, can be said to perfectly fit, in that none fully explains the object it describes. Indeed, there currently is a recognizable trend towards trying to develop broader, less restricting definitions of translation; among the options put forward there are: "genre"; "multidiscipline"; "interdiscipline". lt is therefore relatively easy to say what contributes to translation (linguistics, literature, philosophy, anthropology, etc.), but very hard to define it per se and in toto. All the historical views on translation take its nature for granted, and are only concerned with descriptions of it. Employing metaphors and other figures of speech, some of them are among the most brilliant aphorisms of all times, yet they say what translation is like, but fail to say what it is. Main contemporary figures in these fields have provided less evocative yet more systematic views on translation than in earlier times that have had strong influence on it. At the turn of the century, a renewed interest in the theory of signs was best interpreted by Charles Peirce in America and Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe. Both considered translation as serving the role of an intersemiotic operation. In Peirce's amply arbitrary view of the relationship between sign and referent, translation is a "replica" of a sign: a whole book is a sign; and a translation of it is a replica of the same sign. A literature is a sign. De Saussure, the founder of modern linguistic structuralism, saw translation as the link between thought and sign. In the wake of Saussurean structuralism, Roman Jakobson, in the 1950s, as well as organizing translation into his famous intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic categories, called it "interpretation" and even "reported speech". For Halliday: "Translation is meaning-making activity"; more than that, "it is guided creation of meaning”. Moving to a literary-philosophical perspective, George Steiner writes that “translation is formally and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication, in the emission and reception of each and every mode of meaning”. The only certainty is the mere phenomenological evidence: like fire, translation can safely be called a 'phenomenon', something that manifests itself naturally in the world and which everybody has more or less experienced; to explain its true nature univocally and universally appears a still unsolved and much harder task. 'Equivalence' -· the longest-discussed issue in the history of translation and crucial to understanding the nature of the phenomenon and, consequently, trying to define it. Perfect, specular equivalence is not possible according to most. Nevertheless, at least some sort of equivalence, however imperfect, is evidently possible, translation could not take place at all.
All - both the supporters of belles infìdèles and of laides fidèles versions - acknowledge the need and the importance of finding an equivalence of sort between languages as a means of exchange between cultures. Talent, too, is inescapably connected with the notion of art and, in turn, with that of translation, if this is to be considered (at least a minor) one. Any theory of translation will attempt to define its object of study, and encounter insurmountable problems at least and necessarily when facing the notion of equivalence. Linked to this is the other problematic concept of talent, in tum involving that of evaluation: in translation, the translator's talent influences the obtainable degree of equivalence , but how is either unambiguously measurable, therefore evaluable? If to define translation it is necessary to elevate one's standpoint to include a wider horizon, made of the various aspects of knowledge it encompasses, to learn about translation it is indispensable to look more closely at its constituents, of which the linguistic element must be accorded prevalence over the rest as translation's defining character. Language is believed to have developed in order for humans to communicate with each other for practical everyday needs, such as those required by survival and/in community life, which is not in contrast to saying that language was developed to help humans store information and pass it on to the following generations. In this regard, written language is just a further step in our cultural evolution: a means to enlarge the quantity of information we can safely store and pass on as a community. Within this view, it is only logical, for example, that those civilizations that could best optimize the accumulation and the transmission of these enormous quantities of data often proved the most successful in cultural survival. Into this view could still well fit a now historic theory in Translation Studies, Evan-Zohar's "polysystem theory", conceived by one of the fathers of the field and accounting for the transfer (through translation) of cultural items from one "cultural system" to another, on the assumption that 'weaker' systems would draw on 'stronger' ones. Knowing about the basic units of linguistic information and their (re)producibility would naturally mean shedding light on most current riddles in linguistics, including, the relationship between meaning and sign, and even how units of meaningful information are reproduced in one or another language, i.e. how linguistic equivalence (or translation) is obtained. As anticipated earlier, this 'non-answerability' is non-definitive. However, while this condition lasts, it is also non-defining, and research cannot only define phenomena by what they are not. It should instead concurrently keep making hypotheses - although they might not be verifiable in the short term. From this perspective, even in linguistics and in translation in particular, the best line of research, seems to be to work in the long term on breaking the human cognitive code and, in the short term, to focus on practice as a way of accumulating empirical data that could possibly verify limited theoretical assumptions. Applied to translation, this would mean that to photograph translation at one specific moment in the time can be the sole possible object of studies on translation. Or, to put it in Halliday's words, "Linguistics cannot offer any theory of translation equivalence. There can be no such general theory". Halliday's view of equivalence introduces nonetheless another whole set of issues that can prove useful to further circumscribe the field: the theorizations to which translation can be subject. Gentzler (1993), Nergaard (1995) and Munday (2001), among others, comprehensively report on the various phases of development of the new discipline, first concerned with establishing, in Nergaard's (1995) wording, a "science" of translation, then "translation theories", and finally opting for focusing on "translation studies". Considered the foundation of contemporary research on translation, the 1950s-1960s "science" was concerned
the various intermediate phases), practices in a spiralling way (for instance when repeating translation processes over again in different ages because a new translation is needed or desired, with every repeated process being an unrepeatable event in itself. 2.Specialized texts, Specialized translation 'Purpose' is the keyword in specialized translation; it is in fact the keyword in translation at large. What, then, characterizes specialized translation? How is it different from non- specialized translation? And where does literary translation belong, in this distinction? The history of translation until about the mid-twentieth century revolved exclusively around literature; not only, it was taken for granted that it should regard nothing but that. In reality among the oldest written translations (and texts) into any language and of all times there is a prevalence not of literary but of 'service' documents, those that would currently be called 'domain-specific' or specialized texts (e.g. Ptolemaic decree). The supremacy that literary translation enjoyed until the 20th century lies in its practitioners' possessing the tools, the purpose and ultimately the time not only to carry out their activity, but also to write about it. It is not as if nobody ever, in the course of history, recognized or wrote about specialized translation; on the contrary, many mentioned it with the specific objective of asserting its inferiority compared to literary translation. Paradoxically, however, some of the very authors who denigrated this phenomenon also provided brilliant descriptions of it. Specialized translation appears to be strictly linked to the nature of the texts it deals with which might belong to different specific domains. Understanding in detail what makes a text specialized is therefore the key to understanding what specialized translation is and how it works. The actual academic research over specialized languages only started as recently as the 1970s, following the major developments that occurred in all fields of knowledge, since the second half of the 20th century, and produced the results that are most interesting in a TS perspective. The Languages for Specific or Special Purposes (LSPs) were initially identified and researched as early as the 1960s, in the wake of the then newly flourishing studies in applied linguistics, though evidence of a reflection on the subject can be ascribed to Ferdinand de Saussure himself and to even earlier authors. A LSP can be defined as a natural language as typically used in a specific technical or disciplinary field, for a functional or an operational purpose, commonly within a given professional setting. The natural language and the professional setting are the basic variables in LSPs, so that there can be a Business English, an espanol juridico, a français medical, an italiano dello sport. When speaking of LSP, it is actually to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) that most scholars look for reference or for a comparison with their own languages. Hutchinson and Waters, among the most authoritative ESP theoreticians, indicate, as the reasons for the rise of English over other languages in the second half of the 20th century, the "unprecedented expansion in scientific, technical and economic activity on an international scale", "the economic power of the United States”. As English imposed its predominance in all the economically relevant fields, the double need arose to learn to communicate in and through English: English Language Teaching (ELT), and especially the didactics of ESP, catered for the 'in'; specialized translation took charge of the 'through'. A specialized language's purpose is defined, delimited and set out by a community of practice exercising within a specific professional domain that can be technical, scientific, or disciplinary in nature. This community can be called a discourse community according to Swales if, as well as sharing a domain-specific knowledge, it also shares "a broadly-agreed set of common public goals", it employs the same communicative tools, it uses these tools to actively exchange information, it
communicates through specific lexes and genres. Fairclough furthermore expands the notion of discourse community to that of a social, not only professional, construction. From the perspective of translation, the highly specialized lexicon, which is what distinguishes LSPs from 'natural' languages, results in non-specialists commonly finding a specialized text perfectly readable yet not comprehensible. A specialized text would then appear to non-specialists as a thinly woven fabric, with few, well-spaced-out threads and many big knots. Undoing the knots is the specialized translator's task at the lexical level. Strategies that can be applied to do this include examining the etymology of the word, checking whether it has a generic meaning that can help infer its specialized sense or whether it was directly created as specialized, comparing the different meanings the word has in order to establish which semantic fields it is used in. The specialized translator is therefore faced with concerns that are not only linguistic in nature, but cognitive, sociological and potentially ethical too. Domain-specific lexicon has always, correctly, been identified as the LSPs' main vehicle of expert information, and thus as the greatest barrier to a layperson's understanding of specialized texts and the biggest obstacle in translating them. Researching lexicon for the purpose of specialized translation is therefore a translator's most immediate and time-consuming task, often proving hard to carry out because s/he lacks the required domain- specific knowledge, and terminological resources are not available or reliable. The latter circumstance is often due to an absence of constructive cooperation either between linguists and specialists in building glossaries, databases, translation memories, etc., or among linguists, in sharing them. For all these reasons, when translating for professional discourse communities, the existence and application of standards is considered helpful and desirable in solving lexical problems and building reliable terminologies. Sacrificing creativity, inventiveness and originality to standards is acceptable and even required in specialized translation for its intrinsic purpose of providing clear and synthetic communication, where clarity and synthesis are reciprocally restraining: at the lexical level, this means a term must be translated as clearly as possible but within the tight limits allowed by any specialized field. The argument in favour of the introduction and respect of common standards, is furthermore in line with the suggested view of translation as a time-constrained product, process and practice. Product-wise, the focus is on the short-term, circumscribed purpose of retrieving and adapting the terms to complete a specific translation project. Process- wise, it may be relevant to acquire the terms for a longer period and a wider purpose, i.e. to organize and store them in databases for future reference and use. Practice-wise, the discourse community that the translated product will reach and affect ought to be considered too, namely in evaluating the average or expected lifetime of the specialized terms appearing in the product. Comprehensibly, lexis- as the outstanding feature in specialized languages and the vehicle for communicating expertise with clarity and monoreferentiality - has since ancient times been identified as their major and often as their only feature. This is not the case: research has established that also syntactic and textual features, although in lesser proportions, undergo variations in ESP. Focusing on terminology and that alone is precisely one common faux pas of many an inexperienced specialized Translator. Words may be the building blocks of language, but syntax binds them together into sentences and textual construction organizes them into texts endowed with the coherence and cohesion required for the communicative purpose they must serve, all the more so if this is specialized. On the other hand, even the recent years' attention to communication in general, has sometimes resulted in the opposite mistake of concentrating only on text building. Non-lexical features shown by specialized texts, include (but are not limited to) strategies relating to at the syntactic level : nominalization, modality,
Verb tenses also deserve special consideration, particularly those that do not enjoy strict or univocal English-Italian correspondence. It is known that the desire for objectivity, together with depersonalization and hedging, creates a preference in ESP for non-finite verbal forms such as infinitives, participles and gerunds. In Italian, this results in the issue of how to differentiate between an infinitive and a gerund, which is often solved by replacing the English gerund deverbal noun with an Italian noun tout court, thus nominalising and keeping in line with the general trend. Finally, even more interesting is the analysis of the 'past simple-present perfect' pair; the correspondence between these tenses is nowhere near perfect. The problem lies in the multiple value (and translation) that each English tense has in Italian. The past simple can be translated into the Italian passato remoto, passato prossimo or imperfetto. The present perfect can actually refers to a past action or be used with a non-action verb as a duration form. Linguistic approaches are nonetheless functional to specialized translation and in fact are essential, as seen, in decoding the original message and re-codifying it into the target product correctly and according to the purpose. It takes a selective process to identify what analytical resources are to be employed with each single text to translate; the greater the experience, the faster this process is carried out.
2.5 Genre theory and specialized texts
Genre theory: a functional approach in linguistics that itself contributes to bringing coherence.
A genre, being: a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative
purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic
community in which it regularly occurs.
Exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and
intended audience. If all high probability expectations are realized, the exemplar will be viewed as
prototypical by the parent discourse community (Swales 1990: 58, italics added).
In practical terms, then, genres are collections of similar structural and stylistic patterns, applicable
to certain domains, for communication within or across certain communities or, even, beyond
communities, between specialists and non-specialists. Well-known examples are the legal contract,
the research article in hard sciences, the technical report, the patient's medical record in clinical
medicine. Genres, however, do not always necessarily belong to so specific fields. Many facilitate
communication between specialists and non-specialists, for example for dissemination or didactic
purposes: the medical prescription, the instruction manual, the textbook.
So far, the concept of purpose in LSPs has been associated mainly to that of discourse l professional
community, i.e. with reference, in fact, to the domain. Studies on textual genres introduce a
differentiation or, better, a second nuance to it: within their 'purpose', LSPs accommodate not only a
professional focus linked to a specific domain or topic, but also a degree of specialization that
varies from specialist to non-specialist. This is known as a horizonta1- vertical framework
(Cortelazzo 1994, 2000), where the horizontal variation relates to the domain, and the vertical
variation to the degree of specialization.
However, popular communication too, can make use of strictly rigid genres, again depending on
their purpose.
For example, a grandmother's cooking recipe, if it must be successful, shares the same need for
absolute clarity as the description of a newly synthesized molecule, so it follows very crystallized
rules and has a scientific content like a chemical formula's, if for the fact it may use different
systems of measurement, e. g. tablespoons and cups; in translation (and in the kitchen), it is treated
with the same thoroughness as any 'real' scientific text. In view of this discrepancy caused by
purpose, the definition of specialization variation as two-dimensional should perhaps be adapted
into a tri-dimensional structure, linking domain, specialization and purpose at all levels. The
classical horizontal (domain) - vertical (specialization) variation realising specialized languages
could then be seen as integrated into a widely reaching framework comprising a horizontal
(domain) - vertical (specialization) - oblique (purpose) variation, realising specialized
communication.
An established view in literary studies upholds that a genre really is one when it can be parodied.
The professional translator, following Kant's and Wittgenstein's cognitive categories, does not look
for genres in texts, but interprets a text according to the genre features that best describe it: genre
analysis as applied to translation is essentially a matter of choices (a theme that will be discussed
later on in this and the next chapter).
Genre analysis is a functional-linguistic approach19 with roots and applications in philosophy,
literature and the arts. It is inherently concerned with coherence at the textual level as obtained by
the combination of cohesive lexico-semantic and syntactic elements. However, since "coherence is
provided not only by the ordering of sentences, but also by their meaning and reference" (van Dijk
1985: 110), establishing the meaning of sentences is a semantic operation related to interpretation -
one aspect of translation. It furthermore provides the specialized translator with a variety of
analytical tools from which to choose that are this time well-structured and 'packaged' into
readymade yet flexib1e, adaptable and interchangeably constructed textual frameworks: genres.
2.6 Approaches to specialized translation
Translation shares the same traits and problems of the arts as regards equivalence and talent. Any
strictly prescriptive work will then have to deal with these aspects, though art and talent seem
hardly teachable if absent, just refineable or developable if present.
Newmark's functional approach differentiates between semantic and communicative translation.
The first is authorcentred and tends towards lìterality; the second is reader-centred and less
constrained. For most specialized texts, he recommends communicative translation, while be sees
semantic translation closer to literary texts.
The 1990s report interest in register analysis (chapt. 3) and genres (chapt. 8), and introduces
machine translation (pp. 22-25), the then developing notion of discourse (chapt. 4), and the
importance of the social framework (pp. 1-20), with which the focus moves from 'reader' to 'reader
in society '. In The translator as communicator (1997), the same authors move on to consider
translation within even wider horizons, thus leaving the bidimensional plane for the holistic view of
translation in communication. Newmark's semantic and communicative translation is substituted by
static and dynamic translation (I 997: 30-35); the concept of register blends into social semiotics
(1997: 22-24); coherence is introduced as a key element in translating texts ("Indeed, one might
define the task of the translator as a communicator as being one of seeking to maintain coherence",
1997: 12); an d an overall textual analysis approach is followed an d recommended (chapt. 2). Mona
Baker has been publishing extensively on translation and TS. Baker adopts a bottom-up or micro-
to-macro method that starts by taking into account as usual the lexical level, however still
traditionally divided into "word level" (chapt. 2) and "above word level" (chapt. 3). As expected, the
next level accounted for is grammar, while the following is text analysis. Baker's text analysis
explores theme and topic organization, textual cohesion and, finally, what she considers responsible
for "pragmatic equivalence" (chapt. 7): coherence. Coherence deals with "how texts are used in
communicative situations that involve variables such as writers, readers and cultural context"
Taylor (1998): a specific and original methodology is illustrated: translation as a "rolling" (part two)
or circular process, made up of the various subsequent stages leading to the actual translation, from
the first literal version, through the analysis of the various levels of the text, to the final version.
Moving into the 2000s, Scarpa ([200 l] 2008), like Taylor starting from linguistics and moving to
regarding time in translation as a practice. At the co-textual level, for example, the text's source
could fail to be correctly identified in place and time.
The lexico-grammatical and textual dimensions intersect purpose and time to create complex
networks in which chains of causes and effects are activated by choices. These choices affect the
translation.
Moreover, the entire system is immersed in context, which further expands the sets of variables that
can affect the mere linguistic process. Following such a view, domain, purpose and specialization
make up an at least tri-dimensional representation of translation, joined by contextual time - time in
context, and context in time - as a fourth variable, itself a multivariable. Time is considered to be
what makes any model of translation viable, i.e. not just functioning theoretically, but actually
operational. This way, translation would appear (Fig. 5) as:
- domain-defined (according to LSPs/ESP studies);
- purpose-oriented (in line with skopostheorie);
lexico-grammatically-made (as in functional grammar);
- text- and genre-organized (following text l genre analysis);
- context-influenced (or immersed in society, in critical discourse analysis terms);
- pursuing a prototypical target text (as postulated in particular by Garzone 2002c, 2005);
- a multidiscipline (as implied by many and theorised in particular by Ulrych 1997 and 1999);
- time-constrained (in a historical l hermeneutic l philosophical dimension) (Torop 1995); and,
ultimately,
- choice-determined (in a cognitive and neurocognitive view as in Lery 1967, Katan [1999] 2004,
Salmon 2005a, 2005b).
Models can only try to bring together and hypothetically account for phenomenal evidence.
How is specialized translation different from non-specialized translation? Perhaps, in a perspective
where specialization is so closely related to domain and purpose, it is not.
Translation always regards a piece of communication and, just as there is no such thing as
purposeless communication, there is no purposeless translation, which in tum prevents the existence
of nonspecialized communication and translation, as a consequence.
'Where does literary translation belong, in this distinction?' In a phenomenal-descriptive view, it
could be just said that the difference with literary translation is that specialized translation is
particular instead of universal, and for immediate consumption, not generally destined to last. This
would be a view of literary translation as heavily influenced by context and time.
Choice is seen as the ultimate decision factor in translation, amplified in specialized translation by
the immediate economie repercussions that it has on the client, the translator and the receiving
discourse /practice communities. Choice calls for responsibility, in tum calling for commitment, as
in the Italian 'impegno': an obligation, promise, task, appointment, event, effort, but also "attivo
interessamento ai problemi sociali e politici da parte dell'uomo di cultura"27 (a man of culture's
active interest in social and political problems).
3. Into the web age
3.1 The digital turn
Languages and translation are two fields certainly affected by the digital turn.
3.2 Corpus linguistics and/in specialized translation
Related to the digital revolution, though not strictly to the Internet, corpora represent perhaps the
major consequence that digitalization has had on translation, except of course for word-processing
and the personal computer itself. The concept and creation of corpora are no 20th -century
invention, though the extent reached by their applications certainly are.
The possible applications of corpus technology and studies to linguistic analysis are easily
imaginable. Fora start, corpora can be applied to language teaching and ELT in particular1 (Aston
1995, 200 l, Sinclair 2004b). They have been usefully employed in genre analysis (Scarpa 1999)
and in ESP research to identify the lexical and non-lexical characteristics typical of specialized texts
(Gaviali 2005) using realia. They also find many and important applications in specialized
translation: corpora can be divided into mono- or multilingual, parallel or non-parallel (collections
of the 'same' texts in various languages), comparable or non-comparable (collections of similar texts
in the source language or in other languages). In their bi- or multilingual and parallel versions, they
obviously represent an invaluable source of information for translators, the more precious the larger
the corpus because - as seen - large corpora return steadier, i.e. more reliable (from a translator's
viewpoint) patterns.
Corpus-based Translation Studies has become an established subdiscipline within TS with its own
various lines of investigation (Baker 1993, 1995, 1996; Bemardini 2003, 2005; Hunston 2002;
Laviosa 1998, 2002). One of these postulates the existence of 'translation universals' (Baker 1993,
1996), tangible patterns recognisable in translations which could, if demonstrated, provide
applications in evaluation and didactics. The presence or absence and the quality of any such
universals in leamers' translations, for example, could be functional to establishing objective criteria
for marking them.
Other interesting reflections stemming from the relationship between corpora and translation take
into account the introduction of the online condition: not only corpora can go digital, they can also
be shared through the Internet and enrich the World Wide Web.
The World Wide Web itself seen as a corpus.
At an individua (the translator's) level, corpora of translations (products) can be grouped according
to various criteria, probably not much different from any translator's criteria for filing his/her work
(domain, author, client, year, etc.).
Potentially infinite criteria and sub-criteria that can be applied to create a variety of different sets.
The connection of potentially anybody in the world possible implies the potential sharing of
innumerable documents, among which innumerable translations.
In ideal terms, it is possible to conceive a moment when everybody is Internetconnected, and all
translations are Internet-shared: thus, the largest set of 'all translations in the world' would be
obtained, and would also coincide with 'the largest corpus of translations in the world'. In this case,
the usefulness would lie in the quantity of the information available and in (the speed of) its
searchability: a translator working on a given text could make use of all the previous translations of
the same text or of similar ones.
At the dawn of the digital tum, machine research made scholars, including linguists, believe that the
future of translation lay in automated machine translation. Computer-based tools have indeed
become prorninent4, but human-less automated translation at human level just proved unattainable
(Bar-Hillel 1960, Garvin 1967).
3.3 Multimodality, multimediality: multitranslation?
The end of the 20th century saw a move of Western civilization from an age of blocks, barriers,
crystallized ideologies and no choice, to an age of blurred boundaries, no ideologies and maximum
openness towards all possibilities, coupled with increasing numbers of resources from which to
choose. But too many choices can also result in disorientation, leading back to the doubts
surrounding the 'web as a corpus'.
The main features and issues of multimodal language which, like hyperdocuments, can be summed
up by means of tags: medium, semiotics, choice, participation. In practice, most webpages today,
even the simplest ones, usually communicate through more than one medium and one mode, for
instance verbal language (text), colour(s) and graphic layout, to which sound and video and
animations could be added; tools for partecipation.
The channel as in Jakobson's model of communication, in which it is named "contact", has long
evolved since it was posited as "a physical channel and psychological connection between the
addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication" (1960:
353). Not much later, in the booming years of television, Marshall McLuhan put forward his
famous provoking argument that "the medium is the message" as it "shapes and controls the scale
suppose such a migration concluded, just as the 'new' technologies can no longer be considered so
'new'. Still, when it comes to establishing how genre theory can be amended to take the online
element into consideration, the debate is still open. Garzone (2007: 20 ff.) identifies eight detailed
properties to consider in developing any framework explaining web-mediated genres: immateriality,
extension in participation framework, muitimodality, hypertextuality / hypermediality, co-
articulation and interactivity, intertextuality and granularity.
Askehave and Swales (2001) suggest redefining purpose as the one criterion informing genres,
maintaining the communicative purpose, but granting much more relevance to contextual aspects.
A bi-dynamic framework was suggested as the minimum requirement capable of explaining
muitimediality l multimodality: Askehave and Ellerup Nielsen (2004 and 2005a) propose a
bidimensional model, building on Swaies (1990) and Bhatia (1993), in which the users' purpose -
reading or navigating - makes them focus on the text or on the medium respectiveiy. In particular,
they stress the importance of the medium itself as a mode: "not only a distribution channel but also
a carrier of meaning, determining aspects of social practice" (2005a: 7). The above perspectives all
seem compatible, as they all stress the need for a new framework that takes into consideration the
social dimension of communication which, in the Internet era, means accounting for
multimediality / multimodality.
Given the time elapsed since the diffusion of the Internet and the familiarity with it acquired by its
users, it could be suggested that a term like 'multigenre' should be preferred to either "web genres"
or the even longer "web-mediated genres" (Garzone 2007: 20, 27).
Users no longer perceive the novelty of the web as a medium, which is now as familiar as printed
paper, so that any pre-modifiers would sound redundant, as in 'paper-mediated genres'.
Secondly, it has been argued that it is easier to list what features web genres have than what they
are, as web communication indeed appears to be made of many different, overlapping layers at a
time. However, their most relevant feature, for the purpose of better defining multigenres, remains
its high degree of interactivity and the large audience(s) it can reach ("extension in participation
framework" , Garzone 2007: 20).
However, since the web is part of the global "semiosphere" (as in Lotman [ 1990] 200 l), but is no t
separate from the real world- and so far virtual reality does not exist without material reality - what
happens within this multigenre space is still influenced by non-web reality (i.e. any event taking
place in society at a global level), and of course the relationship is biunivocal.
The entity resulting from the most recent changes in communication could therefore be defmed as a
container of multigenres that are by now well-established among their communities of users. These
are by no w perfectly familiar with hypertextuality, interactivity, volatility, multimodality, although
as non-specialists they may be unaware of any specific terms.
The initial phenomenon of genre 'migration' ought by now to be over. What many researchers have
in fact been observing lately are potential instances of genre 'hybridization' (Kwasnik and Crowston
2005, Santini 2006).
This phenomenon, even less explored than other web realities, is the 'natural' evolution of genres
once they have migrated to the digital medium.
Hybriditazion it is neither a rnigration / shift (movement), nor a chain or an instance of
juxtaposition (linear association), but it is closer to Fairclough's (2003: 34) "genre mixing"
(granularity).
Instrumental elements (meclia) mix with semiotic features (modes), in this blending the different
elements are still recognizable as such, because boundaries between them are indeed dissolving.
The new hybrid entity must first be acknowledged, the moment it is accepted, though, the
hybridization process ends, as the new hybrid is no longer perceived as either new or a hybrid, but
as an entity existing in its own right.
START online migration - - hybridization - - new hybrid - - recognition - - definition - - acceptance
- - normality END
Again, the newspaper and its traditional genres well exemplify this migration process: as is easily
verifiable, an ordinary online newspaper article would usually feature hyperlinks, or 'clickable'
words in the text, videos, audio files, etc.
In conclusion, it is clear that the changes brought forth by the Internet medium and the web modes
have disrupted the established reference frameworks previously used to interpret communication,
imposing the need to widen epistemic horizons by including contextual variables, not as peripheral
but as central factors. The effects that the digital and the Internet tums manifested on language
doubly affect translation: as a product, a process and a practice that is both linguistic and semiotic in
nature and has always had to bear on (some vaguely defined) context anyway. To help the translator
in this choice, language research had identified textual genres that applied well to traditional, non-
digital, offline genres. This was no longer the case when texts went online.
3.5 Translation tools 2.
Translation, as said earlier, has always had to bear on context. While beforehand the choice of how
to relate a text to its context was only the translator's, at the discretion of his/her common sense
('good' sense, meaningfully, in its Italian counterpart buon senso), today s/he is surrounded by and
immersed in - off and online - great numbers of theoretical an d practical resources supporting
him/her. This creates a paradox: the options are more, but freedom seems less, as the choice is
subjected to a much longer and more complex decisional process that has to take into account very
many options, including peer comparison and evaluation, per se a stimulating or a blocking
resource depending on the viewpoint.
Terminology, of course, is often the main issue in specialized translation, and it can be addressed by
means of dictionaries, glossaries and encyclopaedias (paper or digital, on or offline) but, as seen,
also by an entirely new set of machine-assisted tools, up to people interrogation resources, as in
web-based forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, social networks, etc 1 6. The same options
apply to syntactic and grammatical needs in general.
Where, then, can translators acquire notions in all these fields? It is well-known that the
experienced translator leams about them inductively. For those who wish to leam them through
instruction, the viable option, naturally, is training.
The lists of tools available to specialized translators are by and large organized into categories
following the distinction commonly applied of late to distinguish between digital and non-digital
( e.g. paper, oral, etc.) resources, i.e. based on the medium. The proposal is to arrange them, instead,
around the semantic area of 'choice'.
Table l (p.112,113) reports a classification of translation resources according to two arbitrary criteria
associated with choice: 'collaborative' or 'non-collaborative' (with respect to translator's choice), and
'existing' or 'new'.
If the data fed into the web are not rearranged in creative ways, the same combinations of them are
coming out of i t, much in the same way that a wrongly translated term posted somewhere on the
web is picked up by other translators and starts replicating itself virally.
It has been noticed before (cf. par. 3.4) how the Internet turn has caused the introduction into
everyday language, not only into web idiolect, of large numbers of affixed words. Another
successful webrelated neologism is '2.0', from the version number of software programmes, used as
a post-modifying deterrniner meaning 'the second, improved version of something'.
3.6 Localization, multitranslation, no translation?
Starting from the early 1980s, but actually booming in the 1990s (Esselink 2003), localization is a
buzzword for the translation and adaptation of documents to meet the requirements of new 'locales'
(country l regions and languages), especially in the fields of software and websites (Pym 2002: 168,
italics in the original). The feeling is that this term could be used as a 'semantic tag' toposition
translation experts on the basis of their neamess to the contemporary translation market: the more
familiar one is with localization (theoretically or practically), the closer s/he is to the current
translating services. Moreover, a global space (the web) where a non-native variety is the prevalent
variety could in time favour its prestige and diffusion within and without the cyberspace,
endangering both the role of standard varieties of English (Gnutzmann and Intemann 2005) and
translation even in the non-virtual world.
The classic antithetic pair 'linguist with specialized knowledge' versus 'specialist with language
knowledge' (cf. par. 2.3) could thus be made instantly outdated by the LFE speaker, who could
come to represent the 'any-domain specialist with minimum (English) language know ledge '.
Translation in human history has received innumerable definitions.
In the Internet age, it has been defined as a multidiscipline (Ulrych 1999), a pluridimensional
process ("il carattere essenzialmente pluridimensionale del processo traduttivo", Garzone 2005: 56)
and no later than this paragraph it has been suggested to temporarily call it multitranslation. This in
response to a process begun in the 1990s to widen categories and interpretational frameworks to
accommodate a more complex, fragmented reality, as opposed to the static polarization of the
1980s, the last decade of 20th century ideologies.
Conclusions
The challenge specific to the specialized translator is dual. The first aspect of it is to preserve the
excellence of the profession and the tradition of language
The second is to accept the necessity of change, the one indispensable requirement to attempt to
take control of it, which in tum implies taking responsibility for it, i.e. choosing.
