Academic literature on the topic 'Ethics of translation'

This paper offers a comprehensive survey of translation ethics within the theoretical frame of Lady Welby’s meaning triad concerning the relationship between ethics and translation in the meaning process of sign activities. The paper mainly discusses such aspects as: (1) the relationship between meaning triad and translation ethics, (2) upward translation as a method to maximize ethical value and (3) enhancement of translation ethics as a goal of upward translation. The results of the paper can be found as the following: 1. the evolutionary process of meaning from sense to meaning and then to significance is the path for the improvement of translators’ cognitive ability and the sublimation of translator or interpreter’s ethics and morality. 2. Upward translation serves as a key to enhancing translators’ ethical consciousness.3. translation, meaning and ethics are correlated and interrelated mechanism. Therefore, the implications of the dynamic and dialogic view of translation and meaning will provide an interdisciplinary theoretical vision for the construction of translation ethics.
 
 Keywords: meaning triad; upward translation; translation ethics

Abstract Crisis situations, including disasters, require urgent decisions, often without sufficient resources, including decisions about translating and interpreting. We argue that using citizen translators (i.e., translators without professional translator training) in such contexts can be ethically justified when their preparation incorporates virtue ethics. Translation potentially improves access to crucial safety information, and delivering such information is critical. We acknowledge several ethical challenges with citizen translation based on our experience in humanitarian contexts, relevant literature, and discussions with stakeholders engaged with our research consortium. Recourse to citizen translators has limitations, but we advance mitigation measures through training to address the ethical challenges of providing translation services to linguistically diverse groups in crisis. We propose virtue ethics as a framework for citizen translators to develop ethical decision-making skills and virtues. We suggest virtue ethics training to prepare citizen translators for ethical challenges in the field.

Since 1980s, the researchers weren’t bound by the ideal of “faithfulness” in translation, but the ethics of “keeping differences” is advocated. Establishing a code of conduct of the cross-cultural exchanges and the translator will be and should be bound by these guidelines has been advocated. This is the translator's professional ethics called the Ethics of Translation. Ethics of Translation has greatly expanded the view of translation studies and made a great significance in protecting the vulnerable culture from being invaded by the strong culture. As everyone knows, Shakespeare’s plays had a great impact on both the Chinese and Western cultures. So a lot of well-known translators have translated Shakespeare’s plays. Among them, many readers are favor of Zhu Shenghao’s translation of “Romeo and Juliet”, which will be explained in the paper in the perspective of Chesterman’s ethics of translation to find the inherent relationship between Ethics of Translation and the translations of Shakespeare’s plays, so that we can find a new way to study the translation of Shakespeare’s plays and make the ethics of translation into practice.

As Bible translation slowly develops into a discipline of its own, ethical standards need to be defined. In functional and skopos-oriented translation theories, an obligatory work plan gives support to expressing and regulating the expectations, capabilities and the contextual environments of a Bible translation project. Such agreements should also describe a code of ethics to which all agree. The interdisciplinary and professional nature of Bible translation leads increasingly to a collection of expertise that also requires an ethical framework to guarantee mutual understanding. Balancing out divine intervention against human responsibility is foundational to a code of ethics in Bible translation with Scripture-internal (emic), outward-oriented (etic) and mediating ethical aspects. To deal with the ethics of translating a text of divine origin, the author presents a perspective on the notion of divine inspiration that he calls impact-inspiration. A general code of ethics in Bible translation states the general but minimal agreements of those involved in Bible translation, and an individual code of ethics in Bible translation builds on the former and states the ethical agreement in Bible translation projects as part of a work plan.

Abstract Journalistic translation is governed by a target-oriented norm that allows varying degrees of intervention by journalists. Given the public’s expectations for the fidelity of translated news, this norm entails ethical issues. This paper examines the ethical dimensions of journalistic translation through a case study of political news translation in the South Korean context. It investigates how newspapers translated a US president’s references to two South Korean presidents in accordance with the newspapers’ ideologies and then came to apply the translations as negative labels as the political situation evolved over time. The study demonstrates how even word-level translation can require an intricate understanding of the sociopolitical context and cumulative meanings of a word. It then draws its implications for machine translation by comparing the human translations with machine translations of the references in question. It concludes by discussing why machine translation cannot yet replace human translation, at least between Korean and English, and what translation studies should do regarding the ethics of journalistic translation.

AbstractThis article interprets the sociosemiotic approach to translation from an ethical perspective. First, it briefly illustrates the necessity and feasibility of studying the sociosemiotic approach to translation from an ethical perspective, then shifts to the genres of ethics to be used in the interpretation. After that, it proposes an empirical study of the ethical values underlying the sociosemiotic approach to translation. The articles makes it clear that, in translating the referential meaning of a sign, translators who follow the sociosemiotic approach to translation tend to honor ethics of representation if this sign has an equivalent sign in the target language and would like to adhere to norm-based ethics if this sign has no equivalent in the target language. The article demonstrates that, in translating the linguistic meaning, translators who follow the sociosemiotic approach to translation often stick to ethics of commitment, which confers upon them the role of an expert as well as an arbitrator and makes it possible for them to mediate the conflicts between the various parties related to a translating mission. The article also exemplifies that, in translating the pragmatic meaning, translators who follow the sociosemiotic approach to translation, in most cases, prefer ethics of commitment, which allows them to represent the pragmatic meaning incubated in the source text either with the method employed in the source text or with a different method when the method applied in the source text is not appreciated in the target context.

The paper is focused on the issues of machine translation ethics. The goal of the present study is to discuss the role of neural machine translation tools from an ethical point of view and their impact on humans. Although traditionally ethics of translation is viewed in terms of sameness and difference, it is human translator who is a party to ethics of translation. It is discussed that translators should rely on technology as a helpful leverage in their job, since it allows them to be faster and more productive. On the other hand, we take an interest in examining the extent to which translation technology tools are given power. Neural machine translators can be unsupervised by humans, therefore viewed as a party to ethics of translation.

In addition to many other functions, translating may (and often does) also have a national agenda. Such agenda determines what is going to be translated, how and by whom. Depending on what the national agenda might be, various questions of ethics come into play. Such questions of ethics may be reflected in the translation norms, they may be concealed but still have an important role in constructing the image of translators as well as the idea of what translations should be like.
 In Estonia, translation has been of pivotal importance among other things in the formation of the national canon and in developing the Estonian language. In addition to that, translation can be considered to be a means of implementing new ideologies as well as means of resistance. In the present paper, we will ask questions rather than try to answer them: What does ethics of translation mean in the Estonian cultural context? Considering Estonian translation history, can translation ethics be said to be dependent on a particular historical-political situation? And, who has the right to judge translations and the activity of translators?

Abstract In the post-modern world where thinking of pluralism and relativism is prevalent (Honeysett 2002), fundamental values such as respect for life pertinent to the health and welfare of humanity should remain unchanged in order to preserve the culture from corrosion. In this paper, through examining creativity in translation and creative writing (Zawawy 2008; Perteghella and Loffredo 2006), macro- and micro- strategies of translating a Chinese prose into an English play will be discussed, with the aim to explore the notion, “creativity is culturally variable” (Carter 2016) in literary translation. I would concur with Ludwig Wittgenstein who stated, “ethics and aesthetics are one” (1961), and argue that genres and forms of expression might vary in cross-cultural translation, semantic content and message should still be unaltered. Literary translators can act as cultural mediators to advocate peace. So to “develop an understanding of translation strategies and of the vital role that creativity plays throughout the translation/interpreting process” (Levý in Beylard-Ozeroff, Králová and Moser-Mercer 1998) can help translators build bridges rather than promote violence, to foster diversity rather than divisiveness. As such, I would explore how a translator can translate cultures with respect, integrity and creativity in the midst of tensions, confrontations and conflicts due to misunderstandings linguistically and culturally. As Vezzaro (2010: 10) put it, “to come closer to feeling compassion, which is what writing and translating is ultimately all about.” This will call for efforts to translate texts with faithfulness and the right degree of creativity (Grassilli 2014), making good decisions at individual levels and beyond. This will also require cultural understanding and collaboration at national and even international levels.

The interest in and understanding of ethics among translation scholars has changed dramatically since the publication of Andrew Chesterman’s proposal for a Hieronymic Oath (Chesterman, 2001). Early definitions of ethics based on equivalence (Newmark, 1991), faithfulness, loyalty (Nord, 1997) and trust have been put aside in favour of more recent notions of translator ethics grounded in accountability (Baker & Maier, 2011) and social responsibility (Drugan & Tipton, 2017). Practising translators who abide by codes of ethics/conduct are bound by principles of honesty, integrity, linguistic competence, confidentiality, and trust. This paper begins by presenting a brief literature review of the main developments in translation ethics from the early linguists to contemporary interpretations. There then follows an analysis and comparison of several professional codes of conduct from the main international associations of translators and interpreters with the benchmark, the Association of Translation and Interpreting Professionals (APTRAD). It is one of the more recent translator associations and has a code of conduct adopted in the last six years. The objective of this paper is to determine which theoretical definitions of ethics are reflected in the codes of conduct and to discuss their usefulness for translators in their daily practice. The paper ends with recommendations for changes to codes of conduct to make them more relevant to practising translators.