Evaluation in translation: Critical points in translator decision-making

在全球媒体和即时交流的世界里，笔译和口译是新文本和新思想进入目标文化的敏感渠道，调查这些思想是如何被处理、评估和调解的至关重要。在译者或口译员的决定可能会对目标受众的解释和接受产生真正影响的文本中，哪些是临界点？影响这些决定的因素是什么？这一项目旨在通过超越过去十年来困扰翻译理论家的“权力”和“意识形态”的一般问题来研究这一问题，在这些问题中，译员或口译员的主体性的确切迹象有时被微妙地识别出来。相反，这个项目将详细研究作者、译者和读者之间如何动态地协商和传达意义。它使用了应用语言学的新的语言分析工具(特别是评价和评价理论)，为对这次谈判的各种语言表达进行更系统、更全面和可复制的分析提供了可能性。因此，本项目的重点是确定和模拟译者如何对文本中的论点进行评价的过程，对表明这种评价的语言信号以及潜在的主观价值系统进行评价。除了对翻译过程有更深入的了解外，这些发现还将对翻译人员培训和处理敏感文本的专业翻译人员具有重要应用价值。

In a world of global media and instant communication where translation and interpreting function as a sensitive channel through which new texts and ideas enter a target culture, it is crucial to investigate how such ideas are processed, evaluated and mediated. Where are those 'critical points' in a text where the translator or interpreter's decision may make a real difference to the interpretation and reception by the target audience? What are the factors that affect these decisions? This project sets out to investigating this by going beyond general questions of 'power' and 'ideology' that have occupied translation theorists for the past decade and where the exact the signs of the translator or interpreter's subjectivity are sometimes tenuously identified. This project will instead investigate in detail the ways in which meaning is dynamically negotiated and communicated between writer, translator and reader. It employs new tools of linguistic analysis from applied linguistics (notably evaluation and appraisal theory) that offer the possibility of a more systematic, comprehensive and replicable analysis of the various linguistic expressions of this negotiation. The focus of this project is therefore on identifying and modelling the process of how translators evaluate arguments in a text, on the linguistic signals that indicate this evaluation and on the potentially subjective value systems that are in operation. As well as giving greater insights into the translation process, the findings will have important applications for translator training and for professional translators working with sensitive texts.