The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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thelinguist.uberflip.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016 The Linguist 31 INSTITUTE MATTERS SOCIETIES Meet the Fellows Profiles of the most recent admissions Danuta Watson FCIL studied Russian Philology at Gdansk University and then spent five years at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, training for diplomatic work before working in the Polish diplomatic service in Moscow, Warsaw and London. Her main professional experience lies in academia, as she has spent 20 years teaching Russian and Polish at Northumbria University. A Polish national, Watson has the DPSI Law (Polish/English) and plans to devote more time to interpreting and translation when she retires from her current position as Senior Lecturer. Richard Delaney FCIL CL is bilingual, having grown up in Germany and the UK. Before qualifying as a translator, he worked as a lawyer in England and Germany, and therefore has an in-depth understanding of both legal systems, specialising exclusively in legal translation. From 2008 onwards, he helped to set up and teach an MA in Legal Translation at City University in London, until it was discontinued in 2013. He now runs professional development courses, both for professional translators' bodies and for industry and private clients, including government ministries and public authorities. Delaney has recently been accepted as a Chartered Linguist in the translation and education sections. Across the cultural divide GERMAN SOCIETY MEMBERS ENJOY A DAY OF TALKS, FROM LINGUISTIC PROFILING TO TRANSLATING JAMIE OLIVER On 14 November, the German Society Chair welcomed 28 linguists to a day of talks about translation in its widest possible sense, and how we communicate across cultural divides. Susanne Kilian has many years of experience as a UN interpreter. This has taught her that a word can create different emotional triggers in different people, and that we subconsciously filter information to decipher whether it is trustworthy. Our cultural background colours our reception. Using many entertaining examples, she explored the differences between Germans and native speakers of English and arrived at the conclusion that Germans "can do everything, except small talk". Richard Delaney FCIL (see 'Meet the Fellows') taught us "how to be incomprehensible in more than one language". Many antiquated legal phrases combine Norman French with Anglo-Saxon, giving us 'aid and abet' and 'grant, devise and bequeath'. German does not have this. Ambiguity in legal texts is often criticised, but can be deliberate and advantageous. If the wording of an international agreement leaves the signatories some wiggle room, they can 'sell' it more easily back home. Dr Isabelle Thormann talked about linguistic profiling. A profiler may be called upon to assess the possible authorship of ransom notes, blackmail, threats, hate emails, etc. Other material written by a suspect is compared with the text in question to identify peculiarities of speech. Do mistakes that a spellchecker can't find occur throughout? What grammatical forms or tenses are favoured? Is an em dash or a hyphen used? Is there an unusual word order or double negatives? Is the style consistently inconsistent? One's personal use of language can be very revealing. Nick Tanner, who has a marketing background, introduced us to the British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in German translation. Jamie writes as he talks on TV: his recipes instruct us to "whack" or "throw" in "nice handfuls" of ingredients. Nick wondered if the German translators found stylistic equivalents but found that Jamie's idiolect, and abundant use of the first-person voice, disappeared almost entirely in German. Perhaps this is a cultural preference, however, as the books do sell well in Germany. We also tried, with little success, to translate Jamie Oliver ourselves. Pity the translator faced with "I think it's a really wicked fish." Or, at the end of a recipe, "To. Die. For." German just doesn't go there! See www.ciol-gs.de for a full report. Martin Jakubiak Amarjit Kaur Wai Fun Kho Sara Knapp Brenda Lees Linda Liu Slavka Lukashuk Monica Majauskiene Michael Martin Iris Martins-Griffiths Michael McCain John Mifsud Mojdeh Mohtadi Thomas Moncur Dorota Moracka Malgorzata Niemiec Merav Pinchassoff Connor Porter Helen Robinson David Ronder Emily Russell Claudia Sanchez Bajo- Roelants Nazir Tabassum Leslie Thorogood Andrew Wai-Ping Wong