Channels, Fall 2020

Page 30 Beale • Equivalence in Translation pragmatic understanding, I now turn to the professional peer review portion of my findings. Professional Peer Review Dr. Shaver’s review showed a marked difference between the business and linguistic texts. The vast majority of her notes concerned the linguistic texts, with only a handful of remarks on the business texts related to style and word choice. Some of her remarks touched on stylistic issues such as an unclear idiomatic translation or the translation of the German “sich” to English singular “themselves.” Mo st remarks, however, were directed toward grammar and word choice which could affect the meaning of the text. Two such examples of word choice issues include the words “geisteswissenschaftliche” and “Sachtexten,” which could be translated as “humanities/humanistic” and “non - literary/specialized” respectively (ignoring the “text” portion of the latter word). Another comment arising from ambiguity includes my translation of the phrase “die Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Übersetzens” as “the principles of translation,” whereas Dr. Shaver corrected it to say, “the principles of the translation.” As the linguistic texts have a scientific nature, their primary task is the clear communication of information, which must be transferred from the ST to the TT. Therefore, it is logical that the majority of Dr. Shaver’s notes concern issues of clarity and precision. In no case did Dr. Shaver make any mention of loss of content, which, while not a guarantee that translation loss did not occur, does indicate that the main informational content of the texts was successfully conveyed from the ST to the TT. Surveys The naïve reader surveys conducted among the business students at Cedarville provided perhaps the most enlightening results of all. Of 27 surveys sent out, I received 24 responses. All nine students in group one responded to the China article, eight of nine in group two responded to the Davos article, and seven of nine in group three responded to the coal opinion piece. Sources which the students mentioned as to the origin of the articles included the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg, with three students recognizing the piece as originating from a foreign source. An objection could be raised here that the students were not asked if the texts were translated, and therefore, did not think to consider foreign news sources. My rebuttal to this objection is that these evaluations were designed to see whether or not the texts could pass as written by a native English speaker, thus masking their nature and signaling a successful translation and equivalent effect if nothing was suspected. Eight students in the first group thought the writer of the article was a native speaker of English, and one did not, citing occasionally awkward wording s uch as the phrase “certain stability.” One of the students who considered the author to be a native of English did cite the use of words of “however” and “yet,” as well as phrases such as “Middle Kingdom” (in reference to China), to be odd for a native speaker. Overall, this translation was well received. Five students in the second group thought the writer of the article was a native speaker of English, two did not, and one stated that there were no clear indicators of the author’s linguistic background. As with the China article, the two students who did not think the