Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

The fate of “The Families of Medellín”
Tampering with a potential translation universal
in the translation class
Riitta Jääskeläinen
University of Joensuu
Avoiding repetition is one of the assumed translation universals, which
professional translators (as good writers) tend to engage in almost
automatically. However, sometimes repetition is used deliberately as a
stylistic device. This article reports on a small-scale research project in
progress which aims at finding out if and how students of translation can be
made aware of the function of deliberate repetition in texts. The research
material consists of student translations of the same source text from English
into Finnish. The translation brief has been formulated such that the ST style
ought to be preserved in the translation. Some groups of students have been
asked to translate “blind”, while others have been given instructions about
style analysis and stylistic devices. A comparison of the students’ translations
indicates that students tend to avoid repetition, unless they have been
sensitised to its importance as a feature of ST style.
1. Introduction
The present article is an interim report on a small-scale research project in
progress, the aim of which is to find out whether the “avoidance of repetition”
universal can be seen at work among translation students (i.e. novices); if yes,
whether translation students could be weaned from automatic avoidance of
repetition when necessary. The research project started from my own informal
observations in translation class: students were presented with a source text
which utilises repetition as a stylistic device and they were asked to translate
the text for a purpose which called for a relatively “faithful” translation (the
source text and the translation brief will be described in more detail below).
To my surprise, repetition had been cleaned away from several translations;