Intertextuality in Administrative Translation: the Translating Strategies Employed by the Student-translators as Story-tellers

Abstract

            This is an experimental process-oriented research that examines the intertextual translation strategies employed by the student translators to translate the administrative texts. It analyzes the intertextual relations traced in the ST and the way they are transferred into the TT. The translating strategies that preserve these relations are the main focus of the study. To this end, the study adapts Nord’s Looping Model (2005) to set the problem into action. Thus, 45 third-level student-translators are selected; they have completed a training course in administrative translation. Being instructed about the task, they are asked to translate an Arabic text, chosen by the study jury, into English to elicit the translation strategies used to transfer the intertextual relations of the ST. Then, they are required to be interviewed to gain more insights about the translation process to aid the results obtained from the translation task. Accordingly, the study adopts two tools to approach the problem systematically; a translation task of an administrative text, and a retrospective interview, for more authentic results (Alves, 2003). The findings prove the applicability of Nord’s (2005) model in eliciting the intertextual translation strategies. That is, the borrowing strategy is the most applied one among student-translators; the paraphrasing, elaboration, omission strategies are also used, yet very limitedly. Further, the student-translators face linguistic challenges mainly due to the following of the SL conventions. The literal method of translation urges the translators to make a balance between the SL and the TL systems. Such balance would preserve a corresponding tone of language, which represent the convention and text-specification of the original.