181 3 926 1 10 20171215 PDF
181 3 926 1 10 20171215 PDF
181 3 926 1 10 20171215 PDF
Łucja Biel
University of Warsaw
Krzysztof Łoboda
Jagiellonian University, Kraków
1 Introduction
Quality has been on translation scholars’ minds since the emergence of Trans-
lation Studies (TS) as a discipline in the 1970s, with one of the seminal mono-
graphs by Juliane House being published in 1977. More recently, with TS shift-
ing its focus to integrate non-literary texts more broadly (cf. Rogers 2015), the
quality aspect has been researched across various specialized fields and genres.
One of these fields is Institutional Translation, where the quest for product and
process quality underlies the raison d’être of in-house translation teams. This
field requires further in-depth research into quality aspects to combine and cross-
fertilize theory and practice.
The purpose of this collective monograph is to explore key issues, approaches
and challenges to quality in institutional translation by confronting academics’
and practitioners’ perspectives. What the reader will find in this book is an in-
terplay of two approaches: academic contributions providing the conceptual and
theoretical background for discussing quality on the one hand, and chapters ex-
ploring selected aspects of quality and case studies from both academics and
Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda. 2017. Quality aspects in institu-
tional translation: Introduction. In Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda
(eds.), Quality aspects in institutional translation, 1–13. Berlin: Language Science Press.
DOI:10.5281/zenodo.1048175
Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda
practitioners, on the other hand. Our aim is to present these two approaches as
a breeding ground for testing one vis-à-vis the other.
This book studies institutional translation mostly1 through the lens of the Eu-
ropean Union (EU) reality, and, more specifically, of EU institutions and bodies,
due to the unprecedented scale of their multilingual operations and the legal
and political importance of translation. Thus, it is concerned with the supra-
national (international) level, deliberately leaving national2 and other contexts
aside. Quality in supranational institutions is explored both in terms of transla-
tion processes and products – the translated texts.
1
Except for Prieto Ramos’ and Vandepitte’s chapters which also survey supranational, intergov-
ernmental and/or centralised national organizations.
2
See Svoboda (2017) for literature review of quality aspects in national institutional translation
settings.
3
The event was held under the #TranslatingEurope project, which aims to bring together stake-
holders in the translation profession across Europe. The project consists of the yearly forum
organised in Brussels and the workshops, which are smaller events (conferences, seminars,
round tables) targeted towards more regional level, at specialised audiences. The workshops
are often organised in cooperation with EMT (European Master’s in Translation) universities.
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1 Quality aspects in institutional translation: Introduction
As Schäffner et al. argue, the fact that institutional translation is “typically col-
lective, anonymous and standardised” (2014: 494) requires institutions to ensure
the lexical, grammatical and stylistic consistency of translations. Such standard-
ization is achieved through “style guides and CAT tools, revision procedures,
and mentoring and training arrangements” (ibid.). Thus, standardization may be
regarded as one of the defining features of institutional translation.
Given the divergent conceptualizations of the term ‘institutional translation’
and the narrow grounds against which the term was initially coined (i.e. suprana-
tional institutions, especially institutions/bodies of the EU), Koskinen (2014) ad-
dresses the definition of institutional translation through the question of “what
purpose(s) translation serves in institutions” (2014: 480) and studies the topic of
governance in the context of translating institutions. Her approach is inspira-
tional in two ways: it offers a way of approximating divergent research endeav-
ours in the field and, beyond that, it offers a broad platform to interpret research
results.
The present book is an in-depth consideration of one of the many aspects of in-
stitutional translation – yet one of key importance – both as regards research and
translation practice within institutions – namely quality. Quality can be defined
in many ways. In the industrial/commercial practice, with which institutional
contexts tend to have increasingly more in common (cf. Mossop 2006), quality
– in connection with the ISO 9000 standards (cf. ISO 9000:2015 2015) – is often
understood as a degree to which the inherent characteristics of a product or a
process fulfil the clients’ expectations.
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1 Quality aspects in institutional translation: Introduction
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Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda
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1 Quality aspects in institutional translation: Introduction
practice, too, thanks to a model where Vandepitte presents the above parameters
as part of a coherent system. This makes the opening chapter a valuable asset in
the bi-directional process of exchange between (Translation Studies) theory and
(translation) practice.
In the second conceptual chapter, Łucja Biel from the University of Warsaw
(chapter title: “Quality in institutional EU Translation: Parameters, policies and
practices”) identifies key quality parameters of EU translation. Biel does so by
analyzing and evaluating institutional policies as well as practices. Besides that,
she compares and contrasts this view with the pertinent academic literature. The
chapter deals with quality on two interrelated and overlapping planes: that of the
textual level (where translations are viewed as products and are judged with the
criteria of equivalence, consistency/continuity, on the one hand, and of textual fit
and clarity on the other hand) and that of the process level (where translation is
viewed as a service), which subsumes workflow management, human resources
and tools. She observes that, recently, EU institutions have foregrounded quality
aspects. This is particularly visible at the European Commission’s DGT, where
the quality discourse has been reframed by linking translation quality (at the
textual level) to genres and genre clusters, which has raised the visibility of the
criterion of clarity. This shift is, most likely, effected by a managerial approach
to assuring translation (product) quality and the concept of fit-for-purpose trans-
lations as part of what DGT refers to as Total Quality Management (TQM).
The next part of the book opens with the contribution by Fernando Prieto
Ramos from the University of Geneva, entitled “The evolving role of institu-
tional translation service managers in quality assurance: Profiles and challenges”.
Adopting a holistic approach to translation quality, this chapter foregrounds a ne-
glected and under-researched component of quality assurance – namely, profiles
of senior and mid-level translation service managers, that is translation service
directors and heads of language units, who take fundamental decisions that affect
the day-to-day management of translation units. Prieto Ramos surveys and con-
trasts the management structures at twelve intergovernmental and supranational
organizations and studies their job descriptions in vacancy notices. The common
ground in the scope of duties across the organizations is discussed around four
groups: (1) strategic, administrative and financial matters; (2) staffing matters; (3)
translation workflow coordination, and (4) contribution to translation, technical
and quality control tasks. His study shows a reorientation from “one-fits-all qual-
ity control to a more modulated approach to quality variables”. The second part
of the paper reports on structured interviews with service managers with a focus
on quality assurance practices and challenges. The key interrelated challenges to
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Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda
quality are related to: (1) resource availability and productivity pressures due to
cost-effective measures and budget limitations; (2) outsourcing procedures; and
(3) workflow changes caused by technological developments, including new er-
ror patterns and new variables in the workflow. Prieto Ramos concludes with
recommendations for an adequate balance between service managers’ transla-
tion expertise and managerial skills.
The next chapter by Tomáš Svoboda from Charles University, Prague, entitled
“Translation manuals and style guides as quality assurance indicators: The case
of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation” asks to what
extent the quality aspect of institutional translation is governed by rules, analyz-
ing it through the prism of translation manuals and style guides. In his empirical
quantitative study, Svoboda surveys 24 language pages of the DGT’s resource
website, which is the largest resource of its kind, and contrasts the number and
type of resources across language units, demonstrating shared areas and varia-
tion of language-specific resources up to 50% of the links analyzed. The findings
indicate that the structure and content of resources is largely standardized and
harmonized, in particular as regards EU information – namely references to EU
institutions, terminology resources and the Interinstitutional Style Guide. The
highest variation was identified for language-specific resources, with significant
differences between individual languages. The analysis of the content of link
tags shows that resources are assigned a large variety of ‘labels’, ranging from
names which strongly suggest the binding status of resources (e.g. decree, rules,
instructions, requirements) to names which connote their less pressing nature
(e.g. recommendations, tips, advice). In conclusions Svoboda comments on the
complexity of institutional translation: “for their translations to be considered
high quality, the translators (…) have to follow very many recommendations
and instructions”.
Another related aspect of quality assurance – terminology management – is
undertaken in the contribution by Karolina Stefaniak, a terminologist at the Eu-
ropean Commission’s DGT (“Terminology work in the European Commission:
Ensuring high-quality translation in a multilingual environment”). Stefaniak doc-
uments the daily work of a terminologist – a separate role assisting translators
in terminological searches – on the example of the DGT’s Polish Language De-
partment. The chapter explores the specificity of EU terminology, in particular,
its supranational peculiarity, highly specialized or novel nature, occasional in-
tended ambiguity, political sensitiveness and, last but not least, its systemic na-
ture which requires terms to be internally consistent. Interestingly, Stefaniak
reports that the majority (90%) of translators’ queries deal with scientific terms
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1 Quality aspects in institutional translation: Introduction
rather than with legal terms which tend to be rare. The second part of the paper
discusses criteria and techniques applied when solving terminological problems
in the EU context. The author observes a strong preference for literal transla-
tion techniques, descriptive equivalents and neologisms. As for the quality crite-
ria in the terminological decision-making process, they include accuracy, clarity
and internal consistency of terminology, which often overrides other considera-
tions. The standardization of terminology in translations is also achieved through
terminological resources, including the IATE termbase, a major terminological
achievement of EU institutions.
The next chapter by Ingemar Strandvik, a quality officer from the European
Commission’s DGT (“Evaluation of outsourced translations. State of play in the
European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DGT)”) addresses
a novel and underresearched topic of evaluating outsourced translations, a trend
gaining recently in importance in EU institutions due to budgetary constraints
and limited human resources. Strandvik shares his insider knowledge of evalu-
ation practices in the DGT, including assessment tools and the evaluation grid.
The chapter draws attention to many outsourcing challenges, such as (1) the need
to ensure the consistency of evaluation practice among 1600 in-house transla-
tors; (2) differences in the size of translation markets in various Member States;
(3) time allocated for revision and evaluation; and (4) risks involved in mistrans-
lation. These and other factors have contributed to the evolution of the reference
model for translation quality management, and to a move from the fidelity to
fitness-for-purpose approach to quality. Strandvik raises an important point of
missing empirical evidence as to the correlation between sample sizes and assess-
ment reliability. The chapter ends with a pertinent discussion on recent devel-
opments and further challenges related to translation evaluation and ensuring a
translation quality policy at the interinstitutional level.
In their case study entitled “Quality assurance at the Council of the EU’s Trans-
lation Service”, Jan Hanzl and John Beaven from the Council’s General Secre-
tariat offer an insider view on quality practices and policies within the Council,
an institution which is far less outspoken about its quality policies compared
to the European Commission. The authors discuss the specificity of translation
work at the Council related in particular to the fact that texts are subject to
numerous discussions and amendments until their content is supported by the
Member States. Thus, translators rarely translate from scratch but work on in-
terim and working texts at various stages of their amendment (“versions drawn
up in a hurry by non-native English speakers, not final, well-edited and fine-
tuned texts”), often against tight deadlines. Similarly to Stefaniak, the authors
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Tomáš Svoboda, Łucja Biel & Krzysztof Łoboda
7 Conclusions
This volume aims at contributing to the deeper understanding of institutional
translation, mainly, but not exclusively in the domain of EU translation. By pre-
senting a blend of conceptual and empirical studies, this collective monograph
intends to offer an extension to research available so far, which is still far from be-
ing saturated. As Schäffner et al. put it, “[t]here is widespread agreement among
researchers […] that institutional translation is still rather unexplored and that
empirical studies are missing” (2014: 494); similar remarks may also be observed
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1 Quality aspects in institutional translation: Introduction
in some chapters by the practitioners who contributed to this book. Likewise, the
proposed reconciliation of both the academic and the professional views is sug-
gested as a continuation of a dialogue, which has the potential of enriching and
cross-fertilizing both areas. The discipline of Translation Studies is a witness to
a bi-directional movement of academic reflection informing practical decisions
of professionals on the one hand, and, on the other, observations from practice
providing solid grounds and data for academic research.
References
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