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Machine translation, ethics and the literary translator’s voice

Kenny, Dorothy orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-4793-9256 and Winters, Marion orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-5404-0401 (2020) Machine translation, ethics and the literary translator’s voice. Translation Spaces, 9 (1). pp. 123-149. ISSN 2211-3711

Abstract
Recent work in translation studies has established the literary translator’s voice as an ethical concern, but there has been little empirical research so far into how the translator’s voice is affected in workflows involving machine translation. In this article, we investigate how the use of neural machine translation influences the textual voice (Alvstad et al. 2017) of renowned translator from English into German, Hans-Christian Oeser. Based on an experiment in which Oeser post-edits an excerpt from a novel he had previously translated, we show how his textual voice is somewhat diminished in his post-edited work compared to its stronger manifestation in his translation work. At the same time Oeser’s contextual voice (ibid.) remains strong in his comments on the text he produces in post-editing mode. The article is offered as a methodological intervention and represents an initial attempt to design studies in literary machine translation that put the focus on human translators, allowing their voices to be heard more clearly than has previously been the case.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:literary translation, translator’s voice, textual voice, contextual voice, translator style, neural machine translation
Subjects:Computer Science > Machine translating
Humanities > German language
Humanities > Literature
Humanities > Translating and interpreting
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies
Research Institutes and Centres > Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS)
Publisher:2211-372X
Official URL:https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.00024.ken
Copyright Information:Publishers
Funders:Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dublin City University, Ireland, School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland
ID Code:29988
Deposited On:17 May 2024 10:43 by Dorothy Kenny . Last Modified 17 May 2024 10:43
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