Summary of Doctoral Thesis
ANIKÓ MAKKOS
COMPARABLE COMPETENCIES IN MOTHER TONGUE AND TRANSLATED TEXTS Links between competence in composition writing and competence in translating, based on a comparison of Hungarian texts produced by university students
Doctoral School of Linguistics Dr. Vilmos Bárdosi CSc, professor, Head of Doctoral School Translation Studies Doctoral Programme Dr. Kinga Klaudy DSc, professor, Head of Doctoral Programme
Members of the Committee: Chair of the Committee:
Dr. Kinga Klaudy DSc, professor
External Examiners:
Dr. Pál Heltai CSc, professor emeritus Dr. Tibor Szűcs PhD, Habil. associate professor
Secretary of the Committee:
Dr. Márta Lesznyák PhD, college associate professor
Further Members of the Committee: Dr. Jenő Bárdos DSc, professor Dr. Krisztina Károly PhD, Habil. associate professor Dr. Zsolt Lengyel CSc, professor emeritus
Supervisor: Dr. Júlia Dróth, PhD, associate professor
Budapest, 2014
1.
Research objectives and the aim of the thesis
The objective of the research is to compare mother tongue and translation competence in which I examine mother tongue compositions with texts translated into the mother tongue which have been produced by university students specialising in translation and interpretation. The main aim of the research is to map the two competencies involved, explore their relationships, examine the two performances through empirical research and to show how the results can be implemented in higher education, especially in translation training. So far there has been no research which has tried to evaluate mother tongue compositions and texts translated into the mother tongue through the same set of criteria and which has drawn conclusions concerning the relationships between these two different text production skills. The present research is the first to record text production features based on a given comparable corpus and to make suggestions for improving text production skills of the population examined. 2.
Structure of the thesis
The thesis consists of five main chapters. Between the introduction and the conclusion the reader will find the presentation of mother tongue composition and translation processes as well as the description of the two empirical research methods used in the study. The introduction states the reason for the choice of subject and outlines the aims of the research, its prospective outcomes and benefits, then presents the research questions, the hypotheses and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is divided into five subsections. First, mother tongue education in the state education system is described, not only because this forms the basis of all further studies but also because it plays an extremely important role in professions such as translation. Then, in my discussion of text composition, I compare its written and oral variations, consider how text composition relates to other language skills, discuss its conditions, circumstances and processes. The third subsection addresses the Common National Core Curriculum (NAT) and I consider the role of text production skills, and introduce the two writing examinations and their evaluation during state education. One main focus in my discussion is the secondary school-leaving exam as this has a key role in mother tongue education. It is worth highlighting that the two versions of the NAT that I examine, are the ones that were in operation when the present university students studied in schools because I want to see the governing principles of their mother tongue education, and especially text production. The 1
fourth subsection introduces the reader to the practice of teaching text production, outlines different teaching methods, training and development tasks and possible school procedures. Subsection five closes Chapter Two by detailing how text production performance was measured and evaluated in my study. In this part of the thesis I primarily rely on Hungarian literature because my main concern is to examine the national context and to help the development of the trainings in question. Chapter Three concerns producing translated texts and contains four subsections. The first subsection attempts to define translation and discusses the processes of translating and I highlight the elements of, development of and evaluation of translation competence. I then enlarge on one particular aspect, translation training in subsection two. In subsection three I consider the following: the relationship between foreign language education and translation training; the links between translation and other language skills; the characteristics of translated texts and some guiding principles that students should know about such as equivalence and translation norms; the role of mother tongue in translation. I close this subsection with a literature review of opportunities for evaluation. In subsection four, I present an overview of how the quality of translations can be evaluated in different contexts and through different methods. I address details such as choosing texts, types of errors or interference. Because in the thesis the empirical research is realised through analytical evaluation, I close Chapter Three by surveying the examples found in the literature. Since the international literature of translation studies is far more abundant than the Hungarian literature, in this part I primarily review the English language literature. However, at the same time I provide examples of national studies, observations and practices, something especially relevant as my research was carried out in one Hungarian higher educational institution. Chapter Four links up mother tongue and translated texts through the empirical research. It starts by introducing my pilot study and details its impact on the main research. I then present the large-scale empirical study. After analysing the materials and methods, the thesis focuses on a detailed description of the results through nine sections and ends with the verification or disproof of the research hypotheses. The conclusion summarises again the main ideas of the study, the key themes from the literature and fresh insights gained from the results of the empirical research. The conclusion also outlines future directions for research. The thesis ends with the list of literature and list of figures. 3.
Theoretical background of the research 2
The theoretical background of the research is interpreted within the scope of communicative, language and translation competencies, and is focused on the literature of mother tongue and translated text production. I discuss communicative and translation competencies as comparable entities since both of them are productive skills and contain text production subcompetence. If I examine mother tongue texts and texts translated into the mother tongue, the competences in mother tongue and in target language text production obviously coincide. The thesis hypothesizes that translated text production is a special type of text production which is induced by another text, or more precisely which makes it accessible, that is why it is characterised by both reproductive and productive features and its product functions as an independent text (cf. Neubert 1985, Jakobsen 1994, Williams 2005, Heltai 2014, Károly 2014). In the thesis I rely on the Common National Core Curriculums issued in 20031 and 20072 , especially on sections specifying the aims and developmental tasks of written text production. I analyse the text production tasks and their evaluations at the secondary school entrance exam and the school-leaving exam in Hungarian language and literature. Based on the literature, I present how mother tongue text production is developed in the state education (cf. Lengyel 1999, Bárdos 2000, Bárdossy és társai 2002, Kerber 2002, Antalné 2003, Tolcsvai Nagy 2004, Molnár 2001, 2009a, Nagy 2009b, Koltay 2010, Major 2011, Szilassy 2012). Further, I summarise the studies in the efficiency of education (cf. Orosz 1972, Kádárné 1990, Graf 1993, Horváth 1998, Molnár 2002, 2009a, Nagy 2009a, 2009b, Major 2011). Finally, I point out that the educational documents, the school-leaving exam tasks and the skills development do not agree and that is why the state education is unable to prepare the students fully for the challenges they face in higher education concerning text production. It also has a great influence on the text production skills of students specialising in translation and interpretation. In parallel with the knowledge concerning mother tongue competence and text production, I present the improvement of translation competence too (cf. Séguinot 1991, Toury 1995, PACTE group 2000, Tirkkonen-Condit 2005, Göpferich − Jääskeläinen 2009), and highlight that development of mother tongue competences should be more emphasised in translation training. Nowadays, target language approach is a characteristic of translation studies, and translators are increasingly faced with tasks which demand the ability to finalise raw texts which come from different sources (cf. Ulrych 1995, Dróth 2011b, Horváth 2011, Kovalik Deák 2013, Robin 2013a). 1 2
http://www.nefmi.gov.hu/letolt/kozokt/nat_070926.pdf (Retrieved: 15. 18. 2012.) http://www.nefmi.gov.hu/kozoktatas/2007/nemzeti-alaptanterv (Retrieved: 17. 08. 2012.)
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The evaluation procedure I use in the empirical research is based on the evaluation guide used for the school-leaving exam in Hungarian language and literature3, and on the Hungarian literature which introduces the possibilities of text production evaluation (cf. Kádárné 1990, Kernya 1992a, Bárdos 2002, Molnár 2002, Nagy 2013). Based on Klaudy (2005), I look through the different contexts of translation evaluation, and the possibilities and procedures of measurement, focusing primarily on analytical approaches and translator training situations (cf. Dollerup 1994, Ivanova 1998, Asztalos-Zsembery 2008, Conde 2012, Károly 2012). As a result, I prove that the studies mentioned above cannot be compared to each other because the evaluation situations and the aims of the evaluators have an effect on the methods to a great extent. I also consider translation errors and see them as inevitable attributes of the learning process (cf. Séguinot 1989). Based on the most commonly accepted error typologies (cf. Wilss, 1982, Pym 1992, Nord 2005, 2011, Heltai 2004/2005, Budai 2010) I uncover errors not mistakes which come from the lack of competence and could be categorised as both overt and covert, and I do not grade them because my aim is not to evaluate the texts but to determine the types and rates of errors. Due to the significant differences between the evaluations, both translation professionals and researchers look for more unified evaluation methods (cf. Dróth 2001a, 2013, Conde 2012), and one possible solution could be the evaluation procedure of mother tongue texts introduced in the thesis. 4.
Material of the research
Texts forming the material of the empirical research belong to two corpora: the texts primarily written in Hungarian make up the first corpus, and the texts translated from English into Hungarian make up the second corpus. Altogether there were 220 texts produced by 110 students. Thus total number of words in the first corpus is 32,494, while in the second corpus 32,990. Thus total words come to 65,484, and the rate of the two corpora is 1.015, so their lengths are almost the same. The circumstances of text production were as follows. My colleague, Iván Sellei, a tutor at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Translator and Interpreter Training Department, helped me to recruit three seminar groups of students (26, 43 and 41 people) who were given the translation tasks as seminar assignments during the first year of their MA studies or at the end of them. Translations had to be done at home and within one week. 3
http://193.225.13.61/erettsegi2012/k_magyir_12maj_ut.pdf (Retrieved: 07. 06. 2012.)
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English was the second language of all students, so they translated from the second language to the mother tongue. This guaranteed that the failure to understand the English source texts became the source of errors. The expertise and experience of my colleague also guaranteed that the difficulty of the source texts met the foreign language knowledge of the students. None of the source texts were modified or simplified and all of them were produced by native speakers. As for the topics the prime concern was actuality and interest which might have motivated the students. None of the texts were specialised texts, since during the first year of MA studies students work with standard language in seminars teaching translation techniques. In my research I definitely wanted to exclude specialised vocabulary because participants’ lack of specialised vocabulary knowledge may lead to distorted results. If we evaluate the knowledge of specialised vocabulary, then we will inevitably describe a very special knowledge and not general language usage which was my aim. Accordingly, all the translated texts I chose from all the seminar assignments belong to standard language usage of educated people. Because mother tongue compositions had to meet the same requirements, the two comparable corpora are stylistically similar. At the same time I must admit that I did not exclude original mother tongue compositions which in terms of originality, tone and writer’s intension were of rather a literary style, but then I evaluated the style and vocabulary used with this literary usage in mind. For the purposes of the research, each translation is accompanied by a Hungarian language composition. The circumstances of this text production were the same as those for the translation. However, the topics were not similar and the Hungarian compositions were always structured essays expressing the writers’ attitudes, opinions or arguments. Through this personal approach, I tried to assure spontaneity of the compositions and the students’ positive disposition to share their thoughts. The direct context for translations was created by the longer pieces of writings from which the 250−350-word excerpts were taken, and the students also had to name a Hungarian context such as a journal where the translation could appear. The broader context of both Hungarian compositions and translations was the educational situation which aimed at developing the students’ translation and text production skills. That means all the students were informed about the empirical research which used their texts, and they agreed to use them for study purposes. I guarantee the anonymity of all participants be referring to their production by codes.
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5.
Method of the research
The empirical research started with the selection and compilation of the texts belonging to the two corpora and continued with their detailed error analysis. The groups of texts, three-three sets of compositions and translations, six altogether, were kept together while they were examined. This system made it possible to correct more easily the texts translated from the same source text and categorise the possible typical errors across the board. One group of texts was scrutinised until all the language problems were revealed. It usually involved two, but sometimes three thorough readings for each text, but if it was necessary I returned to some of them and reread them again. To be able to record the results of the analysis quickly and correctly I used a Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) called NVivo4. I decided to use it as quantitative results can also be produced with NVivo. The software stored all the annotated errors of all the texts and made it possible to modify the annotations later as many times as was needed. With this program I could read the texts and identify and annotate the errors at the same time, while the software placed the errors into error categories which were previously determined. Finally I arranged all the results generated by the program into Excel spreadsheets and used them to identify the error patterns of the Hungarian compositions and the texts translated into Hungarian and to compare the two corpora. To decide on questions concerning spelling problems I used the Laczkó−Mártonfi reference book called Helyesírás5. 6.
Results of the research
6.1 THESIS 1 According to the first hypothesis of the dissertation education in the mother tongue text production does not lead to the level of ability required in higher education. I attempted to prove this hypothesis by analysing mother tongue texts produced by students studying translation and interpretation on MA courses. Concerning mother tongue skills I believe that this section of the population might have the best writing abilities within the age group since these students will be translators and interpreters and for them it is extremely important to use the mother tongue particularly clearly and exactly.
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http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx?utm_source=NVivo+10+for+Mac (Retrieved: 15. 05. 2014.) 5 Laczkó K. – Mártonfi A. 2006. Helyesírás. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó.
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I tried to examine all possible ways of analysing texts produced in the mother tongue before I decided on the final error types. This explains why the analysis of the content and the macrostructure were excluded. When I assessed the mother tongue compositions in the pilot study, I found that structural problems are not typical and mass errors occurred in texts of the given length. I also realised that students are basically aware of the importance of and need for paragraphing the body, starting with an introduction and finishing with a conclusion. There were more problems concerning the proportion of the above mentioned elements, and the lack of titles seemed to be a typical error. Shortcomings in the mother tongue text production identified in the large-scale study proved that 12 years of mother tongue education just partly results in the expected outcomes, and this is fully visible in the text production of university students. Their vocabulary in not varied and rich enough as the most typical error is repetition of words without a function. This error is closely followed by words and combinations of words used incorrectly. The most apparent problem here is a superficial or vague knowledge of their meaning or usage which leads directly to confused wording. I recorded some classical errors of phrases like ‘ujjat húz’ or mixing up words which are close in their forms, like ‘fáradtság-fáradság’, but most of the vocabulary errors belonged to other error categories. It is only the style of the vocabulary which I found appropriate, so mother tongue education seems to be successful in conveying the standard language norm. Establishing connexity proved to be a more serious problem than assumed earlier, for instance reference words and conjunctions are left out between clauses and subsequent sentences. As a result text components are connected more loosely than would be expected and is necessary in written communication and the logic of the text is more difficult to follow. This is typical of the situation when the writer of the text cannot see their text from the viewpoint of the reader so they are not able to see the gaps and inaccuracies which impede understanding. The students have not reached such a level of awareness which would make it possible for them to take up the position of the reader. Errors in agreement, especially the person and the number of pronominal linking words are very prominent, and here I undoubtedly have to raise the issue of the influence of spoken language on written language. These types of mistakes are often found in longer, overcomplicated, structurally difficult sentences demanding to follow, but which could be corrected in writing. Most syntactical problems, which did not prove to cause a lot of errors, lead us again to spoken language, for example incomplete structures, overlong simple sentences, complex and compound sentences consisting of too many clauses. Some of the uncertainties of 7
punctuation I would also ascribe to the same influence, such as short parenthesis not separated by adequate punctuation marks, or accumulated adjectives not separated by commas according to the meaning of the noun structure. Finally concerning spelling, it can be stated that it is not a fully developed skill of the students involved in the research although it is assumed to be by the time of school-leaving exam. Lack of awareness is obvious as the number of misspelt words not corrected by the spell-checker is high in texts created with word processing software. It should be highlighted that spell-checkers are not always reliable and their scope is limited. This is true for the problem of spelling compounds as one or more words, which is becoming a prevailing error nowadays, and also can be seen in the texts of students. Based on my research nothing can justify the disregard of punctuation in the course of education and at the exams because following vocabulary spelling is the second source of errors in Hungarian compositions. Spell-checkers cannot correct the positioning of punctuation marks and this is why education has to keep up with the changing social environment and demands and modify its content. In brief, every second line of an average 26-line Hungarian composition contained one error. However, this statement relates to the type of creative writing that students produce at secondary level where students arguably, do not have to pay so much attention to the rather rigid rules of academic writing. However, in higher education writing is a tool for demonstrating professional knowledge and its imperfect technique seriously influences the judgment of the content. Therefore I can declare that the first hypothesis has been proved. The text production problems which were discovered in the Hungarian compositions make successful learning in the higher education more difficult or even impede the studies which require frequent written text production. 6.2 THESIS 2 The second hypothesis, closely connected to the first one, states that further development of text production competence in the mother tongue would be necessary and this is particularly true for translation training. I think that the verification of the first hypothesis in itself proves the second one. I find the level of text production competence of translator and interpreter trainees problematic although these students must know and use their mother tongue as the prime target language of translation and interpretation proficiently during their studies and later in their profession. The level of their text production competence definitely must be better than that of average university students’. We know that to get into higher education an advanced level school-leaving exam in Hungarian language and literature is a requirement 8
only for students whose major will be Hungarian language and literature, so most students take the intermediate level exam and possess an intermediate knowledge of the mother tongue. Judging from the text production competence of the students examined I deem it necessary to expand mother tongue development into higher education. At best it would cover oral skills as well because these two competencies of written and oral text production are interdependent. The present research attempted to give a picture of the developmental level of the written text production only, so it cannot provide relevant information about the oral production. Concerning future translators and interpreters it is even clearer that they would need special mother tongue development targeted at the problem areas which the research discovered so that they become confident professionals if it comes to mother tongue text production. As the research shows translator and interpreter training courses simply cannot avoid this task. 6.3 THESIS 3 According to the third hypothesis the competences examined in the doctoral thesis are linked the most closely through text production. This hypothesis has been proved by surveying the literature and doing the empirical research. Text production competence is a common and often the central element of both competencies. Besides, the literature acknowledges that an accepted theoretical approach to translation is that it is a special type of text production, and the literature also supports the idea that language mediation most closely resembles writing if we consider all language skills. Furthermore by doing the empirical research I argue that the characteristics of text production in both types of texts can be described through the same set of criteria. An evaluation process like this can simultaneously reveal the students’ text production problems and explore covert interconnections concerning text production patterns of the individual students. This approach might cause quick and considerable improvement in translations. Because of these links, mother tongue text production can rightly be considered a starting point. In this case, translated text production from a foreign language into the mother tongue can either build on or be built from mother tongue text production. Consequently, if we correct the imperfections of mother tongue text production, we can reasonably expect an improvement in the quality of translated texts. 6.4 THESIS 4 Hypothesis 4 claims that at the moment the system used for evaluating mother tongue text production is not used widely for evaluating the production of translated texts, although it 9
could be used successfully. By reviewing the literature I can declare that the first part of the hypothesis has been proved. In the Hungarian and English language literature I could not find any references for studies which linked the evaluation of the two text productions as directly as I do in my pilot and large-scale study. The literature of mother tongue text production and the literature of translated text production do not use in practice, each other’s findings so I cannot report on any similar studies. Although target language approach to translations is spreading in the translation literature, practical adaptations seem to be missing. Concerning the second half of the hypothesis stating that the procedures used in the evaluation of mother tongue texts can also be used successfully for translated texts into the mother tongue, when used together with other methods, I provided evidence for this through my own practical experience. Undoubtedly it would be more reassuring to be able to report on the congruent experience of more researchers, but hopefully the results of this doctoral thesis will filter down to higher education and colleagues working in the field will agree with me. In an educational situation, when we examine the numerous renderings of the same source text, the quality of text production can be easily judged without comparing the translations with the source text, especially if we read them as if they were original mother tongue compositions. In this way we can identify the problems which are connected to mother tongue usage and which can mainly be overcome by specific mother tongue development. 6.5 THESIS 5 In hypothesis 5 I suggested that the text production skills of students in higher education, in our case students studying translation and interpretation on MA courses, need to be improved in some areas, the most important of which are vocabulary, grammatical devices establishing connexity and some areas of spelling. The findings of the research have fully confirmed this hypothesis. Both in the mother tongue compositions and the translations, vocabulary errors formed the most numerous group within which repetitions without a function and inappropriate words and phrases were prominent. Each composition contained on average 5 vocabulary errors, and each translation had 9.6. I am convinced that vocabulary is a field which can and must always be developed further and the students’ existing knowledge also needs to be strengthened. Applying avoidance strategies is natural and unnoticed when we write in the mother tongue, so problematical language elements are simply left out from or not as frequent in the final text. As the results show, in a translation situation vague knowledge of words and phrases is magnified, so it is essential for translators and interpreters to retain or if it is necessary to enrich their vocabulary. The high number of repetitions without a function 10
can be due to students’ narrow range of vocabulary and this means they find it difficult to find the right synonym. Therefore synonyms are well worth dealing with. Arguably, secondary school education does not foster the wide vocabulary needed in higher education. The second statement of the hypothesis concerning grammatical devices establishing connexity, has also been verified as Hungarian compositions contained an average of 3.3 errors, while translation contained an average of 5.4 errors of this type. Lack of connexity is the second most frequent error type in translations and the third most frequent error type in Hungarian compositions. Judging from the texts examined it is clear for me that if we provided courses in mother tongue development in higher education, we could make the student more aware of the differences between the grammatical connexive devices used in the oral and written registers. The loose or inaccurate use of these devices observed in the texts shows similarities with the wording of spoken language. The unjustified omission of conjunctions, reference words and definite articles and the careless agreements are more distinctively characteristic of translated texts, so the future professionals have to learn to consciously strive to write texts which are grammatically well connected. Finally the third element of the hypothesis stated the problematic nature of some areas of spelling. I knew that this statement certainly had to be made more exact and I hoped to get ideas about the real problem areas of spelling from my research. The findings reflect the fact that spelling mistakes form the second biggest group of errors in Hungarian compositions and the third biggest group of errors in translations: an average of 4.8 and 4.7 mistakes in the two types of texts. Previously I presumed that the spelling mistakes I would find in students’ texts would not belong to the classical types, seriously hunted and punished during state education and at the exams, but those ones which the spell-checker does not correct or even indicates as a misspelling. At the same time I expected to record far fewer mistakes than I finally did record and was really surprised at the real significance of the problem. If we look at the numbers, punctuation problems stand out, and spelling mistakes in compound words and phrases (one or more words) are also numerous, so they must be the prime targets of developmental work. It seems clear that it is not enough just to rely on spell-checkers. As I expected there were not too many problems concerning proper nouns, foreign words or the usage of ly-j, and typing was also quite correct except for the texts of a couple of students. I must add that these types of spelling mistakes might be different in other texts, especially in translations if the topic triggers a special vocabulary the spelling of which needs special knowledge. For instance I realised in the texts I examined that geographical names of foreign places were misspelt in Hungarian translations from time to time and the incorrect spelling 11
was clearly due to interference. I have to say that after a thorough investigation into the most common spelling problems, there is definitely space for developing spelling in translation training too. 6.6 THESIS 6 According to the sixth hypothesis there are provable links between the mother tongue text production performance and translation performance, primarily where syntax and vocabulary are concerned while correct language usage and spelling are also interrelated. I attempted to prove this hypothesis by showing the text production errors of the comparable texts as a result of which I gained data about the quality of the two text types in the categories examined and analysed them statistically too. The pilot study could not explain the critical level of correct language usage problems which are quite pronounced in the evaluation of text production at the school-leaving exam. This is why I did not identify correct language usage as a distinct error type in the large-scale study and I am still convinced about the rightness of my decision now I know the whole corpus. Because of the small number of errors concerning correct language usage, I was not able to measure the links between the two text productions, so this hypothesis statement has been disproved. At the same time I could verify that these types of problems are not characteristic of either corpus, so correct language usage plays a marginal role in the quality of text production. Without doubt this must be due to the fact that for the 15 years student spent in the state and higher education, these deviances have either not been present in the language of education or have been taken so seriously that students have learnt to avoid them in their written texts. On the other hand, according to my interpretation, the group of these types of errors is quite small, so I might have identified some language usage errors as other error types. For instance the misapplication of the pronominal conjunction ‘ami’ I counted as a connexive error because in most cases it led to an inaccurate reference. At the same time I am sure that the language usage errors which most practicing language teachers would identify, are not illustrative of the texts produced by the given population of students. The language usage errors include for example: using -suk/-sük and –nák; mixing -ba/-be and ban/-ben; wrong conjugation of the verbs with the ending -ik in the third person singular; the misplacement of the interrogative particle -e. If we look at syntax the situation is somehow similar. I had to use the fewest error types within the group of syntax errors in the large-scale study and finally I identified the smallest number of errors here in both corpora: an average of 1.4 in translations and 1.3 in 12
Hungarian compositions. Because of the small number of items no significant correlations were found, but it is clear that these types of problems are equally present in both corpora to a similar extent. Thus the way of sentence construction can be interpreted as a kind of individual characteristic feature of text production. Therefore this hypothesis statement has been proved. If we look at all the areas which were involved in the research we can say that spelling results were also almost exactly the same in the two corpora but here significant correlations were identified. I would suggest that if we improve the general spelling skills of a person, the quality of all text types produced by them may improve because this is an unchanging skill of a person as the present study has also verified. Finally vocabulary is the field where arguably the existing shortcomings of the text producers are almost doubled in the translations because of the challenges of language mediation, and this result is backed up by the statistical correlation analysis too. I would strongly argue that vocabulary development would result in improved text quality in both text types. 6.7 THESIS 7 In hypothesis 7 I suggest that persons with firm mother tongue text production competencies will produce better translations into the mother tongue, because they depart more easily from the surface elements of the source text. I have proved this statement by declaring the existing links between vocabulary, syntax, spelling and connexity errors in the two corpora and finding significant correlations between them except the syntax errors. When translating, the most problematical phase is breaking away from the source text and re-creating meaning of the target language text. All of the areas examined in the study are involved in this process. When choosing the right words, constructing the sentences, forming grammatical and logical relations, and even when deciding on the correct spelling, the translator has to disregard the source text elements and structures. If target language text production competence is developed and rests on firm foundations the target language text will not resemble any aspects of the source text. A good translator is able to minimalize interference which means their target language text is very close to texts which are originally written in the given language taking textual aspects into consideration. To be able to produce target language texts in the mother tongue of this quality texts written originally in the mother tongue can contain only very few errors. If a person’s production of target language text in the mother tongue or some areas of that are problematic, we cannot expect them to produce 13
perfect translated texts because translation needs much more effort. For instance if a person tends to overlook repetitions without a function in mother tongue compositions, they will have the same problems in their translations, so repetitions will be a characteristic of their target language to the same or even a larger degree. Good mother tongue text production skills are a prerequisite of the ability to translate into the mother tongue well. The empirical research of the doctoral thesis has proved this. 6.8 THESIS 8 According to the eighth hypothesis, a significant percentage of the errors found in the translations is the consequence of uncertain mother tongue usage rather than the insufficient knowledge of the source language. I wanted to prove this hypothesis by registering the error types of translated texts. My analyses showed that in translated texts there were hardly any errors resulting from the lack of understanding of the source text. As a part of their seminar assignment the students had to produce a glossary of the new words which accompanied each translation. These lists showed that there were just a few unknown words which were easy to handle but the students could translate them with the help of the appropriate translation tool. Besides, the source texts contained only one or two more complicated sentences with difficult structures which not all the students could interpret correctly and in some cases it certainly resulted in unsuccessful translations. However, I must state that generally the source texts corresponded to the students’ English language knowledge and the vocabulary and structures did not greatly challenge their language knowledge. Consequently the vast majority of errors can be ascribed to the way of wording in the target language. I do acknowledge that if we work with different source texts belonging to other genres we might get slightly different results because the unknown genre conventions or special registers can make understanding more difficult. 7. Benefits of the research I started the research with the aim of revealing the characteristics of mother tongue compositions produced by students who must have outstanding mother tongue skills. I wanted to conduct this research because the literature looks at mother tongue competence and its subcompetencies like text production only during state education thus we do not have sufficient knowledge of mother tongue competencies of the students studying in higher education. One benefit of the research is the exploration of text production patterns among university students which enables the institutions to provide special developmental courses aimed at the 14
shortcomings revealed. At the same time the research can enable higher educational institutions to identify the needs of their own students using the research as a model. In addition, by reviewing the literature and doing the empirical research I wanted to prove that close links exist between mother tongue text production and translation into the mother tongue. The literature of translation studies so far has not undertaken the exploration of these links point for point. However, the results of the present study made it explicit that several aspects of text production are interrelated concerning one person’s translations and mother tongue texts. These findings can inform translation training on how to improve the quality of translations into the mother tongue, by looking at mother tongue text production. The benefit of the research can also be this simple realisation: there is a tool for evaluating translation which is both well-known for students and can make evaluation of translations into the mother tongue more understandable and unified.
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Makkos A. – Robin E. 2014. Explicitation and Implicitation in Back Translation. Current Trends in Translation Teaching and Learning, Vol. 1. 151−182. Internet link: http://www.cttl.org/uploads/5/2/4/3/5243866/nov_27_complete_cttl_e_2014.pdf#page =159 (Retrieved: 02. 12. 2014.) Makkos A. – Robin E. 2012. Fordítói műveletek a kompetencia függvényében. In: Horváthné Molnár K. – Sciacovelli, A. (szerk.) MANYE XXI. Az alkalmazott nyelvészet regionális és globális szerepe: alkalmazott nyelvészeti kutatások az EU magyar elnökség évében. MANYE, Vol.8. Budapest – Szombathely – Sopron: MANYE – NYME. 305–318. Makkos A. 2011. Kell-e fordítói kompetenciával rendelkezniük a nyelvvizsgázóknak? In: Kultúrák és nyelvek között – kompetensen. Zwischen Kulturen und Sprachen – kompetent. Győr: NYME Kiadó. 131−134. Makkos A. − Robin E. 2011. Explicitáció és implicitáció a visszafordításban. Alkalmazott Nyelvtudomány, 11. évf. 1-2. szám. 135−150. Makkos A. − Robin E. 2011. Explicitáció és implicitáció a fordítói kompetencia függvényében. In: V. Alknyelvdok Konferencia. Budapest: MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet. 94−107. Internet link: http://www.nytud.hu/alknyelvdok11/proceedings11/makkos_robin.pdf (Retrieved: 06. 06. 2012.) Makkos A. 2011. Automatikusak-e a kohéziós átváltási műveletek? In: Bada I. K. – Mónos K. (szerk.) MANYE XX. Az alkalmazott nyelvészet ma: innováció, technológia, tradíció. MANYE, Vol. 7. Budapest – Debrecen: MANYE – Debreceni Egyetem. 254−259. Makkos A. 2010. Szöveggrammatikai eszközök fordítása és alkalmazása nyelvvizsgázók fordításaiban. Fordítástudomány, 12. évf. 2. szám. 96−122. Conference presentations Makkos A. 2014. Az írásbeli nyelvhasználat sajátosságai egyetemisták szövegeiben. Presented at: XVIII. Apáczai-nap Tudományos Konferencia. Teóriák, hipotézisek és az igazság viszonya. Győr, NYME AK. (21−22. 10. 2014.) Makkos A. 2014. Translation in Professional Tourism Language Exams in Hungary. Presented at: Second International Scientific Conference: „Foreign Languages and
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Tourism.” Eisenstadt, University of Applied Sciences, Burgenland, Austria. (14-15. 05. 2014.) Makkos A. 2014. Fogalmazás és fordítás kapcsolata a gyakorlatban. Presented at: XVI. FTTOFFI-MFTE Konferencia, XI. Fordítástudományi PhD Konferencia. Budapest, ELTE BTK. (10−11. 04. 2014.) Makkos A. 2013. Az anyanyelvi szöveg és a fordított szöveg értékelésének lehetőségei az oktatásban. Presented at: TÁMOP PhD-konferencia. Budapest, ELTE BTK (18. 04. 2013.) Makkos A. 2013. Írásbeli szövegalkotás a közoktatásban és a közoktatás után. Presented at: XXIII. Magyar Alkalmazott Nyelvészeti Kongresszus. Budapest, ELTE BTK. (26–28. 03. 2013.) Makkos A. 2012. Egyetemisták írásbeli szövegalkotási teljesítménye a NAT és a vizsgák tükrében. Presented at: XVI. Apáczai-napok Tudományos Konferencia. Győr, NYME AK. (16. 10. 2012.) Makkos A. − Robin E. 2011. Fordítói műveletek a kompetencia függvényében Presented at: XXI. MANYE Kongresszus. Szombathely, NYME SEK. (29−31. 08. 2011.) Makkos A. − Robin E. 2011. Explicitáció és implicitáció a visszafordításban Presented at: VII. Fordítástudományi PhD Konferencia. Budapest, ELTE BTK. (07. 04. 2011.) Makkos A. − Robin E. 2011. Explicitáció és implicitáció a fordítói kompetencia függvényében Presented at: V. Alkalmazott Nyelvészeti Doktorandusz Konferencia. Budapest, MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet. (04. 02. 2011.) Makkos A. 2010. Kell-e fordítói kompetenciával rendelkezniük a nyelvvizsgázóknak? Presented at: XIV. Apáczai-napok Tudományos Konferencia. Győr, NYME AK. (14−15. 10. 2010.) Makkos A. 2010. Automatikusak-e a kohéziós átváltási műveletek? Presented at: „Az alkalmazott nyelvészet ma: innováció, technológia, tradíció.” MANYE XX. Kongresszus. Debrecen, Debreceni Egyetem. (26−28. 08. 2010.) 9.2 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Makkos A. 2013. A siker titka – egy életút tanulságai. Interjú Klaudy Kingával. In: Fordítás és tolmácsolás a harmadik évezred elején. Jubileumi évkönyv 1973−2013. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó. 249−256.
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Makkos A. 2012. Sherry Simon: Cities in Translation. Intersections of Language and Memory. Across Languages and Cultures 13 (1) 127−132. Makkos A. 2011. Az újrafordítások szükségességéről a Csudálatos Mary kapcsán. Fordítástudomány, 12. évf. 2. szám. 96−106. Makkos A. 2010. Az EU nyelvpolitikája – a magyar elnökség nyelvi előkészítése. (Budapest, 2010.11.26.) Fordítástudomány, 12. évf. 2. szám. 125−130. Makkos A. 2008. Miért olvassunk a kisiskolásokkal kortárs gyermekirodalmat? In: Lőrincz I. (szerk.) Nyelvek és kultúrák dialógusa: tanulmányok. Apáczai füzetek 3. Győr: NMYE AK. 103−116. Makkos A. 2008. A kortárs amerikai gyermekirodalom felhasználása az oktatásban fordulópont 9. évf. 40. szám. 57−71.
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