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1. Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences A 1 Retina display Retina skaerm A 1 FaceTime HD camera FaceTime HD kamera A 1 Multi Touch display Multi Touch skaerm A 1 isight camera iSight kamera A 1 Nano SIM tray Nano SIM bakke A 1 Lightning connector Lightning stik A 1 FaceTime calls FaceTime opkald C 1 High end print technology High end printteknologi C 1 Hi Q LED print engine Hi Q LED printmotor C 1 Higher end devices Higher end enheder C 1 Xerox EA toner technology Xerox EA tonerteknologi C 1 WorkCentre 6015 WorkCentre 6015 multifunction printer multifunktionsprinter D 1 Windows logo key Windows logotast D 1 Windows applications key Windows programtast D 1 Headset microphone Headsetmikrofon D 1 RJ 45 jack RJ 45 stik G 1 Remington Service Center Remington servicecenter H 1 Philips head screwdriver Philips hovedskruetraekker H 1 Light Touch Bumper Light Touch Bumper teknologi technology 2 BlackBerry device BlackBerry enhed 1 BlackBerry Remember app BlackBerry Remember app 1 BlackBerry Balance technology BlackBerry Balance teknologi 1 BBM Video chat BBM Video chat Table 6 Translation and Transfer Page 62 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 1 Appendix C English Higher end devices Danish Highe
2. 90 Figure 2 Example ce 91 Fig re 3 Example 2 uere ert E Ee aa E E a aaa AE beer er eee de b dieta vete ee 92 Figure 4 EXample 3 ctetu teet tiber eite ci em dub Mere e ibas iEn 92 Figure 5 EXample v eit oeil eee re A N ctore ib Mer etm Ec dile KE DRS cb ciet 93 Figure o EXample D E tette ub oM E eb Mer te bt x b eter ibt eet 93 Figure 7 Example 6 3 cie ettu ctetuer sett pe va set po osea e eeu se eque aae pev aee ey een o Eug a de ev deae eee ese ecu coeeuenceveeesttlegesstnets 94 Figure 8 BENE RE 94 Figure 9 Examiple 8 ci ersten eie tes A a doen aue eaae ui deae 95 Figure 10 Example 9 LES 95 Figure 11 Example 10 5 5 rca oie Tete spare Eee D aee TE ae EE C EYE C YN TE ELTE ER eve ERN E RR S 96 Tables Table 1 Contrastive Translation AnalySis ccccccccsssssscecececsssessaececececesseseeaeceeecseseseseaesesecessesesasaeeeeeeesseseaaeas 37 Table 2 User Manual ERRORES REEL LL LP 38 Table 3 Schjoldager s Mierostrategles e Tute detect eoa eties anik konie Eide Eae tae sucaceeesasdnzecseeaty 42 Table 4 Strategies for own Model of Analysis cc cccccccecsssssenseceeccecessesesaeceseesseeseaeseceeceusseseaeaeeeeeesseesenaees 51 Table 5 Transfer rere ce cessent e tae ne ra eee hei te pav eee PN Ne eee n UR RE Leine RE Dee Le EVE NE ee eM Ca ea E E eed RN Vea Me Ue RENS 60 Table 6 Translation and Transfer
3. eee EINES EDER ELIE DRED SLETTES 62 Table 7 Straightforward Translation esses nennen enne nnne nennt nana nasse n sns ti asa Ea EEEE 68 Table 8 ITuiceiiiilee em M 71 Table 9 Explicit Translatione cta ette da a x eR De ete Ee a ERE RDe ee e a SR RC Deu REE EE 72 Table TO Rewordihg ERR eN E 76 Table 11 imiplicitatiOn s i rr HERES ERES UR RUE ener 77 Table 12 Reduction ieri eite erro poa Poe cE FR canta TERRE Ve XEXYRRUGYR URN SER YR E RRRTRNRRM Ge FERNER UG CR PERS GER FA ERR FERRE Ue YES 79 Table 13 Change of Me nilig sercan teen ete cde rev ae xd e ru eee Md ue OS a ha Ex ke E eden MERE ees 80 Table LAs Eras Ure urea ccs EP E 82 Table 15 Results of Qualitative Analysis sesenta seen nest nennen 83 Tabl 16 Results in Total S Fvey nee ee eerte une Er eee petro e ce e Teese 96 Page 105 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Appendix Overview Appendix A Texts from the user manuals of Apple s tablet English Danish Appendix B Texts from the user manuals of Kenwood s mincer English Danish Appendix C Texts form the user manuals of Xerox printer English Danish Appendix D Texts from the user manuals of Hewlett Packard s Notebook PC English Dani
4. 2 Voice Control Stemmestyring 1 Speakerphone Hgjttalertelefon 1 Voice notes Talebeskeder 1 File Manager app Filadministrator appen 1 Work account Arbejdskonto 1 Network access Netvaerksadgang 2 Work space Arbejdsomr de 2 Work data Arbejdsdata Home screen Startskaerm J 1 Refrigerator Compartment Kagleafdeling J 1 Bottle Retainer Flaskeholder J 1 Rating plate Typeplade J 1 Fan intake area Indsugningsomr de J 1 Ice cube trays Isterningbakker J 1 Ice packs Fryseelementer J Control panel Betjeningspanel J 1 Fridge freezer K le fryseskab J 1 Front panel Forpanelet J 2 Refrigerator compartment k leskab J Fridge freezer K le fryseskab J 1 Ambient air temperature Rumtemperatur Table 7 Straightforward Translation Example 1 Appendix B English Slow speed outlet cover Danish Langsomme hastighedsudtag gloss the slow speed outlet This first example of the use of straightforward translation has been chosen because it is one of the more complex CNs to be found on the list of the uses of this strategy As can be seen from the Page 68 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Danish translation the word cover has not been translated However this will still be considered an example of the use of straightforward translation This is due to the facts that the res
5. research which is found in this thesis will only consider written translation and so no form of oral translation the issues or theory pertaining to it will be addressed Furthermore this thesis will focus mainly on the strategies which are employed in the translation of compound nouns in user manuals and how the choice of strategy may end up affecting the Page 15 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen comprehensibility of the user manual This means that issues of correctness of the compound nouns will not be addressed unless these somehow turn out to affect the comprehensibility Moreover the comprehensibility of the user manuals in general will not be assessed as compound nouns only form a small part of the user manuals 1 5 Definitions In the subsequent part of this thesis some definitions of central concepts will be given in order to provide a common point of departure for the thesis There are various ways of defining the following concepts which is why it must be considered very important to provide specific definitions which apply to this thesis in particular The concepts which will be defined are some of the most significant concepts for this thesis namely technical language compound nouns and user manuals 1 5 1 Technical Language The field of technical language comprises a very wide variety of d
6. the TT changing the meaning of the CN or simply transferring the CN from the ST to the TT Page 100 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen How might the choice of translation strategy affect the comprehensibility As previously mentioned the choice of translation strategy and its effect on the comprehensibility of the user manuals which have been studied can be hard to determine At first it seemed simple to divide the strategies into groups of positive and negative for comprehensibility However it turned out to be more complicated than that The CNs which were analysed did not always conform to what was prescribed by theory In some cases it even seemed to be just the opposite However when the results of the survey were brought into the equation it seemed to shed more light on the way in which the choice of translation strategy affects the comprehensibility According to the results of the survey the respondents seem to favour CNs over explanations and a direct form of translation over a rephrasing The fact that the qualitative analysis showed that straightforward translation was the predominant choice of strategy and the fact that the survey showed that respondents prefer CNs to explanations seems to indicate that the way in which the translators of the user manuals in question have translated the CNs is good for compreh
7. Appendix F English AC adaptor Danish lysnetadaptor gloss light circuit adaptor This example of the use of the strategy of explicit translation involves what one might refer to as a reversed reduction When the translation strategy of reduction is employed the CN is translated by the use of an abbreviation In this example the opposite has been done and an abbreviation Page 72 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen has been translated by explaining what is to be found behind the abbreviation The abbreviation AC is translated into lysnet light circuit thereby making the information contained in the abbreviation more easily understood by the reader Furthermore the CN remains a CN in the translation As this translation offers information which is contained in the ST unit but which is not explicit it must be considered an example of the use of explicit translation Example 2 Appendix I English Notification LED Danish Meddelelsesindikator gloss notification indicator This is another example of the use of explicit translation in which an abbreviation is explained However as consider LED to be a quite commonly used abbreviation which many people will know and understand would consider this a lighter form of the use of explicit translation but still belonging to this
8. However employing only manuals pertaining to one type of product would also have narrowed the research somewhat as the research would only be focused on the translation of CNs in that particular type of manual Had the method for this thesis been another one the data used for it might also have been different This means that the data could have consisted of any type of data which might have been employed in any alternative method which would have suited the subject of this thesis However will not be going further into that as there may be multiple possibilities depending on the methods which may be considered relevant 6 2 Future Perspectives In this final section of the thesis possible further research which this study may inspire will be explored and suggestions to future studies will be made An aspect which was not included in this thesis is that of the opinion of actual translators It might be interesting to not only guess at the strategies which translators employ in the translation of CNs based on the analysis of data but to ask the translators One might e g create a survey or interview a number of translators in order to find out what they do why they do it in that way and if they even make these decisions consciously It might also be relevant to test the comprehensibility of translated CNs in context This could be done e g by translating two technical texts of similar length and difficulty containing a number of CN
9. was employed in this study will be examined in connection with the choice of examples and the general composition of the survey as well as the respondents The method of survey may be considered the quantitative part of the design for this study Creswell 2014 12 When the survey has gained a sufficient number of answers the results gained from this small sample of people should enable me to generalise those results in order to say something interesting Creswell 2014 156 In this thesis fifty answers to the survey will be considered sufficient to generalise from However will probably not be able to generalise to a population because the sample will not be completely random as will be discussed later Furthermore this choice of a survey has been made because it will provide a view at the reaction of real people to the selected examples Comprehensibility can be hard to assess H nig 1998 49 As previously mentioned in theory it seems fairly simple to name one translation strategy positive for comprehensibility and another negative However this is not always the case as can be seen from the qualitative analysis pertaining to this thesis which is why it will be interesting to see what real people think of the examples chosen for the survey The employment of the survey in this study will coincide very well with the research question which was posed concerning the translation of CNs and how that affects comprehensibility The s
10. Danish must be quite low which means that first producing an English translation and then translating into Danish from that seems more reasonable and likely A closer look at the various user manuals will reveal that some of them are quite extensive For example the user manual pertaining to Apple s iPad is over 130 pages long The space and time constrictions of this thesis will not allow such a great amount of data to be analysed which is why a small part of each user manual has been selected for the purpose These small parts consist of comparable pieces of text from each user manual meaning that they all answer to the same Page 39 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen description Two different pieces of text which can be found in almost any user manual have been selected for this purpose these are e The overview page usually found in the first part of a user manual and consists of a picture of the product involved and names for the various buttons cameras screens etc which may be found on the product e Asmall piece of text from the description of the product which contains interesting CNs This piece of text will consist of approximately 150 170 words These texts can be found in Appendices A J in both the English and the Danish versions Using comparable texts from the various user manuals should m
11. ST to the TT without changing it in any way It might be worth mentioning that both the English and the Danish unit come with a parenthesis following the unit which may be meant to aid the reader in understanding However Page 51 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen this parenthesis only contains an abbreviation of Memory Stick namely MS and so does not impede or assist comprehensibility which is why it has not been included in the example Translation and Transfer Translation and transfer is based on a mix of Anne Schjoldager s microstrategies direct translation oblique translation and direct transfer The use of this strategy could seem rather impossible as Schjoldager s direct transfer dictates that a unit must be rendered unchanged but Schjoldager s direct translation dictates that a unit must be translated directly and oblique translation dictates that the wording may be changed but not the meaning However this strategy involves the use of two of the strategies in one unit One part of the unit is transferred directly without being translated and the other part is translated directly or translated with a focus on the sense of the unit Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix C English Hi Q LED print engine Danish HI Q LED printmot
12. Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen The research design which would logically follow the choice of pragmatism is mixed methods Indeed according to Teddlie and Tashakkori pragmatism is the philosophical orientation most often associated with mixed methods Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 7 Employing mixed methods instead of simply a qualitative or a quantitative research design is thought to help eliminate most of the weaknesses which qualitative and quantitative designs are thought to have when they are employed individually Creswell 2014 15 Consequently using a mixed methods approach should strengthen the research which is conducted and the conclusions made in this thesis Certainly this approach only strengthens the research because it is relevant to the research problem as prescribed by the notions of the pragmatic research paradigm More precisely as the qualitative analysis comes before the quantitative analysis we are dealing with what Creswell refers to as exploratory sequential mixed methods Creswell 2014 16 These two parts may be considered to be different studies as they will be conducted independently of each other The qualitative part a contrastive translation analysis will lead to one result which will be independent of the result of the quantitative part a survey However the results of the two empirical studies will be discussed and connecte
13. Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Nisbeth Jensen Matilde 2013 Translators of Patient Information Leaflets Translation experts or expert translators A mixed methods study of lay friendliness PhD Thesis PhD Department of Business Communication School of Business and Social Sciences Aarhus University Nisbeth Jensen Matilde Forthcoming Optimising comprehensibility in interlingual translation Department of Business Communication School of Business and Social Sciences Aarhus University Nord Christiane 1997 Translating as a Purposeful Activity Functionalist Approaches Explained St Jerome Publishing Manchester Norlyk Birgitte 1994 Fagsproglig kommunikation eller miskommunikation et praktisk perspektiv p anvendelse af fagsprog In Grindsted Annelise edit Fagsproglig kommunikation Forlaget Samfundslitteratur Frederiksberg Oxford Dictionaries 2013 Braggadocious Never Just excited about the Oxford Dictionaries February 2013 update http blog oxforddictionaries com 2013 02 odo february 2013 update accessed 19 03 2014 Reiss Katharina amp Vermeer Hans J 2013 Towards a General Theory of Translational Action Skopos Theory Explained St Jerome Publishing Manchester Schjoldager Anne 2008 Understanding Translation Academica Aarhus Teddlie Charles amp Tashakkori Abbas 2009 Foundations of Mixed Methods Research Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in the
14. This type of macrostrategy allows the translator to stay very close to the ST Hence it does not allow great creativity as the TT must follow closely along the lines set out by the ST Target text oriented Macrostrategy As opposed to the former macrostrategy this macrostrategy does not instruct the translator to stay very close to the ST when producing a TT The target text oriented macrostrategy puts the effect of the target text Schjoldager 2008 71 above the form and content of the ST thus allowing for a more creative approach to the translation 3 3 2 Microstrategies Microstrategies of translation are focused on the micro level choices which a translator can and will make during the translation of a given text These are the specific choices a translator makes which have to do with only smaller parts of the text such as words phrases and sentences Schjoldager 2008 89 Those of Schjoldager s microstrategies which will be employed in the model of analysis which will be formulated in section 4 2 will be presented in the following part These microstrategies are direct transfer direct translation oblique translation explicitation Page 41 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen paraphrase condensation substitution and deletion A full list of Anne Schjoldager s microstrategies and a short
15. and whys as opposed to only making conclusions based on figures This provides us with research which seeks to explain and interpret in depth instead of presenting results based solely on numbers In this thesis the qualitative research will be conducted in the first part of the analysis This first part is where the model of analysis which will be formulated in chapter 4 will be employed One might say that if the model of analysis formulated for this thesis is sufficiently precise then it should not be considered qualitative research when it is used However it seems that there is always some measure of subjective opinion involved in this type of analysis and so it seems proper to name this a qualitative analysis The qualitative analysis will consist of a contrastive translation analysis in which the relevant CNs from the data will be analysed and the results of that analysis will be discussed The method of contrastive translation analysis will be gone through in section 3 1 2 2 2 Quantitative Quantitative research is a form which was very common before the development of qualitative research and mixed methods Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 5 Teddlie and Tashakkori define quantitative research as the techniques associated with the gathering analysis interpretation and presentation of numerical information Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 5 From this we see that quantitative research is mainly based on numbers This can be ver
16. compound nouns or explanations which came from the data and which had not simply been constructed for the purpose of this study In chapter 6 the conclusion to the entire thesis is presented Firstly the research questions which were posed in the beginning of the thesis are answered The answers to these questions seem to indicate that translators are generally doing a good job when it comes to the translation of compound nouns and comprehensibility Secondly some general comments to the thesis are made Thirdly some different ways in which this study might have been approached are considered Lastly some future research which may be interesting in connection with the translation of compound nouns in technical language is considered briefly This thesis also contains a part about future research which may be inspired by this thesis There are several aspects to this subject which are still in need of further research and so many new studies might be inspired by this one It would be interesting to find out what the translators themselves think and do about the translation of compound nouns in user manuals Furthermore one might test the comprehensibility of translated compound nouns when they are set in a context or investigate the way in which machine translation affects the comprehensibility of a given text when it comes to compound nouns The first study contained in this thesis seems to indicate preference among translators to tran
17. influential when it comes to Translation Studies Schjoldager 2008 151 it has also been a target at which quite a bit of criticism has been aimed Through the years it has been called such things as unethical and even not really a theory in the academic sense of the word Schjoldager 2008 180 According to Schjoldager perhaps one of the most predominant reasons why some scholars do not consider the skopos theory to be an actual theory is that it is not a hypothesis which is empirically testable Schjoldager 2008 181 Some scholars consider the skopos theory more of an idealistic notion of how translations should be done rather than a theory in its own right because it seems that it cannot be tested empirically Schjoldager 2008 181 The scholars who consider the skopos theory to be unethical claim that promoting the purpose of a text the way the skopos theory does may mean that translators will think that anything goes as long as the translator makes sure that the skopos of a given TT is fulfilled This may be problematic because it could result in translations which fulfil irrelevant skopoi However this all seems to be based on a common misunderstanding Namely the misunderstanding that some make when they assume that the skopos theory tells a translator how to make a translation which in fact it does not Nord 1997 117 According to Schjoldager one should keep in mind that even though the Page 26 of 143 Translating Com
18. is not one will be going further into For this reason will in this thesis be employing what Bauer refers to as a working definition Bauer 1978 54 meaning that my definition will be broad enough to encompass most compound nouns Generally speaking compounds are words which have been constructed by the use of at least two other words or rather lexemes Bauer 1983 28 This is a broad definition of the concept However it does provide the basic understanding which is needed in order to elaborate and explain further Compounds can be formed by combining words or lexemes from either the same or different word classes Some examples of compounds made by combining words from the same or different word classes could be Snowfall noun verb snowflake noun noun and snow white noun adjective Indeed people form new compounds all the time Normally these compounds will be immediately understandable in the context Jakobsen 1992 29 However in technical language compounds tend to get rather extensive which may impede understanding Jakobsen 1992 34 Page 17 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen There are several different kinds of compounds such as compound verbs compound adjectives and compound nouns However in this definition and in this thesis in general the focus will be placed o
19. previously mentioned considered to affect the comprehensibility of a text in a negative direction However as was demonstrated in the analysis of the translation of Internal Wireless Card into Wi fi this is not always the case This is the reason why a survey was introduced as a quantitative method The survey allows us to get a sense of what people actually think of CNs when they prefer them and when they want them to be explained The qualitative analysis provided a rather theoretical view at the translation of CNs in manuals and by making use of a survey will endeavour to provide a perhaps less theoretical but real world look at the way in which the translation of CNs affects comprehensibility Page 86 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 5 Quantitative Analysis and Results In this chapter the quantitative part of the study will be conducted Firstly the method of survey will be introduced and explained in order to provide the reader with an idea of how and why the survey has been conducted the way it has Secondly the results of the survey will be given Lastly the results of the survey will be discussed along with possible connections with the qualitative part of this thesis 5 1 Method of Survey In this section of the thesis the method of survey will be explained and the online survey which
20. see a compound which constitutes the title of a special feature belonging to the product in question Once again we have to do with a compound which does not have a good Danish translation a compound which in fact probably does not have many translations at all As this compound represents a proper noun it seems prudent to simply transfer it from the ST to the TT Had the CN been translated it might have resulted in readers who would be confused because they only had prior knowledge of the English title Like the previous example will consider this an example of transfer because the CN from the ST has not changed in any way in the TT The above examples were to show that CNs which have been transferred from the ST to the TT without change are not always proper nouns they can also constitute English CNs which have found their way into the Danish language Furthermore as the transfer of proper nouns seems to be the most frequently occurring type of transfer an example of the transfer of a title was also provided 4 3 2 Translation and Transfer The list below provides the reader with the CNs which have been analysed as being among the examples of the use of the strategy of translation and transfer Following the list a few examples will be explained more thoroughly Page 61 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen
21. so the use of straightforward translation would probably have been even more frequent As previously mentioned the same English CN may appear in the analysis in more than one place as the same CN may have been translated in more than one way within the same user manual One might think that translating the same CN in more than one way in the same user manual would affect the comprehensibility of said user manual in a negative way and that is probably the case in some instances However if the two translations involve the same choice of words it may not affect comprehensibility very much Consider this example from the data Appendix A English Volume buttons Danish 1 Knapper til justering af lydstyrke gloss buttons for the adjustment of volume Danish 2 Lydstyrkeknapper gloss volume buttons In this example it seems fair to assume that readers would understand alternative 1 as well as alternative 2 and that they would understand that the buttons which are being referred to are the same in 1 as in 2 However figuring out that the two translations denote the same thing would probably demand a little more time than if they had been translated in the same way We cannot know exactly why the choice to translate in two ways is sometimes made However the reason Page 85 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen ma
22. strategy The abbreviation LED is translated into indikator indicator One might say that this translation provides the reader with information about the function of the LED which was not provided in the ST unit as LED does not necessarily signify indicator Therefore as implicit information from the ST has been rendered explicit in the TT will consider this an example of the use of explicit translation The previous examples were to show how explicit translation may be used and to clarify why these examples have been analysed in the way they have 4 3 6 Rewording Below is a list of the CNs which have been reformulated in their translation to a greater or lesser extent and which therefore have been considered to be results of the employment of the translation strategy of rewording Moreover following the list the analysis of a few examples has been explained Page 73 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences A 1 iPad Overview Oversigt over iPad A 1 Sleep Wake button Knappen V geblus til fra A 1 Headset jack Stik til hovedszet A 6 Side Switch Kontakt pa siden A 1 Volume buttons Knapper til justering af lydstyrke A 1 Portrait orientation Staende retning A 1 L
23. that the people who write the user manuals will most likely have in depth knowledge about the product described in the user manual However the readers or users will most likely not have this knowledge If they did they would not be in need of a user manual In consequence the comprehensibility of the original manuals will depend very much on the writer and the comprehensibility of the translated user manuals will depend very much on the translator Therefore it is rather interesting to take a closer look at the translation strategies which were employed in the translation of the data selected for this thesis To do so this thesis investigates the strategies used in a data set consisting of 10 user manuals for electric products which were meant to be read by laymen This will be done in order to assess the comprehensibility of the finished product and of translated user manuals in general in terms of compound nouns Consequently this should enable us to establish how the translation of compound nouns affects the usefulness of the user manuals for the readers In the following section some other pieces of research which have been conducted in connection with compound nouns in technical language will be presented and discussed in order to give the reader an idea of the current research within this field Page 10 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lo
24. the occurrences of the use of the strategy of erasure which can be found in the data pertaining to this study Furthermore the explanation of a few selected examples is provided after the list Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences C 1 Phaser 6010 C 1 WorkCentre 6015 C 1 Desktop E 1 Bluetooth technology status E 1 Smartphone link E 1 Battery gauge G 1 Bathroom H 1 Faceplate H 1 SPOT Button H 1 Dirt Detect Page 81 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen H 1 CLEAN Power Button H 1 DOCK Button H 1 MAX Button Table 14 Erasure Example 1 Appendix E English Bluetooth technology status Danish This example of the use of erasure is very clear The English CN is part of a small box with symbols and their explanations However for some reason the explanation contained in this CN and the symbol to which it belongs must have been considered unimportant to Danish readers as it has been deleted entirely from the TT This is the reason why it will be considered to be an example of the use of erasure Example 2 Appendix H English Faceplate Danish Like the one before it this is an example of erasure in which the English CN faceplate has been completely deleted from the TT As was the case wi
25. the user manual belongs in the correct way and that the user manual is a text which is written for laymen 1 6 Abbreviations In order to avoid multiple repetitions which will end up making the text unnecessarily long the following abbreviations have been employed throughout the remaining parts of this thesis ST Source Text SL Source Language TT Target Text TL Target Language CN Compound Noun Page 19 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 2 Paradigm and Approach to Translation Chapter 2 will present and discuss the research paradigm and research design which will be employed in this thesis Then the concept of equivalence based translation will be examined and commented on in short Furthermore this chapter will take a closer look at the skopos theory which is very important to this thesis The rules of the skopos theory will be gone through along with some criticism of the theory and an answer to the criticism will be provided Moreover it will cover some theory about technical translation CNs and comprehensibility In the section about technical translation we will learn more about how readers should be considered when translating this type of text and about how technical texts stand out from other texts The section about CNs will go through the ways in which CNs can be formed how CNs are us
26. this example kabinettet the cabinet has replaced the words frame and top section which has rendered the translation shorter than the original Furthermore do not consider kabinet to be the most direct choice for the translation of either frame or top section meaning that the wording has also changed along with the length of this unit Together these two factors make me analyse this translation as an example of the use of Schjoldager s paraphrase Condensation This microstrategy has a lot in common with the formerly mentioned microstrategy paraphrase Both of these microstrategies are very focused on the length of a translation item and both are used to describe translations which are shorter than their ST items The feature which Page 45 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen distinguishes condensation from paraphrase is the fact that the use of a condensation will tend to make the TT seem more similar in meaning to the ST than the use of a paraphrase will Schjoldager 2008 101 In some cases the use of this particular microstrategy will mean that explicit source text information is made implicit but not necessarily so Schjoldager 2008 102 Furthermore when condensation is employed the source text message as a whole is rendered Scjoldager 2008 103 meaning that no part of the orig
27. to improve the sentence though not the CN Another respondent commented that he or she did not understand the sentence Page 94 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 8 8 Oversigt over iPad 21 21 ad oversig 77 iPad oversigt TI 79 Figure 9 Example 8 Once again it seems like there is a clear tendency to prefer the CN to the explanation However three respondents commented on their choice of alternative all three said that they needed some kind of context to be able give a good answer Example 9 9 Salatskufferumopdeler 3 3 Rumopdeler til salatskuffen 96 97 CHEN Salatskufferu 3 Figure 10 Example 9 This example is the one of all ten examples which has shown the clearest preference among the respondents 97 prefer the explanation to the CN Two respondents commented that salatskufferumopdeler has too many words in one to be readable One respondent thought that salatskuffe was a funny word Page 95 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 10 10 Effektive sc 57 Effektive scanningsfunktioner inklusive Scan til netv rk e mail eller standardiseret hukommelsesenhed til USB indgang 42 42 Effektive scanningsfunktioner
28. use HDMI port instead of either of the alternatives One respondent commented that he or she did not know what either of the alternatives denote Example 5 Indsugningsomr de 74 75 Imr de hvor 25 Omr de hvor indsugning foreg r 25 25 Figure 6 Example 5 Regarding this example the respondents seem to prefer the CN even if it is a somewhat long word Only one respondent commented on this and said that the first alternative was short and precise Page 93 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 6 Ringmatrik 80 Matrik formet som en ring 39 39 Ringmetrik 60 6196 Figure 7 Example 6 As it was the case with the previous example it seems that the respondents prefer the CN to the explanation in this example One respondent commented that the first alternative the explanation seemed like a dumbing down Example 7 Roomba bruger sin Light Touch Bumper teknologi til at identificere vaegge og andre forhindringer 64 65 Roomba bruger sin teknologi kaldet Light Touch Bumper til at identificere v gge og andre forhindringer 35 35 Figure 8 Example 7 This is another example in which the respondents prefer the CN to the explanation One respondent commented that a Roomba vacuum cleaning robot cannot do what is described in the sentence and tried
29. 3 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen qualitative analysis in which the use of various strategies was considered and a more real world look at the translation of CNs in connection with comprehensibility in the quantitative part However as will be mentioned in the following sections there are still several new angles which may be applied to this field of research 6 1 Alternative Approaches This section will explore some of the alternative approaches which might have been employed in the course of this study instead of those which were used Firstly the possibility of another method will be explored Secondly the option of having used different data will be looked at 6 1 1 Other Methods One possibility which may be considered valid in the examination of the translation of CNs in user manuals and their effect on the comprehensibility of said user manuals may be that of a more extensive survey The survey employed in this thesis is quite simple and a more expansive survey might provide a better look at how people perceive CNs and how easy or difficult they are to comprehend If a survey of this kind had been employed one might have considered using a more controlled compilation of respondents in order to ensure that the results could be generalised to a population Another possibility which might have been considered is
30. 34 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen From this part of the thesis we may draw three important conclusions about comprehensibility and CNs e f possible CNs should be avoided and replaced by explanations e If itis not possible to avoid CNs they should contain no more than 3 concepts at the same time Although this depends on the context as some compounds of only 2 concepts can be hard to understand whereas some consisting of 3 or more can be easy to understand e Abbreviations do not solve the problem of CNs and comprehensibility Keeping these 3 points in mind should enable writers of specialised texts to write texts which are easier to comprehend and which in turn will ensure that the message of a given text arrives safely with the receiver Page 35 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 3 Methods In chapter 3 first the method of contrastive translation analysis then the data selection and the translation strategies which will form the basis for the model of analysis will be presented The method of contrastive translation analysis will be gone through and explained In the section about data selection the way in which the data were selected and the difficulties pertaining to th
31. A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen F Clock battery Urbatteri F Main batteries Hovedbatterierne F Display language Displaysprog G Product features Produktegenskaber G Precision styling Praecisionsstyling G Heat and speed settings Temperatur og hastighedsindstillinger G Safety cautions Sikkerhedsforanstaltninger G Residual current device Fejlstr msafbryder G Residual operating current Fejlstr m G Bathtubs Badekar G Warranty period Garantiperiode G Proof of purchase K bsbevis H Troubleshooting Light Fejlfindingslys H CLEAN Power Button Reng r T nd og sluk knap H Scheduling Interface Programmeringsgr nseflade H Cliff Sensor Openings Forhindringssensor bninger H Wheel Module Hjulmodul H Contact Points Kontaktpunkter H Caster Wheel Drejehjul H Main Brush Hovedb rste H End Caps B rstekapper H Brush Bearings B rstelejer H Brush Guard B rstebeskytter H Side Brush Sideb rste H Carpet tassels T ppekvaster H Side Brush screw Sideb rsteskruen Lock screen Sk rml s Headset jack Hovedtelefonstik Page 67 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen
32. Charrow 1988 99 meaning that CNs should be broken up and explained instead of simply being strung together Specialists often have the need to be very precise in their wording and as the CNs are considered too hard to understand the result will often tend to be an abbreviation Becker Jensen 2001 145 However the resulting abbreviations will most likely be as inscrutable as the CNs or worse Becker Jensen 2001 145 Therefore Leif Becker Jensen agrees with Charrow that the best way out of the problem is to break up and explain the CNs He also adds that the average reader is usually not able to understand more than 2 or 3 concepts at a time Becker Jensen 2007 63 meaning that a CN should consist of a maximum of 3 concepts However Nisbeth Jensen argues that the context of a given compound will ultimately determine how many concepts can be combined Nisbeth Jensen 2013 113 Becker Jensen also states that most Danish specialist compounds can be broken up without any great trouble Becker Jensen 2001 145 An example of how a CN can be broken up and explained could be shown with the Danish CN virksomhedsanalysemodel company analysis model which can be broken up into model til analyse af en virksomhed model for the analysis of a company As we have just seen breaking the CN up should according to Becker Jensen make the CN easier to understand and this process should not be too difficult which it does indeed not seem to be Page
33. Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen In this example a piece of information which is implicit in the English ST has been made explicit in the Danish TT The reason why consider the information that the knife has 4 blades to be implicit in the English ST is that it can be seen from the drawing above both the ST and TT unit that the knife has 4 blades However in the Danish TT the translator has chosen to include this information in writing making implicit information explicit Paraphrase When a translator employs this microstrategy in a translation it might almost be said that he or she is summarising the content of the ST in the TT According to Schjoldager when paraphrasing translators render source text meaning rather freely Schjoldager 2008 100 Similarly to for example oblique translation the wording is not terribly significant However when the microstrategy of paraphrase is employed the TT item will tend to be considerably shorter Schjoldager 2008 101 Below is an example of Schjoldager s paraphrase from the data Appendix J English frame top section Danish kabinettet This translation may be considered an example of the use of Schjoldager s paraphrase However as paraphrase is in my opinion one of the more obscure strategies for translation the analysis of this unit will depend somewhat on the perspective from which it is viewed In
34. Multifunktio Figure 3 Example 2 This example seems to have caused more disagreement among the respondents However the predominant part of the respondents still agreed that the explanation was easier to read and understand than the CN Five of the respondents commented on this example three of them commented that they had a hard time understanding either of the alternatives These comments could imply that this example was too complex for the survey and that it should not have been included to begin with However it is also interesting to see what people consider to be hard to understand Example 3 Brug af skaermtastaturet Ti 78 t 22 Brug af tastaturet p sk rmen 22 22 Figure 4 Example 3 In this case almost 8096 of the respondents agreed that the CN was preferable to the explanation One of the respondents commented that the reason why the CN was easier to understand might be that it seems to be a word which already exists Page 92 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 4 IDMi sk rmpo 51 5 Port til HDMI skeerm 48 48 HDMI skaermport 51 5296 Port til HDM 48 Figure 5 Example 4 This example has truly divided the respondents into two groups a little more than half prefer the CN the rest prefer the explanation Two respondents suggested that one might
35. Munck 1994 140 Descriptive texts will tend to be focused on describing a spare part a function or the structure of an item Munck 1994 140 Directive texts often resemble recipes as they tell the reader what to do Munck 1994 141 Furthermore Munck states that compounds are very common in technical language CNs in particular but also compound verbs and even compound adjectives Munck 1994 165 This is also evident from the data pertaining to this study which is filled with CNs 2 5 2 The Readers According to Byrne the readers of a technical text or translation can vary a lot as these texts may be aimed at several different readers and may have various purposes Sometimes the writer or translator will know exactly who these readers are and sometimes the readers will be many different people with different needs and preferences It does not matter whether a group of readers is defined in a very specific way or if the group consists of many different subgroups the text or translation should be made for that group or those groups in particular Byrne 2012 27 Byrne describes technical texts as task oriented tools which are made for particular purposes and must be produced with the readers in mind in order to gain the best result Byrne 2012 27 In order to be able to make the best possible text for the readers Mousten suggests imagining a typical reader Mousten 2008 52 This should enable the writer or translator to favour t
36. Ring nut Ringmg trik B 3 Mincer body Kgdhakkerhus B 1 Pusher lid Stoppepindslag B Sausage filler P lser r B Slow speed outlet cover Langsomme hastighedsudtag B 1 Base plate Bundplade B 1 Jet of water Vandstr m C 1 Back lit LCD screen Baggrundsoplyste LCD skaerm C 1 Menu structure Menustruktur C 1 Front panel Frontpanel C 1 Media sizes Medieformater Page 64 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen C 1 Standard portable USB Baerbar USB memory device standardhukommelsesenhed C 1 USB memory device USB hukommelsesenhed C 1 Grayscale Gr toner C 1 Fax capabilities Faxfunktioner C 1 Fusing temperature Fikseringstemperatur C 1 Multifunction productivity Multifunktionsproduktivitet C 1 Workload Arbejdsmaengde D 2 Functions key Funktionstast D 1 System information Systemoplysninger D 2 System functions Systemfunktioner D 1 Shortcut menu Genvejsmenu D 1 Audio out jack Lydudgangsstik D 2 Headphone Hovedtelefon D 1 Audio in jack Lydindgangsstik D 1 Stereo speakers Stereohgjttalere D 1 Earbuds resnegle D 1 Television audio Tv lyd D 1 Audio component cable Lydkomponentkablet D 1 4 conductor connector Firlederkabelstik D 1 USB ports USB porte D 1 USB devices USB enheder D 1 VGA monitor VGA sk rm D 1 Network Netv rk D 1 N
37. Social and Behavioral Sciences Sage Publications California Vermeer Hans J 2004 Skopos and Commission in Translational Action In Venuti Lawrence edit The Translation Studies Reader Routledge London Page 110 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Vinay Jean Paul amp Darbelnet Jean 2000 A methodology for translation In Venuti Lawrence edit The Translation Studies Reader Routledge London Zola Christensen Robert amp Christensen Lisa 2012 Dansk Grammatik Syddansk Universitetsforlag Odense Page 111 of 143
38. Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language LET i Q ws SE Ae Wheels Pj SS Qs ar P e S Q erigeraco X Setup bte SL SETE Pater BN oie Coni Ces t 1 8 EIN PS WBE eie es HN edie CUfr reen 85 eda OU B f y gt y gt d aC Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 300722 Characters without spaces 150 744 Supervisor Matilde Nisbeth Jensen Cand ling merc Engelsk Tolk Translatgr Department of Business Communication School of Business and Social Sciences Aarhus University August 2014 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Page 2 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Contents Abstract LT A E A E 7 aem a AA E A Et eee O 9 TI Literature REVIGW M P 11 1 2 Problem Statement and Research Questions enne enne nnne nnne 14 1 3 Outline of THESIS ae raa E EE sedan eel uted taaweets anew 14 d Merino r 15 Eabb e 16 1 5 T Techhiical EanguaBe s ose tos roris testem redit Or es a aa FEDTET ERE 16 1 5 2 Compound NOUN iscsi rsisi oira ie tate od esee edad eg ecdss paie ute e et
39. a text and in fact let the purpose be what determines the way in which a translation is made because it according to the theory should aid in finding the best approach Schjoldager 2008 152 As previously mentioned an equivalence based approach to translation in which the TT may not vary largely from the ST used to be the norm Schjoldager 2008 90 Even though the skopos theory allows the translator to think of translation in broader terms and consider several ways of translating a text which would certainly not be considered viable by those scholars who believe in an equivalence based theory of translation Schjoldager 2008 Page 24 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 153 it does not mean that a translator who is keeping the skopos of a translation in mind cannot make word for word translations Nord 1997 29 When considering the skopos of a translation one must remember that the skopos of a given TT may be the same skopos as that of the ST but not necessarily Nord 1997 31 Indeed Vermeer remarks that even if the skopos of the TT is the same as that of the ST the translator still cannot be expected to simply transfer the words from one language into another because the TT is primarily oriented towards a target culture situation or situations Vermeer 2004 229 Thus no matter whether th
40. ake it possible to end up with some generalisable research about this field 3 3 Translation Strategies Several scholars have tried to formulate and define translation strategies both on the micro and macro level In connection with macrostrategies Schjoldager 2008 mentions for example Chesterman 1997 Nida 2000 and Vinay and Darbelnet 2000 Furthermore Schjoldager mentions among others Vinay and Darbelnet 2000 Delabastita 1993 and Gottlieb 1997 in connection with microstrategies Indeed there are several different scholars to choose from in connection with translation strategies However as it will be described in section 4 2 1 Schjoldager s translation strategies seem to suit the purpose of this study very well and have therefore been selected to form the basis for my own model of analysis These translation strategies will be presented in this part of the thesis Both microstrategies and macrostrategies are included However only the microstrategies which have been deemed relevant and which will be used in the model of analysis will be presented This has been done because it seems unnecessary to present microstrategies which will not be employed in this study in any way and in order to keep the focus on the subject at hand 3 3 1 Macrostrategies As previously mentioned macrostrategies denote the overall method for translating a given text There are two overall macrostrategies namely the source text oriented and th
41. al Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Det tager ca 3 minutter at svare pa dette sp rgeskema Du skal ganske simpelt vurdere hvilket af de to alternativer der er lettest at laese og forst Hvis du vil kan du vaelge at kommentere pa dine valg i forbindelse med hvert alternativ eller til sidst i sporgeskemaet Mange tak for hjaelpen 1 a knapper til justering af lydstyrke Appendix A b lydstyrkejusteringsknapper a multifunktionsproduktivitet Appendix C b produktivitet med multifunktioner brug af skeermtastaturet Appendix E brug af tastaturet p skaermen Port til HDMI skaerm Appendix I HDMI skeermport indsugningsomr de Appendix J omrade hvor indsugning foregar a m trik formet som en ring b ringmgtrik Appendix B a Roomba bruger sin Light Touch Bumper teknologi til at identificere v gge og andre forhindringer b Roomba bruger sin teknologi kaldet Light Touch bumper til at identificere vaegge og andre forhindringer Appendix H a oversigt over iPad Appendix A b iPad oversigt a salatskufferumopdeler b rumopdeler til salatskuffen Appendix J a Effektive scanningsfunktioner inklusive Scan til netvaerk e mail eller standardiseret hukommelsesenhed til USB indgang b Effektive scanningsfunktioner inklusive Scan til netveerk e mail eller USB standardhukommelsesenhed Appendix C Figure 1 Survey Page 90 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strate
42. an offer of information puts the TT and its readers in focus this is a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as the dethronement of the ST Nisbeth Jensen 2013 46 Page 25 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen The 3 rule of the skopos theory tells us that the skopos of a given TT is not clearly reversible This means that the skopos of the TT may be different from that of the source text Reiss amp Vermeer 2013 92 In other words one cannot always expect the skopos of the TT to be same as the skopos of the ST Moreover this means that e g a back translation might not lead to a translation which is similar to the ST The coherence rule which is rule number 4 states that the translation of a text must be done in a manner which makes the TT coherent for the TT receivers given their circumstances and knowledge Munday 2008 80 This means that the receiver must be able to understand the TT and the TT has to be meaningful in the communicative situation and target culture Rule number 5 the fidelity rule states that there must be agreement between the intentions of the author of the ST how the translator interprets those intentions and how the information from the ST is produced once again in the TT Munday 2009 188 2 4 2 Criticism Even though the skopos theory is considered to be very
43. and made a successful test on selected compound nouns However the test of the model was rather limited as only 5 compound nouns selected for the purpose by Drijver herself were tested As the only one of the studies mentioned here Andreassen 2010 touched upon the issue of comprehensibility as her questionnaires asked the doctors if the translated compound nouns were readable and understandable However her research concentrated only on medical texts and involved only doctors Furthermore Andreassen s study concentrated on expert to expert communication as the target group consisted of doctors but it would be interesting to see what her results would have been had the target group consisted of laymen Finally Jakobsen 1992 investigated the need for a translator to fully understand a compound noun in order to be able to translate it and found that understanding completely is paramount as the same compounds may have several meanings depending on the context and cannot always be translated by translating the various parts of the compound separately These are all studies concentrating on the translation of compound nouns in some form of technical text However none of them have focused on which strategies are used in the translation of compound nouns in user manuals and how that in turn ends up affecting the comprehensibility of such a text in relation to laymen Page 13 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the S
44. andscape orientation Liggende retning C 1 15 sheet automatic document Automatisk dokumentfremfgrer til feeder 15 ark C 1 Multiple page documents Dokumenter med flere sider C 1 Front side USB port USB porten pa fronten C 1 ID Card Copy Kopiering af ID kort C 1 Automatic background Automatisk suppression baggrundsundertrykkelse C 1 Graphic artists Den grafiske branche C 1 High quality toner H je kvalitetstoner C 1 Supplies costs Omkostninger til forbrugsstoffer C 1 Real world print productivity gte printproduktivitet C 1 Built in features Indbyggede funktioner C 1 USB or network connectivity USB forbindelse eller netvaerksforbindelse D 1 Start menu Menuen start D 1 Esc key Tasten esc D 3 Fn key Tasten fn D 1 Digital card formats Digitale kortformater D 1 Digital media slot Slot til digitale medier Page 74 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen D External monitor port Port til ekstern skaerm E Status bar icons Statuslinjens ikoner E Language settings Indstillinger for sprog E Keyboard settings Indstillinger for tastatur E Keyboard language mode Sprogindstillinger for tastaturet E Character capitalization Store og sm bogstaver F Playback zoom Zoom under billedvisning F Backup battery Ekstra batter
45. annot be expected to evaluate the comprehensibility of nothing which is why this particular strategy has been left out Another example of a strategy which has been left out is that of transfer This strategy has been left out because it would mean that the respondents would have to consider the comprehensibility of a Page 88 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen CN which would be in English seeing as the unit would not have been translated This survey was from the beginning meant to be available only to Danish speaking people meaning that including an example which was all English would exclude some of the respondents from answering the survey Furthermore including this strategy should in theory mean that the two alternatives would be represented in the same way rendering the choice between them irrelevant The survey is presented below The survey which the respondents were presented with contains no underlinings and all the parts which are marked in bold have not been included in the survey they are included here simply to guide and inform the reader The underlined parts come from the data whereas the parts which are not underlined were formulated by me for the purpose of this survey Page 89 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technic
46. ansfer has been selected because the word which has been transferred from the ST to the TT without change is one which does not seem to have a good Danish translation Headset is a word which is commonly used in Danish even though it is an English word which means that it would probably seem strange to a Dane if it had been translated it might even impede comprehension Of course the translator might have translated the CN into hovedtelefoner headphones However headset does not always signify headphones In Appendix D both headset and headphones are mentioned which should mean that two different things are referred to In this case it seems like headset denotes a device which comprises both a microphone and headphones meaning that headset cannot simply be translated into hovedtelefoner Like one of the other compounds which has simply been Page 60 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen transferred to the TT without translation namely podcast headset has been transferred because transferring it makes more sense than translating it As the CN has not been translated or changed in any other way will consider this an example of the use of transfer Example 2 Appendix I English BlackBerry Link Danish BlackBerry Link In this second example of the use of transfer we
47. anyone might read the user manuals that go with them This means that experts as well as laymen and everyone in between must be considered Consequently it seems fair to assume that user manuals should be written and translated in a way which makes them available and understandable for both experts and laymen 2 6 About Compound Nouns This part of the thesis will present further theory about CNs First of all the ways in which CNs may be formed will be presented and discussed Second of all we will take a closer look at CNs in connection with technical language Last of all we will consider the translation of CNs and the differences between CNs in English and Danish 2 6 1 The Formation of Compound Nouns Compounds can be formed in three different ways inflection derivation and compounding Bauer 1983 10 In this part of the thesis the different ways of forming compounds will be considered briefly Compounds formed by inflection are units which have gained new endings these endings may signify the number involved as well as the gender or tense of the compound in question Bauer 1983 10 However CNs are not formed in this way rendering this type of compound irrelevant to this study Compounds which are formed by the use of derivation consist of units which have been derived from other units These derivatives can come in the form of either a compound with a suffix a prefix or both at the same time Zola Christensen amp Christe
48. ative Analysis and Res lts 5 e eere erede redet ere reves e recuset 87 5 1 Method of SUrVeyc ai iret tree eim t Yee eas eret eie tu iv cabal Vea NE TRATEN ea 87 5 2 Results of SUFVey zd Piera nU Ree 91 5 3 Discussion of Results Of S rvey recte inre etta denen s pad ena inb e URS ATE Fee VER Re Er Et ves Pn eva Fa Pass 97 6 Discussion and COnclusion ccceecceeeeceeesseceecceceeeeeceaeeeeaaecseaeeceaeeeeaaeeeeaaeseeeeecsaeeseaaeceeaeeseaeeseaaeeseaeeseeeeees 100 6 1 Alternative Approaches cccssssccccccscsssesssaeeececesseseaeseeeeeceseeseaaeseeeeecessesaaaeseseessesesaaaeseseesseeseaaeas 102 6 1 1 Other Methods in e ett eet petisti I reef ttf el avs ste OR E UR Reed 102 Page 4 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 6 1 2 Different Choice of Data ird ra ete I Dat eee 102 62 Fut re PerspectiVes ais ee 103 Figure and Table Overview tree ta er ele e an iaa na ea ege bae ave tv e ut a eee Ev SY PE RE ERE 105 Ballett Em 105 Tables 5n ete D SR E Be ops Oe et POR RR PE etre 105 Appendix Overview a ttr aee cro ete ae ee A duis pe epe uie vea Pear e PI eee gas 106 References erp stu ei tees to ttt ees e teret a recte D diese 107 Page 5 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christense
49. bject it seems necessary to use a wide variety of user manuals instead of using only user manuals from either the same manufacturer or the same type of product Page 37 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen All of the user manuals which have been selected come from foreign manufacturers This makes it fair to assume that the English texts were made before the Danish translations make this assumption because Danish is a rather small language meaning that there are relatively few people who speak and understand this language compared to the bigger world languages like Spanish English and Mandarin Because there are so few speakers of this language it might seem less important to translate user manuals into this language compared to other languages Indeed many user manuals do not contain a Danish translation at all Below is a list of the products and manufacturers of the user manuals which are examined in this study Product Manufacturer Country of Origin 1 Tablet Apple United States of America 2 Mincer Kenwood United Kingdom 3 Printer Xerox United States of America 4 Notebook PC Hewlett Packard United States of America 5 GPS Garmin United States of America 6 Digital camera Nikon Japan 7 Hairdryer Remington United States of America 8 Vacuum cleaning robot iRobot United State
50. ce between the languages Danish and English Both languages make frequent use of compound nouns in speech as well as in writing However the rules for the formation of compound nouns are very different In English Page 9 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen compound nouns are commonly written in more than one word they may be hyphenated or in some cases they may be written as one word Jakobsen 1992 33 In Danish compound nouns are usually written as one word with or without a hyphen Jakobsen 1992 33 This creates some intriguing issues when it comes to translation as the more complicated compound nouns will typically require some kind of change when they are translated Even though long compound nouns can simply be made with a string of separate words in English translating this string directly would result in a long Danish word which would most likely be hard to read and understand Therefore it will be interesting to see how the translators have translated the compound nouns and how this affects the comprehensibility of the user manuals The rules of compound formation will be discussed further in section 2 6 1 Another point which makes the research in this thesis so relevant is the fact that user manuals must in general be considered to be a type of text which is written by experts for laymen This means
51. coincides very well with the choice of research design as well as methods for this thesis As can be seen from the above this paradigm works very well with the research problem in this thesis This paradigm makes it possible to apply the methods needed to examine the use of translation strategies in connection with CNs in user manuals and the effect on comprehensibility in the way which is wanted in this thesis 2 2 Research Design In the following part of this thesis the research design will be presented Applying either a qualitative or a quantitative research design are the more traditional choices of research designs but in recent years a new phenomenon has gained attention and theory has been developed about it that is the phenomenon of mixed methods Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 7 According to Creswell one should not consider qualitative and quantitative approaches polar opposites which are detached and cannot be combined but instead they should be considered to represent different ends on a continuum Creswell 2014 3 On this continuum in between quantitative and qualitative is where the research design known as mixed methods is to be found Creswell 2014 3 In this thesis a research design of mixed methods will be employed The qualitative and quantitative approaches will be discussed further in the three subsections pertaining to this section Page 21 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the
52. cond example of the use of rewording is also very clear in explaining the CN from the ST The translation does contain a new CN namely sprogindstillinger language settings However even in spite of this new CN in the translation will still consider the translation strategy of rewording to have been employed here as the CN has been split up to some degree It might have been split up further but that may not have helped comprehension Even if the CN has not been explained in full it will still be considered the result of the use of rewording These examples were to show some of the ways in which a rewording may appear and also to clarify the uses of the strategy further 4 3 7 Implicitation Below is provided a list of the limited number of instances in which the strategy of implicitation seems to have been employed Furthermore both examples are explained after the list Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences C 1 High end products Graphic Grafiske produkter arts industry C 1 128 MB standard memory Den store standardhukommelse Table 11 Implicitation Page 77 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 1 Appendix C English High end products graphic arts industry Danish grafiske produkter gloss graphic products In this first example of the use of implicita
53. ct com www baser dk science article pii B0080448542001115 np y accessed 10 03 2014 Becker Jensen Leif 1998 Kancellistil eller Anders And sprog Roskilde Universitetsforlag Frederiksberg Becker Jensen Leif 2001 Den sproglige d se bner Roskilde Universitetsforlag Frederiksberg Becker Jensen Leif 2007 P patientens pr misser Forlaget Samfundslitteratur Frederiksberg Byrne Jody 2012 Scientific and Technical Translation Explained A Nuts and Bolts Guide for Beginners St Jerome Publishing Manchester Charrow Veda 1988 Readability vs Comprehensibility A Case Study in Improving a Real Document In Davison Alice amp Green Georgia M edit Linguistic Complexity and Text Comprehension Lawrence Erlbaum Hillsdale Chesterman Andrew 1997 Memes of Translation John Benjamins Amsterdam Page 107 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Chesterman Andrew 2004 Paradigm Problems In Schaffner Christina edit Translation Research and Interpreting Research Traditions Gaps and Synergies Multilingual Matters Clevedon pp 52 56 Creswell John W 2014 Research Design Sage Publications Croydon Dansk Sprognaevn 2013 Nye ord i 2013 http www dsn dk nyt nyheder 2013 nye ord i 2013 1 accessed 19 03 2014 Delabastita Dirk 1993 There s a Double Tongue An i
54. d later on As was mentioned in the research questions pertaining to this thesis the purpose of this study is to take a closer look at the translation strategies employed in the translation of CNs in user manuals and the way in which this affects comprehensibility In my opinion this calls for an investigation which will only benefit from a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches As previously mentioned the research in this thesis has been divided into two different parts namely a qualitative and a quantitative part The design for the separate parts will be presented in the subsections below 2 2 1 Qualitative A qualitative analysis will form the first part of the research conducted in this thesis Qualitative research is a more recent approach than that of quantitative research and was developed by scholars who did not think that the quantitative approach was sufficient or viable to remain the only approach to research Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 6 Teddlie and Tashakkori define qualitative research as the techniques associated with the gathering analysis interpretation and Page 22 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen presentation of narrative information Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 6 From this we may gather that qualitative research must go deeper than numbers it must look into the hows
55. d to promote comprehensibility The first part BlackBerry Balance which might be known to the reader is simply transferred and will therefore not give rise to any misunderstandings The second part technology is translated as it does not seem to be part of the proper noun but more of an explanation of what BlackBerry Balance is This translation should aid the Danish reader in understanding if he or she is not acquainted with BlackBerry Balance Page 63 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen These examples were supposed to demonstrate how this translation strategy may apply to more than one type of translation 4 3 3 Straightforward Translation This section of the analysis will present the CNs from the data which have been analysed as examples of the use of the strategy straightforward translation Lastly a few examples of this translation strategy will be explained Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences A 1 Status bar Statuslinje A 1 App icons App symboler A 1 Cellular models Mobil modeller A 3 Volume buttons Lydstyrkeknapper A 2 Sound effects Lydeffekter A 1 Audio alerts Lydadvarsler A 1 Audio notification Lydmeddelelse A 1 TV shows Tv udsendelser A 1 Screen orientation Skaermretning A Control center Kontrolcenter B 2
56. dager translators are no longer so attentive to the idea of making sure that their translations are perfect equivalents of the STs on which they are based Schjoldager 2008 17 A troubling part of the notion of equivalence is that it can be hard to determine and define at which level the equivalence is to be found Munday 2012 76 Some think that equivalence should lead to translations which have the same effect in the TL as the ST had in the SL Munday 2012 81 However others believe that an equivalent effect is not enough and that equivalence must also be found with regard to for example words and phrases Schjoldager 2008 142 Even though equivalence in translation is a somewhat old concept it remains a very important concept in Translation Studies even today Munday 2009 185 2 4 Skopos Theory This theory which remains a very influential theory in Translation Studies the skopos theory was coined in the 1970s by Hans J Vermeer Schjoldager 2008 151 As many scholars mention in their presentation of the skopos theory skopos is a word from Greek which means purpose Nord 1997 27 The meaning of this word is paramount to this theory as it is mainly focused on the purpose of a translation Byrne 2012 12 There may be multiple purposes for a translation entertainment information instruction reflection and so on The point of the skopos theory is to take this or these purpose s into account during the translation of
57. ded to prefer the CN to an explanation Moreover the 2 Unclear results both showed a slight tendency to prefer the CN to the explanation Furthermore it should be added that in 6 out of 10 cases the respondents preferred the translations which are found in the data to the ones which were manufactured for the purpose of this survey Conclusive Comments Conclusive comments from some of the respondents made after having answered the whole survey e At first thought it would be easier to read the divided words but in some cases the compounded words made more sense to me e Some ofthe things were a little difficult and ambiguous without a context e In general thought this was hard to answer because the words are out of context It is easier if you can see the point of the sentence e Readability is very important to me 5 3 Discussion of Results of Survey This section will discuss the results which were found in the quantitative part of this thesis namely the survey Furthermore these results will be compared to the results of the qualitative analysis when it makes sense to do so In the section about the results of the survey we saw that in 5096 of the cases the respondents preferred a CN to an explanation and only in 3096 of the cases did they clearly prefer an explanation This seems to indicate that the respondents tend to prefer a direct form of translation to a rephrasing of the CN As ment
58. ding to Zola Christensen and Christensen these joining letters should not be considered as carrying meaning in themselves but rather as a way of connecting units and depicting the border between the two original units Zola Christensen amp Christensen 2012 41 2 7 About Comprehensibility Comprehensibility is about understanding Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English n d C Understanding a text is paramount if one is to do what the text prescribes Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 1 one cannot fill out an application take medication according to the patient information leaflet or assemble a closet according to the manual if one does not understand the needed texts Therefore comprehensibility is very important in both writing and translating texts What is referred to in this thesis as comprehensibility can be referred to in several other ways for example complexity readability lay friendliness or intelligibility Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 3 However in this thesis the term comprehensibility is employed This choice has been made because the term in question appears to be the best representative of the issue which is treated in this thesis It covers the issue at hand when it comes to considerations for the readers but does not attach itself to one field like some terms tend to Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 3 According to Nisbeth Jensen comprehensibility has become an important part of
59. e ev ente dd e aede tote iude sedit 17 TSS USE hI IUE PEE 18 1 6 ADDEVIatlONS M M 19 2 Paradigm and Approach to Translation ccccccccccssssssssssecececsssesecseseeeeecsssesesaeeeeeeecesseseeaeeeeeesessseeeaeaeeeesensees 20 2 1 Research Paradigm eerie errato Een RN ETE AR SENSERI XR ER RR ESSERE NE SERER PARERE ERN Eri roi taine YE 20 2 2 Research Design sees oer queen e pao sees Ree e u copo oen eu a oe e paseo aeaa pu deseo sud r Poe eoo EREET 21 VE MESI UM EE 22 VAN 23 2 2 3 Recapitulation of Research design ccsssssccececsssessneececececessesneaeeeeeessesseaeaeeeescesseseasaeeeeeceseeseaaeas 23 2 3 Equivalence based Translation ccccsessssccececessessaesecececseseeuaesecececessesaaaesececeseesesaeaeeeeeesssessaeaeeeesensees 24 2 4 Vase 24 2 4 1 General Rules of the Skopos TH OF c scccccecsssessnececececesseeeeaecesecsseeseaeaeeeeeeusseseaeaeeeeeesseesenaees 25 PE PAE eE MET SERG 26 24 3 Answer to CRITICISM pm 27 2 5 About Technical Trarislation ierit eem en Woes EE ker x eeu esee ERR Ee Ra ESE 28 2 5 1 Distinctive FeatUres uoce reo recen a neo coetu d cx ge sec cd dau D cxx nen ER ouod cx ke e uc wa nue p cun dicen 28 225 2 Th Readers M 29 2 6 About Compound No ns cte taie dos tad ee cda dread ren eoe ide en ud sce decades EESE REN M aan 30 2 6 1 The For
60. e internal is only given to the reader of the translation not of the original text Today most computer speakers are internal which is why this information will be considered to be contained in the ST unit Therefore we must consider the Danish translation to be the result of the strategy of explicit translation Rewording The translation strategy of rewording is based on a mix of Anne Schjoldager s microstrategies paraphrase and explicitation When the translator employs this strategy he or she is in fact rewriting the CN and producing an explanation of the translation instead of a CN The description of Schjoldager s paraphrase told us that the use of paraphrase will usually result in a shorter TT unit However in this connection paraphrase is included mostly in order to signify a reformulation of the words employed in the original and will in fact result in a lengthier unit than what was found in the original Furthermore the microstrategy of explicitation has been included because translations made by the use of a rewording will tend to be more explicit than the original CN from which they stem Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix A English Volume buttons Danish Knapper til justering af lydstyrke gloss buttons for the adjustment of volume Page 55 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christen
61. e skopos has changed or not the target culture and or language will still be new 2 4 1 General Rules of the Skopos Theory The skopos theory is based on six rules which set out some general guidelines for the theory these rules will be presented below The rules are as follows 1 ATT is determined by its skopos usually referred to as the skopos rule 2 ATT is an offer of information in a target culture and TL concerning an offer of information in a source culture and SL A TT does not initiate an offer of information in a clearly reversible way A TT must be internally coherent usually referred to as the coherence rule A TT must be coherent with the ST usually referred to as the fidelity rule eg Ur Be 19 The five rules above stand in hierarchical order with the skopos rule predominating Munday 2012 122 As stated in rule number 6 rule number 1 is the most important one Nord 1997 29 This rule is the one which states the dominant idea of the skopos theory namely that purpose is key in deciding how to produce a translation According to Basil Hatim the essence of rule number 2 is that purpose varies according to the text receiver Hatim 2009 40 Consequently the receiver of any given text must be taken into consideration when a translation is to be made in order to be able to decide on a purpose which will enable the translator to translate in the most appropriate way Furthermore naming the ST
62. e standard memory Reduction This strategy is based on Schjoldager s microstrategy of condensation When this strategy is employed the CN from the ST will be considerably shorter when it is translated in the TT In fact this CN will have turned into an abbreviation In section 2 7 2 Leif Becker Jensen established that compounds which are considered too hard to understand will often be translated by making an abbreviation Therefore this possibility must be considered in this model of analysis However it Page 56 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen should be noted that the abbreviation which the English CN is translated into may not represent a CN Consider this example from the data Appendix C English internal wireless card Danish Wi fi Wi fi is not a direct abbreviation of internal wireless card However it is used as a considerably shorter and perhaps more easily understood way of saying the same thing as is expressed through internal wireless card As we can see from this the use of the strategy of reduction does not always make a translated unit harder to read and understand In fact it may promote comprehensibility in some cases Change of Meaning This translation strategy is based on Anne Schjoldager s microstrategy of substitution As is the case with substitution change of meanin
63. e target text oriented macrostrategies Schjoldager 2008 72 At first it may seem that these two could be considered to be opposing possibilities of which one must be chosen However the case with the Page 40 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen source text oriented and the target text oriented macrostrategies is that they should be seen as opposing ends of a continuum A translation cannot normally be defined as either one or the other usually it is somewhere in between Equivalence was formerly considered to be the basis of all translation Bassnett 2014 6 and so translations were generally made to be very source text oriented Schjoldager 2008 90 However things have changed and today many translators believe that the TT is as important as the ST Bassnett 2014 6 meaning that current tendencies point towards a more target text oriented strategy for translation However scholars still tend to disagree on this subject as some prefer one macrostrategy in general and others do not Schjoldager 2008 71 Source text Oriented Macrostrategy As the name suggests a source text oriented macrostrategy places the focus on the ST This means that the translator chooses to concentrate his or her attention on preserving the form and content semantic meaning of the source text Schjoldager 2008 71 in the translation
64. een consciously made Furthermore it should be considered that the model of analysis which is employed in this thesis may also have affected the results of the analysis This means that the use of another model might have yielded a different result For example in the strategy of straightforward translation Schjoldager s direct and oblique translation are combined as one strategy meaning that this Page 84 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen strategy does not distinguish between whether the CN in question was translated with a focus on the words or the meaning Had the angle of the thesis been a different one this distinction might have been considered relevant However in this thesis it was not The data which was employed in this study may also have greatly affected the results In section 2 7 2 we were informed that a Danish CN can reach a letter count of 50 letters or more However the data used in this study did not include any CNs of such a length or even any that came close The longest Danish CN from the data is perhaps multifunktionsproduktivitet Appendix C which can only boast 27 letters Had the data contained CNs of a more complex nature then the use of straightforward translation would perhaps have been less frequent On the other hand the CNs might have been even less complex than they are and
65. ensibility One might almost say that the translators and the respondents to a great extent agree on how the CNs should be translated This seems to indicate that the translators must have also at least to some extent succeeded in fulfilling the skopos of making sure that the translated user manuals are comprehensible and useful to the readers Not only do the translators and respondents seem to largely agree on the way in which the CNs should be translated but in the survey the respondents also chose the alternative from the data in 6096 of the cases The fact that the respondents chose the alternative from the data in 6096 of the cases may be considered to support the claim that the translators have to some degree succeeded in fulfilling the skopos of the manuals in terms of comprehensibility with regard to CNs Furthermore it would seem that the translators had the readers in mind when they made the translations However this is only something we can guess at This study is interesting because it may aid translators and people training to be translators in discovering the best way in which to translate CNs in technical language for laymen Although the study can only say something more specific about the 10 user manuals which were used as the data these user manuals should represent a good sample of the user manuals available for electric products Furthermore the study has provided both a theoretical look at the CNs in the Page 101 of 14
66. ers provide all translations of their manuals online in fact it seems quite common only to provide the English version From Table 2 one may observe that 7 out of 10 of the user manuals come from manufacturers based in the United States of America This was not intentionally done but the search for available user manuals proved rather difficult and so the data ended up being mainly American Indeed the original list of user manuals contained manuals coming from countries such as the Netherlands Israel Germany and Sweden which were replaced later on However it would have been very difficult to find out whether these manuals had been translated from their respective original languages or if an English version was made after the original and the translations of the remaining languages were then produced from the English one This is why it seemed safer and more prudent to select only user manuals in which the Danish translation must almost certainly have been made directly from the English original in order to ensure the integrity of this study One user manual stands out this is the one belonging to Nikon s digital camera Since Nikon is a Japanese company do not expect the original text to have been made in English However will assume that an English translation of the Japanese original was used as the ST for the Danish TT This assumption seems fair because the number of people who would be able to translate a Japanese text into
67. etwork cable Netv rkskabel E 2 Vehicle power cable Bilstr mkablet E USB port USB stikket E 2 Suction cup Sugekop E 2 Windshield Forruden Page 65 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Power outlet Stikkontakt Status bar Statuslinjen Main menu Hovedmenu GPS signal status GPS signalstatus Battery status Batteristatus Battery information Batterioplysninger On screen keyboard Skaermtastaturet Keyboard layout Tastaturopsetning Search entry S gepost Special characters Specialtegn Punctuation marks Tegns tningstegn Camera body Kamerahus Zoom control Zoomknap Wide angle Vidvinkel Telephoto Telefoto Thumbnail playback Miniaturevisning Shutter release button Udlgserknap Camera strap Kamerarem Power on lamp Tzendt lampe Self timer lamp Selvudlgserlampe AF assist illuminator AF hjaelpelys HDMI micro connector HDMI mikrostik Connector cover Stikdaeksel Flash pop up button Pop op flashknap Side zoom control Sidezoomknap Time zone Tidszone Setup menu Opsaetningsmenu Multi selector Multivaelgeren Daylight saving time Page 66 of 143 Sommertid Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals
68. explanation for each has been provided below Schjoldager 2008 92 Microstrategy Explanation Direct Transfer Transfers something unchanged Calque Transfers the structure or makes a very close translation Direct Translation Translates in a word for word procedure Oblique Translation Translates in a sense for sense procedure Explicitation Makes implicit information explicit Paraphrase Translates rather freely Condensation Translates in a shorter way which may involve implicitation making explicit information implicit Adaptation Recreates the effect entirely or partially Addition Adds a unit of meaning Substitution Changes the meaning Deletion Leaves out a unit of meaning Permutation Translates in a different place Table 3 Schjoldager s Microstrategies Direct Transfer When a translator chooses to make use of the microstrategy of direct transfer you could say that he or she is simply copying a given part of the ST and pasting it in the TT According to Schjoldager the unit which is copied should be rendered unchanged Schjoldager 2008 93 meaning that the unit from the ST is simply put in the TT without translating or otherwise changing it This microstrategy is commonly used when names or proper nouns are involved it could be names of people places spare parts etc Not all proper nouns have a translation
69. f translating power switch while retaining the correct meaning Moreover the English CN has not been translated by the use of a Danish CN Consequently must consider this an example of the use of decompounding Page 71 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 2 Appendix G English Workmanship Danish Forarbejdning This is another example of the use of decompounding In this example the translation of the somewhat long English CN remains a rather long word in Danish but is not a CN The English CN has been translated about as directly as it can be as the two words mean exactly the same However the unit from the ST is a CN and the unit from the TT is not Therefore must consider this an example of the use of decompounding These previous examples were meant to show how different the uses of decompounding can be while staying within the limits set out for this strategy 4 3 5 Explicit Translation Below here a list of the CNs belonging to the translation strategy of explicit translation is provided Following the list two examples will be explained Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences D 1 Computer speakers Computerens interne hgjttalere F 1 AC adaptor lysnetadaptor 1 Notification LED Meddelelsesindikator Table 9 Explicit Translation Example 1
70. ferent strategies for translation which this model consists of are as follows Strategy Explanation Transfer The CN is transferred from the ST to the TT unchanged Translation and Transfer One part of the CN is transferred unchanged the other part is translated more or less directly Straightforward Translation The CN is translated more or less directly into a CN in the TT Decompounding The CN is translated somewhat directly but will not be a CN in the TT Explicit Translation Some piece of implicit information from the CN becomes explicit in the CN in the TT Rewording The CN is explained in the TT Implicitation Explicit information from the CN is made implicit in the TT Reduction The CN is translated into an abbreviation Change of Meaning The CN remains a CN in the TT but changes meaning Erasure The CN is removed from the TT Table 4 Strategies for own Model of Analysis Transfer The translation strategy transfer is based on Schjoldager s microstrategy of direct transfer The name very precisely defines what happens when this strategy is employed A unit is simply transferred from the ST to the TT without being translated just like it is the case with Schjoldager s direct transfer Consider this example from the data Appendix D English Memory Stick Danish Memory Stick In this example the entire unit has been transferred from the
71. g Under here a list of the occurrences of the use of decompounding found in the data has been given Directly below the list two of the examples will be explained Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences F 1 Power switch Afbryder G 1 Workmanship Forarbejdning J 2 Freezer compartment Fryser J 1 Top section Kabinettet Table 8 Decompounding Example 1 Appendix F English Power switch Danish Afbryder In this example the English CN has been replaced by a Danish word which is not a CN The reason why I analyse this example in this way is that the meaning of afbryder is the same as that of power switch So even though the Danish word is not a CN it must still be considered a very direct translation of the English CN Using the word afbryder makes sense in Danish just like the use of power switch does in English Furthermore I think that translating the English CN directly by the use of a Danish CN would most likely confuse the reader or even change the meaning of the CN in spite of the fact that a direct translation would have been made The Danish word str mafbryder which would be a very direct way of translating power switch by the use of a CN does in fact not designate a normal power switch but a circuit breaker meaning that the use of this Danish CN instead of afbryder would change the meaning of the unit Therefore consider the use of afbryder to be a very direct way o
72. g dictates that the meaning of the unit in question must have changed from the ST to the TT Furthermore the CN which is translated must also be represented as a CN in the TT Consider this example from the data Appendix H English SPOT DOCK Button Danish Dok Demo knap gloss Dock Demo button This example demonstrates how a translation may also result in change of meaning However it seems that only one part of this CN has changed meaning in the TT DOCK and Button seem to have retained their original meaning in the TT but SPOT has changed into demo It can be hard to find a reason why SPOT which is also translated into pletrenggring spot cleaning elsewhere in appendix H should for some reason change into demo As SPOT has already been translated into something relating to spots it should be fair to assume that SPOT is not an abbreviation Page 57 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Therefore think that this example with SPOT being translated into demo demonstrates very well the nature of the translation strategy of change of meaning Erasure The strategy of erasure is based on Anne Schjoldager s microstrategy of deletion These two strategies have the same basic characteristics in order for a translation to be analysed as an erasure every part or sign
73. gies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen As can be seen from the above presentation of the survey the examples vary in length and context as well as complexity Furthermore the examples come from a lot of different user manuals and vary between whether the CN or the explanation comes from the data 5 2 Results of Survey This section will present the results of the online survey along with some of the more interesting comments which were made by the respondents 99 people answered the survey over a period of 5 days For some reason however examples 1 and 8 were only answered by 98 people Example 1 Knapper til justering af lydstyrke 88 90 Lydstyrkejusteringsknapper 10 1096 Figure 2 Example 1 As can be seen from the above there was a strong tendency towards agreement between the respondents in connection with example 1 9096 thought that the explanation of the CN was easier to understand than the CN Several of the respondents commented that it was easier to read and understand the first alternative because the words are split up Furthermore a respondent commented that the CN lydstyrke was fine Page 91 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 2 Multifunktionsproduktivitet 32 3296 Produktivitet med multifunktioner 67 68
74. glish and the Danish CNs have the same basic meaning but the translation could have been performed in a more direct way by the use of the word bar instead of linje However the translator must have considered linje the preferable word in Danish and ended up making an oblique translation instead of a direct translation Explicitation The microstrategy of explicitation renders implicit information from the ST explicit in the TT Schjoldager 2008 99 This means that the reader of the TT will be provided with information which is not immediately apparent from the ST The information which is given in the TT will usually be there to provide a service to the reader The knowledge which one can expect the readers of a text to have may differ greatly depending on the country language or culture to which the readers belong Therefore the information provided in a given translation may also differ For example in a Danish text one might mention Mary and Frederik without including their titles but in a translation of that same text it might make more sense to mention them as the crown princess and crown prince of Denmark thereby making implicit information which is common knowledge to Danes explicit for other readers who are unlikely to know Below is an example of Schjoldager s explicitation from the data Appendix B English cutter Danish 4 bladet kniv gloss 4 bladed knife Page 44 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User
75. he needs of the readers and produce a text which will help them in the best possible way Mousten 2008 52 When considering the readers of a finished text or translation there are many different matters to take into account One must consider whether the readers are experts in the field or laypersons without much knowledge of the field Byrne 2012 32 Technical texts can tend to get very specific in their explanations and instructions which means that the readers of the text must be taken into account in order to make sure that the text is going to be useful and understandable to the readers For example experts in a given field will need little or no help understanding a text from the field but people with very little knowledge of the field will perhaps need explanations of different concepts words which are more easily understood or they may have a need for other considerations to be made in order for them to better understand Page 29 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen If we consider user manuals more closely as a type of technical text it seems fair to assume that the readers of such a text may be almost anyone The audience depends very much on the product of course However if the products described in the user manuals are everyday products such as coffee machines or lawn mowers we must assume that almost
76. hristina edit Translation and Quality Multilingual Matters Clevedon Jakobsen Arnt Lykke 1992 Overs ttelse af komposita i fagsproglige tekster Eng da da eng In Hermes Journal of Linguistics no 8 pp 29 42 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English N d A Technical Online http www ldoceonline com dictionary technical accessed 06 03 2014 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English N d B Manual Online http www Idoceonline com dictionary manual 2 accessed 11 03 2014 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English N d C Comprehensible Online www ldoceonline com dictionary comprehensible accessed 01 06 2014 Mousten Birthe 2008 Communicating in English for Science and Technology Expo Com Abyhgj Munck Lena 1994 Introduktion til dansk teknisk sprogbrug In Hj rnager Pedersen Viggo amp Krogh Hansen Niels Oversaettelsesh ndbogen Munksgaard pp 139 171 Munday Jeremy 2008 Introducing Translation Studies Theories and Applications Routledge Abingdon Munday Jeremy 2009 The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies Routledge Abingdon Munday Jeremy 2012 Introducing Translation Studies Theories and Applications Routledge Abingdon Nida Eugene 2000 Principles of correspondence In Venuti Lawrence edit The Translation Studies Reader Routledge London Page 109 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of
77. i F Language setting Indstilling for sprog F Date and time setting Indstilling for dato og klokkeslaet F Date settings Indstillingerne for dato F Date and time setting screen Skaermen til indstilling af dato og klokkeslaet G 2200 Watt AC lonic hairdryer 2200 watt hartgrrer med ionteknologi og AC motor G Ceramic Tourmaline Grille Keramisk turmalinrist G 7 mm slim air concentrator Slank 7 mm luftkoncentrator G Motor life Motorens levetid G Easy clean air filter Filter som er let at reng re G Date of consumer purchase Forbrugerens oprindelige kgbsdato G Statutory rights Lovfaestede rettigheder H Infrared Sensor Infrar d sensor H Bin Release Button Knap til at frigere beholderen H Power Supply Socket Stik til batteriopladeren H SPOT Button Knap til pletrenggring H High pile carpets H je t pper H Edge Cleaning Side Brush Sideb rste til reng ring af kanter H Dirt Detect Sensor Sensor til at finde snavs H Hard floor surfaces H rde gulvoverflader Page 75 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen H Brush Guard Release Tabs Klapper til at frig re bgrstebeskytteren HDMI display port Port til HDMI skaerm Device data Enhedens data USB charging port Port til USB opladning Front camera Fremadrettet kamera J Shelf area Zone til hylder J Doo
78. ifferent texts and genres so many in fact that trying to define them all would be a rather lengthy task Byrne 2012 27 which is why a rather broad definition of the term will be employed in this thesis Technical language is often considered to be connected to science Halliday amp Martin 2005 206 which it often is though not always Indeed Mousten claims that technical language may be found in user manuals as well as texts for business and scientific texts Mousten 2008 4 As we can see technical language is something which comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes However in order to gain a general sense of what technical language is we may look to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English for help This dictionary defines technical language as something which the majority of people in general will find hard to understand as it is closely related to one subject in particular Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English n d A From this definition we may gather that technical language is not just one field of language there are in fact many possibilities The one thing which seems to define technical language as a whole is that it is specialised Specialised is here meant in the way that a technical language set adheres to one specific field and cannot necessarily be applied to another field without changing the meaning of the words involved According to Jakobsen this also means that words from the general language may have a
79. ific texts Byrne 2012 2 However scientific and technical texts and translations are indeed not the same This does not mean that the two types cannot be joined together in one text but they do have their own different writing styles foci and purposes Byrne 2012 2 According to Byrne scientific texts will discuss analyze and synthesize information with a view to explaining ideas proposing new theories or evaluating methods whereas technical texts will convey information as clearly and effectively as possible Byrne 2012 2 This means that technical texts and translations will ultimately seek to pass information on to the reader without analysing it As is the case in scientific texts the subject is paramount in technical texts and translations and this focus on the subject brings some special features with it Generally technical texts tend to contain a lot of nouns and very few adjectives passive constructions are predominant compared to active constructions and the author is usually completely anonymous resulting in a text with a great focus on the subject and a strong tendency towards objectivity Norlyk 1994 25 Page 28 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen According to Lena Munck technical texts can generally be divided into two different groups the descriptive texts and the directive texts
80. il other requirements These texts must also be complete correct conform to legal requirements with regard to form and contents etc G pferich 2009A 49 Therefore we should keep in mind that when assessing the comprehensibility of a text we cannot always expect a highly comprehensible text to be useful simply because it is comprehensible 2 7 1 Skopos Theory Revisited In connection with comprehensibility the skopos theory should also be remembered The skopos theory is as mentioned previously focused on the purpose of a given translation The purpose of a translation and the comprehensibility of a translation may be said to be closely connected as comprehensibility must always represent one of the main purposes of a text If the readers of a given text are unable to comprehend said text then the text will be unable to fulfil any other purposes it may have Indeed Susanne G pferich also employs the assumption that comprehensibility for the intended readership is an important factor of the skopos adequacy G pferich 2009A 31 Thereby G pferich shows that she also thinks of comprehensibility and the given skopos of a translation as interconnected When we consider user manuals in particular the comprehensibility of such texts is paramount as user manuals are made only to be of help to the readers and if the readers cannot understand the content then the user manual will be unable to fulfil any purpose it might have had The
81. in his or her endeavour to avoid compounds Furthermore Nisbeth Jensen argues that introducing a compound in the TT when there is not one in the ST will also weaken the comprehensibility of a translation Nisbeth Jensen 2013 114 Page 31 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 2 6 3 The Translation of Compound Nouns During the translation of CNs one should also keep the differences between the languages in question in mind The biggest difference between Danish and English compounds is probably the fact that Danish compounds are usually written as one word whereas English compounds are usually written as more than one word Zola Christensen amp Christensen 2012 39 Furthermore the Danish language features a phenomenon which is not common in the English language Namely the phenomenon of the joint s or joint e which are letters used to combine two elements into a compound Jakobsen 1992 33 In Danish two elements cannot always be combined into one compound without adding either a joint s or a joint e Consider for example the word doghouse in English the two words dog and house can simply be combined to create one compound However the Danish translation hundehus which is a combination of the two words hund dog and hus house needs a joint e in order to form one compound Accor
82. in the formulation of a model of analysis or in the analysis itself The reason for this choice is that macrostrategies have to do with the overall method for translating a text Schjoldager 2008 67 This thesis will only be investigating small parts of selected translations which to me makes the overall macrostrategies of the translations seem somewhat out of reach meaning that this thesis will not produce results to say anything substantial about the macrostrategies employed in the translation of the various user manuals However as Schjoldager views macrostrategies as the general approach to a translation and the microstrategies only as approaches to more specific parts of a given translation Schjoldager 2008 68 it seems important to include the macrostrategies here in this chapter Page 48 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 Qualitative Analysis and Results This chapter contains the analysis and the results of said analysis however first the formulation of the model of analysis will be presented In fact this chapter will start out with an account of how the model of analysis was formulated followed by the model itself The reason why the model has been placed here in the chapter containing the analysis and the results is that the process of formulating the model may be considered both a deductive and a
83. inal message may be left out but that some may have been made implicit in the TT Below is an example of Schjoldager s condensation from the data Appendix C English It s the same high quality toner used in our high end products for the graphic arts industry Danish Det er den same hgje kvalitetstoner der bruges i vores grafiske produkter gloss it is the same high quality toner used in our graphic products In this example the TT unit has been shortened compared to the ST unit However one might still say that the information from the original ST unit is contained in the TT translation In the TT the fact that the graphic products are for the graphic arts industry has been left out but this has already been mentioned earlier in the text and so consider this information to have been made only implicit and not deleted Substitution When a translator makes use of this microstrategy he or she is as the name suggests substituting one thing for another Employing substitution in a translation means that the translator is effectively changing the source text meaning Schjoldager 2008 106 There may be several different reasons for employing this microstrategy the translator could for example be trying to improve the text by making it more correct Schjoldager 2008 106 or by making the connotations it brings more suitable to the text Schjoldager 2008 107 Although substitution involves changing the meaning of an item f
84. inklusive Scan til netvaerk e mail eller USB standardhukommelsesenhed 57 58 Figure 11 Example 10 This example shows one of the greatest divisions among the respondents as they have almost been divided into two equal groups of those who prefer the CN and those who prefer the explanation However the greater part still prefers the CN One respondent commented on what was considered to be mistakes in spelling and the use of capital letters However these have been transferred directly from the data in which the sentence can be found This same respondent also commented that both sentences were technical nonsense Another respondent commented that the difference between the two was not all that great Results in Total Below a table showing the distribution of preferences according to the answers given in the survey is provided The table is divided into three different categories CN Explanation and Unclear CN denotes a preference for the CN Explanation denotes a preference for the explanation of the CN and Unclear denotes an almost equal distribution between the two previous possibilities CN Explanation Unclear Total 5 3 2 Table 16 Results in Total Survey Page 96 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen As shown in the table in half of the cases people ten
85. ion which is part of the basis for straightforward translation as the sense has been preserved but the wording has changed somewhat Furthermore the English CN has been translated by the use of a Danish CN Consequently will consider this an example of the use of straightforward translation Example 4 Appendix J English Ice cube trays Danish Isterningbakker This is an example of a CN which has been translated very directly as every English word has been rendered in the Danish CN as well Furthermore this is an example of a translation in which the word may be considered an everyday CN The words ice cube tray and isterningbakke were not invented to specify something which is only to be found in Whirlpool refrigerators they are quite normal words which most people would be likely to know and understand even without knowing the context Therefore will consider this an example of the employment of the translation strategy of straightforward translation The purpose of the aforementioned examples is to show just how different the translations can be even though they belong in the same translation strategy Furthermore they were to provide the reader with a better understanding of why the examples have been analysed in the way they have Page 70 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 3 4 Decompoundin
86. ioned in the literature review Andreassen 2010 also concluded that a direct form of translation was considered preferable to an explanation or rephrasing of the CNs There may be several reasons why the respondents seem to prefer a direct form of translation For instance the respondents may consider some of the CN examples chosen for the survey to be Page 97 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen easier to read and understand because they are fairly well acquainted with these If the respondents have previously encountered or perhaps regularly encounter a CN it should be fair to assume that they would consider this CN easier to read and understand than an explanation of it An example of this could be found in example 3 from the survey in which the CN skeermtastaturet is featured this is a word which a lot of people may have encountered before which may cause them to choose it over an explanation Indeed one respondent commented that this word seemed to exist already Moreover in some cases it could be that the CN can be considered fairly self explanatory rendering the explanation the more complicated choice In example 6 from the survey we find the CN ringmgtrik which even though it is not a very common word is fairly easy to understand This could be considered an example of a CN which would be p
87. is process will be covered Next the macrostrategies and microstrategies of Anne Schjoldager will be presented in order to form a basis for the model of analysis which will be formulated later on in chapter 4 3 1 Contrastive Translation Analysis This part of the thesis will present the method which is employed in the qualitative part of this study According to Teddlie and Tashakkori research methods are specific strategies for conducting research Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 21 this tells us that we are now dealing with the actual method which is employed in the research As opposed to the research paradigm and design the method is not so much a way of viewing the research but more a way of conducting it Furthermore Teddlie and Tashakkori add that a method includes procedures for implementing research design including sampling data collection data analysis and interpretation of the findings Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 21 From this we may gather that the method can be regarded as the way in which the research design is actually realised in a given study The method which will be used in the analysis of the CNs from the selected data is that of a contrastive translation analysis The analysis will involve the comparison of the English and Danish versions of the documents involved namely user manuals The data and the selection of the data will be commented on and explained further in section 3 2 Furthermore the anal
88. lation of compound nouns Kristin Andreassen 2010 posed the question of whether compound nouns should be paraphrased when they are translated from English into Danish instead of simply being translated directly The study focuses on compound nouns used in medical language In the study 6 Danish doctors were asked to participate and answer a questionnaire about translated compound nouns with and without a context Firstly the doctors were to evaluate compound nouns of different lengths which had been translated from English into Danish in terms of correctness as well as how readable and understandable they were In this first part the compound nouns were not set in a context Secondly the doctors were to evaluate small pieces of text containing compound nouns again in terms of correctness as well as how readable and understandable they were The doctors did not always agree on whether the compound nouns could be considered correct readable or even understandable However it did become apparent that the context of the compound nouns was very important as most of the doctors found it easier to read and understand the compound nouns when they had a context Furthermore Andreassen 2010 discovered that sometimes it is better to translate directly in order to preserve the meaning but sometimes paraphrasing can be used in order to make the compound noun easier to read and understand A research article which may be considered relevant despite i
89. ledning gloss swivel cord This example of the use of change of meaning clearly demonstrates how this translation strategy works The meaning of the English CN and the Danish CN are obviously not the same in fact one might say that they have nothing to do with each other Why the meaning of the English CN has been changed in the TT remains unclear but that is not the point of this strategy The point is that the meaning has changed Furthermore the translation is still a CN Therefore will consider this an example of the use of change of meaning Page 80 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 2 Appendix H English SPOT DOCK Button Danish Dok demo knap gloss dock demo button In this example of change of meaning the change is less imposing as only a part of the CN has changed meaning This is the part SPOT or in Danish demo which has changed Like it was the case in the previous example these two parts cannot be considered to mean the same Furthermore both the original and the translation are CNs Consequently this must be considered an example of the use of change of meaning These examples were to demonstrate how examples of the use of the same translation strategy may not be all that similar even if they do belong to the same strategy 4 3 10 Erasure Below is a list of
90. lity as both translators and readers seem to prefer a fairly direct form of translation and in more complex cases a rewording which is what the translators seem to be doing It would seem that as far as the skopos of the user manuals is concerned the translators also seem to be doing a good job as we must assume that an agreement between what is actually done and what the respondents prefer must mean that the translation of the CNs is affecting the comprehensibility of the manuals in a positive direction This should mean that the translation of the CNs is also aiding in fulfilling the skopos of these translated manuals Page 99 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 6 Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter of the thesis a conclusion to the study will be provided will attempt to answer the research questions which were posed all the way back in the problem statement based on the findings of this study Furthermore other approaches which might have been employed instead of the one chosen for this thesis will be discussed Hereunder other methods which might have been used and a different choice of data will be examined and possible effects on the outcome will be commented on Lastly some possibilities for new research which this study may inspire will be looked at Which strategies are used in the translation fr
91. ly be precision However this may entail stringing quite a few words together Even though that is not always a problem especially in a language such as English which tends to keep the words separate in a language such as Danish which tends to join the words together it may represent a problem This may not be a problem when the receiver of the text is an expert but it will be when it comes to comprehensibility for laymen As will be discussed in more detail below long winded words will typically be harder for the readers to understand and will end up affecting the comprehensibility of a given text in a negative direction This relationship between comprehensibility and compounds is at the heart of this thesis as it will investigate how the translation of compound nouns from English into Danish in user manuals may affect the comprehensibility of the texts in question Through all of this we must keep one thing particularly in mind the skopos A very important part of the skopos for any user manual must be considered to be usefulness to the reader If the reader of a given user manual does not understand said user manual then it will not have fulfilled its purpose or skopos Assessing the comprehensibility of the translated compound nouns from the data selected for this thesis will aid in determining whether the skopos of the translated user manuals is generally fulfilled A point which makes this piece of research interesting is the differen
92. made the inclusion of these remaining microstrategies relevant were observed When one considers the microstrategies of Anne Schjoldager it seems that the various strategies might be thought of as different places on a continuum The continuum seems Page 58 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen to start in one end with the ST oriented microstrategies e g direct transfer and direct translation and go to the other end with the TT oriented microstrategies e g permutation and adaptation The microstrategies which were employed in the model belong mainly to the ST oriented part of the continuum In this model of analysis have endeavoured to keep the concepts and strategies simple This has been done in order to make the strategies easy to transfer to other settings in order to make the strategies easy to understand and therefore also simple to apply to the data 4 3 Qualitative Analysis In the qualitative analysis the CNs from the data will be divided by their respective translation strategies As previously mentioned the analysis of only a selected few CNs will be explained However all CNs will be listed according to their strategies a limited number of examples of the use of each strategy will be selected and a full explanation of these examples will be given It should be noted that the same English CN may ap
93. mation of Compound NOUNS c scccccceesssssssececcceceeseseeaecesecssesseaeaecesecssseseaeaeeeeeesseesenaeas 30 2 6 2 Compound Nouns in Technical La nguage cccsecssssccecccecsesesseaeeeeececessesneaeseeecesseseasaeeeeeeeseeseaaees 31 2 6 3 The Translation of Compound NOUNS ccccccccccecsssessseececececesseseeaeeeeecsceeseesecececeseeseasaeeeeeeeseeseaaeas 32 2 7 About Comprehensibility ecciesie eene nnne enne nennnnnn nnns inset ri anas sisse seti a sanas nn 32 2 7 1 Skopos Theory Revisited tte their peterent eode eon rr Ea E 33 2 7 2 Comprehensibility in Connection with Compound NOUNS eese enne nnne nnns 34 Page 3 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen EN DPA EE 36 3 1 Contrastive Translation Analysis esses eene nenne nennen ener titan nasse sensn ananas nnn 36 3 2 Choice of Dataczat aeta eee etre ete t REPE e eere CE RUP ete eee hades e RNT e etae tena 37 3 3 Translation Strategies ios en ER e RN a B a eE aonais 40 3 3 1 Macro strategies unii ee ed eir era nio eee dear era pete eases eae a a D eie 40 3 3 2 MIcrostrategies s reete d eee e eaae ete aee chide wea Pain devo nage ues aepo eu eue eade ape deret aeie un 41 3 3 3 Summary and Delimitation of Translation Strategies essssssseeeen nennen 48 4 Qualitative A
94. mean that can have no real control over who answers the survey or how many people choose to answer the survey Furthermore it should be noted that sharing the survey on Facebook will mean that the greater part of the respondents will be acquaintances of mine which means that a great part of them will be similar to myself both in age and education Moreover using Facebook for sharing the survey will also mean that cannot reach people who are not on Facebook e g elderly people who may represent a part of the population in which the tendency to struggle to understand written information is greater than in the population in general In answering the survey the respondents will simply have to answer whether they consider alternative A or alternative B to be the easiest to read and understand Furthermore they will be provided with the opportunity to comment on each choice as well as their overall opinion All examples included in the survey are in Danish which means that only people who understand Danish can answer it Furthermore it should be noted that not all of the translation strategies which were presented in section 4 2 2 can be considered to be included in this survey This choice has been made because it was considered impossible to include some of the strategies For example the translation strategy of erasure the inclusion of this strategy would have meant that one of the examples in the survey would have consisted of One c
95. mely the microstrategies of Schjoldager had to be established This was done in a fairly simple way as most of the tendencies which were observed during the first stage connected themselves to the microstrategies in what seems a quite obvious way The tendencies from the data were not all completely compatible with the microstrategies of Anne Schjoldager which is why a new model of analysis had to be formulated Furthermore this incompatibility meant that some of Schjoldager s microstrategies had to be either left out or combined with others in order to reach the result which suited the Page 49 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen subject best Another point which contributed to the decision to formulate a new model of analysis was the fact that the subject of this thesis is CNs in particular not the translation of user manuals in general Even though the general tendencies from the data fit Schjoldager s microstrategies fairly well Schjoldager s strategies are not focused on CNs Therefore a new model was formulated 4 2 Formulation of Model of Analysis In this part of the thesis the model for the analysis of the translation of CNs in user manuals will be presented and discussed Firstly Schjoldager s microstrategies for translation which form the theoretical basis for this model will be commented on briefly Seco
96. n Page 6 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Abstract This thesis is focused on the translation of compound nouns in user manuals It is investigated which translation strategies are used for the translation of said compound nouns and the way in which the translators choice of strategy may end up affecting the comprehensibility of the user manuals in question The foundation of this thesis consists of two empirical studies Firstly an analysis of the compound nouns found in selected pieces of 10 user manuals for laymen pertaining to electric products This analysis has the purpose of discovering the strategies which are used in connection with the translation of compound nouns in user manuals Secondly a survey meant to test the comprehensibility of selected compound nouns was answered by ninety nine people In the survey the respondents were to select which of two alternatives was the more easily read and understood one being a compound noun and the other an explanation of the compound noun The approach to translation paradigm and research design which are employed in this thesis are all presented and discussed in chapter 2 Chapter 3 contains the introduction to the first of the two studies namely a contrastive translation analysis In this chapter the first method the data and the theoretical basis for a
97. n compound nouns According to Bauer compounds which have been made by the use of two nouns are generally considered the prototypical type of compound Bauer 2006 722 Furthermore Jakobsen claims that compound nouns are the type of compound which has the most frequent occurrence in general Jakobsen 1992 35 A compound noun is not necessarily made up of two or more nouns However it is to be understood that the compound no matter the word classes of the lexemes of which it is composed must have the overall word class of a noun in order to be considered a compound noun or if it is a case of a longer unit the compound must act as a noun Examples of compound nouns could be the previously mentioned snowfall and snowflake But one must keep in mind that compound nouns may be much longer and much more complicated than the ones mentioned here In this thesis the following definition for compound nouns based on Bauer s definition will be employed A compound noun is a lexeme which has been constructed by the use of at least two other lexemes and which acts as a one lexeme noun Consequently the only compound nouns which will be considered in this thesis are compound nouns which have been constructed by the use of two or more words which could stand alone 1 5 3 User Manual User manuals come in all kinds of shapes and sizes As evident from the data there are several different names for this user aid some examples are user man
98. n entirely different meaning when they are used in a technical setting Jakobsen 1992 36 Page 16 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen The type of technical language which will be looked at in this thesis is communication between an expert and a layman in user manuals This kind of text will most likely be written by someone who has extensive knowledge about the product the expert and read by someone who knows very little of the product the layman This means that this particular type of technical language should perhaps not be as specialised as other types of technical language which may be written by experts for experts and that it will probably tend to be mixed with general language 1 5 2 Compound Noun In order to provide a viable definition of the compound noun as a concept firstly an overall definition of the concept of compounds will be given followed by a more specific definition of compound nouns Defining compounds in general seems to be a rather difficult task as even the theorists have trouble formulating a precise definition of this concept According to Bauer this may be because there are so many different kinds of compounds and ways of forming them in the various languages that it has become almost impossible to encompass them all in one precise definition Bauer 1978 54 However this discussion
99. n inductive process The model is largely based on the phenomena which can be observed in the data selected for this thesis and the model contains examples of these phenomena The process may be considered both deductive and inductive because the model is based on the data and the theory of Schjoldager while also being used systematically on the data Indeed one might almost say that the analysis already began in the formulation of the model Therefore the model can be found in this chapter After the model comes the qualitative analysis divided by translation strategy followed by the results and a discussion of said results 4 1 Procedure for the Formulation of Model of Analysis In this part of the thesis a short presentation of the procedure for the formulation of the model of analysis will be given This is done in order for the reader to be able to understand and hopefully recognise the pattern which caused the model to be formulated in the chosen way The first and perhaps one of the most important stages in the formulation of this model of analysis was the stage at which the data were reflected upon in order to establish the basic strategies which were required to cover the possibilities discovered in the data Based on observations made by pondering the data for this thesis general tendencies were noted and so the foundation for the model of analysis had been laid After having considered the data the connection with the theory na
100. n the word boathouse but the meaning will have changed as a boathouse is a house in which boats are kept This part of the thesis is meant to provide the reader with a general understanding of how compounds can be formed because the formation of compounds will also play a role when they are to be translated However the formation of compounds will not be gone through any further as this thesis is not meant to focus on the formation of compounds but on the translation of them 2 6 2 Compound Nouns in Technical Language Compounds are according to Leif Becker Jensen very common in technical language because experts often tend to clarify one concept by adding another concept Becker Jensen 2001 145 Furthermore these compounds are usually CNs because experts generally tend to prefer to let nouns specify nouns and because the style prescribes a tendency to be precise in a short manner Becker Jensen 1998 87 According to Byrne one will usually achieve the most comprehensible text if one employs simple sentence structures and words Byrne 2012 145 As we will see later on in section 2 7 2 compounds are usually considered to work against the general comprehensibility of a given text Therefore it seems fair to assume that a translator who chooses to translate compounds from the ST without using compounds in the TT will arrive at the most comprehensible result assuming that the translator does not complicate the text further
101. n this thesis Secondly this chapter will discuss the skopos theory Thirdly the chapter will present theory about the subjects of technical translation compound nouns and comprehensibility Chapter 3 the chapter about methods will include the method of contrastive translation analysis This chapter will also present the translation strategies of Anne Schjoldager 2008 which will form the theoretical basis for the model of analysis Furthermore it will present the data the reasons why they were chosen and the process by which they were chosen Chapter 4 the chapter which contains the analysis and the results will start out with the formulation of the model of analysis This will be followed by the qualitative analysis and the results of the analysis Lastly the results will be discussed In the chapter about the second study chapter 5 the method of survey will be presented the results of the survey will be provided and interesting comments will be considered Moreover the results will be discussed and possible connections with the results of the qualitative analysis will be explored In the final chapter chapter 6 the conclusion to the whole thesis will be presented Along with the conclusion different approaches to this research will be discussed as well as possibilities for further research in this field 1 4 Delimitation In this section some limits will be set for the research which is presented in this thesis The
102. n will tend to be the most obvious solution when a unit is translated As we have to do with an English ST and a Danish TT the translation will oftentimes have resulted in one word even though the original consisted of two or more words In section 2 6 3 we saw that English compounds usually consist of more than one word and that Danish compounds usually consist of only one word Therefore we will consider the translation a straightforward translation if the translator has produced a Danish compound in the translation of the English compound while also translating the words somewhat directly However in some cases the translation will not be the most direct form of translation but will have the same basic meaning as the ST unit It should be noted that the context of the CN will have to be considered in order to determine whether the CN has been translated while maintaining the original sense As there seems to be no reason to focus a lot of attention on the difference between a CN which has been translated directly and one which can be considered to have been translated to have the same sense as the original the strategies of direct and oblique translation have been combined as one in this strategy Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix B English Ring nut Danish Ringm trik gloss ring nut In this example the English CN has been translated in a straightforward way and two English words have been translated into o
103. nalysis and Results esses eene eene enne nenh nnns sss r ns sn tirada nass ases satia sanas 49 4 1 Procedure for the Formulation of Model of Analysis cessere nnns 49 4 2 Formulation of Model of Analysis cesses nr ere ns nne n neni nnns EE enes 50 4 2 1 Theory nie Re t eu eet e ttes i pee t en E E 50 ADD Model of Analysis ee reet p E dp AREE PONAM SR seas 50 4 2 3 Explanation and Delimitation siisii ariii e ian ia e iiaia aeiia as 58 43 Qualitative Analysis 5 8 erste uer ER E eura bee e ERRAT EXTERN TCR AEREE 59 4 3 1 Titalister e ido eerie e indie oath svvchd tugeag RE PR A dy Rae e E heater eie ee ced ade 60 4 3 2 Translation and Transfer pt tat eti etta et ti tede tera e bin dn 61 4 3 3 Straightforward Translation 4 er re terret r e Re vea EEA Ea aR 64 4 3 4 DECOMPOUNGING os nereti eee eei ren ne peque RAV c ab 71 4 3 5 Explicit Translation cerent etn uiis 72 4 3 6 a Tee 73 4 3 7 Irplicitationi aree ERREUR Le E ps de ee ae aa 77 4 3 8 REGUCU OM 64 ERR 79 4 3 9 Charige of Meaning ee ui ierat suse ende Eee sis eoa eo x sis eese ed FER eie ERE dx de eda da 80 Le MEL e 81 4 3 11 Results of Qualitative Analysis eese enean nnne ne nnns essens kk eks sans sn nn na 83 4 3 12 Discussion of Qualitative Analysis eesssseesseseseseeee nennen ennemis nenas nnne 84 5 Quantit
104. ndicate that some form of context is in some cases needed in order to be able to evaluate the Page 98 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen comprehensibility of one translation compared to another In the literature review pertaining to this thesis it was also mentioned that Andreassen 2010 had made a similar conclusion in her study of compound nouns It is interesting that two independent studies of compound nouns should conclude the same thing namely that context is important to understanding and we must consider these two studies to support each other in that conclusion When considering the results of the quantitative part and the qualitative part of this thesis it seems that they coincide very well in their findings The qualitative part showed us that the most common strategies for the translation of CNs are straightforward translation and rewording straightforward translation being the more frequent of the two Then when the quantitative part is considered it seems to acknowledge the fact that the respondents generally tended to prefer a direct or straightforward form of translation slightly to a rewording or explanation of the CN This appears to indicate that the translators who translated the user manuals used as data for this thesis have in general chosen good strategies when it comes to comprehensibi
105. ndly the model which will be employed for the analysis of the data in this thesis will be formulated Thirdly further explanations and delimitations needed for the model will be presented 4 2 1 Theory As mentioned previously the basis of the model is Anne Schjoldager s microstrategies for translation These strategies have been selected among many other possible strategies because they appear to fit the purpose well as will be argued below Schjoldager s microstrategies represent a great variety of possible choices available to a translator but manage to remain fairly simple while encompassing this great number of possibilities 4 2 2 Model of Analysis In this part of the thesis the model of analysis which is to be employed in the analysis of the data will be formulated Firstly a list of the strategies for translation which this model consists of will be presented Secondly each strategy will be presented separately and further explanation of the strategy will be provided All of the strategies which are described in this model of analysis have been given different titles than those microstrategies on which they are based This has been done in order to be able to distinguish Schjoldager s microstrategies from the ones which are formulated here Page 50 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen The dif
106. ne Danish word This would seem to be the most obvious solution in the translation of ring nut which is why this example fits the straightforward translation strategy so well However it is only by considering the context of this CN that we can Page 53 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen be sure that the Danish CN has the same basic meaning as the original m trik is not the only Danish word which might be considered a direct translation of nut The Danish word ngd is also a direct translation of nut but it is not the same kind of nut as n d denotes a fruit from a tree Consequently we can only know if n d or m trik is the more suitable translation if we consider the context of the unit Decompounding This strategy of translation is also based on Schjoldager s microstrategies of direct translation and oblique translation Furthermore it is closely related to the previous strategy straightforward translation as it dictates the same main points apart from one The CN must be translated somewhat directly or at least keep the same basic meaning as that of the CN from the ST However translations made by the use of decompounding will no longer be compounds Sometimes it makes more sense to translate a CN without using a compound in the TL which is what happens when this
107. ne Secher Wingreen Christensen 1 1 Literature Review In this section previously conducted research in the field of the translation of compound nouns in technical language will be presented and discussed This must be done in order to place the thesis in the context relevant to the research which will be conducted Furthermore it will provide the reader with some basic knowledge of the background and present state of this field of research The amount of research conducted on the translation of compound nouns relevant to this thesis is somewhat limited An advanced search for studies connected to the translation of compound nouns on the Translation Studies Bibliography using the search words compound lexeme and word formation in Keywords provided only a limited number of research articles of which none were considered truly relevant Most of the hits provided by the search were articles which did not include either of the relevant languages Danish and English in the research articles which focused on literary translation articles which were only indirectly about translation or articles which mainly put the focus on machine translation Another search for studies connected to the translation of compound nouns on Translation Studies Abstracts using the search word compound in the category of Specialized and Technical Translation like the previous search yielded no relevant hits After having visited othe
108. new model of analysis are all introduced Both the macrostrategies and microstrategies of Anne Schjoldager 2008 are presented in order to be used in the formulation of a new model of analysis later on In chapter 4 a model of analysis formulated for the purpose of investigating the choice of translation strategies made in connection with compound nouns in user manuals is presented Furthermore the analysis itself is performed in this chapter and the results are presented and discussed The analysis showed that most of the compound nouns found in the data were either translated in a direct way 5496 or explained 2596 Other strategies had also been employed in the translation of the compound nouns However the use of the remaining strategies was far less frequent than that of the two previously mentioned strategies Chapter 5 starts out by presenting the method of survey and the survey itself Furthermore the results of the survey are presented and discussed In cases in which it is relevant the results of the survey are also compared to the results of the analysis conducted in chapter 4 The results of the Page 7 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen survey showed that the respondents tended to prefer a direct form of translation over an explanation Moreover the respondents showed a slight tendency to prefer the
109. nsen 2012 39 However the type of compound which is formed in this manner will not be included in the study either as this thesis will focus on the most common form of CNs namely compounds made up of two or more existing words Bauer 2006 719 The third type of compound formation compounding is the most interesting type of compound formation for this thesis Compounding is the type of compound formation which involves connecting two words existing compounds or one or more of each to each other Zola Christensen Page 30 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen amp Christensen 2012 38 39 Although one may connect existing compounds to other compounds or simply to words one must according to Jakobsen keep in mind that any compound in question can only be analysed as two elements Jakobsen 1992 33 This means that even though it may be possible to split a compound up into for example 4 separate words there will always be a natural division of the words which will result in only two units Furthermore Jakobsen adds that the order of the units in a compound is always fixed Jakobsen 1992 32 Consider for example the word houseboat consisting of the words house and boat this word denotes a boat which is constructed to be lived in In this case the words can switch places which would result i
110. nslation must be correct Schjoldager 2008 95 Below is an example of Schjoldager s direct translation from the data Appendix E English You can select some icons to change setting or view additional information Danish Du kan v lge nogle ikoner for at ndre indstillinger eller fa vist yderligere oplysninger The English sentence in this example has been translated about as directly as possible and demonstrates the point of direct translation namely translating a unit while changing very little besides the language Oblique Translation Where direct translation employs a word for word approach to translation it might be said that oblique translation employs a sense for sense approach Schjoldager 2008 97 Employing oblique translation in the translation of a text does not necessarily mean that the words of the TT will be very similar to those of the ST Instead the translator will tend to focus on transferring the Page 43 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen sense of the ST to the TT Schjoldager 2008 97 This microstrategy places the significance on the meaning of the words rather than on the words themselves Below is an example of Schjoldager s oblique translation from the data Appendix A English Status bar Danish Statuslinje gloss status line In this example the En
111. nvestigation into the translation of Shakespeare s wordplay with special reference to Hamlet Approaches to Translation Studies Editions Rodopi B V Amsterdam Drijver Merete Kristine Hvas 2007 Skal det i t eller flere ord Model til analyse og overs ttelse af nominalkomposita i tekniske tekster fra engelsk til dansk MA thesis Cand ling merc Institut for Sprog og Erhvervskommunikation Aarhus School of Business Gottlieb Henrik 1997 Subtitles Translation amp Idioms PhD Thesis PhD Centre for Translation Studies and Lexicography Department of English University of Copenhagen G pferich Susanne 2009A Comprehensibility assessment using the Karlsruhe Comprehensibility Concept In The Journal of Specialised Translation no 11 2009 pp 31 52 G pferich Susanne 2009B Determining the skopos adequacy of non instructive texts In inTRAlinea online translation journal Halliday M A K amp Martin J R 2005 Writing Science Literary and Discursive Power Routledge Abingdon Hatim Basil 2009 Translating Text in Context In Munday Jeremy edit The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies Routledge Abingdon Page 108 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen H nig Hans G 1998 Positions Power and Practice Functionalist Approaches and Translation Quality Assessment In Schaffner C
112. o not think that it can be considered an example of translation and transfer because the same designation is used in Danish as in English and because the use of USB has become an everyday occurrence Moreover would consider USB to be an abbreviation which is actually better known and more easily understood than the words behind it Universal Serial Bus If we look beyond USB we find the word devices which has been translated into the word enheder this translation is about as direct as a translation can be Therefore consider this to be an example of the use of the strategy of straightforward translation The same can be said about the above examples of straightforward translation which contain abbreviations such as VGA and HDMI Page 69 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 3 Appendix F English Camera body Danish Kamerahus gloss camera house This example has been selected because of the use of the Danish word hus house as the translation of body This translation seems to be translated rather directly but one cannot claim that the words body and hus mean the exact same thing However this translation ends up making perfect sense as kamerakrop camera body would not make sense in Danish but kamerahus does Schjoldager would probably consider this an oblique translat
113. oes not concern itself with the either or choices that other paradigms pose Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 8 meaning that a pragmatist is able to pick and choose freely from a wealth of methods and designs in order to find those which will suit the problem or issue being studied The Translation Studies Page 20 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen scholar Andrew Chesterman suggests that a researcher must consider two questions when pondering the use of the pragmatic paradigm is it true and is it useful Chesterman 2004 54 this goes very well with the ideas of the pragmatic paradigm as it focuses the attention on the problem at hand Furthermore according to Chesterman assuming a pragmatic research paradigm in Translation Studies makes sense if it brings better understanding which it most likely will if it appears to be truth like Chesterman 2004 54 Although the pragmatic research paradigm is a common choice within Translation Studies it is not common for the scholars who employ this paradigm to actually specify the fact that they are employing it Nisbeth Jensen 2013 59 60 This may indicate a further tendency to focus on the problem in question In this thesis Chesterman s suggestion will be followed and the pragmatic paradigm will be assumed As will be shown later on this
114. of the original CN must be gone from the TT Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix E English Bluetooth technology status Danish In this example the English CN has not been translated at all and does not appear in any way In the explanatory text which follows the box in which this CN is found no further explanation or translation is attempted either So we must conclude that this CN has been completely removed from the TT making this an example of the use of the strategy of erasure 4 2 3 Explanation and Delimitation Not all of Schjoldager s microstrategies were incorporated in the model of analysis which was formulated in the above We are dealing with a form of specialised translation which does not call for the microstrategies which would usually belong to genres such as literary translation Therefore some of the microstrategies have been left out in the model of analysis These are calque adaptation addition and permutation Furthermore in some cases two or more of Schjoldager s microstrategies were combined into one strategy in the model This was done in order to make the strategies for this thesis easier to understand for the reader and also simpler to apply to the data The microstrategies which were not included in the formulation of the model of analysis were left out because they were not considered relevant to the translation of CNs in technical language Furthermore no tendencies which
115. om English into Danish of compound nouns in user manuals As we saw in the qualitative analysis and the results of said analysis there are clear tendencies in the apparent choice of translation strategies employed by translators when they encounter CNs in user manuals The choice which is clearly predominant is that of a direct form of translation in this thesis titled a straightforward translation This choice is closely followed by the choice of an explanation of the CN in this thesis titled a rewording In the data eight other strategies for translation were observed However the use of the remaining strategies was far less frequent than that of rewording and straightforward translation Straightforward translation and rewording are perhaps the most obvious choices when it comes to the translation of CNs in technical language As far as this study is concerned it seems that the most frequent choice is that of a direct form of translation As previously mentioned a direct form of translation is often the instinctive choice when making a translation which is a notion that seems to be confirmed by the results of this study seeing as 5496 of the translated CNs were translated in a direct way As previously stated the translation strategies of straightforward translation and rewording constitute 79 of the translations in this study The remaining 21 were translated by the use of strategies which include such choices as e g deleting the CN from
116. or As we can see the first part of the unit namely HI Q LED has been transferred directly from the ST to the TT whereas the other part print engine has been translated directly into printmotor in the TT This example must be considered only to demonstrate the combination of Schjoldager s direct translation and direct transfer Therefore another example demonstrating how oblique translation may be involved will be provided Consider this example from the data Appendix A English Lightning connector Danish Lightning stik gloss Lightning plug In the above example Lightning is directly transferred from the ST to the TT However the other part of the CN namely connector is not translated directly The word connector may refer to a Page 52 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen variety of things but can denote something like a stik plug Therefore this cannot be considered the most direct form of translation and must instead be considered to be oblique Straightforward Translation This strategy for translation is based on Schjoldager s microstrategies of direct translation and oblique translation When this strategy is employed the CN from the ST has been translated in the TT using an equivalent CN in the TL Furthermore a straightforward translatio
117. pear in more than one place in the analysis as the same CN may have been translated in more than one way within the same user manual Furthermore it is stated which appendix the CN comes from and how many times it has been translated in the indicated manner as it may have been translated in the same way more than once The examples which will be explained have been underlined in the lists of the use of the strategies Following the analysis of the CNs from the data the results of the analysis will be provided and then discussed Page 59 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 3 1 Transfer This section will present the CNs from the data which have been analysed as belonging to the translation strategy of transfer After the CNs belonging to transfer have been listed an analysis of a limited number of examples will be conducted Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences A 1 Podcasts Podcasts D 1 Memory stick Memory stick D 1 Memory stick pro Memory stick pro D 1 MultiMediaCard MultiMediaCard D 1 xD Picture card xD Picture card D 1 Headset Headset H 1 Home Base Home Base 1 BlackBerry Link BlackBerry Link 1 BBM Groups BBM Groups Table 5 Transfer Example 1 Appendix D English Headset Danish Headset This example of the use of the translation strategy of tr
118. pound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen skopos theory defines the skopos of a TT as a controlling factor it does not necessarily exclude other influential factors Schjoldager 2008 181 Furthermore Christiane Nord argues that translators should generally be able to present arguments in defence of their translation choices Nord 1997 118 So the skopos theory does not necessarily supply translators with a safety net allowing them to produce any kind of translation as long as they keep a skopos in mind However it does provide translators with an ideal of how a translation should be made and some guidelines which may help in reaching that goal Furthermore some claim that the skopos theory is not a valid theory because a translator does not have a specific reader in mind during translation They claim that a translator will simply translate the contents of a given ST directly no matter whom the readers are Vermeer 2004 233 The statement that a translator does not have a receiver in mind during translation shakes the very foundation of the skopos theory as this opposes everything in this theory However Vermeer concludes that the translator will always have some kind of receiver in mind Irrespective of whether the translation is made for a whole country there will always be some presuppositions about the readers no matter if it is conscio
119. r Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen comprehensibility as long as they fulfil the skopos of transferring the needed information from the ST to the TT or if they are able to keep the readers in mind during this process However it should be remembered that we cannot know if the translator has had the reader in mind while translating we can only draw assumptions based on the findings of this thesis 2 5 About Technical Translation Technical language and translation is as mentioned previously a field which is composed of a great selection of different types of texts and texts with very different kinds of content However there are some things which can be considered common for most technical texts and their translations This section is going to take a closer look at some of those points namely distinctive features and the readers The distinctive features and readers of technical language and translations are important to introduce because they affect the finished texts greatly The part about distinctive features explains how a technical text will tend to differ from other texts both in form and content Moreover the part about the readers will explain how and why readers should be considered in the production of a technical text 2 5 1 Distinctive Features Technical translation and technical texts are often associated with scientific translation and scient
120. r end enheder This first example of the use of translation and transfer has been selected because it does not include a proper noun which is the case with many of the other examples of translation and transfer Higher end is not a proper noun it is a way of saying good quality with other words It can be hard to find a reason for this choice but it is evident from the translation that one part of the CN has been transferred while the other has been translated The word devices has been translated directly with the Danish word enheder and provides the translated part which is required in order for a translation unit to be considered an example of translation and transfer Therefore will consider the translation strategy to have been used here to be translation and transfer Example 2 Appendix I English BlackBerry Balance technology Danish BlackBerry Balance teknologi In the second example of translation and transfer a CN which includes a proper noun has been selected This has been done because this type of CN seems predominant to the strategy of translation and transfer BlackBerry Balance has been transferred directly to the TT from the ST whereas the latter part of the CN namely technology has been translated into the Danish word teknologi and this must be considered a direct form of translation The reason why the translator has chosen to employ this strategy in the translation is probably that it might be considere
121. r in which the thesis is introduced a chapter containing the research paradigm and general approach to translation a chapter explaining the first study including the method and the choice of data a chapter in which the model of analysis will formulated and in which the analysis will be performed and the results given a chapter which will explain the second study including the method of survey and provide the results of said survey along with a discussion of the results Finally the results of the studies conducted in this thesis will be discussed in the conclusion along with possibilities for new research and alternative approaches Chapter 1 which is the chapter in which the thesis is introduced contains several different parts A literature review will aid in providing a sense of where the research in this field is currently at A problem statement and research questions will state what is to be investigated in this thesis Page 14 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Definitions delimitations abbreviations and an outline will give the reader a more exact idea of how this thesis is going to take shape Chapter 2 the chapter containing the paradigm and approach to translation will include several different sections Firstly this chapter will present the research paradigm and design which will be employed i
122. r resources which might provide relevant research it seems that the most recent and relevant research comes from the hands of other Master thesis students In her Master thesis on the translation of compound nouns in technical language Merete Kristine Hvas Drijver 2007 attempts to create a model for analysing and translating compound nouns This is done by analysing and discussing the differences in how compound nouns are formed in Danish and English as well as how compound nouns are translated from English into Danish Furthermore Drijver 2007 discusses the use of compound nouns in Danish and English technical texts and tries to explain what a translator is required to consider when translating these compound nouns Lastly the formulated model was tested by applying it to a selected few compound nouns with which it turned out to work very well Similarly to what was hinted at earlier in this literature review Drijver 2007 also mentions that there seems to be a knowledge gap in the research on the translation of compound nouns She states that scholars have discussed the formation and use of compound nouns in Danish and Page 11 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen English but that no one seems to have tried to set up some strategies which can be used in translating them In her Master thesis on the trans
123. r trays Hylder i dgren J Crisper divider Rumopdeler til salatskuffen J Freezer compartment door D r til fryseafdelingen J Electronic device Elektronisk mekanisme J Fan area Ventilatorens omr de J Temperature distribution Fordeling af temperaturen J Frequency of door opening Antallet af gange d ren bnes Table 10 Rewording Example 1 Appendix A English Volume buttons Danish Knapper til justering af lydstyrke gloss buttons for the adjustment of volume This first example of the use of rewording is what I consider one of the clearest examples of the use of this strategy In this example the English CN volume buttons is clearly explained and separated into independent words instead of being strung together in one word as one might also have done in Danish The translation chosen in this example involves a change in word order from the ST to the TT which is often the case when this strategy is employed However the most important point is that the CN is explained instead of simply being translated into another CN this is why I will consider this an example of the use of rewording Page 76 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Example 2 Appendix E English Keyboard language mode Danish Sprogindstillinger for tastaturet gloss language settings for the keyboard This se
124. raightforward translation One in four of the CNs have been translated by the use of the strategy of rewording Together these two strategies account for 7996 of the translations of CNs The second most frequent strategies are the strategies of translation and transfer and erasure These two comprise 1396 of the total number of translations The remaining 896 of the translations are a mix of the uses of transfer decompounding explicit translation implicitation reduction and change of meaning Page 83 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 3 12 Discussion of Qualitative Analysis In this section the results of the qualitative analysis will be discussed and commented on Furthermore the effect which the analysis has had on the thesis will be commented on As formerly stated the microstrategies of Schjoldager which feature in the model formulated for this thesis mainly belong to the more ST oriented part of the microstrategies If we consider Schjoldager s microstrategies to be points on a continuum going from ST oriented to TT oriented the ones employed in this thesis can mainly be considered to come from the ST oriented part This has a lot to do with the fact that the texts involved in this thesis are technical texts This type of text mainly conveys facts they do not need to be artistic and colourful instead the
125. referred because the explanation as one respondent commented is a dumbing down of the CN This seems to indicate that the CN in question is too simple for an explanation to be preferable Furthermore there may be a very valid reason why the respondents so clearly preferred an explanation in 3 cases Consider the CNs in examples 1 2 and 9 lydstyrkejusteringsknapper multifunktionsproduktivitet and salatskufferumopdeler These are the cases in which an explanation was clearly preferred they are some of the longest and most complex CNs employed in the whole survey and that fact may be a possible reason why the explanation was preferred in these cases This seems to indicate that the respondents prefer CNs as long as they are either well known easily understood even if not previously encountered or relatively short and simple However in some cases an explanation seems preferable for example when a CN cannot live up to the previously mentioned criteria Furthermore it might be worth considering that 2 out of 3 of the above examples of complex CNs were constructed for the survey and only one actually comes from the data This may indicate that translators are making an effort to favour the needs of their readers when they translate CNs The fact that the respondents preferred the examples from the data in 6096 of the cases may further support this Furthermore some of the comments from the respondents to the survey seem to i
126. refore the skopos or purpose of the translated user Page 33 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen manuals is very important in connection with the comprehensibility of said user manuals Furthermore according to G pferich both translation scholars and translators can agree that in the process of determining the quality of a translation particularly instructional and scientific translations the skopos theory is a very important tool G pferich 2009B 1 2 7 2 Comprehensibility in Connection with Compound Nouns In specialised texts there is a definite tendency to employ long strings of words These strings are very often nominal Becker Jensen 1998 86 otherwise known as compound nouns or nominal compounds Where English tends to use separate words in Danish the words are usually written as one single word Becker Jensen 1998 86 These words can in Danish reach a count of as many as 50 letters or more which results in quite a strain on the comprehensibility Becker Jensen 2001 145 The effect of CNs on comprehensibility in English texts is no different In fact Veda Charrow warns against the use of noun strings as they are difficult for readers to read and understand Charrow 1988 99 Furthermore Charrow adds that unstringing CNs will usually make it easier for the readers to understand
127. rom the ST to the TT it cannot involve a rewriting of the source text as that would mean that the strategy in question cannot be deemed a microstrategy any longer Schjoldager 2008 106 Page 46 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Below is an example of Schjoldager s substitution from the data Appendix G English hang up loop Danish drejeledning gloss swivel cord In this example the meaning of the ST unit has been changed in the TT For some reason the information provided in the ST has been replaced by something else in the TT We cannot know why this has been done we can simply determine that it has The English ST unit mentions a loop meant for hanging the hairdryer in whereas the Danish translation mentions a swivel cord As the meaning of the ST unit has changed into something entirely different in the TT this demonstrates substitution rather well Deletion As the name of this microstrategy suggests it involves the deletion of a unit from the ST in the TT Something about this microstrategy which is important to notice is the fact that the unit which is deleted must be completely gone from the TT it must not be implied by other units in any way if that was the case the translation could not be analysed as a deletion Schjoldager 108 When the reader reads a translation in which the microstra
128. s In one text all of the CNs would be translated into CNs and in the other they would be translated into explanations These texts could then be evaluated in terms of comprehensibility by a test group Furthermore it could be interesting to investigate the effect which the use of e g machine translation might have on how CNs are translated One might try to see the contrast between a human translation and a machine translation by letting a technical text be translated by machine Page 103 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen and human translation respectively and then let a test group evaluate the results in terms of comprehensibility This study may inspire several new studies with different angles and approaches those mentioned above are only some of the possibilities one might imagine and several more could be just as relevant As we saw in the introduction to this thesis the field connected to the translation of CNs in technical language remains unexplored to some degree Therefore there are still many interesting points about this field which may be explored Page 104 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Figure and Table Overview Figures Figure TES UNV
129. s of America 9 Smartphone BlackBerry Canada English speaking region 10 Refrigerator Whirlpool United States of America Table 2 User Manuals Even though this variety of user manuals comes from different manufacturers and products they do have a few things in common all of the products to which the user manuals belong are electric and they were all written to be read by laymen There are two main reasons why the choice to use only user manuals from electric products has been made Firstly the study will most likely be more interesting if the user manuals which are studied are somewhat complicated and it seems fair to assume that products which are electric are more complicated than those which are not and therefore also have more complicated user manuals Secondly felt that the user manuals all Page 38 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen coming from different manufacturers and products needed to have some common denominators to link them The user manuals which have been selected are all available online This means that it has not been necessary to contact each manufacturer in order to obtain these manuals However it has also complicated the search for them somewhat as only a limited number of electronics manufacturers provide their clients with manuals online Furthermore not all manufactur
130. sen There will often tend to be a more obvious way of translating units which were made by the use of a rewording for example in the example above in which the TT unit might have simply been volumenknapper volume buttons However as the use of this strategy of rewording entails explaining the contents of the CN it should according to Becker Jensen 2007 63 and Charrow 1988 99 make the TT unit easier to understand and read Implicitation The translation strategy of implicitation is based on Anne Schjoldager s microstrategy of condensation This strategy dictates that some piece of information which is given in the CN from the ST must be made implicit in the TT CN In fact one might say that this strategy is the opposite of the aforementioned explicit translation as this provides less information in the TT than is provided in the ST where explicit translation provided more information in the TT Furthermore a CN which is translated by the aid of implicitation must also contain a CN in the TT Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix C English 128 MB Standard memory Danish den store standardhukommelse Gloss the large standard memory This example shows how a piece of information is left out in the TT This information is not left out completely as 128 MB is replaced by store large However the TT may be considered less precise than the ST as the reader is not informed of the size of th
131. sh Appendix E Texts from the user manuals of Garmin s GPS English Danish Appendix F Texts from the user manuals of Nikon s digital camera English Danish Appendix G Texts from the user manuals of Remington s hairdryer English Danish Appendix H Texts from the user manuals of iRobot s vacuum cleaning robot English Danish Appendix I Texts from the user manuals of BlackBerry s smartphone English Danish Appendix J Texts from the user manuals of Whirlpool s refrigerator English Danish Page 106 of 143 Page 112 115 119 121 125 128 131 134 137 140 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen References Andreassen Kristin 2010 Anvendeligheden af lange nominalkomposita oversat fra engelsk til dansk i medicinsk fagsprog MA thesis Cand ling merc Institut for Internationale Sprogstudier og Vidensteknologi Copenhagen Business School Bassnett Susan 2014 Translation Routledge Abingdon Bauer Laurie 1978 The Grammar of Nominal Compounding with special reference to Danish English and French Odense University Press Odense Bauer Laurie 1983 English Word Formation Cambridge University Press Cambridge Bauer Laurie 2006 Compound In Brown Keith edit Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Elsevier Amsterdam pp 719 726 http www sciencedire
132. slate in a rather direct way when it comes to compound nouns in user manuals The second study a survey appears to indicate that the respondents agreed that a direct form of translation is in many cases a good way of translating compound nouns in user manuals However in more complicated instances another approach seemed to be considered preferable Abstract Characters without spaces 3 663 Page 8 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 1 Introduction Each year new words in the Danish language are registered by Dansk Sprognaevn the Danish Language Council and a great part of these new words tends to be compounds such as some of the examples from 2013 fladlusdambrug fotobombe and bededame Dansk Sprognaevn 2013 The same is evident from the Oxford Dictionaries quarterly updates with new words from the English language including compounds like friend zone feature complete and dumbphone Oxford Dictionaries 2013 This constant development of new words is also taking place within the various fields of technical language Every time a new part for a machine or a new function for a button is invented a new designation will most likely follow in order to be able to denote that new invention precisely For the experts who formulate these new designations the most important feature of the designations will most like
133. strategy is employed Consider for instance this example from the data Appendix J English Freezer compartment Danish Fryser gloss freezer The Danish translation of the English CN is not a compound However it may still be considered a fairly direct translation of the CN from the ST In Danish it makes sense to leave out compartment Therefore this demonstrates the use of decompounding very well Explicit Translation This translation strategy is based on Schjoldager s explicitation and will render implicit information from the ST unit explicit in the TT unit like it is the case with explicitation Translation units which are a result of this strategy should still contain a CN or consist only of a CN Explicit translation seeks to furnish the reader with perhaps not further information but at least more explicit information The information which is given in a translation which is the result of explicit Page 54 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen translation should as is the case with Schjoldager s explicitation already be contained in the ST unit in some way Consider this example of explicit translation from the data Appendix D English computer speakers Danish computerens interne hgjttalere gloss the internal speakers of the computer In this example the information that the speakers ar
134. t of the CN has been translated more or less directly and that the Danish translation still contains a CN namely hastighedsudtag It may seem strange that this CN has been considered the result of a straightforward translation as it does not only contain a CN The word langsomme slow is not included in the CN However I will still consider this a straightforward translation for two reason firstly do not see how langsomme could have been included in the CN secondly cannot be sure whether the English word slow is part of the CN or not but I have included it because it is a definite possibility However if the CN was to have included slow in a correct way the words slow and speed ought to have been hyphenated Furthermore if slow is not a part of the CN the remaining translation of speed outlet cover into hastighedsudtag should be considered a straightforward translation For these reasons have placed the translation of this CN in this strategy Example 2 Appendix D English USB devices Danish USB enheder Example 2 has been chosen because it contains the abbreviation USB At first glance one might think that it would be more appropriate to analyse this either as a use of the strategy of translation and transfer or the strategy of reduction However it cannot be analysed as an example of the employment of reduction as the abbreviation is used in both the ST and the TT Furthermore d
135. tegy of deletion has been made use of he or she will most often not notice that something is missing from the translated text Schjoldager 2008 109 There may be several reasons for employing this microstrategy for example an item from the ST may not be needed in the TT or it may not make sense to mention it in the TT Below is an example of Schjoldager s deletion from the data Appendix E English To increase the accuracy of the battery gauge you should fully discharge the battery and then fully charge it Danish In this example the entire sentence from the English ST has been deleted in the TT Furthermore this information is not given in any other place in the manual and demonstrates the point of deletion very well Page 47 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 3 3 3 Summary and Delimitation of Translation Strategies In the preceding part of this thesis the macrostrategies and microstrategies of Anne Schjoldager were presented The microstrategies addressed translation issues on the micro level and the macrostrategies addressed translation issues on the macro level Both levels may present interesting problems However the macrostrategies have been included mostly in order to provide a full view of translation strategies in general and great emphasis will not be placed on these strategies later on
136. th the previous example this CN has been completely removed from the TT Consequently it must be considered an example of the use of erasure In the above all CNs from the data were analysed and selected CNs were explained The explanations of the selected CNs should have aided in clarifying the reasons why the remaining CNs were analysed as is the case Page 82 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 3 11 Results of Qualitative Analysis This section will present the results of the qualitative analysis Firstly a table will show the numbers connected to the analysis Secondly some comments on those numbers will be made Below is a table listing all the translation strategies the number of occurrences and the approximate percentages of the total number of CNs connected to each strategy Strategy No Of occurrences Approximate Percentage Transfer 9 3 Translation and Transfer 24 8 Straightforward Translation 154 54 Decompounding 5 1 Explicit Translation 3 1 Rewording 73 25 Implicitation 2 1 Reduction 3 1 Change of Meaning 2 1 Erasure 13 5 Total 288 100 Table 15 Results of Qualitative Analysis As can be seen from the table above there are clear tendencies in the apparent choice of strategy More than half of the CNs have been translated by the use of st
137. that of conducting interviews with translators This possibility would have afforded us a look into the minds of actual translators the thoughts behind their translations and their use of strategies Both of these possibilities will be mentioned in section 6 2 Future Perspectives 6 1 2 Different Choice of Data The data employed in this study consisted of user manuals for electric products However other data might also have been employed One could e g have used user manuals from non electric products or a mix of user manuals from electric and non electric products Furthermore one might have stayed within one type of product category e g smartphones or tablets and used only user manuals from that type of product If user manuals from non electric products had been employed the CNs involved would probably have been less complex meaning that explanations would have been needed less frequently and Page 102 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen that a direct form of translation would in most cases have been a good solution also in terms of comprehensibility Employing user manuals belonging to a very specific type of product e g smartphones might have made the research conducted in this thesis more exact meaning that something more precise could have been said about that particular type of user manual
138. tion two separate CNs have been combined in the Danish translation As a consequence of the combination of these two CNs some information from the ST seems to have been left out in the TT For example the facts that the products are high end and that they are meant for a specific industry have not been included in the translation One might say that the piece of information that the products are meant for a specific industry is actually given in the translation as the translation does contain the word grafiske graphic However nothing is mentioned about an industry Therefore will consider this an example of the use of implicitation even if this example is somewhat special due to the fact that it combines two CNs from the ST in the TT Example 2 Appendix C English 128 MB standard memory Danish den store standardhukommelse gloss the large standard memory This example of the employment of the strategy of implicitation demonstrates a translation which has become less precise than the ST unit from which it was translated The information that the size of the standard memory is 128 MB has been left out in the TT However the reader is told that the standard memory is stor large Therefore this unit has only become less precise However will still consider this an example of the use of implicitation as some information has become implicit In the above examples we have seen two very different wa
139. translation due to the fact that laypersons need to and are expected to understand texts on an increasingly difficult level within various areas of knowledge Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 1 2 Furthermore Page 32 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Nisbeth Jensen claims that comprehensibility in itself must be termed a significant part of the skopos of a translation as the opposite incomprehensibility would rarely be a relevant skopos Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 2 In order to achieve comprehensibility in a text or translation it is thought very important to rid the text or translation almost or completely of technical terms and that only the necessary terms should be included Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 10 Compounds and CNs in particular are considered to be very hindering when it comes to the comprehensibility of a text because they make the text in question harder to read and understand Nisbeth Jensen forthcoming 12 When thinking of the concept of comprehensibility one can easily make the hasty assumption that a text which is highly comprehensible will also be of great use to the readers However G pferich claims that this is not always the case G pferich 2009A 49 According to G pferich particularly texts containing instructions e g user manuals must also fulf
140. trategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 1 2 Problem Statement and Research Questions This part of the thesis will present the main research questions posed in this thesis and provide an overall look at how an attempt will be made to answer them The aim of this study is to investigate the strategies used in the translation from English into Danish of compound nouns in user manuals In my thesis will attempt to answer the following research questions e Which strategies are used in the translation from English into Danish of compound nouns in user manuals for laypeople e How might the choice of translation strategy affect the comprehensibility This will be done by defining and discussing compound nouns and reasons why the translation of them is interesting Furthermore a model for the analysis of the strategies in question will be formulated which will then be applied to the data set of user manuals for laypeople On the basis of the results of my analysis will conclude upon the choices regarding strategies Furthermore a second study a survey will be employed in order to gain a better view of what a lay audience s opinion about compound nouns in relation to comprehensibility is Lastly the quality of the strategies chosen will be evaluated with regard to the skopos of the texts 1 3 Outline of Thesis This thesis consists of six primary chapters These are the following a chapte
141. ts age is Arnt Lykke Jakobsen s 1992 article about the translation of compounds from English into Danish and vice versa in technical texts At first this would appear to be something which might deal with many of the same problems as this thesis will However even though the subject matter is essentially the same the angle is very different The article discusses the necessity for a translator to actually understand a compound in full not just the parts of which it is made in order to be able to translate it in a suitable way Moreover the article touches slightly upon strategies for the translation of compounds various rules for the formation of compounds and different types of compounds Jakobsen 1992 investigates whether selected compounds can be translated by the Page 12 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen help of dictionaries and concludes that only very few can and that even if they can the translation provided by a dictionary may be somewhat imprecise From the review of these studies it seems that we may conclude that a knowledge gap exists as some aspects of the translation of compound nouns in technical language have been studied but as will be discussed below even more aspects would appear not to have been studied Drijver 2007 created a model for the analysis and translation of compound nouns
142. ual manual user guide instruction book operating instructions reference manual operating manual and instruction manual In spite of all of these different titles the essentials behind these are basically the same which can be seen from the data selected for this thesis Therefore in this thesis the term user manual will be used to denominate this kind of text Generally user manuals tend to contain three basic parts These are Basic information about the product such as which buttons have which function and what the product can make or do a guide Page 18 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen about how to use the product in the right way in order to achieve the best result and finally warnings about what not to do with the product and how it may be dangerous if used in the wrong way Mousten 2008 54 G pferich adds that information especially instructions should be given in the order in which the user needs it G pferich 2009A 46 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines a manual as a book that gives instructions about how to do something especially how to use a machine Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English n d B From this we may gather that a user manual is a text of varying length which has the main purpose of helping the user or consumer to use the product to which
143. ually used in technical texts and some points which should be kept in mind when CNs are translated Lastly the section about comprehensibility will look at comprehensibility in connection with the skopos theory and CNs 2 1 Research Paradigm What is referred to here as a research paradigm can be referred to using many other designations such as worldview or epistemologies and ontologies Creswell 2014 6 However in this thesis this concept will be referred to as paradigm or research paradigm both denoting the same thing Indeed Teddlie and Tashakkori describe a paradigm as a worldview including philosophical and sociopolitical issues Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 21 Creswell agrees and describes a paradigm as a general philosophical orientation about the world and the nature of research that a researcher brings to a study Creswell 2014 6 Making the research paradigm employed in a study explicit is very important to researchers as the research paradigm will affect both the result of the study and the way in which the researcher arrives at the result The research paradigm which is employed in this thesis is the pragmatic paradigm Pragmatism allows the researcher to focus on the problem at hand and affords him or her the opportunity to employ the methods assumptions data etc which will aid in solving the problem Creswell 2014 11 Pragmatism is all about what works Teddlie amp Tashakkori 2009 7 and d
144. umber of instances of each strategy will be counted and the numbers will be ready to discuss in the section that will follow Below is a table showing the process involved in the contrastive translation analysis Step Task 1 English CNs from data are compared to Danish translations 2 Analysis of translation of CNs and assignment of strategy 3 The analysis of the translation of selected CNs is explained 4 Results of analysis are counted and presented so that these results may be discussed later on Table 1 Contrastive Translation Analysis In short in this analysis will attempt to show the contrasts between the English ST units and their Danish translations these will then be grouped according to strategy the number of instances in each group will be counted and the numbers will be discussed in the section following the analysis 3 2 Choice of Data The below section of this thesis will provide some basic information about the data which are studied Furthermore it will also present the reasons why this data were selected for this study The data which have been selected for this thesis consist of user manuals All of the user manuals come from different products and different manufacturers The reason why the user manuals all come from different places and belong to different products is to ensure the greatest possible diversity In order to end up with a result which provides generalisable knowledge about the su
145. ure digital In this example of reduction the designation Secure Digital and the abbreviation SD are both contained in both the English CN and the Danish translation However in the English version Secure Digital must be considered the most important as SD is in parenthesis In the Danish Page 79 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen translation SD must be considered the most important as secure digital is in parenthesis This is the reason why I will consider Secure Digital from the ST to have been abbreviated into SD in the TT Furthermore the English CN has been translated into a CN Therefore this must be an example of the use of reduction The previous examples of reduction were meant to show the reader how examples of this translation strategy may differ in spite of the fact that they have been analysed as belonging to the same translation strategy 4 3 9 Change of Meaning In this section a list of the instances in which the strategy of change of meaning has been employed is provided Furthermore the two examples are explained below Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences G 1 Hang up loop Drejeledning H 1 SPOT DOCK Button Dok demo knap Table 13 Change of Meaning Example 1 Appendix G English Hang up loop Danish dreje
146. urvey consists of ten questions each containing two alternatives one is a CN the other is an explanation of the CN The examples from the various user manuals are presented in no specific order those of the examples which are set in sentences in the manual from which they come will also be set in sentences in the survey the remaining will not This means that some of Page 87 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen the examples will consist of complete sentences whereas others will consist only of a CN This has been done in order to achieve examples which are as true to life as possible meaning that the respondents should get an experience which is as close to the real thing as is possible in a survey Furthermore as can be seen below the CNs and their explanations have not always been placed in the same order This has been done in order to render it less obvious what the survey is actually about Should the respondents figure out the real purpose of the survey it may affect the way they answer it In order to gain as many answers as possible the survey will be shared on Facebook This should also ensure that the demographic composition should to some degree be varied in age and gender as well as education automatically rendering the sample random to a certain degree However sharing the survey on Facebook will also
147. usly done or not Vermeer 2004 233 2 4 3 Answer to Criticism In connection with this thesis the claim that the skopos theory is not a valid theory does not seem problematic as it will mainly constitute a general approach to the field of translation and permeate the way in which this field will be viewed in this thesis The remaining points of criticism mentioned in this chapter namely that the skopos theory is unethical and that a translator does not have a receiver in mind during translation are perhaps the most interesting points to this thesis In connection with the criticism of the skopos theory as being unethical Nord presents the notion of loyalty which represents the responsibility translators have toward their partners in translational interaction Nord 1997 125 This means that the personal relations between e g a translator and his client will impose certain restrictions on the way in which a given translation is produced Furthermore Nisbeth Jensen argues that there cannot be an unlimited number of skopoi for a given text Nisbeth Jensen 2013 47 which tells us that translators do not have unlimited choices when they produce translations The criticism saying that translators do not have a reader in mind during translation will to a certain measure be tested in this thesis as we will see whether the translators of the user manuals appear to neglect to consider Page 27 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in Use
148. which means that it will not always make sense to translate them making direct transfer very useful If one considers for example the name of the Danish capital Kobenhavn it makes sense to translate it because it has a fixed translation namely Copenhagen However this is often not the case with smaller cities first names etc and when that is the case direct transfer is often used Page 42 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen Below is an example of Schjoldager s direct transfer from the data Appendix I English BlackBerry Link Danish BlackBerry Link In this example the designation BlackBerry Link has simply been transferred from the ST to the TT as it does not have a fixed Danish translation No changes have occurred from the ST to the TT which makes this a good example of the use of direct transfer Direct Translation A translator makes use of the microstrategy named direct translation when he or she makes a so called word for word translation Schjoldager 2008 95 Direct translation is what you might call the instinctive translation as it is often thought of as the solution which comes first to mind Schjoldager 2008 96 When this microstrategy is used the translator will stay very close to the wording of the ST in the TT Furthermore translations which are the product of a direct tra
149. y be that one translation fits one context and the other fits a different context On the one hand making use of an explanation like in Danish 1 may not be preferable if a unit is to be repeated several times in a text because it would elongate the text and perhaps make it awkward to read On the other hand an explanation may be needed in order to make sure that the readers will understand what is referred to Consequently incorporating two different translations of the same CN in one user manual may make sense in some cases even if it will mean that the readers will have to spend a little more time when they read the manual Originally this thesis was supposed to have contained a quantitative analysis which would be based solely on the numbers which would be derived from the qualitative analysis The number of occurrences of each strategy for translation was thought to be able to tell us something about the general effect that the translation of the CNs had had on the user manuals whether the comprehensibility had been affected in a positive or negative direction In theory it seems fairly simple to label one strategy positive for the general comprehensibility and the next negative However during the qualitative analysis of the data it was discovered that a lot of the CNs and their translations do not fit the theoretical boxes of positive and negative for comprehensibility For example translating a CN by the use of an abbreviation is as
150. y interesting in itself but it seems appropriate to combine it with qualitative research which is what is done in this thesis The quantitative part will consist of a survey in which some examples of CNs from the data and their level of comprehensibility will be investigated It might be said that the qualitative analysis will present a more theoretical view on the subject matter whereas the survey will ask people what they think The method of survey will be discussed and explained further in section 5 1 2 2 3 Recapitulation of Research design By making use of a mix of the qualitative and the quantitative approaches this thesis should gain the strengths of both approaches This means that the conclusions which will be made will be more viable and justified than if the whole thesis had been based on either a qualitative or a quantitative approach Page 23 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 2 3 Equivalence based Translation Equivalence based translation is a concept which dictates that a TT must be the equivalent of the ST but in another language Munday 2009 185 The notion of equivalence in translation is a quite controversial subject some scholars dismiss the idea completely while others think that there could be no such thing as translation without equivalence Munday 2009 185 According to Schjol
151. y need to be correct and to stay relatively close to their STs Byrne 2012 28 This trait means that employing TT oriented strategies should in theory not be necessary As can be seen from the results of the qualitative analysis some of the more TT oriented strategies have indeed been employed However the use of the strategies in which Schjoldager s more TT oriented microstrategies have been employed is rather limited These strategies are implicitation reduction change of meaning and erasure and together they only constitute about 8 of the translations This fact seems to emphasise the point that technical texts should mainly be translated in an ST oriented manner However these strategies have been used even if the use of them is rather infrequent This seems to tell us that even technical texts which usually stay quite close to their STs will at times contain translations which are more TT oriented As mentioned in the results of the qualitative analysis the most frequently used strategy for the translation of CNs in the selected manuals is straightforward translation This could as mentioned in the above mean that the translators are trying to stick to the norms of technical texts by staying very close to the STs However as previously mentioned it should be considered that a direct form of translation is generally thought of as the most obvious and instinctive way of translating a text meaning that this decision may not have b
152. ys in which the strategy of implicitation may work Page 78 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen 4 3 8 Reduction In the table below is listed the examples in which the translation strategy of reduction has been used Following the list the explanation of two of the examples is provided Appendix No Of English Danish occurrences C 1 Internal wireless card Wi fi D 1 Secure Digital SD Memory SD hukommelseskort secure digital Card F 1 USB audio video output USB A V udgangsstik connector Table 12 Reduction Example 1 Appendix C English Internal wireless card Danish Wi fi This example of the use of reduction is somewhat special because wi fi is not an actual abbreviation of internal wireless card However it does signify the same thing Wi fi is commonly thought to be an abbreviation of wireless fidelity but this is not true Wi fi is actually an abbreviation of nothing in particular However this expression wi fi does mean the same to people as internal wireless card but may be a little easier to understand for most people because it is a designation which is commonly used Therefore will consider this an example of the use of reduction Example 2 Appendix D English Secure Digital SD Memory Card Danish SD hukommelseskort sec
153. ysis will involve the comparison of the English CNs and their translations Firstly the CNs from the English part of the data will be picked out and compared to their Danish translations Secondly the CNs will be analysed and distributed by the different strategies which will be formulated in the model of analysis in section 4 2 These strategies designate the various ways in which the CNs have been translated and go from a simple transfer of the CN from the ST to the TT to a deletion of the CN in the TT The various strategies will be explained further in section 4 2 Thirdly when the CNs have been analysed and divided by their respective translation strategies some of the CNs pertaining to Page 36 of 143 Translating Compound Nouns in User Manuals A Study of the Strategies Employed in the Rendering of Technical Language Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen each translation strategy will be singled out and used to exemplify why they have been analysed as they have and show the general characteristics of the CNs translated by the use of the various strategies Consequently only a selected few of the CNs will come with an explanation of the analysis This has to do with the fact that the data contains such a great number of CNs that it would be impossible to explain them all due to the time and space constraints pertaining to this thesis Fourthly when the CNs have all been assigned to a strategy and the selected examples have been explained the n

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