Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (* 1940 in Varkaus ) is a Finnish translation scholar . Until her retirement in August 2007, she taught as a professor at the University of Joensuu at the Institute for Intercultural Communication in Savonlinna . Her research focuses on empirical studies of translation-specific problems and comparative text analyzes.

Life

After completing a Master of Sciences in Economics at the Helsinki School of Economics in 1970, she began working as a university teacher in Savonlinna after a brief period as a translator at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. In order to expand her knowledge of translation studies, she decided in 1979 to study Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex, which she graduated with honors (First Class Honors Degree). After returning to Savonlinna, she began working on her master's thesis on the quality assessment of translations as part of a funding measure from the Academy of Finland . This was followed in 1985 by her dissertation on the structural structure and the translation of two selected argumentative text types. Her analyzes focused on structural aspects such as illocutionary factors, superstructural peculiarities or text-type-specific translation problems of argumentative texts. In 1993 she was appointed Professor of Theory of Language and Translation . Following her retirement in 2007, she continued to conduct independent research with an empirical and intercultural focus. With her work, she has decisively shaped the research into regularities in the translation process and raised starting points for follow-up investigations.

Researches

Unique items

The core idea of their belonging to the Universalienhypothesen unique hypothesis are Unique elements ( unique items ), have the source language which is no direct equivalent in the target language. According to Tirkkonen-Condit, this includes certain semantic features, lexicalizing Finnish modal verbs such as uskaltaa 'has enough courage for doing' or clitic particles such as - kin 'also'. In this context, Kujamaki (2004) refers to Finnish expressions such as keli 'state of the roads, weather', which are assigned different semantic properties depending on the speech situation. Their translation of these elements into target languages ​​is largely only possible using non-literal translation methods due to the semantic gaps caused by different cultural concepts (Darbelnet / Vinay 1995). Tirkkonen-Condit found that translated texts contain fewer unique elements on average than non-translations of the same language. The reason for this is the lack of certain linguistic stimuli in the source text, which usually allow the translator mental access to the unique element.

discussion

Further empirical studies by Tirkkonen-Condit (2002) suggest a close connection between the presence of unique items and the authenticity of a text. When reading Finnish texts, test subjects with a translation-specific background were all the more convinced that the fewer unique elements they contained were translated. Syntax-focused research by Eskolas (2004) on the representation of Finnish-specific nonfinite verb forms in English and Russian translations confirm the results of Tirkkonen-Condit. Mauranen (2000) also comes to the same conclusion for the highly specific Finnish adverb toisaalta 'on the other hand'. According to study analyzes by Kolehmainen (2013), a comparable phenomenon can be identified for the underrepresentation of linguistic elements caused by language contact: If there is no common equivalent for a linguistic property in the contact languages, a stronger decline than with other expressions tends to be observed. At the same time, however, Kolehmainen notes that the unique hypothesis is more related to texts of a temporary nature, but does not cause permanent changes in the target language. Chesterman (2007), on the other hand, criticizes the terminological accuracy of the term unique and emphasizes that the phenomenon is by no means translation-specific, but can also be used to avoid difficult language structures in foreign language acquisition. Follow-up studies by Tirkkonen-Condit and Mäkisolaa (2007) have also highlighted the dependence of the unique hypothesis on types of text . In contrast to Tirkkonen-Condit's previous statements, clitic particles appear particularly numerous in Finnish subtitle translations , since technical framework conditions require a particularly brief textual character.

Articles, editorships and publications (selection)

  • Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (Ed.): Empirical Research in Intercultural and Translation Studies. Selected Papers of the TRANSIF Seminar, Tübingen: Narr 1991.
  • Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit, Riitta Jääskeläinen (Ed.): Tapping and Mapping the Processes of Translation and Interpreting. John Benjamin BV, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2011.
  • Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (2002): “Translationese - a myth or an empirical fact? A study into the linguistic identifiability of translated language. "Target 14 (2), 207-220.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mauranen / Kujamäki: Translation Universals. Do they exist? 2004, p. 179.
  2. ↑ Article of Kohlemainen the unique hypothesis. Trans-kom website Accessed on June 17.
  3. ↑ Chesterman "What is a unique item?" In: Gambier / Shlesinger / Stolze (Eds.): Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies: Selected contributions from the EST Congress . Lisbon 2004. 2007, pp. 3 ff. 2007

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish translation scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Varkaus