Abstract Relying on two series of interviews with interpreters from various sociocultural backgrounds working in a variety of contexts, including conference and community settings in the US, Belgium, Turkey, Germany, and Canada, this article explores how objectification of the body and interpreting intersect. Drawing on the concept of ‘aesthetic labor’, it examines the lived experiences of female interpreters in terms of appearance requirements imposed on them and argues that the rules and expectations of ‘looking good’ and ‘sounding right’ that interpreters confront at work are heavily gendered, racialized, and reproduce gender and racial inequalities in several ways. This leads not only to devaluation of their profession, but also to marginalization of them as gendered and racialized individuals, affecting the way they perceive their roles. Aesthetic labor provides a unique tool to analyze the embodied aspects of the profession and its body politics, allowing a critical perspective to investigate client–interpreter relations in complex structural positions of power.
Abstract Despite the significance of death as a theme in children’s literature, few studies examine how it is translated across cultures. Drawing on death education and censorship studies, this article analyzes the English translation of Chen Jiatong’s White Fox series, a Chinese anthropomorphic adventure story. Through comparative textual analysis and interviews with the translator, this study reveals that the translations omit or soften violent death, as a result of censorship from the translator and editor. At the same time, the translations amplify the emotional impact of loss on the protagonist Dilah. While the source texts describe the inevitability of death, the translations foreground Dilah’s resilience in facing death and place greater emphasis on helping target readers develop an appropriate understanding of death, particularly its emotional and value-laden dimensions. This article highlights the importance of achieving a delicate balance between shielding young readers from graphic depictions of death and normalizing discussions of mortality as part of their emotional and cognitive development. Censoring the sensitive topic of death in the translation of children’s literature reflects a complex negotiation between protection and empowerment, cultural differences, and universal experiences.
Abstract This study explores the relevance of the concept of legal survivals, proposed by the legal scholar Rafał Mańko, for legal translation purposes. The concept of legal survivals, in parallel to the well-known notion of legal transplants, problematises a specific aspect of legal continuity, namely the continued existence of certain units of legal culture despite transformations of a given jurisdiction’s legal system. Translating texts relating to such institutions raises difficult questions for legal translators, who need to consider the legal and/or terminological changes to establish acceptable equivalents. This article uses the translational comparative legal analysis framework to investigate the usefulness of Mańko’s theory for legal translation through three case studies of the Polish–English translation of property law terms. The research shows that the legal survivals theory may be useful in helping translators better comprehend the not-always-parallel paths of legal terminology and legal institutions and encouraging a kind of ‘legal genealogy’.
