This study addresses the intricate challenges of translating modern Arabic poetry into English through the analysis of the translation of three selected poems by the renowned Egyptian poet Farouk Goweda. These poems, reflecting Goweda's sociopolitical engagement with the cultural background of the Middle East, contain cultural specificities and stylistic features that pose difficulties for translators on various levels, semantic, syntactical, idiomatic and sonic. This study explores how a joint approach relying on collaborative translation and a functionalist approach to translation addresses and processes these multilevel difficulties which necessitate a combination of skills and cross-cultural proficiencies of experts from both the source and target cultures to achieve the purpose of the target translation and to appeal to Anglophone readers. This approach manages to balance the aesthetic and thematic effect of the source text with the linguistic and cultural context of the recipient culture, stressing the importance of intercultural communication through translation.
Knowledge transfer in the Soviet Union is commonly seen as taking place under the absolute dominance of Russian. Omnipresent as the only Union-wide scientific language, Russian did indeed occupy an extremely influential position as a relay language for knowledge transfer within the Soviet Union, from the Socialist Camp as well as from so-called capitalist languages. Nevertheless, there are activities that suggest a more complex system of different source and target languages and corresponding modes. The present article will explain these activities in detail using the example of encyclopedic knowledge and its dissemination in the Soviet Union and especially in the Soviet Ukraine. While it is well known that knowledge from a communist point of view had been propagated from the early 1920s onward, there were a series of other and lesser-known efforts at spreading encyclopedic knowledge that generated a rather complex system of knowledge transfer.
Machine translation (MT) users generally express a willingness to continue using MT systems, despite their often-negative perceptions of MT output quality. Informed by an extended Technology Acceptance Model, this questionnaire-based study of trainee translators (N = 273) investigates this phenomenon by assessing the predictive effects of users' perceptions on their intention to continue using MT systems. Perception of MT output quality was found to have no significant direct effect on respondent's intent to continue using MT; however, the strongest predictor of continued use was the perceived relevance of MT output, followed by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. This study suggests that user perceptions of relevance and usefulness, other than output quality, were more direct determinants of user intent. The results highlight the importance of user perceptions in translation technology acceptance, providing a new perspective on MT system research and development.
