Managing Latin: support and intratextual translation as mediation strategies in the history of English

Abstract

Our study maps the practices of managing Latin in English texts from over a thousand years. Mediation is a communicative activity which involves explaining the content of a conversation or text to another person. In contexts of multilingual writing, this is typically self-mediation, which a writer may perform by complementing code-switches with intratextual translations in the text. The data for the study are drawn from corpora of English historical texts, dictionaries and manuscripts, and mediation is analyzed in terms of support, intratextual translation and flagging. The findings show that while cognitive support helps a reader understand all of the content of the text, intratextual translation may also have relational functions, where the reader is expected to understand both languages used, as when code-switching and translation are a vehicle for humor. Intratextual translation can also be used to add credibility to the writer’s argument or to link it to a broader discussion on the topic. Mediation is also facilitated by flagging code-switching and intratextual translation metalinguistically or visually. Support is needed for Latin as a language which has always been part of relatively few English-speakers’ repertoire, but these strategies are expected to apply to other language pairs as well.

De gustibus non est disputandum: Translating a multilingual novel / De gustibus non est disputandum: mitmekeelse romaani tõlkimine

“…Whether writing or translating multilingual texts, writers and translators have a resource for maintaining multilingualism and at the same time keeping the texts approachable in the target culture: intratextual translation (Nurmi 2019;Nurmi and Skaffari 2021). The most familiar forms of this are peritextual elements such as glossaries of foreign expressions or footnotes offering translations.…”

“…When a writer does not know what languages their readers understand, or knows they will probably not understand one of the languages, it is possible to insert intratextual translations into a text as a means of supporting readers (Nurmi and Skaffari 2021). Intratextual translations can be overt, in for example footnotes, as well as covert insertions of corresponding content in the target language (see Nurmi and Skaffari 2021 for a more detailed discussion).…”

Stylistic Conversion and Linguistic Beauty Reproduction in English Translation-Based on Neurosemantic Analysis

“…To determine the semantics of the English content and to meet certain criteria is to collect and organize data. To analyze the semantics of the English content, the factors in it will be dissected on the kind; for the English content to be partially selected, using the formulated analysis method, using manual coding method to analyze the content chosen; data after unified management to analyze the data, to confirm the consistency of the coders in the coding process exists in the validation of the content, and ultimately, the content of the data expression will be completed [8][9][10][11][12]. In the process of development and popularization of information technology, the user the process of using only the content, which is analyzed layer by layer, and finally, the content and meaning of which is clearly processed.…”

Characterization of Business English Translation Styles Based on Semantic Contrastive Analysis

“…Finally, the discourse structure of Business English is made up of vocabulary and sentence patterns, and it is important to choose correct and rigorous vocabulary to form a semantically complete long sentence or a complex sentence and a certain number of sentence patterns to form a complete discourse [16][17]. Business activities have seriousness and precision, business English text translation style needs to be based on the development of business activities towards the appropriate retention of a certain amount of communication space, and in the business environment needs to pay great attention to the efficiency and standardization, translators need to clarify the overall logic of the business English language style, the business line of the text for concise [18][19].…”