Types of Equivalence Used in Translating Educational Terminology
Types of Equivalence Used in Translating Educational Terminology
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Andrea Kriston
Polytechnic University of Timisoara
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Abstract
The internationalisation of the educational system is a growing trend in the contemporary society,
offering mobility opportunities for both teaching staff and students. In this context, mastering the
educational terminology in several international languages has become a necessity for anyone active
in the field of education. Therefore, all the students, particularly those in translation, should be able to
use the educational terminology in the languages they study. The present article proposes a new
interdisciplinary method of teaching translation by equivalence, which consists of several activities and
focuses on four languages, i.e. Romanian as a source language, English, German and French as
target languages. The method was tested on the 2nd year students in Translation and Interpreting at
the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Politehnica University of Timișoara (Romania). The purpose
of the article is both to show a possible way to teach the concept of equivalence in an interdisciplinary
manner, applying it to the translation of educational terminology, and to reveal the linguistic
preferences for accommodating existing or new educational phrases, thus drawing the attention to the
existing similitudes and differences among languages.
Keywords: equivalence, teaching, terminology, translation.
1 INTRODUCTION
The internationalisation of education is a direct consequence of the globalisation process [1], which
started once people began to communicate, exchange goods, conquer other peoples and new
territories, increase their power by influencing and dominating politically, economically, religiously,
culturally, and ideologically [2]. Generally speaking, globalisation refers to “the flow of technology,
knowledge, people, values, ideas, capital, goods, and services across national borders” [2], and
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cannot be done without human interaction. In the second half of the 20 century, the globalisation
process became particularly obvious with the development of the new transportation, communication
and information technologies which changed for good the way in which people interacted both for
personal and professional reasons. The new technologies made it possible for businesses to go global
and to facilitate the contact among people belonging to different cultures and having different
educational backgrounds. Doing businesses globally, people started moving around, changing living
and work places for a shorter or longer period of time. To smoothen this path and to increase the
individual productivity, the need was felt to create a common global educational framework that could
be beneficial to all parties, both employers and employees. Thus, started the integration of the national
educational system into the global one. This process is called the internationalisation of education [3],
and takes place at several levels:
• national: e.g. national educational policies on foreign relations;
• sectoral: e.g. sectoral educational policies on licensing, accreditation, curriculum, teaching,
research, regulations, quality assurance, funding from national, regional, and/or international
sources;
• institutional: e.g. programmes devised by educational institutions, observing the national and
sectoral policies, such as international teaching staff and student exchanges, various
educational programmes [4].
Today’s global educational system facilitates contacts that can be established among persons active
in the field of education, namely teaching and supporting staff, students, translators and interpreters,
to name but a few. Therefore, mastering the educational terminology in several languages of
international circulation, by anyone working in the field, but particularly by the future professional
translators and interpreters is a must.
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appears in the case of interjections, onomatopoeia, idioms, proverbs, nominal or adjectival phrases,
clichés, etc. [9].
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In the end of the second micro-activity, a questions-and-answers session was organised with the aim
of clarifying unclear aspects. In the present case, the students understood their colleagues’
explanations, so there were only laudatory comments.
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2.3.3 Translating the corpus
This activity was done individually, by recourse to the documentation and translation tools mentioned
above.
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Table 2. The work of the German group.
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2.5 Wrapping up the activities
The last macro-activity was designed to consist of two micro-activities:
− micro-activity 1: analysing the types of equivalence identified;
− micro-activity 2: creating the micro-multilingual glossary of educational phrases.
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Sistemul European de European Credit Europäisches System zur Système européen de
Credite Transferabile Transfer System Übertragung von Leistungspunkte crédits transférables
Uniunea Europeană a European Students` European Students` Union Union Européenne des
Studenţilor Union Studentenschaft étudiants
învățământ gimnazial lower secondary Sekundarstufe I enseignement secondaire
education
ciclu liceal upper secondary school gymnasiale Oberstufe II enseignement secondaire
cycle deuxième cycle
învățământ postgraduate education Aufbaustudium enseignement post-
postuniversitar universitaire
seminar repetitiv drill seminar Drill-Seminar séminaire repetitif
cunoaștere explicită explicit knowledge deklaratives Wissen connaissance explicite
3 CONCLUSIONS
Globalisation and internationalisation of education play a central role in the present society. In this
context, mastering the terminology of education is a must for most of us, but particularly for those
active in the field of education.
Under the pretext of creating a micro-multilingual glossary of educational phrases, the present paper
proposed a new interactive and interdisciplinary method of teaching equivalence, made up of five
macro-activities and several micro-activities:
• Macro-activity 1: Establishing the theoretical background
o micro-activity 1: topic introduction;
o micro-activity 2: identification of the types of equivalence;
o micro-activity 3: choosing the model of analysis.
• Macro-activity 2: Establishing the corpus in Romanian
• Macro-activity 3: Translating the corpus into English, German and French
o micro-activity 1: establishing the translation groups;
o micro-activity 2: documentation for translation;
o micro-activity 3: translating the corpus;
o micro-activity 4: choosing the best translation for each phrase.
• Macro-activity 4: Establishing the type of equivalence used
• Macro-activity 5: Wrapping up the activities
o micro-activity 1: analysing the types of equivalence identified;
o micro-activity 2: creating the micro-multilingual glossary of educational phrases.
The proposed sequence of activities had the learning objectives summarised below:
• students should know the most important theories on equivalence;
• students should be able to apply one theory to a selected corpus that is translated from
Romanian into English, German and French;
• students should be able to think critically, compare results, and draw final conclusions.
The method was used during the classes in translation held for the 2nd year students in Translation
and Interpreting at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Politehnica University of Timișoara
(Romania).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Politehnica University of Timişoara for supporting our work by the research
grant PCD-TC-2017 (16183/21.11.2017, code 30 Competition 2017 PCD-TC).
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