‫‪DTRA 440‬‬

‫السعودية االلكترونية‬ ‫الجامعة‬

‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬
‫‪Translation in the Workplace‬‬

‫‪26/12/2021‬‬
Module 8- Week 9

The Associate Translator

Content

• The Duty of the Associate Translator.

• The Characteristics of the Associate Translator.

• The Indicators of the Associate Translator’s Knowledge and Skills.

Learning Objectives
• Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able to:

- Identify the duty of the associate translator.

- Identify the characteristics of the associate translator.

- Identify the indicators of the associate translator’s knowledge and

skills.
 The Duty of the Associate Translator.

- After around five years or more in the job, the translator will develop his
skills to get to the third stage; a stage that entitles a translator to be an
associate translator based on translator career path.

- The translator in this stage feels more involved in social activities among
co-workers and in professional decision making.
The Characteristics of the Associate Translator

• 1- The translator is competent and gains the ability to prioritize

among various situations of the task at hand.

• 2- The associate translator becomes aware of the responsibility of

this specific task of translation which in turn leads to a greater
emotional involvement.
 A list of the Indicators

• The following list contains the indicators of the associate translator’s

knowledge and skills:

• 1- Good ability to identify historical, geographical, social terms, and other

linguistic features that convey socio-cultural impact; the text might have
some mistakes.
• 2- Certain awareness that a choice must be made between domestication or
foreignization of the text; if the choice is corresponding to the commissioner
purpose, the translation outcomes have some mistakes.

• 3-Good ability to translate culture-specific items by the process of paraphrasing;

the result allows target reader to relate item to target culture.

• 4-Good range of vocabulary to translate texts that contain not only

straightforward information, but also abstract language. In this stage, there are
some incidents of inconsistency and wrong word choice.

• 5- Sufficient use of dictionaries of all kinds. In addition, the influence of some

source language structure and word order emerges, but good grammatical control
overall and clear meaning.
• 6- Medium range of both morphologic and syntactic structures in the target
language. Also, there are reasonable command of mechanical conventions;
meaning is not clear and confusing sometimes.

• 7- The associate translator uses some documentary sources to deal with stylistic
aspects. He/she considers the reliability of documentary sources. He/she is able
to create interlinguistic correspondences and build parallel representations of
part of a semantic field.

• 8- The associate translator can independently use a range of software to assist in

correction of translation, and documentary research. He/she can create and
manage a database and files as well.

• 9- The associate translator has the ability to adapt to and learn new tools,
particularly for the translation of multimedia and audiovisual material.
• 10- The associate translator has good ability to detect some
ambiguities and reference problems, faulty logic and discrepancies,
errors of fact, faulty text structure, and confusion in source text.
• 11- Solution planning is more form-oriented rather than
communicative. The associate translator starts considering sense, style
and text-type, but still approaches problems word by word, sentence
by sentence.
• 12- Problem solving is attempted by paraphrasing, using unrelated
words when the concept is not lexicalized in the target language; other
strategies includes borrowing, calques, compensation, and appeal for
help from field specialists.
• 13- In this stage, some comprehension of subject matter highly dependent
on cultural and technical knowledge.

• 14- Reading: there is almost complete understanding of a variety of

authentic prose material on unfamiliar subjects. Also, some comprehension
of subject matter is highly dependent on cultural and technical knowledge.

• 15- Writing: there is familiarity with text-type conventions in source

language and target language. There is an awareness of source text
function
• 16- Moderate range of translation strategies is noticeable to meet
translation brief requirements. Furthermore, there is novel
performance that exceeds traditional routine.

• 17- Flexible translation that sometimes violates literalness in

translation exists. Seldom shows some abstraction (use of vague,
general or abstract target text solutions), modification (use of changes
of perspective), and/or concretization (when the target text evokes a
more explicit, more detailed, and more precise idea than the source
text).
• 18- There are many fluent translation variants in this stage.
• 19- There is good knowledge of organization-specific translation
system including style and principles, however, he/she fails to apply
some of them in his or her translation successfully.

• 20- There is good knowledge of professional translation practice

such as the organization’s business, types of clients and their needs,
types of translation briefs, and translation project specifications, but
he/she fails to adhere to some of them.
• 21- The associate translator messages effectively whether verbally or
through body language. He/she receives messages effectively through
listening, reading, and considering.

• 22- The associate translator builds collaborative relationships with a

range of colleagues within own and adjacent departments and with
stakeholders.

• 23- The associate translator is open to sharing information and

collaborating in the workplace including teamwork and co-translating.
• 24- The associate translator supports the development of the
reputations of less experienced translators. He/she understands own
behavior and impact on others when working in teams.

• 25- The associate translator appreciates and works with diversity and
difference in working environment. He/she actively participates in
and contributes to collaborations and external relationships.

• 26- The associate translator is confident of own skills and ideas in the
face of strong challenges.
References
● Alowedi, N. (2015). Developing A Translator Career Path: A New
Approach to In-House Translator Development Evaluation (Doctoral
dissertation, Kent State University).
Thank You