Communicating Successfully - A Bridge between Theory and Practice Approaches to Legal Translation in the Pacific

Abstract

One of the main problems in translation studies today is the large gap between theory and practice. Theory is criticised for being out of touch with the reality of the translator's everyday work: it is often complex, and based on little more than the theorist's personal experience. On the practical level, translators are chided for failing to keep up with or make use of theory, which has the potential to help them reflect on their own work, and ultimately help improve the overall product. In their defence, translators often say that theorists are looking in the wrong place for generation of theory, and ought talk to the translators themselves if they want to document the theoretical underpinnings of translation. This thesis proposes a bridge for this gap between the ideals of theory and the realities of practice. Using grounded theory as a method of analysis and theory development, this thesis documents a theory of translation which has been built up from the legal translators' accounts of their own experiences. The participants who were interviewed about their experiences of translation work from English into Pacific Island languages. This group was chosen because they work under comparatively difficult conditions, and because approaches to legal translation in the Pacific have not been well documented. Many of the participants work with languages that have poor dictionary resources, yet they regularly have to grapple with conceptual incongruence between legal systems, and the high demands for accuracy of legal texts. Moreover, many have no formal translator training, and often work in isolation. Grounded theory analysis of interviews of the participants has yielded a theory that is transcendental, based on translator behaviour, and applicable regardless of working conditions. The theory is illustrated by a simple, user-friendly model of the translation process, which has the potential to link disparate theories, and more importantly, is readily useable by translators themselves in practice. The key feature of the theory is that its interlocking parts remain the same, although, the magnitude of the actions taken by the translator changes according to his or her working conditions. This means that it is widely applicable in any translation context. In this respect, the theory is a valuable contribution to the field of translation studies. It bridges the gap between theory and practice, and brings together previously disparate accounts of the translator's experience of translation as a process and translation as a product. Most importantly, it refocuses the field on translation as an act of successful human communication.