Metaglossia: The Translation World

The team at 20|20 Research — led by former Republican state senator Jim Bryson — has brought to market a translation tool that lets marketers around the world nearly instantaneously translate content in multinational research projects. The QualTranslate technology covers 24 languages.

"For instance, if researchers gain insight i

RCT focuses on translation research and the publication of Chinese literature in English translation

It is extremely satisfying when students say they understand the content of prescribed books thanks to a terminology list in their mother tongue, says Ms Anita Jonker, co-ordinator of the First-year Academy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Thanks to her initiative, close on 1 000 political terms are now available in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa.

"While I was presenting an introductory module on Political Science to students in the extended degree programme, I realised that they understood the work much better if the technical terms were translated into their mother tongue," says Jonker. "These students often arrive at the university with academic backlogs."

The seed was planted and she applied for FIRLT funding to have the terminology lists of two of the prescribed books in the Department of Political Science (Heywood, Andrew, 2007. Politics and MacGowan, Cornelissen and Nel, 2007. Power, Wealth and Global Equity) translated into Afrikaans and isiXhosa by professional translators, as well as edited. The result is 488 new translations of the English Heywood terminology list and 496 new translations of the English McGowan et al. terminology list.

"The terminology lists help students to enjoy the course more, and this increases participation in the lecture hall," says Jonker. "When they understand the technical concepts better, their self-confidence grows."

Just how much the terminology lists help the students is reflected in the reactions of two students.

"One of the Afrikaans-speaking students said everything suddenly makes sense, while an isiXhosa speaker said that although he had received his entire school education in English, the translations into his mother tongue made it possible to understand the concepts in the textbook even better," says Jonker.

Research is currently being done on the use of the two trilingual terminology lists as instruments to determine whether they can have an influence on the academic success of EDP students with Political Science as a major.

OFTEN we are faced with writing tasks, be it a report, a letter, an article, essay or it could be any other longer academic writing. Being clear to our readers is always the foundation of the desire to present ideas clearly and avoid or minimise ambiguity. Mastering paragraph-writing skills requires practice and regular reading.

In this article, I share with our readers some of the basic paragraph writing skills one needs to pay attention to every time a pen and a paper are locked in confrontation. To create and maintain clarity and precision of meaning in our writing of longer pieces, the composition, division and order/sequencing of paragraphs will determine the success of the message that the writer wants to put across.

A paragraph can be defined as a distinct division of a piece of writing. One can say it expresses some thought or point relevant to the whole of the piece, but is to some degree complete in itself. As far as punctuation is concerned, a paragraph begins on a new line, even where this means leaving most of the previous line empty.

Often, being ‘indented’ from the edge of the page marks it. Luckily, in typing, an extra line of space is generally used between paragraphs. In a case of dialogue, in a work of fictional (imaginary) prose, each speaker or character’s utterance usually begins on a new line for the clarification and convenience of the reader.

Paragraphing provides resting-places for the reader, since at the end of each paragraph, the reader can pause and take stock of or digest what he/she has read so far. Each paragraph break tells the reader, in effect, that he/she has finished with one topic/theme and is now embarking on a new one. Universally, there are no rules on how often these resting-places or long pauses should occur.

However, typically, in light journalism (newspapers) and advertising, almost every sentence seems to start a new paragraph. In more serious academic writing, i.e. thesis and dissertation reports, a paragraph can last for a page or more and this usually looks very daunting to read.

To be safe, most paragraphs should contain at least three sentences, but an occasional one-sentence will be fairly inviting and refreshing to the reader’s eye and mind.  On the other hand, it is best not to make all one’s paragraphs too short as this can create a disjointed effect.

It is best to try to aim for a mixture of lengths to create some variety. If a single topic or idea needs room to develop, school has taught us to make it more digestible for the reader by breaking it up into more than one paragraph. But, I personally choose to differ with this, because two unrelated topics or ideas call for two separate paragraphs, no matter how short such paragraphs may be.

Importantly, note that the opening paragraph of a piece of writing should introduce the topic about which one is writing. The middle paragraph(s) should contain the different ideas or themes of the main topic, while the closing paragraph should sum up what one has been writing about.

Lastly, each paragraph should have a topic/opening sentence introducing the paragraph idea, followed by body sentences (details, examples, and descriptions that explain the paragraph topic), and a closing sentence summing up the main details of the body sentences.