Abstract

The presentation aims to explore how the dynamics of the modern world influences education, more specifically language education at tertiary level, and which of the current trends globalisation is associated with are likely to have a long-lasting bearing on the teaching and learning process.

Topics like internationalisation of education, intercultural approaches, technology enriched education, nonformal education, CLIL and the principles of interdisciplinarity - are they just trends and fashionable buzz words or do they actually shape the reality of teaching and learning at the onset of the new millennium?

About Ștefan Colibaba

Stefan Colibaba is a Professor at the Department of English, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature and an M.A. in TEFL. He has written on the theory of short fiction and the teaching of literature, and co-authored books on language development and human rights and citizenship education.
His professional interests include: ELT materials development, trainer/teacher training, education management, project management, blended learning formats, and international benchmarks in evaluating language competences.
Stefan Colibaba has been course director and/or trainer for regional training courses (Thailand, Colombia, Pakistan, Hungary) focusing on the link between language development and critical thinking, autonomous learning, and inclusive education.
He is involved in European projects that develop innovative non-formal tools for assessing and validating competences at the workplace. In this capacity, he has taken part in designing training materials and evaluation schemes.

Abstract

A great deal of journalistic production is the result of rewriting and recontextualizing processes, both interlingual and intralingual processes. The dominance of certain languages, above all English, in the distribution of news through press agencies, also impacts on news content selection. This paper presents a couple of case studies focusing on the relationship between language knowledge, (non-)translation and selection procedures.

Acts of recontextualizing inevitably deal with the transfer of (national and cultural) images and stereotypes, as well as the conscious and unconscious changes involved. In modern media societies journalistic discourse is highly influential in producing and distributing national and cultural stereotyping. Research has shown that under certain circumstances stereotyping is likely to function by default in journalism, the so called ‘automaticity of stereotyping’ (Lasorsa & Dai 2007). This phenomenon will be illustrated with examples from three case studies in the media: 1. about sports journalism; 2. about the image-building of Germany (a highly interesting country for imagological research) during the recent financial crisis; and 3. about the use of the terms Western, Eastern and Central Europe.

About Luc van Doorslaer

Luc van Doorslaer is the director of CETRA, the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium), where he works as a Professor in Translation and Journalism Studies. As a Research Associate he is affiliated with Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Since 2016 he has been Vice President of EST, the European Society for Translation Studies. Together with Yves Gambier, he is the editor of the online Translation Studies Bibliography (13th release 2016) and the four volumes of the Handbook of Translation Studies (2010-13). Other recent books edited include Eurocentrism in Translation Studies (2013), The Known Unknowns of Translation Studies (2014), Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology (2016) and Border Crossings. Translation Studies and other Disciplines (2016). His main research interests are: journalism and translation, ideology and translation, imagology and translation, institutionalization of Translation Studies.

Abstract

400 hundred years of Shakespeare's presence in world-wide theatres, schools, literature, film, and even languages must give us pause. It is worth reflecting on what  there is in the texts that have come down to us that answers this great and obviously most diversified horizon of reception. The paper will try to present Shakespearean plots, characters and themes and examine them for their potential to become appropriated into the very centres of multiple cultural polysystems.

About Marta Gibińska

Prof. dr hab. Marta Gibińska worked until 2012 at the Jagiellonian University; at present she teaches at the Jozef Tischner European University in Krakow, Poland. Her special fields are  Shakespeare studies and translation studies. Her publications include among others Functioning of Language in Shakespeare’s Plays. A Pragma-dramatic Approach (1989), and Polish Poets Read Shakespeare (2000). She has also published extensively on theatrical history of Shakespeare in Poland and on Polish translations of Shakespeare. She is member of the Polish Shakespeare Society, Deutsche Shakespearegesellschaft, International Shakespeare Association, and European Shakespeare Research Association.

Abstract

Many scholars see the spread of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in an extremely positive light. A new field of academic research has sprung up around the subject with a plethora of articles and full-length books. Some writers have even gone as far as to regret that linguistic descriptions of English are still based on the language used by native speakers. I shall be adopting a rather different perspective in my paper. I shall first look at some of the advantages that ELF has indeed brought. I shall then discuss two fields in which I believe that the disadvantages are at least equal to — or indeed seriously outweigh — the advantages. The first of these is academic discourse, where I will be discussing recent developments in the field of Translation Studies. The second is the world of translation, and in particular professional translation.

About Lance Hewson

Lance Hewson spent some 20 years teaching at the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse. In 2002, he moved to the University of Geneva's Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, where he heads the English Unit. He teaches literary and pragmatic translation, runs seminars on translation criticism and contemporary translation theories, and teaches English as a passive language. He has published widely in the field of translation studies. His most recent publications include a book on translation criticism, and articles on a variety of topics, including the translator's subjectivity, the dangers of hybridity, explicitation and implicitation, creativity in translation, English as a lingua franca, and translating for a mass readership. His working languages are French, Croatian and German.

Abstract

There is a permanent conflict between the speakers using approximate, vague, and fuzzy language means and the scholars in search of the precise methods of interpreting those means. And the struggle stimulates the both parties – speakers resort to stylistic devices in their worldview cognition, and scholars, “due to the global quantitative accuracy” (Setnes, 1998), in its explanation to logic and mathematical analysis.  
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the definition of approximation as ‘coming or getting near to identity in quantity, quality, or degree; an approach to a correct estimate or conception of anything;’ of vagueness as ‘lack of distinctness or preciseness; indefiniteness;’ and of fuzziness as ‘indistinct, imprecise, vague’.
These three phenomena have a common component of contensive imprecision or indefiniteness which takes us back to the general opposition of definite vs. indefinite in language. But our aim is much more modest – to reveal the ways of the speaker’s choice of selecting an attribute expressed by qualitative adjective in L1and the reader’s choice of its equivalent in L2, that is translating or reflecting physical and non-physical features of the object by the speaker with the help of attributes and the reader’s re-translating them in L1 likewise in L2.
In the case of L2 the major difficulty is to retrieve a correlative unit which must mirror the ethnic-cultural feature of L2. There can be two directions in modeling semantic sets (cf.: Kennedy, 2005) linear, i.e. gradability direction-- moving of quality towards or away to the centre; and vertical, i.e. scalarity direction -- moving either upward (increase of quality) or downward (decrease of quality).
This paper will present a  Re-Translation  algorithm of approximative, fuzzy, and vague sets  in the frame  of cognitive semantics, applying some ideas of Linguistic Fuzzy Logic (Zade, 1965),  applying a more human-like way of thinking leaving a mathematical methods to mathematicians. There is a steady interest in data driven approaches to the acquisition of fuzzy systems from Plato to contemporary semanticists.

About Valery V. Mykhaylenko

Valery V. Mykhaylenko is a professor of the Department of Translation and Philology at King Danylo Galytskiy University of Law, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine and a professor of the Department of English at Yuri Fedkovych National University, Chernivtsi, Ukraine. He is an expert in Historical Grammar of Old Germanic Languages, Cognitive Semantics, and Translation/Interpretation. He has pioneered a Glossary Series of Terms in various professional discourses (Arts, Trade, Law, Medicine, Political Science, Economics, etc.) for the Translation majors and students of other specialities. Mykhaylenko is former chair of the Department of English (Chernivtsi National University, 1980-2008) and of the Department of Bukovyna State University of Finance and Economics (Chernivtsi, 2008-2013). His current research interests are Historical Semantics and Translation/Interpretation in a socio-cultural context.