Open AccessAre Translators Really Subservient? Empirical Evidence from Lexical Transfer and Language Prestige in Curaçao
Author(s) -
Courtney G. Parkins-Ferrón
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
research in language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.165
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 2083-4616
pISSN - 1731-7533
DOI - 10.18778/1731-7533.18.3.01
Subject(s) - prestige , agency (philosophy) , perspective (graphical) , linguistics , process (computing) , sociology , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , social science , philosophy , operating system
This paper examines whether translator subservience is generalisable among translators. Taking professional Curaçaoan Papiamentu translators as a case study built on a much larger work, the research looks at issues of subservience from the perspective of agency in the English-to-Papiamentu lexical transfer process and at the influence of language prestige. The results show instances in which the translators reported more lexical transfers than did the non-translators. The results also reveal an overlooked translator agency in the process rather than translator subservience, in view of the fact that in this process they are on the “frontline”, pre-empting whatever decisions the official language planners make.