The impact of style on the quality of writing and translation

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dc.abstract.enThe “secret” of style seems easy and straightforward; yet, it is hard to put in practice. For years, it has had many distinguished advocates: Strunk (1918), Orwell (1946), Vonnegut (1985), Lesikar (2001), (Williams 2015) etc. but not enough practitioners. “Teaching the principles of style … has long tradition especially at the American academic institutions. One of the biggest authorities among the experts on style has been the late Joseph Williams from Chicago University. His academic coursebook, entitled Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace was first published in 1981 and up till now has had more than eleven editions, with the latest one published in 2015 and co-edited by Joseph Bizup” (Gadomska, 2017). Williams proposes ten principles, which when applied, result in “writing clearly.” The authors observed that although these ideas were formulated for English, they can, surprisingly, also be effective (for the most part) in writing in Polish. Moreover, they help paraphrase complex discourse, which results in its better understanding and, consequently, improved quality. This in turn may have a positive effect on the text’s translation. In fact, the style of the original may have an impact not only on the way the author is perceived but also the translated is evaluated. “Unclear writing is a social problem, but it often has private causes.” (Williams and Bizup, 2015, p. 4). The authors of the paper present the intercultural universality of the ten principles by Williams with a particular focus on applying them in translation practice. Having made the claim that clarity may have a significant impact on performance in translation, the authors discuss the notion of translation quality with particular emphasis on the ways in which it can be measured and evaluated. Subsequently, the authors propose and attempt to justify a paradigm for evaluating quality against communicative value. The case study consists of an analysis of a diverse range of English texts which could benefit from a more diligent approach to stylistics, and their subsequent comparison to ones where the ten principles have been observed to a greater extent. Further, translations of both groups of texts performed by university students are analysed with a view to finding out whether writing clearly may in fact lead to better translation output (i.e. whether the ten principles tend to transpire in the target text or, quite simply, become lost in translation).
dc.affiliationWydział Nauk Humanistycznych w Warszawie
dc.contributor.authorGadomska, Agnieszka
dc.contributor.authorSzwed, Marcin
dc.contributor.editorLewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara
dc.date.access2024-07-02
dc.date.accessioned2024-07-02T06:59:00Z
dc.date.available2024-07-02T06:59:00Z
dc.date.created2020
dc.date.issued2020
dc.description.accesstimeat_publication
dc.description.physical169-181
dc.description.seriesSecond Language Learning and Teaching
dc.description.versionfinal_published
dc.identifier.isbn9783030433352
dc.identifier.seriesissn2193-7648
dc.identifier.urihttps://share.swps.edu.pl/handle/swps/769
dc.identifier.weblinkhttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-43336-9_10
dc.languageen
dc.pbn.affiliationjęzykoznawstwo
dc.pbn.affiliationliteraturoznawstwo
dc.pbn.affiliationnauki o kulturze i religii
dc.publisher.ministerialState University of Applied Sciences in Konin
dc.relation.bookCultural conceptualizations in translation and language applications
dc.relation.pages259
dc.rightsClosedAccess
dc.rights.explanationzamknięty dostęp do monografii
dc.rights.questionNo_rights
dc.share.monoOPEN_REPOSITORY
dc.swps.sciencecloudnosend
dc.titleThe impact of style on the quality of writing and translation
dc.typeMonographyChapter
dspace.entity.typeBook