Browsing by Author "Jayasinghe, D. G. T. A."

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The challenges faced by students in the interpretation classroom
(Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka, 2022) Jayasinghe, D. G. T. A.
The present research is an observational study on the challenges faced by 23 final year undergraduates of the Translation Studies Hons. Degree Program in the Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, studying the course unit ‘Introduction to Interpretation’. The undergraduates were taught by a professional interpreter. However, by observing the performance in the end semester examination, it was evident that the students face challenges in the learning process. Accordingly, the research problem of the present study was; ‘What are the challenges faced by students studying Interpretation course unit?’ The performance in the classroom and at the examination was initially observed and a follow up interview was also conducted in the process of identifying the challenges mainly based on Gile’s theory of interpretation, followed by a qualitative analysis of the collected data to recognize where to make interventions in future. The main challenge identified in the research was that weaknesses in relation to bilingual competency such as errors in subject verb agreement, starting the interpretation from the wrong segment of the original utterance and issues in converting reported speech into interpretation mode, wrong use of terminology and forgetting known terminology due to excitement. Other challenges were excitement and fear when they were asked to start interpretation, forgetting the facts in the original speech, insufficient knowledge about current incidents, interpreting years and numerical statistics and translating sentence segments and the limited time for this type of a new course unit, which needs more active participation and constant practice. So, it was identified that interventions can be made with regard to duration allocated to the course unit and language aspects related to interpretation.
The Problems Encountered by the Translators in Translating Cultural Words Depicted in the novels “Gamperaliya” and “Viragaya
(2019) Jayasinghe, D. G. T. A.
This research focuses on the problems encountered by the translators in translating cultural words depicted in the novels “Gamperaliya” and “Viragaya”. Accordingly, the researcher attempts to find the answer for the research problem “What are the problems faced by the translators in translating cultural words in “Gamperaliya” and “Viragaya”? There, the Source Texts were subjected to a close scanning process and thus identified the cultural words. It was followed by identifying the translated versions of those cultural words in the Target Texts. They were categorized based on the categorizations of Peter Newmark and Espindola, and thus conducted a qualitative content analysis using comparative research methodology. Accordingly, it was found that the translators faced problems such as encountering unfamiliar cultural words, finding the meanings of such unfamiliar cultural words, finding equivalents, collecting information to explain the cultural word in the text, translating religious terms, receiving the support of a subject expert or a native, translating proper names and deciding the most suitable procedure of translation among several strategies. The present research revealed that the culture creates a complex hurdle for the translators in Literary Translation.
Translation Loss in “Alimankada Sita”: the Sinhalese Translation of the Novel “The Road from Elephant Pass”
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2023) Jayasinghe, D. G. T. A.
Literary translation is an interesting but complex field of Translation Studies. If the translator fails to convey the idea given by the source text along with its extralinguistic elements, it will cause a translation loss. The objective of this study is to find the translation loss in the novel “Alimankada Sita”: the Sinhalese translation of “The Road from Elephant Pass”. Accordingly, the research problems are: “What are the linguistic levels at which translation loss occurs in “Alimankada Sita?” and “What are the reasons for such loss in translation?” Further, the researcher attempts to analyze the impact of such losses in rendering the meaning of the original text. This qualitative research was conducted as a comparative content analysis. Accordingly, it was found that translation losses occur at different linguistic levels. Further, it was found that such losses occur in instances where unnecessary omissions and additions take place, and in translating and transliterating Tamil terms, idiomatic phrases, taboos, slang, and dialogues. Moreover, it was identified that there are translation losses that occur as a result of following the structure of the source language, while not looking for the target language structure and equivalents on syntactic and semantic levels. It was also noticed that the lack of prior studies about Tamil language and culture which appear in dialogues is another cause for losses in the target text. Moreover, the impact of such losses could give incorrect information to the target reader. They damage intended message of the original writer of the story as well as the feelings generated through some vital incidents.