Traducteur natif ou non natif ?
Native or non-native?

Translation directionality and its perception

Summary/Abstract: This article tackles the question of L2 translation (or non-native translation), examining its role in the translation industry and its specificities. An empirical study was carried out with the aim of objectively evaluating the perception of L2 translation with respect to its nativeness and acceptability. Twenty subjects having French as their mother tongue gave their opinion on a set of utterances translated by native and non-native translators. The results show that a certain number of native utterances were identified as non-native, while approximately one half of the non-native utterances were identified as native. The acceptability turns out to be strongly correlated with perceived nativeness. The perceived non-nativeness seems to be determined primarily by stylistic and grammatical errors. No effect of the respondents’ age or domain of education was identified. The proficiency in Czech seems to increase the tolerance towards L2 translation.

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