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American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

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ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688 AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research)

The quality of translation services in rural communities: the case of the Esiwe Municipality Thandazile Nombuso Mngomezulu and Rosethal Lolie Makhubu Durban University of Technology The Department of Media, Language and Communication 41-43 ML Sultan Road/Box 1334 Durban-4000, South Africa Abstract: The focus of the paper is on the quality of translation services in rural areas, with special reference to the Esiwe Municipality (false name) given to the municipality where the study was done since the real name is withheld due to some terms from the municipality. It is the concern of the study to find out about the Municipality’s level of competency in the field of translation with regards to the acceptability and the quality of their translated documents mainly from English into isiZulu or vice versa. The study was prompted by the fact that upon visiting the Municipality, it was discovered that on the Municipality’s notice board there were notices which created the interest on finding out more about the quality of the translation services provided by municipalities in rural communities but specifically the Esiwe Municipality. This research attempts to advocate for the use of suitably qualified people whose field of specialization is in translation. Keywords: Rural Municipalities, Quality of Translation Services, Rural Communities I. Introduction Translation in most cases it is taken as the service required to render message to between the two parties that do not understand each other. However, that is the main focus. Before it is delivered to the receiver it has to be checked it level of competency. Translators need to guarantee that their translation provided is of an acceptable quality to those you cater and it has been stated on the South African Languages Act proposed by Pan South African Language Board (PANSALB) that municipalities must provide the service using the language clearly understood by the surrounding community Amended version of the South African Language Act (2011, p.12). The focus of the study is on the quality of translation services in the rural area with special reference to the Esiwe, The study try to find out the effort of rural municipality with regards to the acceptability and the quality of their translated documents, mainly from English into isiZulu or vice versa. Furthermore, it is the researcher’s belief that the quality of translation in the targeted municipality has a major influence in addressing the needs of the said community. “Translating is a professional activity, governed by rules of the marketplace” (Robinson 2012, p.60). Therefore, this suggests that when a translator translates a document, he or she has to be mindful of the target readership, which in this regard is the community of the aforesaid municipality where the study is undertaken in order to ensure that the translated text is influential as the source text. Having said that, this also means that the accuracy in the target text should not be compromised by all means possible. This research attempts to advocate for the use of suitably qualified translators who are in possession of the relevant credentials in order to perform translations duties which are at an adequate and acceptable quality or standard. According to the South African Translators’ Institute (2007), being bilingual or multilingual does not mean one will automatically be a good translator - being a good language practitioner, particularly a translator in this regard requires a formal training, just like in any other professions e.g. finance, law, medicine etc. The skills used in the translation process are unique and complex and therefore only a trained translator has the ability to deal with such also ensuring that the quality is not compromised. II. The Rural Community Setting According to Rural area (2014), a rural area is a community situated outside the urban areas and in most cases it is a community that usually lacks some service delivery or the one that lacks development. Rural communities usually end up accepting services of a poor quality just because they are desperate communities. The structure or organization that delivers services is the municipality. In order for the municipality to communicate with its residents, there must be a language that both parties will understand clearly. Translation or interpreting is then required as a service that can bridge the communication between residents and the municipality. Esiwe

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Municipality falls under those municipalities that are articulated to cater for the rural communities. The Esiwe community is the community located in the north eastern part of KwaZulu-Natal. It is a place where there are still people who go to river to fetch water, go to the forest to fetch woods and still use candles for lighting. Even though there are places which are slightly developed. Local Municipality Statistics (2011) shows that the Esiwe area covers 3057 km². It was a rural municipality with 89% of the people staying in rural areas ruled by traditional authorities. The main issue that faced by the people living in rural communities is that their education is limited. Municipalities deployed to cater the rural communities need to make sure that the receiver of their services acquire good knowledge and appreciate freedom and their language dignity. III. Translation Process Every time when people speak of translation, they tend to confuse it with interpreting. Both processes deal with conveying the message but the truth is there is a distinct between the two. Before everything, the two terms are going to be discussed to illustrate the distinction between the two. It is therefore significant to first start by defining the term translation even though the main focus of the study based on the quality of translation. Translation is a process of diverging the meaning of a source language text into a target text (Webber and Wallace 2007, p.151). On the other hand, translation is defined “as the transference of a written text from one language into another language” (Makhubu 2011, p. 4). According to the South African Translators’ Institutes (2007), having knowledge of languages or being bilingual or multilingual does not mean one will automatically be a good translator or interpreter. Although the profession in South Africa is not currently regulated (which means anyone is free to work as a translator or interpreter), but being a good language practitioner involves formal training and a commitment to giving your client a flawless product. This clearly shows that it is not always the matter of provision but the quality should also be critically taken into account. Munday (2009, p.19) says translation is not only about conveying the message but it is also concerned about the way in which other cultural facets and forms are used. This is also supported by Robinson (2012, p.60) where he states that “Translating is a professional activity, governed by rules of the marketplace”. This suggests that translators should be target readership oriented when translating a text in order to avoid nuances which might be considered offensive to them. According to Munday (2004, p.4), “translating implicates more than interchanging a word with its equivalent in another language where sentences and ideas must be manipulated to flow with the same coherence as those in the source document so that the translation may be same as it invented in the target language. Translators need to be the ones who abide any cultural references that may need to be explained to the intended audience, such as colloquialisms, slang, and other expressions that do not translate literally”. Having considered the rules as per Robinson’s suggestion, this means that not anybody can simply translate and render quality translation service without having been taught or trained extensively. Based on the researcher’s personal experience, she refers to translation as the process involving rewriting source language materials into target language making it similar to the source language. Alternatively, translation may refer to the end product of work done by a professional translator who renders the information or message from one language into another guided by rule and code of conduct of translators , interpreters and cultures of languages involved through written materials. Nolan (2005,p.1) confirms that translation serves as a written communication tool from one language to another which is called a target language and a source language. According to Nogueira and Semolini (2012, p.13), “there is no such a thing as perfect translation and even if there were, we could not be sure it would satisfy the average client or critic. But we have been looking for ways to improve the quality of our translations”. Even if there is no such translation that is said to be perfect but there are techniques that can be used to avoid poor translation. Translation is an activity or a system of communication which involves stages that have to be taken into consideration in order to produce a good translation of acceptable quality. III. Quality The Business dictionary (2014, p.421) defines quality as a way of how well a delivered service fit in to what is expected by the clients, however sometimes clients fail to distinguish the service of an acceptable quality and just a normal service which can be caused by not being exposed to such services or by having limited knowledge about the services. It is when it calls business workers to regularly evaluate the quality of their services provided to their customers in order to development the quality of their service, to quickly recognize complications as well as noticing whether their clients are satisfied regardless of the alertness of their customer. IV. Method This study is constructed on a critical theory. Wayne (2010, p.213) describes critical theory as the theory that is aimed at creating political debates and empowering people to take action, to bring about change in existing social structures and processes. Therefore, this study seeks to discover how the quality of translation services is and strives to create awareness if there is any injustice regarding the quality of translation services. According to Johnson and Christensen (2012, p.195) method of data collection is a system or a way of gaining information or

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data to be scrutinized in a study. There are six methods of collecting data mainly applied by educational researchers. Following are the data collection tools that are used in this study: • Qualitative interviews • Questionnaires • Secondary or existing data

V. Discussion It was hypothesized that the translation services may not be of an acceptable quality, and indeed the hypothesis was proven to be true and also stated by the translator of the municipality. There were also public notices that were displayed for community members which had some errors that compromised the acceptability of the municipality’s translation. The newsletter was also viewed and it was noted that at some point the translation was not done, instead both English and isiZulu were used on the same newsletter. The research questions alarmed the unacceptability of the translation quality of the municipality. Does the Esiwe Municipality make it their priority to provide translations of acceptable quality? The Esiwe Municipality strives to provide translation of an acceptable quality but the problem is that there is no allocated budget for translation services. Therefore, the municipality uses anyone who is also not qualified to translate the documents but not qualified translators. Even though the municipality tries to provide translation, their translation is not of an acceptable quality since there are several errors on the translation. Another possible factor for such poor translation quality could be the fact that there are no proof readers appointed to proof read the documents after translation. Hence, documents are distributed to the community without verifying the acceptability and quality of the translated version. The second question: What means do officials make to ensure that the quality of translation at the Esiwe Municipality is maintained? Looking at the Head of Translators’ response, the Esiwe Municipality is willing to maintain the quality of their translation since they have raised their request to the Department of Rural Development and Land reform for an allocation of translator’s budget. The budget will then allow them to design a designated post for qualified language practitioners, these will include: translators, interpreters, editors, proof readers etc. The third question was: Do they consider the quality of translation as one of the important aspects when it comes to written communication? Yes, they do consider translation as an important aspect of a written communication hence they have appointed someone to provide translation services even though there is no designed post for translators but they have seen the need for translation. VI. Recommendations The recommendations made by participants were that, the municipality needs to use the language that they will understand clearly as community members. The Head of Translators recommended that, government needs to allocate a budget for the municipal translators because translation is very important specifically in the municipalities based in the rural areas where English is a second language. It is recommended by the researcher that the Esiwe Municipality needs to first develop a language unit which will address and execute language communication matters on a full time basis. It is noted by the researcher that translation is not adequately done by the Municipality. Some community members stated that sometimes they receive notices written in English and not translated, which is true. It was the researcher’s concern that some of documents are written- in isiZulu and some are written in English only, whereas some are written in both languages but not in a translated form. In short, the Esiwe Municipality needs to consider the lack of proper and professional translation services as a serious challenge which requires urgent attention and must join hands with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. Perhaps an immediate solution could be reached with also some seeking some guidance from the provincial language structures namely Pan SALB, Arts and Culture. The Outsource 2india (2015) highlighted that transference of messages either can be by marketing communication, reports, advertising and website content all can still fail to make an impression if it is not translated. The importance of translation targets to tie the communication gap by helping companies to reach their audience by translating in a language their clients can clearly understand. Moreover, Outsource2india states that “inaccurate translation can alter the intended message, and have a negative effects on your business” Furthermore, the above stated author mentioned that because there are various translation companies and freelance translators some end up offering translation service of a cheap costs neglecting the price of quality of translation for the target readership. This points out that the translation services are important but most important when it is of a good quality whether it is the machine translation or a human translated text. Toury (1995, p.26), argues strongly that translation belongs to the target culture. “Translation is embedded in culture, there is no way translation could share systematic space with the original translation and translation would be in a position to be on source culture again on accession on the source text itself”. Hatim and Mason (1997, p.1)

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share the very same idea that “translation should be looked upon as the act of communication that attempts to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communication”. VII. Conclusion This study revealed that even though there are structures that are formed to make sure that translation services are provided in a professional way. The findings show that translation is not effectively provided and where it is provided the quality is not acceptable particularly in rural communities. The services are provided by anyone who understands more than one language which leads to the neglecting of the translation ethics. References Business Dictionary. (2015), Definition of quality [online].Available: http://www.businessdictionary.com/. ( February 03, 2015),pp 2014:421. Hatim, B. and Mason, I. (1997), The translator as communicator. London: Routledge Publication Ltd. Johnson, B. and Christensen, L, (2012), Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative and mixed approaches.4th ed. London: SAGE Publication Ltd. Makhubu, R, L. (2011), Development of an interpreting services model at the Durban University of Technology. Durban. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Munday, J. (2004), Introducing translation and interpreting studies: Theory and applications. London: Routlegde. Munday, J. (2009), The Routledge companion to translation studies. USA: Routledge. Nolan, J.,(2005),Interpreting techniques and exercises. England: Multilingual Matters LTD. Nogueira, D and Semolini, K. (2012), Twelve Ways to Enhance Translation Quality .[online]. Available: http://www.sls.org.za/IndustryNews/twelve-ways-to-enhance-translation-quality. ( November 24, 2012). Outsource2india. (2014), Importance of translation [online]. Available: http://www.outsource2india.com/translation/articles/translationimportance.asp. ( February 12, 2015). Robinson, D. (2012), Becoming a translator: an introduction to the theory and practice of translation. 3rd ed. USA: Routledge. Rural area, (2014) what is a rural area.[online]. Available: https://www.google.co.za/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=1RDBVMmBJ8SDaOLfgBg&gws_rd=ssl#q=rural+area. (June 12, 2014). South Africa’s Translators Institutes, (2007). Becoming a language practitioner [online]. Available: http://translators.org.za/sati_cms/index.php?frontend_action=display_text_content&content_id=1. (June 23, 2012.) Toury, G. (1995), The nature and role of norms in translation. In idem, Descriptive translation studies and beyond. AmsterdamPhiladelphia: John Publicatin Benjamins, pp 26-59. Vernon, J. and Menard, M. (2010), Quality progress: Quality lost in translation. Scholarly journals of quality lost in translation [online], 39 (8): 27-32. Available: http://dut.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?s.cmd=addFacetValueFilters. (July 15, 2012). Wayne K, (2010), Qualitative research in education. A primer. India: Sage Publication Ltd. Wang, N. and Sun, Y. (2008), Translation, globalization and localisation: A Chinese perspective. USA: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Webber, L. and Wallace, M. (2007), Quality control for dummies. Canada; Willey Publishing.incl.

Acknowledgments Our gratitude goes to the said Municipality and all the participants for allowing us to conduct research. Gratitude also goes the Durban University of Technology for financial support.

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