For the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication (TiCC) research program "Language, Communication and Cognition" (LCC), we are looking for two new, enthusiastic and competent PhD colleagues.
If you are interested in one of these positions, you will need to identify a potential research topic related to one of the research themes of the LCC program. Current themes include:
- Social media and interpersonal communication.
- Professional communication (medical, business, etc.).
- Alignment and adaptation in communication.
- Social exclusion and other social aspects of interaction.
- Emotion and speech.
- Language acquisition and learning.
- Multimodality and communication.
- Language and speech production.
- Visual communication (diagrams, metaphors, etc.).
- Gesture and other forms of non-verbal behavior
For the positions we seek candidates with a background in a relevant discipline, including Psycholinguistics, Communication & Information Sciences, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Psychology or some related area, with experience in doing experiments and analyzing data.
The PhD candidates have a good (research) master degree in one of the aforementioned areas, a strong interest in doing research, excellent writing skills and a good command of English. Developing and defending a research plan is part of the procedure.
Tilburg University is rated among the top Dutch employers, offering excellent terms of employment. The collective labour agreement of Tilburg University applies. The selected candidates will start with a contract for one year, concluded by an evaluation. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for the remaining years. Candidates with a Research Master (MPhil) will be offered a 1+2 years-contract. Master students might be offered a 1+3 years-contract. It is also possible to work 80% instead of fulltime. The PhD candidates will be ranked in the Dutch university job ranking system (UFO) as a PhD-student (promovendus) with a starting salary of € 2.042,-- gross per month in the first year, up to € 2.612,-- in the fourth year (amounts fulltime). The selected candidate is expected to have written a PhD thesis by the end of the contract (which may be based on articles).
Research in the Department of Communication and Information Sciences is located in the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication (TiCC). TiCC consists of two research programs: Language, Communication and Cognition (LCC) and Creative Computing (CC). There is a strong emphasis on experimental research and interdisciplinary cooperation. More information about the research programs can be found athttp://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/ticc/. There is a strong emphasis on experimental work and interdisciplinary cooperation. The department DCI is responsible for a flourishing academic programme Communication and Information Sciences (CIW), that annually attracts about 120 Bachelor students, 130 Pre-master and 200 Master students. The department is also co-responsible for the Research Master Language and Communication. More information about the DCI department can be found at www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/humanities/dci/.
For more information on the positions, please contact one of LCC program leaders prof.dr. Emiel Krahmer (E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl, +311346630700) or prof.dr. Marc Swerts (M.G.J.Swerts@uvt.nl, +31134662922).
Applications should include.
- a cover letter.
- a Curriculum Vitae.
- a 2-page research proposal on a selected theme, plus names of potential supervisor and promotor.
- names of two references.
The only way to apply is via the online link at the bottom of this vacancy: "apply direct". If you receive this vacancy via eg. E-mail, please look at the vacancy located at: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/. Applications should be sent before the application deadline of March 24, 2012. Interviews are expected to be held in April 2012. Starting dates are flexible, so applicants who expect to graduate in the summer of 2012 are also invited to apply.
Translation Techniques in the Asiatic Cultures
Panel description
General premise
Modern studies on language (both in linguistics and in philosophy) made clear that in the human communication the linguistic expressions proper are only a constituent part of a more complex and manyfold process. Not everything that the hearers of a message understand is actually uttered by the speakers. A very big amount of information is left unsaid. In order to understand the message, the hearer has to obtain the missing pieces of knowledge from his internal encyclopedia, or to infer the information from the circumstances of the discourse and some general assumptions shared by all the speakers.A few authors may be mentioned, whose works are very revealing in this respect. Thus, Louis HJELMSLEV (1953) has shown the great importance of the meta-semiotic layers of the communication. Not only the semantic content (or denotation) of a message, i.e. what is said, is important and informative, but also the so-called connotation, i.e. how is said what is said, has often a big relevance in the discourse. This is what happens, for example, with poetical texts: they are bearers of additional semiotic burden represented by metrics, rhymes and the strophic structure. Indeed, the poetical features of the text are as much meaningful as the literal meaning of the words, but are located at a completely different semiotic level.
Also, the philosophy of language of Paul GRICE (1981) is worth of a mention, since this author revealed the importance for the communication of implicit knowledge that the speakers infer from the observation of the communicative process (discourse implicatures) and from some general assumptions about the human semiotic behavior (conversational maxims). With Grice's conceptual framework in mind we are able to explain how do the humans communicate so much with so few words.
Theory and practice of translation: a linguistic approach
All this is of a great relevance for the translation studies. Indeed, as is clear since long time, the most problematic issue for a translator is not to translate what is effectively said, but to transpose what is implicitly communicated though being unsaid.Thus, when a translator deals with a text — especially if it is a poetic, religious or technical one — the content to transpose in another language is not limited to the literal meanings of the words that constitute the message. The translator is supposed to construct an expression in the target language that not only has the same literal meaning, but also the same unsaid implications and the same meta-semiotic connotations as the source text. The mastery of the translator consists in putting all these components together without weighing down the resulting message with excessive explanations and comments; indeed, the translation itself "remains perhaps the most direct form of commentary", according to D. G. Rossetti's well-known statement (see ROSSETTI 1861).
The translators of all the times have faced this problem, have often found some more or less felicitous solutions of it, and sometimes have even theorized about it. In most cases, the translators became aware of the "problem of the unsaid" in language far before the linguistic studies have reached a solution to this problem. A very known case, in such regard, is that of St. Jerome who claimed, in his treatise on the theory of translation (De optimo genere interpretandi), for the supremacy of the "sense-by-sense" translation over the "word-by-word" approach (see MARTI 1974). Not suprisingly, such an opposition is still valid also in contemporary translation studies. Thus, George Nida, one of the most known scholars of translation, speaks about formal-equivalence translations vs. functional-equivalence translations, but the opposition is basically the same as the one dealt with by Jerome (see NIDA & TABER 1982; VENUTI 2000).
Indeed, the senses to be translated are often not stated directly in the original wording and are only communicated implicitly or presupposed. Therefore, translating word-by-word would not be sufficient. Jerome simply stated the necessity of taking care of what we would call "meta-semiotic reference", "frame semantics" and "discourse implicatures" nowadays. For Jerome this is more a technique than a theory. But even in the case of G. Nida, his theoretical thinking strongly depends on his own translation practice.
The present panel is devoted to the analysis of this kind of "naïve" solutions of the "problem of unsaid", i.e. the translation techniques of ancient translators. A theoretic framework as the one explained above is supposed to be the best clue for understanding and interpreting such translation techinques.
References
Call for papers
Papers are welcome dealing with translation techinques in Asiatic cultural context, possibly in ancient period, but even in modern times provided that the translator is unaware of the modern linguistic theories. A theoretical approach similar, or equivalent, to the one presented above should be used as a general framework.Papers on, for instance, the following topics are welcome:
The proposed papers may treat the following historical-cultural areas, among others:
Important dates and further information
Deadlines
Participation to the proceedings book
Artemij KEIDAN
University of Rome "La Sapienza"
Institute of Oriental Studies
P.le Aldo Moro 5
00185 Roma
artemij.keidan@uniroma1.it