First Published in 2011. This special issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer provides a forum for reflection on questions of ethics in the context of translator and interpreter education. Covering a wide range of training contexts and types of translation and interpreting, contributors call for a radically altered view of the relationship between ethics and the translating and interpreting profession, a relationship in which ethical decisions can rarely, if ever, be made a priori but must be understood and taught as an integral and challenging element of one's work

The definition of value or quality with respect to work in translation has historically been a particularly vexed issue. Today, however, the growing demand for translations in such fields as technology and business and the increased scrutiny of translators' work by scholars in many disciplines is giving rise to a need for more nuanced, more specialized, and more explicit methods of determining value. Some refer to this determination as evaluation, others use the term assessment. Either way, the question is one of measurement and judgement, which are always unavoidably subjective and frequently rest on criteria that are not overtly expressed. This means that devising more complex evaluative practices involves not only quantitative techniques but also an exploration of the attitudes, preferences, or individual values on which criteria are established. Intended as an interrogation and a critique that can serve to prompt a more thorough and open consideration of evaluative criteria, this special issue of The Translator offers examinations of diverse evaluative practices and contains both empirical and hermeneutic work. Topics addressed include the evaluation of student translations using more up-to-date and positive methods such as those employed in corpus studies; the translation of non?standard language; translation into the second language; terminology; the application of theoretical criteria to practice; a social?textual perspective; and the reviewing of literary translations in the press. In addition, reviews by a number of literary translators discuss specific translations both into and out of English.

"Memorias de Leticia Valle" (1945) is the fictionalized diary of an eleven-year-old girl who records an "inconceivable" seduction. Set in early twentieth-century Spain, the events she chronicles take place in the village of Simancas, site of a castle that houses a famous archive. Leticia, the archivist, and his wife--Leticia's piano teacher--are the actors in this drama, which is rehearsed in a purely introspective way. The seduction resembles that of a thirteen-year-old girl in Dostoyevsky's "The Possessed," but it does not result in Leticia's mental or physical destruction. Rather, it acts as the catalyst for a deep questioning and exploration of life.

Translated texts are often either uncritically consumed by readers, teacher, and scholars or seen to represent an ineluctable loss, a diminishing of original texts. Translation, however, is a cultural practice, influenced also by social and political imperatives, which can open more doors than it closes. The essays in this book show how the act of translation, when vigilantly and critically attended to, becomes a means for active interrogation.