Metalanguage for the translation process
Masaru Yamada
Kansai University

Mayuka Yamamoto
Kansai University

Nanami Onish
Kansai University

yamada@apple-eye.com

mayuka626@gmail.com

nnm.co5vcu.krm@gmail.com

Atsushi Fujita
NICT

Rei Miyata
Nagoya University

Kyo Kageura
University of Tokyo

atsushi.fujita@nict.go.jp

miyata@nuee.nagoyau.ac.jp

kyo@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Keywords: metalanguage, ISO 17100, translation process, translation strategy, decision list

1

Introduction

The expression “translation process” has two major
usages. In translation process research (TPR), which“works within a behavioral-cognitive experimental
methodologicalparadigm”(Jakobsen,
2017),“translation process” basically refers to cognitive andrelated process of individual translators. TPR
contributed significantly to our understanding ofhitherto underaddressed aspects of translation, i.e., thecognitive process in translation act and factors
affecting the process, such as the relation between
cognitive effort and specific linguistic features (e.g.,
Lacruz et al., 2018). On the other hand, in translationindustries, “translation process” refers to the “external”
process consisting of such modules as a client-TSP
contract, brief definition, project management,
translation, revision, reviewing, quality assurance, etc.
In this presentation, we address the translation process
in the latter meaning.
Descriptions of translation processes in the latter sense,
as such those most typically given in ISO 17100 (ISO,2015), generally seem to assume alreadyknowledgeable actors as their target readers and remain
coarse. As translation industries are growing andincorporating rapidly changing technologies, weobserve a serious issue here, i.e., lack of common
understanding of translation processes among different
actors. MT developers and other natural language
processing (NLP) researchers and engineers deal witha very limited part of translation processes without so
noticing consciously. Translation learners need to gain
competences and norms through practice without being
given a scaffold of explicit and detailed knowledge on
the processes. We observe a dearth of concrete andsystematized terms and expressions in talking abouttranslation processes as one of the main causes of thissituation.

Against this backdrop, we set out a project ofdeveloping a set of “metalanguages” for facilitating
and promoting the level of shared understanding oftranslation in general and concrete translation
processes going on in translation industries. The
overview of our metalanguages is given in thispresentation. We begin by explaining ISO 17100 as abasis of describing our translation process, and thenelucidate issues with these descriptions of operations
pertaining to each subprocess. In the following sections,
we provide brief descriptions of our proposed
metalanguages tailored for talking about translation
issues (Section 4), translation process (Section 5), andtranslation strategies (Section 6). We also touch on
how such metalanguage can be used to annotate TPR
databases (Section 7).

2

ISO 17100 as a basis of translation
process

This section describes translation process andsubprocesses for which we are targeting to create
metalanguages. We utilize ISO 17100 as a basis fordescribing details of the translation process. As
illustrated in Figure 1, the process is divided into threephases: pre-translation, translation, and posttranslation. Translatorial actions (Holz-Mänttäri, 1984),
meta-actions taken by translators and actors involvedin the processes before and after the translational action
may correspond to the pre/post-translation processes in
Figure 1. For instance, in “Client-TSP agreement(4.4)”, specifications for the translation task is decided
by the project manager through negotiation with theclient prior to the beginning of the actual job. The
content of the specification or so-called translation
brief plays an important role, as it influences the core
process of translation or translational action wheretranslation is produced by a translator throughmanipulations of semiotics such as the source and thetarget texts.
Translation processes (“Section 5”) in Figure 1 that
follow the pre-translation (“Section 4”) is so-called
TEP (translation, editing, and proofreading), which
consists of translation, check, revision, review, andproofreading in the ISO 17100. Actors to be involvedin the translation phase are: 1) the translator, who is incharge of “Translation (5.3.1)” and “ Check (5.3.2)”or self-revision, 2) the reviewer, who is responsible for“Revision (5.3.3)” and “Review (5.3.4)”, and 3) the
proofreader, who performs “Proofreading (5.3.5)”.

3

Description of operations

Given the overall flow of processes and subprocesses
and operations described above, an issue arises as tothe description of the operations for each subprocess interms of its granularity – as to whether the actor cantake actions according to the given description –especially for translation training and establishing ashared understanding of each operation in detail. Let us
examine examples of descriptions excerpted from ISO
17100 (ISO, 2015) regarding “Translation 5.3.1” and“Revision 5.3.3”, as follows:
5.3.1 Translation: The translator shall translate inaccordance with the purpose of the translation
project, including the linguistic conventions of thetarget language and relevant project specifications.
(p. 10)5.3.3 Revision: The reviser shall examine thetarget language content against the source language
content for any errors and other issues, and its
suitability for purpose. (pp. 10-11)

Although the description contains some important
keywords such as “project specifications” and“purpose”, it is not sufficiently concrete to be used fortranslator training or for establishing a common
understanding of translation by specifying actions
necessary to achieve the translation for people who are
not experienced in translation. Once again, ISO 17100
reads, “The translator shall translate in accordance withthe purpose”. However, the description with this levelof granularity is the same as saying that the translator
can translate, unless any further explanations areprovided as to what one should do for achieving it.
Otherwise, one must acquire or infer the tacit skills
through practice or just by guessing, without knowing
exactly what to do.
The word “purpose” is also vague in the sense that no
explanation of the components of purpose is provided
in the ISO standard. In the phase of “Client-TSP
agreement 4.4”, the TSP is only instructed to retain arecord of the agreement in writing. After all,“translating in accordance with the purpose” is justanother way of saying “translating as the client
wants”,f and inevitably most parts of the translation job
must depend on the person’s perception or tacit skills
if he or she happens to have them.
While fully recognizing that ISO 17100 is for TSPs andnot for learners or NLP engineers, it is used as animportant point of reference for translation practices intranslation industries, the aspect that has not been fully
explored in translation studies. Enriching thedescriptions of translation processes based on ISO
17100 would thus benefit wider range of actors
including learners and engineers. Therefore, one aim of
this study is to increase the granularity of descriptions
pertaining to translation processes in the form of

Figure 1. ISO 17100 Translation Processmetalanguages through which learners and different
actors will be able to operationalize the tacit knowledgeof translation for better practice and communication.

4

Metalanguage of translation issues

Our benchmark for achieving a higher degree of detailis translation quality assurance (QA) scheme, a set ofissue categories used by reviewers to check fortranslation errors in the industries and translation
training. The QA scheme can be the criteria for the
granularity of descriptions in our metalanguage. One
well-known example is MQM, multidimensional
quality metrics (Burchardt and Lommel, 2014), which
is now the de-facto QA scheme.
The use of such a typology makes the coarse
descriptions more operationalizable. For instance, let
us see the aforementioned ISO description about“Revision 5.3.3”. The concept of “errors” and “issues”
are vague; they can be operationalized in a much higher
granularity with consistency in detection when thequality metrics are employed. For these reasons, theerror categories are now utilized even by researchers
who annotate errors of both human and machinetranslation for research assessment purposes (e.g.,Specia and Shah, 2014).
We have also developed our own issue typology called
MNH-TT issue typology specialized for universitylevel training, based on MeLLANGE issue categories(Castagnoli et al., 2006; Secară, 2005). Issue categories
and their structure were systematically fine-tuned to
improve usability with learners/instructors. For that wehave compiled a list of issue categories in the form ofa decision tree, a step-by-step guide to help learners
classify issues, as provided in Figure 2 (Fujita et al.,2017).
In order to identify an issue in accordance with theissue typology, a learner first finds the issue andcategorizes it to the appropriate category. For instance,
if a part of the source text is found to be untranslated
and the part that corresponds to the source does notappear in the target text, the learner asks a question
about the issue according to the decision tree byanswering Yes or No, starting with the Q1a. When sheor he finds an answer to be Yes to the question, thenthe issue will be classified as instructed herein. If not,the leaner proceeds with the following question until
she or he finds the answer. In this example, Q1a is
answered No, Q1b is answered No, Q2a is answered
No, and Q2b is answered No. As a result, the issue isclassified into X1 omission. In this way, the issue

Figure 2. Decision tree for classifying a given issue(Fujita et al., 2017)

typology will help equip learners with common
knowledge to talk about translation issues with peers
and the instructor.
Of greater importance is that the set of issue categories
will serve as a metalanguage for the learners (Piao etal., 2019). Learners who could not distinctly recognize
errors will be able to identify 16 types of errors after
having learnt with the issue typology. That is to say,meta-recognition is made possible with metalanguage.
The expected acquired skill is not only the improved
ability to check errors during revision but also theimproved translation competence of students having
become conscious of making such errors duringtranslation.
A benefit in consistency of classification is also
expected in terms of both intra-reviser agreement(within the learner revising multiple issues) and interreviser agreement (among multiple learners revising
the same issue). The advantage is expected not only fortraining but also for enhancing shared communication

among actors in interdisciplinary fields. For instance,
when MT developers and translation practitioners talkabout translation issues produced by an MT engine, thelevel of each participant’s understanding about issue
categories should improve with the use of shared
metalanguage. These show that the level ofconcreteness of descriptions represented by QA
scheme and MNH-TT issue typology facilitates
understanding and communications among different
actors with different backgrounds or with different
degree of experiences.

5

Metalanguages of translation process

Here we introduce modules of translation processes foreach of which a subset of metalanguages is developed.
Based on the framework of translation processprovided in ISO 17100, we divided the translation
process into the five sub-phases as shown in Figure 3,
then design a set of metalanguages each of whichcorresponds to a specific sub-phase. A brief
explanation of the metalanguage for each sub-phase is
as follows:(1) Translation project management process: Based on
descriptions provided in ISO 17100 illustrating
subprocesses, we break them down into finer-grained
and operationalizable items which a person in training
can complete as answering a questionnaire. For
instance, it is not clear as to what kind of information
one needs to obtain in order to determine the purposeof translation during the Client-TSP agreement phase.
More specifically, if information such as the target
audience is required for determining the purpose, theitem should be broken down into the variables thatdefine the target audience, such as gender, age,interests, and community membership, which areeasily identified even by learners of translation. In
order to accomplish this degree of detail, we consulted
the literature on translation project management, andalso obtained authentic documents used in the actual
industry with interview data from two of the ISOcertified TSPs in Japan.
(2) Source document property and element:“Translation process (5.3.1)” is divided into
“understanding source document” and “semiotic
transferring”. Given that, it is important to understandthe source document (SD) before semiotic transferring,but operations required for SD understanding have notsufficiently been clarified. For this purpose, we divided
the task of SD understanding into two phases: SD
profiling to identify the properties of the SD that areimportant for translation and SD analysis to identify
the elements within the SD to be properly translated.
As metalanguages, we are developing fine-grained
comprehensive typologies of SD properties andelements.
(3) Translation strategies: Given that translation or
textual transformation requires semiotic manipulationsof source and target languages, good translation resultsfrom the translator’s skilled manipulation. In order todescribe the manipulations, we have drawn ontranslation strategy categories proposed by Chesterman(2016). Detailed explanations are given in the next
section.
(4) Effect of refinement: “Check (5.3.2)” is a selfrevision, carried out by the translator before submitting

Figure 3. Five sets of metalanguages in the translation processthe translation to the reviser. Metalanguage wedesigned to talk about this phase is a set of categories
to describe the effect of refinements added by thetranslator over the course of self-revising.

Our rearranged list of translation categories will serve
as a decision list to help translation learners to identify
an appropriate strategy from the top of the list, as
provided in Figure 4.

(5) Issue typology: As discussed, MNH-TT issue
typology is available for “Revision (5.3.2)” and“Review (5.3.4)” phases where a reviewer will checkthe translation for any issues.
Each type of metalanguage is designed so that it can beused in both classroom settings and translationindustries to describe and explain in detail thetranslation subprocesses for better practice andcommunication. For training purposes, we are planningto implement these metalanguages as an independent
module in MNH-TT, a browser-based learning
platform for translation training, so that learners using
this platform can operationalize the explicit knowledge
for every process by either filling out the template
format or annotating texts according to themetalanguages.

6

Metalanguage
strategiesoftranslation

This section gives explanations in more detail about thedescription of translation strategy by providing a
specific example to explain what it can provide andhow it is operationalized.
Amongst translation strategies proposed in previous
literature (Lörscher, 1991; Newmark, 1988; Vinay andDarbelnet, 1958/2000), we have selected the list oftranslation strategies presented by Chesterman (2016)as a point of departure. Most proposals consist of one
group of categories which makes it difficult fortranslation learners to distinguish, for example,
between semantic and pragmatic shifts, both of which
involve message-related manipulations of target text.
Chesterman’s set of translation strategies (2016) helps
to disambiguate the aspect with granular sets of
categories which comprise three pillars – syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics – each of which branches
into approximately ten subcategories. This would be
advantageous for learners and researchers to dissect
translation shifts or strategies.
The categories were originally designed for translation
between English and German. We recompiled them sothat they are applicable to English-Japanese translation.
Nearly 300 translation samples extracted fromtranslation instruction books (Okada, 2013; Tanabe
and Mitsufuji, 2008) were used to verify the categories.

Figure 4: Decision list of translation strategies

Referring to one category for each of the three pillars
in the decision list, we can describe a given translation
shift. An example is below.
Source text: CNN reported on (a)Thursday that a giant
tornado and hailstorm had killed 51 people in China.
Target text: CNN が(a)23 ⽇、中国で巨⼤⻯巻と雹で51

⼈ が 死 亡 し た と 報 じ た 。

[Back translation: CNN reported on (a) the 23rd that 51
people had been killed in a giant tornado and hailstorm
in China.]
In this example, the underlined unit (a) “Thursday” inthe source text is translated into “23 ⽇” (the 23rd) inthe target text. This translation shift is annotated withthree categories given from each pillar: G1, S1, Pr12 in
Figure 4. This means that no specific strategies aretaken in terms of syntactic and semantic strategies: G1(Literal Translation) and S1 (Semantically Equivalent),
but a pragmatic strategy, Pr12 (the domain adaption),
applies to this case.

7

Application to TPR and the future

Our metalanguage of translation strategies could
potentially be used for deeper analysis in TPR.
Translation strategy is concerned with a process
normally attributed to individual translators and thus
can correspond to the translation process as defined in
TPR. In the existing CRITT TPR-DB (Carl, 2012), therelationship between the source and target texts isrepresented only by annotations on alignments on aformal linguistic unit (at the word or phrase level). If
we also annotate the process data with our strategies, it
may increase granularity of data analysis as well. For
example, we can investigate the relationship between
each translation strategy and the translator’s cognitiveeffort required for the manipulation.

8Conclusion

Fine-grained metalanguages are expected to make itpossible to externalize the tacit knowledge of skilledtranslators for use in translator training and incommunication among different actors. By
operationalizing
thisknowledge
through
metalanguages, translation learners can consciously
practice the behaviors of professionals and different
actors can accurately talk about translation.

Acknowledgement
This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI
Grant Number 19H05660.

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