School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemConstruct validity in the IELTS Academic Reading test: a comparison of reading requirements in IELTS test items and in university study(Cambridge University Press, 2012)The study reported here was concerned with the issue of test development and validation as it relates to the IELTS Academic Reading Test. Investigation was made of the suitability of items on the test in relation to the reading and general literacy requirements of university study. This was researched in two ways – through a survey of reading tasks in the two domains, and through interviews with academic staff from a range of disciplines. Tasks in the two domains were analysed using a taxonomic framework, adapted from Weir and Urquhart (1998), with a focus on two dimensions of difference: level of engagement, referring to the level of text with which a reader needs to engage to respond to a task (local vs global); type of engagement referring to the way (or ways) a reader needs to engage with texts on the task (literal vs interpretative). The analysis found evidence of both similarities and differences between the reading requirements in the two domains. The majority of the IELTS tasks were found to have a „local-literal‟ configuration, requiring mainly a basic comprehension of relatively small textual units. In the academic corpus, a sizeable proportion of tasks had a similar local-literal orientation, but others involved distinctly different forms of engagement, including tasks that required a critical evaluation of material (i.e. more interpretative), or which stipulated reference to multiple sources (i.e. more global). The study also found a good deal of variation in the reading requirements across the disciplines. The results of the study are used to suggest possible enhancements to the IELTS Academic Reading Test. A useful principle to strengthen the test‟s validity, we argue, would be to push test tasks, where possible, in the direction of the more „global-interpretative‟ reading modes required in academic study.
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ItemKeeping records of language diversity in Melanesia: The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC)(University of Hawaii Press, 2012)At the turn of this century, a group of Australian linguistic and musicological researchers recognised that a number of small collections of unique and often irreplaceable field recordings mainly from the Melanesian and broader Pacific regions were not being properly housed and that there was no institution in the region with the capacity to take responsibility for them. The recordings were not held in appropriate conditions and so were deteriorating and in need of digitisation. Further, there was no catalog of their contents or their location so their existence was only known to a few people, typically colleagues of the collector. These practitioners designed the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), a digital archive based on internationally accepted standards (Dublin Core/Open Archives Initiative metadata, International Association of Sound Archives audio standards and so on) and obtained funding to build an audio digitisation suite in 2003. This is a new conception of a data repository, built into workflows and research methods of particular disciplines, respecting domain-specific ethical concerns and research priorities, but recognising the need to adhere to broader international standards. This paper outlines the way in which researchers involved in documenting languages of Melanesia can use PARADISEC to make valuable recordings available both to the research community and to the source communities.
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ItemDemocratizing translation technologies: the role of humanistic research(The Big Wave, 2012)Recent research on translation memories and machine translation technologies tends to focus on technical issues only, falsely abstracting the technologies from the many different social situations in which they are ostensibly to be used. At the same time, the revolutionary promise of the systems with learning potential is that they will improve output only with widespread use, and thus only through the involvement of different groups of social users. In principle, humanistic research is well positioned to investigate and communicate between the various users, with awareness of different kinds of user, collaborative workflows, text types, and translation purposes. If knowledge on those variables can be fed back into the technical research and development, humanistic research could thus play a key role in enhancing not only the social impact of the technologies, but also their democratization.
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ItemEmpirisme et mauvaise philosophie en traductologie(Septentrion Presses Universitaires, 2011)Translation can be known through direct engagement with the practice or profession, through theoretical propositions, or through empirical applications of theoretical propositions. Here we make the argument that the repetition of theoretical propositions without empirical application leads to some unhelpful pieces of philosophy. This particularly concerns the following general postulates: 1) “translation is difference”, tested on Walter Benjamin’s reference to the untranslatability of words for bread; 2) “translation is survival”, tested on Homi Bhabha’s use of Benjamin and Derrida (who do not survive the use); 3) “translators are authors”, tested on the “alien I”, pseudotranslations and process studies; and 4) “translation is cultural translation”, tested on the subject positions created by a piece of current Germanic theoretical discourse. On all four counts, the case is made that the practice of translation exceeds its theory, thus requiring an ongoing empirical attitude.
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ItemTranslation research terms: a tentative glossary for moments of perplexity and dispute(Intercultural Studies Group, 2011)The following is a list of terms with recommendations for their use in research on translation and interpreting. The list has been compiled on the basis of doubts that have arisen in discussions with students completing doctoral research within the Intercultural Studies Group at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. In some cases our notes merely alert researchers to some of the ambiguities and vagaries of fairly commonplace nomenclatures. In other cases, however, we have sought to standardize terms across research projects in a particular field (for example, translator training or risk analysis).
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ItemExcellence in Research for Australia and sustainable data(Custom Book Centre, University of Melbourne, 2011)
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ItemGeneral Introduction(Multilingual Matters, 2011)
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ItemLanguage Policy and Reality in South Tyrol(MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD, 2011)
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ItemLanguage Policy in Practice: What Happens When Swedish IKEA and H&M Take 'You' On?(MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD, 2011)
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Item(Non-)dominant varieties of a (non-) pluricentric language? Italian in Italy and Switzerland(Lang - Peter Lang, 2012)