Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre

Journal of Translation Studies vol. 01/2021, pp. 45–58
                                            © 2021 Wei Cheng - DOI https://doi.org/10.3726/JTS012021.4

wei cheng
Beijing International Studies University
chengwei@bisu.edu.cn

         Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario
         of Digital Genre

Abstract
As the translation market is becoming increasingly diversified and digital genre is gradually
prevailing over paper-based media in communication, user-centred translation is high on
the agenda. According to Suojanen, Koskinen and Tuominen (2015), the two important
concepts behind user-centred translation are usability and user experience. Usability refers
to the ease with which users can utilize a product to achieve their goals. User experience
puts emphasis on the enjoyability experienced by users. While usability focuses on pro-
ducts being learnable or memorable, user experience is a holistic concept encompassing
issues such as aesthetics, fun, and pleasure. Based on the case study of international E-
commerce sites, this research reveals that translators under the new circumstances should
be even more empathic than those working with paper-based media, which enables them
to be versatile, adaptive, innovative and able to provide users with quality translation and
enjoyable user experience.

Keywords
translator competence, user-centred translation, digital genre, empathic accuracy

Journal of Translation Studies vol. 01/2021 - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

46                                                                             Wei Cheng

1. The changing landscape of technology and industry redefines
    translator competence

Translator competence is being increasingly addressed by a number of
researchers in the field of translation studies. The PACTE group in Spain
has defined translation competence in five sub-competences (PACTE Group
2005: 609-619) which include bilingual sub-competence, extra-linguistic
sub-competence, instrumental sub-competence and knowledge about trans-
lation sub- competence. Some other researchers, noticing the complexity of
translator competence, view translators as multicultural mediators in gene-
ral, and thus stress translator competence in producing acceptable translation
by working co-operatively within the various overlapping communities of
translators and subject matter experts (Kiraly 2000: 13-14).
      In view of the changes in the T&I industry and the evolving market
brought about by technology and, in particular, new media, the European
Master’s in Translation (EMT), while still recognizing human intelligence,
knowledge and skills as the key factors in delivering quality translations,
attaches great importance to the technological changes, and their implica-
tions for translators in the published Competence Framework 2017:
     Artificial intelligence and social media have considerably changed people’s
     relation to communication in general and translation in particular, with machine
     translation applications and other language tools now commonly available on
     desktop and mobile devices. This is gradually impacting the translation process
     and many translation markets, and has changed the perception of translation
     among the general public and among translation studies students and graduates.
     Technological and societal changes such as these need to be taken on board
     in academic translator training programs, so that future graduates become
     aware of both the challenges and opportunities that they represent, and can
     adapt their skills and practices accordingly1.

In the age of digitalized communication, translators are working more with
screens than with paper. Translation reaches more diversified audiences and
demands a shorter timeframe. Audiovisual translation, post editing, apps

1 The European Master’s in Translation: Competence Framework 2017, , accessed
  Jan 1 2020.

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre           47

or websites localization, social media translation, etc., are media-specific
translation that requires translators to interact with the digital “screen”, a
new professional competence in the Age of Digitalization when machine
and technology seem to redefine ways of communication. As O’Hagan and
Ashworth state, “some customer and product documentation is making
inroads into Web sites through which the customers are asked to look up
relevant information. In this context, translations are seen on screen rather
than on paper” (O’Hagan and Ashworth 2002: 11).
      It is apparent to all that new media driven by Internet have provided
a new context for communication across borders and cultures. When au-
diences read online, they are literally “reading” the screen, a digital genre
that features multimodality, interaction, and non-linearity. Translators
need to be fully aware of this new genre that determines their translation
strategies.
      Genre is not a new concept. With expected patterns of form and nar-
ration, genre can help reduce the cognitive and interpretive load for readers
and audiences in given communication. In translation, genre conventions
play an important role in the identification and translation of most technical
and localized genres (Nord 1997: 53). Shepherd and Watters (1998) use
“cybergenre”, an alternative term of digital genre, to elucidate this new
digital genre triggered by electronic media. According to Shepherd and
Watters (1998), the combination of the computer and the Internet has been
such a powerful trigger that it has resulted in the emergence of the cyber-
genre, a new class of genre characterized by similarities among content,
form and functionality. They suggest two major categories, extant and
novel subgenres. The class of extant subgenres consists of genre already
existing in other media, such as paper or video, which has migrated to
this new medium. The class of novel subgenres consists of those genres
that have developed in this new medium and have no real counterpart in
another medium. Multimodality, interaction and non-linearity are three
primary distinguishing features of the genre, which make its existence
fully dependent on the new medium.
      To begin with, multimodal texts require readers/viewers to process and
interpret more than one mode in “reading screen”. With technical platforms
such as RealAudio and streaming techniques, the Internet is integrating
broadcasting, video and films. Pictures, colours, sound and other semio-
tics combined elicit readers’/audience interpretation and emotions, while

48                                                                  Wei Cheng

previously, readers’ comprehension and feelings were only elicited by the
reading of printed words.
      Secondly, when screen reading takes place, messages flow back and
forth from the receiver (such as FAQ); sender and receiver are both respon-
sible for encoding and decoding messages. As part of the interactive reading
process, translators need to be digital savvy, knowing how to facilitate the
communication efficiently online.
      Finally, hyperlinks on the screen change the way readers/viewers view
the contents. By scrolling through the items to search for terms, or jumping
directly to other gripping contents, readers/viewers are free from the reading
routes designated by writers in paper-based media. The role of translators is
vital in influencing readers’/viewers’ decision whether to continue reading
the page or switch to other information.
      On the basis of the above analysis, we can see that digital genre, with
multimodality, interaction and non-linearity, functions differently from
paper-based genres. The genre of websites and apps has both exhortative
and expository functions designed to modify the receiver’s behaviour as
well as to provide the necessary information, and finally to have users stay
as long as possible on a site, or encourage users to come back as often as
possible instead of selecting other sites that provide similar information or
services, etc. (Jiménez-Crespo 2013: 96). This means that in the new scena-
rio of digitalized communication, organizations or enterprises that design
their images and product documentation online are aware of competing
for readers’/viewers’ attention online. In order to improve or maintain a
positive user’s attitude towards them, websites try to modify the readers’/
viewers’ behaviour by providing them with user-centred viewing or navi-
gation experiences.
      Accordingly, translators should also provide user-centred translation
to influence receivers’ behavioural patterns as expected. Translations for
the digital genre virtually mediate in the interaction between websites/apps
and users as well as between websites/apps senders and viewers, creating
an innovative way of translation different from working with traditional
paper-based genres. Therefore, translators should perform some cultural
and linguistic adaptations to convince the target audience to stay tuned to
the recommended websites and buy the product besides providing them
with the necessary information.

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre           49

2. Empathic accuracy enhances user-centred translation

As digitalized communication changes the translation scenario and as the
translation industry has recently been characterized by a highly competi-
tive market situation, user-centred translation has emerged as a matter of
considerable discussion in research communities and as a new solution to
help companies secure their customers. According to Suojanen, Koskinen
and Tuominen, two important concepts behind user-centred translation are
usability and user experience. Usability refers to the ease with which users
can utilize a product to achieve their goals; they should be able to achieve
their goals according to their expectations and without obstacles or hin-
drances. The notion of enjoyability emphasizes the role of user experience:
while usability focuses on products being learnable or memorable, user expe-
rience is a holistic concept encompassing issues such as aesthetics, fun and
pleasure (2015: 14). This means that translators and translation companies
need to become more versatile and more innovative, offering translation-
related services that are clearly identifiable and bring added value to the
customers. The focus should be extended from product usability, such as
ease of comprehension, learning, or accessibility to encompass issues such
as satisfaction, aesthetics, fun, and pleasure that define users’ emotions and
enjoyable user experience rather than the qualities of the product.
      As the translation process in digitalized communication is becoming
affective, what a translator should possess is not only linguistic competence
and encyclopaedic knowledge that enable him or her to identify cultural
bumps or hindrance in comprehension, but their ability to imagine, to an-
ticipate the perspectives of their potential clients, to relate themselves to
the feelings and emotions of their clients, to provide them with enjoyable
viewing or navigation experience and finally retain and engage them with
the digital communication. This ability, according to Daryl R. Hague, is
empathic accuracy, “a term that derives from psychological studies […]
when we empathize, we recontextualize our autobiographical memory –
our ‘memory of the self and its intentions’ – to generate perceptions about
the other” (Hague 2015: 20-29). This is also an important sub-competence
under the intercultural communication competence that enables translators
to process effectively and strategically handle multilingual information
for and on digital media. Though the definition of empathic accuracy may

50                                                                      Wei Cheng

vary from an understanding of other persons’ perspectives to a similar
experience of other persons’ emotions, the core idea of this concept in the
translation scenario is the decentralization or depersonalized perspective
taken by translators, and the emphasis on translators’ situation awareness.

3. Case study of empathic accuracy in digitalized communication

Given the changing scenarios of translation, translators’ empathic accuracy
holds the key in dealing with digital genre. In this section, a few examples
taken from Alibaba.com and its Writing Style Guide will be analysed to
illustrate how translators’ empathic accuracy determines the success or
failure of digitalized communication.
Case No.1: Taking an innovative perspective to understand clients’
diversified needs (enhancing usability + user experience)
      One of the traditional criteria that assess translation quality is linguistic
faithfulness and accuracy. Despite the controversy over the interpretation of
“faithfulness” or “accuracy” in translation studies, in a given context, one
term should, or must be translated into one single term in another language.
This one-one association between source language and target language is
taken for granted in various types of translation.
      With the increasingly diversified market such as website localization
and app localization, and with the influence of technology such as machine
translation, however, the traditional sense of one-one association has to be
altered. Translation usability, the ease with which users can utilize a product
to achieve their goals without hindrances, truly matters in evaluating the
translation quality.
      For instance, browsing on Alibaba.com, a website run by Alibaba, a
well-known online e-commerce giant, when a customer types “skirt” into
the search box, then clicks enter, she can obtain the following results. This
is a typical example of one-multiplicity associations in website localization.
One of the translators in the localization team said they initially sought one-
one equivalence in translating the title descriptions, from 裙子 to skirt. Later
they found that during the process from website browsing to order, there
was a huge loss of potential customers and sales opportunities. It turned out

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre            51

that the Internet searches returned nearly no results for the items customers
really wanted. To create a user-centred browsing experience, translators tried
one-multiple equivalent (see below Figure 1), from 裙子 to the following
nouns: Printed, Plain dyed, Beaded, Yarn dyed, A-line, Straight Skirt, Wrap
Skirt, Vintage Style, Bohemian, Office Lady, Europe Style, and Patchwork.
      This example illustrates that usability plays a significant role in de-
termining the success of website translation. The translator is part of the
localization and thus responsible for providing an enjoyable online shopping
experience by creating a highly usable text.

Fig. 1: Skirt icons on an e-commerce website2

Another example can be found in the translation of registration interface on
mobile phones. Figure 2 is the registration interface in Chinese. When the
user (viewer) is positioned as “ 中国 ” (literally, “in China”), the registration
method is “ 设置密码 + 通过手机接 受验证码 ” (literally, to “set password
+ accept verification code through mobile phone”). However, when the
registration interface is translated into English for target language users
(viewers) located in the United States, the faithful translation “Mobile: Click
OK to send verification code” was no longer appropriate.
      Owing to privacy regulation and advanced Internet technology, users
in the United Kingdom and the United States are more accustomed to re-
gistering and receiving verification codes with email addresses. In China,
however, registering with a mobile phone number is a more common way
to reach users efficiently. Therefore, in the context of interactive “screen-
based” communication, the translator’s empathic accuracy with the “screen
reader/user” plays a significant role in providing user-centred translation
that conforms to the user’s viewing habits.

2 , accessed January 10, 2020.

52                                                                         Wei Cheng

Fig. 2: Registration interface (CH); Registration interface (EN)3

Case No.2: Empathically relating translators to the disadvantageous group
of potential clients (enhancing user experience)
Another example is found in the Alibaba Style Guide (Ali Language Team
2017). This guide helps all language professionals, including translators, to
produce consistent, accurate, and highly usable texts that go with the localization
of Alibaba products. Again, user experience is highlighted in the mission of
making this Guide. In terms of language use, the word choice and syntax are
all user-centred. When certain words may seem inappropriate or offensive if
translated directly, they should be translated with their culturally-sensitive form.
      For example, weight is a potentially sensitive topic. If a word such as
“ 胖 ” (literally, fat) is directly translated into English, it can be extremely
offensive, as the following incorrect example shows (See Table 1). Trans-
lation is essentially intercultural communication that requires bias-free
exchanges of information. Offensive terms that may show or incur bias with
regard to gender, age, race, culture or physical appearance should be avoided
in translation, which is a prerequisite for enhancing the user’s experience.

3 This illustration is taken from the PPT “Improve Users’ experience in the Cross-Cul-
  tural Communication” by Liu Yanyi, presented for Beijing International Studies Uni-
  versity, April 7, 2020.

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre                      53

Tab. 1: Translation of derogative descriptions on E-commerce website (1)

        SOURCE            INCORRECT EXAMPLE             CORRECT EXAMPLE
       胖妹妹衣装                 Fat girl’s clothing       Curve-sized ladies’ clothing

Furthermore, the Alibaba Style Guide (Ali Language Team 2017) also
reminds translators to avoid culturally inappropriate topics and sensitive
words, as well as the use of any words which may be culturally sensitive,
or which may be viewed as derogatory to specific groups, nationalities,
ethnicities, religions or cultures. See Table 2 below:
Tab. 2: Translation of derogative brand names on E-commerce website (2)

         SOURCE               INCORRECT EXAMPLE             CORRECT EXAMPLE
          黑业者                      Black trader               Unlicensed trader

In the incorrect example, the target audience may misinterpret the transla-
tion as an indication of race. In fact, 黑 (literally, black) in Chinese not only
means a colour, but also implies something derogatory, illegal or immoral.
When the target language is English, the speakers of which are sensitive to
racial references, translators have to be cautious in assigning the meaning
of “ 黑业者 ”. The correct translation is to remove the figurative sense of
“ 黑 ” in Chinese, with it being rendered as unlicensed.
      This is not the whole story. Translators’ empathic accuracy is different
from rigid rules that “guide” practice. Rather, it enables translators to be
flexible and strategic in their handling of dynamic and situational scenari-
os. When the Chinese term “ 黑 ” is not used to describe people, it can be
directly translated into black.
      For example, terms such as “black market” and “black cab” are
acceptable.
Case No. 3: Improving readability by minimizing users’ processing effort
(enhancing usability)
Figure 3 shows an English-language interface of a smart phone which displays
the command list. The green button “Previous” in the bottom left corner all-
ows the user to choose to return to the previous page, while the blue command
button “Next” on the right enables users, after viewing this page, to browse the
next page. In the process of translating the English to the Chinese interface,

54                                                                    Wei Cheng

the translator sticks to the literal meaning and translates “Next” into “ 下一步
” (literally, next step). However, viewers might be confused by the command
“Next step” which indicates sequential relations between the next action and
the current action, rather than parallel options available on the following page.
       Therefore, the translation of “Next” into “ 下一页 ” (literally, next
page) would have made the instructions much clearer, which suggests that
a parallel command list will be visible upon the click of the blue button.
       Of course, viewers may figure out the functions indicated by the two
buttons, given their different colours, but the navigation experience will be
affected by that small moment of confusion. This can significantly minimize
users’ processing effort, improving the usability of the translation.

Fig. 3: English UI (EN); UI translation (CH)4

Case No. 4: Identifying users’ expectations based on their diversified cul-
tural values (enhancing user experience)
Research into these cultural dimensions is often based on Geert Hofstede’s
classic model of cultural values. Having conducted extensive interviews

4 Ibid.

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre            55

of IBM employees in 53 countries, Hofstede concluded that cultures vary
along five fundamental dimensions: power distance, collectivism vs. indivi-
dualism, femininity vs. masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term
vs. short-term orientation (Suojanen, Koskinen and Tuominen 2015: 19).
      Viewed independently, these cultural dimensions are simply sweeping
over-generalizations that have little to do with translation strategies. Ho-
wever, different cultural orientations do exert some impact on the viewing
habits of website users.
      In terms of uncertainty avoidance, many Asian customers value
certainty, trying to avoid uncertainty or risk. Therefore, when websites
are localized in countries with high uncertainty avoidance, information
including customer service, customer assistance, and customer contact is
highlighted. Guided navigation including site maps should be displayed
clearly. Translation of local terminology is also carefully dealt with, inclu-
ding the use of country-specific metaphors, names of festivals, puns, and
a general local touch in the vocabulary of the web page, and mere literal
translation is avoided.
      Translators working for localization programs should attach great
importance to the impact of cultural values and thinking patterns on their
customers, and adjust their language strategy accordingly in UI translation,
app translation, and product documentation translation. Besides the dimensi-
ons mentioned by Hofstede, social values that may influence customers also
involve dimensions including aesthetics, gender, privacy, and thinking pat-
terns in binary oppositions, such as concrete thinking vs. abstract thinking,
holistic thinking vs. analytical thinking, subjective thinking vs. objective
thinking, forward thinking vs. backward thinking, integrated thinking vs.
individual thinking, spiral thinking vs. linear thinking.
      International companies that highlight a user-centred approach in trans-
lation and language service outperform their counterparts. Many Chinese
companies have come to realize the importance of offering translation-related
services that are clearly identifiable and bring added value to customers. This
enables translators to become multicultural mediators with digital literacy
skills in facilitating digitalized communication in an innovative manner.

56                                                                     Wei Cheng

4. Conclusion

Digital genre has emerged as one new and subversive genre that challen-
ges the traditional paper-based text genre. Its features include but are not
limited to multimodality, interaction, and non- linearity, and have changed
the functionality of texts, readers’ status, as well as the way people read.
As more documentation is making inroads into websites, more readers
are being asked to look up relevant information by “reading on screen”,
a way of reading that offers a new perspective on translation practice and
the translator’s role. Translators working in the scenario of digital genre,
therefore, need to know how to deal with digital genre and how to work for
and on different digitalized media.
       Given that the exhortative function is one of the major functions of
digital genres, the translation of web texts with digital genre becomes affec-
tive in nature. Whether or not readers/ viewers choose to continue viewing
the web page depends on their experience with the web text. Easy access
to the hypertext, rapid comprehension and high usability of the informa-
tion provided, and an enjoyable navigation experience will attract readers/
viewers to continue reading the proposed web texts.
       To secure readers’/viewers’ attention for web texts, user- centred transla-
tion is required. By examining several cases from Alibaba.com and its Writing
Style Guide, this research concludes that translators’ empathic accuracy plays a
vital role in enhancing target readers’/users’ experience by enabling translators
to identify with readers/viewers, to respond in translation to them in a flexible
and versatile manner. In this way, readers/viewers are likely to stay with the
language service provided, whilst customer loyalty for the products is fostered.
       Currently, translation research communities are more likely to catego-
rize translator competence into linguistic competence, cultural competence
and skill competence, or add some sub-competences to the original three,
given changing market needs and technology development. However, this
categorization fails to address dynamic and affective trends in translation,
triggered by the new digital genre in the web-mediated world.
       In dealing with new digital genres, a translator with language profici-
ency and familiarity with cultural differences does not necessarily make a
competent translator. Part of the reason is that the familiarity is more likely
to be equated with having a stock of imparted knowledge. A good translator
does not just transport vocabulary or cultural facts; he or she is, instead,

Translator Competence Revisited in the Scenario of Digital Genre            57

involved in a more dynamic and complicated cognitive and behavioural
process of communication. This research argues that empathic accuracy is
more a decisive competence in providing user-centred translation widely
needed by international E-commerce.
     In this sense, it is wise to involve translators earlier in the chain of
production, rather than having them do language transfer. For translators
who work in and for digital communication, the context is not the imme-
diate textual one, but lies in a broader, coherent scenario from planning to
designing, production, promotion, and marketing, etc. With their empathic
accuracy, they can better identify the target readers/users before they provide
users with quality translation and an enjoyable user experience.
     Intangible as empathic accuracy is, it is now believed to be trained,
learned and acquired (Feshbach and Feshbach, 2009: 89). This current re-
search, however, is subject to some limitations. It is restricted to a limited
number of cases from Alibaba.com and its Writing Style Guide, rather than
based on an extensive empirical study of digital multimodal texts. Thus, the
research limitations fail to quantitate the relations between the translation
quality and translator’s empathic accuracy, which should be addressed in
the future research.

Funding

This paper was supported in part by the National Social Science Fund of
China (16BXW053), and the research project entitled A Study on Editing
Strategies and Handling Culture-loaded Phenomenon prior to Human-Ma-
chine Collaborative Translation (project approval number: WHCB19A001)
conducted by the Beijing International Studies University and Beijing
Institute of Intercultural Communication.

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58                                                               Wei Cheng

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