Warschauer Studien zur Germanistik und zur Angewandten Linguistik – serie

The monograph, based on broad studies into the Polish diaspora in Sweden, provides a picture of the social factors influencing the maintenance of the heritage language and culture by the second generation of emigrants. The author’s main objective, however, is to discover the systemic mechanisms underlying language acquisition by children in a bilingual setting and to investigate the influence of the interference from the dominant language on the acquisition of Polish. A particular attention is devoted to the category of case, which is absent from Swedish. Although it, generally, represents a description of a particular linguistic material, in fact the book addresses problems of the theory of language acquisition. The results and conclusions enable a better understanding of the universal semiotic and psychological principles that motivate the structure of the grammatical system of a natural language.

For some time already, a discourse within the field of Translation Studies has increasingly focused on the translator, his/her translation properties and mental processes resulting from their application. Recent years and advances in technology have opened up many possibilities of gaining a deeper insight into these processes. This publication presents the theoretical foundations, the results of scientific experiments, and a broad range of questions to be asked and answered by eye-tracking supported translation studies. The texts have been arranged into two thematic parts. The first part consists of texts dedicated to the theoretical foundations of Translation Studies-oriented eye-tracking research. The second part includes texts discussing the results of the experiments that were carried out.

This book is the first monographic study on forms of address in Polish-English subtitling from a multidisciplinary perspective. It departs from a contrastive analysis of forms of address in Polish and in English, then discusses the methodological tools and, finally, presents the empirical study on the translation of Polish forms of address in English TV subtitles. The study corpus contains nearly 100,000 words from three popular Polish soap operas and their English translations. Drawing on the methodological tools from descriptive translation studies, audiovisual translation and corpus-based research, the author presents a comprehensive survey of the translation techniques used by the subtitlers in rendering forms of address and discusses their implications. The book can be used by translation teachers, students and professionals.

Although university studies do not always provide translators with the necessary skills, many of them continue in their professional capacity, which is understood to be the result of self-directed learning processes. Thus, translators seem to be not only agents of their own education, but also products of translation operations. The data obtained by means of a questionnaire covers three areas: specialisation and the market, qualifications and competence as well as affects and attitudes. Also, a general description of translators’ specific self-directed learning strategies is provided. The results reveal that institutional training has virtually no importance in the professional education of translators and that the skills missed most in their everyday activity are those they failed to acquire by means of self-directed learning procedures.

Communication audit is a relatively new field of research, which has so far been investigated from a managerial point of view. Linguists have not yet researched it. This book summarises existing, mainly managerial, approaches to communication audits and brings to the forefront a linguistic perspective on them. It showcases that their essence is to capture and assess the actual communication behaviour of auditees. The proposed communication audit model, communication audit procedures, and linguistic form sheet can be applied and further developed by scientists interested in taking on research into communication and by practitioners who wish to conduct communication audits in practice.

The concept of bilingualism has been analyzed for a very long time. Its definitions range from native-like competence in two languages to a minimal proficiency in a second language. Hence one might question why no consensus has been reached in this matter. The authors of this volume imply that there exists a number of theoretical and methodological difficulties raised by older definitions. The notion of bilingualism has to be investigated from different perspectives reflected by the dimensions each individual intends to diagnose. The aim of the book is to review critically the state of the art in the field of bilingualism. The volume reveals the details of empirical studies conducted by scholars from Europe, America and Australia. It depicts a truly interesting spectrum of research topics starting with the educational aspects of bilingualism, such as: bilingual acquisition, bilingual parenting methods and bilingual kindergartens, to reveal various issues of sociolinguistics and even bilingual literature.

Multilingualism is broadly understood as the knowledge and use of two or more languages by individuals in their everyday lives, both private and professional. It is increasingly acknowledged as an important issue of the contemporary world and the interest in the matter of multilingualism is growing rapidly in many areas, such as research, politics, or education. The authors of this book combine some of the questions in a truly interdisciplinary perspective in order to provide an insight into the variety and diversity of research problems of multilingualism. This collection is divided into ten chapters considering the selected matters from different points of view, gathering together empirical research from various fields.

The book presents the first comprehensive description of avialinguistics. The author analyses this new interdisciplinary branch of applied linguistics that recognises the role of language for aviation purposes. She provides an integrated approach to Aeronautical English and proffers insights into aviation discourse, discussing its current linguistic errors and providing suggestions for aviation English communication improvement. The author tests theoretical considerations against illustrative real-life examples so as to facilitate an interpretation of regular pilot-controller communications.