Translating modalities – A "must" for translators?

What are "modalities"? They are what we use to express things like the likelihood of events, orders, suggestions, wishes, intentions, necessity, obligation, moral desirability, politeness, etc.

English, for instance, heavily relies for this on its modal verbs (can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must, ought to), but the list of actual resources it uses in addition to them is surprisingly varied.

Modalities are extremely subtle, highly frequent and clearly play a key role in human communication. Translating them is all the more demanding since equivalent meanings are conveyed in languages through widely differing methods (moods, modal verbs, particles, syntax, lexical solutions, intonation, etc.).

The purpose of this one-day workshop is to provide a generic and jargon-free framework to help understand, explore and translate modalities across languages.

For full information on content, as well as highly positive feedback from participants, see: https://www.jpmlanguageservices.com/translation-workshops/modalities/

Jean-Pierre Mailhac

Jean-Pierre Mailhac has trained postgraduate students in 32 European universities and run translation workshops for the European Union, the British Civil Service, the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the Société Française des Traducteurs (SFT), the Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer (BDÜ), Danske Translatører (DT), the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association (ITIA), the National Network for Translation (NNT), the North West Translators' Network (NWTN) and the translation department of a Swiss bank.

Out of the last 964 workshop participants, 41% were extremely satisfied and 47% were very satisfied. 

In addition to a number of articles on applied translation studies, his publications include two linguistics articles on aspects of modalities.

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