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This article presents a critical review of translation theories advocated in the context of the Chinese language with a focus on their applicability to Community Translation (Taibi & Ozolins, 2016). Community Translation often aims to provide information crucially important to the basic human rights of linguistic minorities. Yet, Chinese translation theories have been largely developed for the translation of literary and religious texts, relying on literary critique of impressionistic and subjective ideas. Therefore, such an approach would not work in the field of Community Translation. A discussion of Community Translation in the context of the Chinese language could add a functional perspective, considerations of the pragmatic functions of both the Source and the Target texts and the perspectives of both the 'producers' and the end-users. Discussion in these aspects could help better investigate and evaluate a translated text that aims to help members of linguistically disadvantaged communities participate in the mainstream society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike community interpreting, community translation engages with the members of the community both at individual and group levels. This duality of the process makes the identification of the community as a socio-cultural entity and of its individual members all the more important. There have been several attempts to define the concept of 'community' in different professional and academic contexts. Mindful of the difficulty of defining community, the paper proposes three methods that can help community translators in visualizing the characteristics of the intended audience and in making informed translation decisions. The three methods, derived from user-centred translation, are scrutinized using a case study based on a real-life National Health Service (NHS) text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While community interpreting has attracted considerable attention in the last two decades, its counterpart, community translation, represents an under-researched area in Translation Studies (International Conference on Community Translation 2014, Call for papers). With a view to narrowing this gap, the article starts by analyzing the concept of "community translation", and then moves to that of translation policy. After situating translation policy within the concept of language planning and its categories (corpus, status and acquisition planning), the author then addresses a specific case study, that of translation policies and community translation in the U.S. at the federal and state levels, the latter of which focuses on California. While surveying and comparing translation policies at these two levels, the author also examines to what extent these policies, and the presence or absence of penalties for their noncompliance, lead to different degrees of regulation of community translation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]