ALTA Competency Exam (CALT) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Cohesion

Surface-level textual ties such as reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunction, and lexical reiteration that link sentences and signal how clauses relate to one another.

Coherence

The underlying logical and conceptual continuity that lets a reader build a consistent mental model of a text, independent of any explicit surface connectors.

Conversational implicature

Meaning conveyed indirectly when a speaker flouts a Gricean maxim; the hearer infers the intended proposition from context rather than from the literal wording.

Presupposition

Background information a speaker treats as already given and shared, triggered by definite descriptions, factive verbs, and change-of-state verbs, and surviving negation.

Speech act theory

A framework dividing an utterance into locution (what is said), illocution (the act performed, such as promising), and perlocution (the effect on the hearer).

Structural ambiguity

A sentence with one word sequence but two possible parses, typically from prepositional-phrase attachment or modifier scope, resolved by constituent tests.

Transposition

A translation procedure that replaces one grammatical category with another, such as turning a source noun into a target verb, without changing the meaning.

Modulation

A procedure that shifts point of view, using negated opposite, cause for effect, part for whole, or abstract for concrete, while preserving the same referential content.

Explicitation

Making explicit in the target what was implicit but recoverable in the source, such as supplying an implied subject or connector; it adds no new information.

Compensation

Rendering a source effect, such as a pun, dialect, rhyme, or register marker, at a different point in the target when the original position cannot carry it.

Skopos theory

A functionalist approach holding that the purpose of the target text, as set by the translation brief, determines which translation strategy is adequate.

False cognate

A word pair in two languages that looks similar but differs in meaning, such as English actual and German aktuell; transferring the sense produces a mistranslation.

Given–new principle

An information-ordering rule that places familiar content early in the sentence and new or focused content toward the end, which smooths comprehension in the target.

End-weight

A principle that heavy, structurally complex constituents move to the right of a sentence, so long clauses follow shorter ones and remain easy to process.

Deverbalization

Reducing source wording to a language-neutral semantic kernel before re-expressing it, which strips away calqued syntax and prevents source-language interference.

Translationese

Markers of source-language interference in a translation, including unusual collocations, overused passives, retained pronouns, and uniformly long sentences.

Parallelism

The requirement that items in a series share grammatical form; a list mixing nouns, verbs, and clauses must be recast to a single consistent pattern.

Register

A configuration of field (subject matter), tenor (participant relationship), and mode (channel) that predicts appropriate lexical and syntactic choices in a text.

Culture-specific item

A referent existing only in the source culture, such as an institution or dish, handled by retention, calque, gloss, substitution, or omission.

T/V distinction

The choice between familiar and polite second-person forms, as in French tu/vous or German du/Sie, which encodes solidarity versus power between participants.

Terminology consistency

The rule that a single concept is rendered by a single target term throughout a document unless the brief explicitly calls for variation.

Localization

Adapting a product to a target locale by converting dates, numbers, currency, units, name order, and address formats to local conventions.

Grammatical agreement

The matching of gender, number, and person between related words, such as noun and adjective or subject and verb, rechecked after any reordering.

Aspect

The grammatical viewpoint on an event's internal structure, such as perfective completion versus imperfective ongoingness; it is distinct from tense.

Definite article rule

The definite article marks referents the reader can identify, whether anaphoric, unique, or superlative, while generic plurals often take no article in English.

Number formatting

Locale conventions for decimal separators, thousands separators, and unit spacing; these are converted to target norms rather than copied from the source.

Diacritic omission

Dropping accents or umlauts, which changes meaning or part of speech in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, for example si versus sí or el versus él.

Competence boundary

The ethical limit confining a translator to language combinations, subject domains, and workloads in which genuine competence exists, with limits disclosed to the client.

Confidentiality obligation

The duty to keep source texts and client information secret, disclosable only with client consent or under legal compulsion.

Revision versus proofreading

Revision compares the target against the source for meaning, terminology, and register; proofreading checks only surface mechanics such as spelling and punctuation.

Conflict of interest

A situation in which personal or financial interest could bias the rendering, requiring the translator either to decline the assignment or to disclose the conflict.

Sworn translation

A translation certified by an authorized translator, attesting fidelity to the source document rather than the truth or legal validity of its content.