Translating vs interpreting
A distinction is made between
translation ,
which consists of transferring ideas expressed in writing from
one language to another, from interpreting ,
which consists of transferring ideas expressed orally ,
or by the use of gestures (as in the case of sign
language), from one language to another.
Although interpreting can be considered a subcategory
of translation as far as the analysis of the processes involved
is concerned ( translation studies ),
in practice the talents required for these two activities are
quite different.
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Translation Process
UK
The translation process ,
whether it be for translation or interpreting, can be described
simply as:
- Decoding the meaning of the source text, and
- Re-encoding this meaning in the target language.
To decode the meaning
of a text the translator must first identify its component " translation
units ", that is to say the segments of the text to be
treated as a cognitive unit. A translation unit may be a word
, a phrase or even one or more sentences .
Behind this seemingly
simple procedure lies a complex cognitive operation. To decode
the complete meaning of the source text, the translator must
consciously and methodically interpret and analyses all its
features. This process requires thorough knowledge of the
grammar, semantics , syntax , idioms and
the like of the source language, as well as the culture of
its speakers.
The translator
needs the same in-depth knowledge to re-encode the meaning
in the target language. In fact, often translators' knowledge
of the target language is more important, and needs to be
deeper, than their knowledge of the source language. For
this reason, most translators translate into a language of
which they are native speakers .
In addition, knowledge of the subject matter being discussed
is essential.
In recent years studies in cognitive
linguistics have been able to provide valuable insights
into the cognitive process of translation.
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Measuring
Success in Translation
As
the goal of translation is to ensure that the source and the
target texts communicate the same message while taking into
account the various constraints placed on the translator, a
successful translation can be judged by two criteria:
- Faithfulness , also called fidelity ,
which is the extent to which the translation accurately renders
the meaning of the source text, without adding to it or subtracting
from it, and without intensifying or weakening any part of
the meaning; and
- Transparency , which is the extent to which the
translation appears to a native speaker of the target language
to have originally been written in that language, and conforms
to the language's grammatical, syntactic and idiomatic conventions.
A translation meeting the first criterion is said to be a "faithful
translation"; a translation meeting the second criterion is
said to be an "idiomatic translation".
The criteria used to judge the faithfulness of a translation
vary according to the subject, the precision of the original
contents, the type, function and use of the text, its literary
qualities, its social or historical context, and so forth.
The criteria for judging the transparency of a translation
would appear more straightforward: an unidiomatic translation "sounds" wrong,
and in the extreme case of word-for-word translations generated
by many machine translation systems,
often result in patent nonsense.
Nevertheless, in certain contexts a translator may knowingly
strive to produce a literal translation. For example, literary
translators and translators of religious works often adhere
to the source text as much as possible. To do this they deliberately "stretch" the
boundaries of the target language to produce an unidiomatic
text. Likewise, a literary translator may wish to adopt words
or expressions from the source language to provide "local colour" in
the translation.
The concepts of fidelity and transparency are
looked at differently in recent translation theories. The idea
that acceptable translations can be as creative and original
as their source text is gaining momentum in some quarters.
The concepts of fidelity and transparency remain
strong in Western traditions, however. They are not necessarily
as prevalent in non-Western traditions. For example, the Indian epic Ramayana has
numerous versions in many Indian
languages and the stories in each are different from one
another. If one looks into the words used for translation in
Indian (either Aryan or Dravidian) languages, the freedom given
to the translators is evident.
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Translation
Problems
General problems
Translation is inherently a difficult activity. Translators
can face additional problems which make the process even more
difficult, such as:
- Problems with the source text:
- Changes made to the text during the translation process
- Illegible text
- Misspelt text
- Incomplete text
- Poorly written text
- Missing references in the text (e.g. the translator
is to translate captions to missing photos)
- Language problems
- Dialect terms and neologisms
- Unexplained acronyms and
abbreviations
- Obscure jargon
- Other
- Rhymes, puns and poetic
meters
- Highly specific cultural references
- Subtle but important properties
of language such as euphony or dissonance
The problem of "untranslatability"
The question of whether particular
words are untranslatable is
often debated, with lists of "untranslatable" words being produced
from time to time.
These lists often include words such as saudade ,
a Portuguese word
(also used in Spanish )
as an example of an "untranslatable". It translates quite neatly
however as "sorrowful longing", but does have some nuances
that are hard to include in a translation; for instance, it
is a positive-valued concept, a subtlety which is not clear
in this basic translation. Some words are hard to translate
only if one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category.
For example, it is hard to find a noun corresponding
to the Russian ????????? ( pochemuchka )
or the Yiddish ?????? ( shlimazl ),
but the English adjectives "inquisitive" and "jinxed" correspond
just fine.
Linguists are naturally
enthusiastic about obscure words with local flavour, and
are wont to declare them "untranslatable",
but in reality these incredibly culture-laden terms are the
easiest of all to translate, even more so than universal concepts
such as "mother". This is because it is standard practice to
translate these words by the same word in the other language,
borrowing it for the first time if necessary. For example,
an English version of a menu in a French restaurant would rarely
translate pâté de foie gras as "fat
liver paste", although this is a good description. Instead,
the accepted translation is simply pâté de
foie gras , or, at most, foie gras pâté .
In some cases, only transcription is
required: Japanese ?? translates into English as wasabi .
A short description or parallel with a familiar concept is
also often acceptable: ??? may also be translated as "Japanese
horseradish " or "Japanese
mustard ".
The more obscure and specific
to a culture the term is, the simpler it is to translate. For
example, the name of an insignificant settlement such as Euroa in Australia is
automatically just "Euroa" in every language in the world that
uses the Roman alphabet ,
whilst it takes some knowledge to be aware that Saragossa is Zaragoza , Saragosse ,
etc. or that China is ??, Cina , Chine ,
and so forth.
The problem of common words
The words that are truly
difficult to translate are often the small, common words.
For example, the verb "to get" in
all its various uses covers nearly seven columns of the most
recent version of the Robert-Collins French-English
dictionary. The same is true for most apparently simple, common
words, such as "go" (seven columns), "come" (four and a half
columns), and so forth.
Cultural aspects can complicate
translation. Consider the example of a word like "bread".
At first glance, it is a very simple word, referring in everyday
use to just one thing, with obvious translations in other
languages. But ask people from England , France or China to
describe or draw "bread", du pain or ? ( bao ),
and they will describe different things, based on their individual
cultures.
Differing levels of precision
inherent in a language also play a role. What does "there" mean? Even discounting idiomatic
uses such as "there, there, don't cry", we can be confronted
by several possibilities. If something is "there" but not very
far away, a Spaniard will say ahí ; if it is
further away he or she will say allí , unless
there are connotations of "near there", "over yonder" or "on
that side", in which case the word is likely to be allá .
Conversely, in colloquial French, all three "there" concepts
plus the concept of "here" all tend to be expressed with the
word là .
Expressions may also exist in
one language which refer to concepts that don't exist in another
language. For example, the French " tutoyer "'
and " vouvoyer " would both
be translated into English as "to address as 'you'", since
the singular informal second person pronoun is archaic in English.
Yet this simplistic translation completely destroys the meaning
of the verbs: "vouvoyer" means to address using the formal "you" form
("vous"), whereas "tutoyer" means to use the informal form
("tu"). Indeed, when English was using the "thou" pronoun, "thou" as
a verb would have been a translation for "tutoyer"; today,
it is difficult to give a concise translation that captures
the nuances of "tu" vs. "vous".
The problem often lies in failure to distinguish between translation and glossing . Glossing is
what a glossary does : give a
short (usually one-word) equivalent for each term. Translation ,
as explained above, is decoding meaning and intent at the text
level (not the word level or even sentence level) and then
re-encoding them in a target language. Words like saudade and ?????? are
hard to "gloss" into a single other word, but given two or
more words they can be perfectly adequately "translated". Similarly,
depending on the context, the meaning of
the French word "tutoyer", or Spanish "tutear", could be translated
as "to be on first name terms with". "Bread" has perhaps a
better claim to being untranslatable, since even if we resort
to saying "French bread", "Chinese bread", "Algerian bread",
etc. we are relying on our audience knowing what these are
like.
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Machine
Translation UK
Machine translation (MT) is
a form of translation where
a computer program analyses the text in one language - the "source
text" - and then attempts to produce another, equivalent text
in another language - the target text - without human
intervention.
Currently the state of machine translation is such that it
involves some human intervention, as it requires a pre-editing
and a post-editing phase. Note that in machine translation,
the translator supports the machine and
not the other way around.
Nowadays most machine translation systems produce what is
called a "gisting translation" - a rough translation that gives
the "gist" of the source text, but is not otherwise usable.
However, in fields with highly limited ranges of vocabulary
and simple sentence structure, for example weather
reports , machine translation can deliver useful results.
Machine translation (MT) is the application of computers to the
task of translating texts from one natural language to another.
One of the very earliest pursuits in computer science, MT has
proved to be an elusive goal, but today a number of systems are
available which produce output which, if not perfect, is of sufficient
quality to be useful in a number of specific domains.
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Legal
Translation UK
Legal translation is
the translation of texts within the field of law . As
law is a culture-dependent subject field, legal translation
is not a simple task.
Only professional translators
specialising in legal translation should translate legal
documents and scholarly writings. The mistranslation of a
passage in a contract , for example, could lead to lawsuits
and loss of money.
When translating a text within the field of law, the translator
should keep the following in mind. The legal system of the
source text is structured in a way that suits that culture
and this is reflected in the legal language; similarly, the
target text is to be read by someone who is familiar with another
legal system and its language.
Apart from terminological
lacunae , or lexical gaps, the translator may focus on the
following aspects. Textual conventions in the source language
are often culture-dependent and may not correspond to conventions
in the target culture. Linguistic structures that are often
found in the source language have no direct equivalent structures
in the target language. The translator therefore has to find
target language structures with the same functions as those
in the source language.
Translators of legal texts
often consult law dictionaries , especially bilingual law
dictionaries. Care should be taken, as some bilingual law
dictionaries are of poor quality and their use may lead to
mistranslation.
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Literary
Translation UK
If the translation of non-literary works is
regarded as a skill, the translation of fiction and poetry
is much more of an art. In multilingual countries such as Canada ,
translation is often considered a literary pursuit in its own
right. Figures such as Sheila
Fischman , Robert
Dickson and Linda Gaboriau are
notable in Canadian literature specifically as
translators, and the Governor
General's Awards present prizes for the year's best English-to-French
and French-to-English literary translations with the same standing
as more conventional literary awards.
Writers such as Vladimir
Nabokov have also made a name for themselves as literary
translators.
Many consider poetry the most difficult genre to
translate, given the difficulty in rendering both the form
and the content in the target language. In 1959 in
his influential paper "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation",
the Russian -born linguist and semiotician Roman
Jakobson even went as far as to declare that "poetry by
definition [was] untranslatable". In 1974 the
American poet James Merrill wrote
a poem, " Lost
in Translation ," which in part explores this subject.
This question was also explored in Douglas
Hofstadter 's 1997 book, Le
Ton beau de Marot .
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Medical
Translation UK
Like pharmaceutical translation, medical translation is specialisation
where a mistranslation can have grave consequences.
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Pedagogical
Translation UK
Translation practised as a means of learning a second language.
Pedagogical translation is used
to enrich (and to assess) the student's vocabulary in
the second language, to help assimilate new syntactic
structures and to verify the student's understanding.
Unlike other types of translation, pedagogical translation
takes place in the student's native (or
dominant )
language as well as the second language. That is to say that
the student will translate both to and from the second language.
Another difference between this mode of translation and other
modes is that the goal is often literal translation of phrases taken
out of context , and of text fragments,
which may be completed fabricated for the purposes of the exercise.
Pedagogical translation should not be confused with scholarly
translation.
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Technical
Translation UK
The translation of technical texts (manuals, instructions,
etc.).
More specifically, texts that contain a high amount of terminology,
that is, words or expressions that are used (almost) only within
a specific field, or that describe that field in a great deal
of detail.
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Translation
of Religious Texts
The translation of religious
works has played an important role in world history. For
instance the Buddhist monks who translated the Indian sutras
into the Chinese language would
often skew the translation to better adapt to China 's
very different culture. Thus notions such as filial
piety were stressed.
For many centuries, translation
in the West was almost exclusively confined to the Christian
Bible .
One of the first instances
of recorded translation activity in the West was the rendition
of the Old Testament into Greek in the
third century B.C.E.; this translation is known as the Septuagint
, alluding to the seventy translators (seventy-two in some
versions) that were commissioned to translate the Bible on
the island of Paphos , with each
translator working in solitary confinement in a separate cell.
Legend has it that all seventy versions were exactly identical.
The Septuagint became the source text for later translations
into many other languages including Latin , Coptic , Armenian
, and Georgan .
St. Jerome , the patron
saint of translation, is still considered one of the
greatest translators in history for his work on translating
the Bible into Latin . The Catholic
Church used this translation (known as the Vulgate)
for centuries, but even his translation met much controversy
when it was released.
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Computer
Assisted Translation
Computer-assisted
translation (CAT), also called computer-aided translation,
is a form of translation where a human translator creates
a target text with the assistance of a computer program.
Note that in computer-assisted translation, the machine supports
the translator .
Computer-assisted translation can be seen to include standard
dictionary and grammar software; however, the term is normally
used to refer to a range of specialised programs available
for the translator.
For example, translation
memory (TM) programs store and align previously translated
source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database.
They split the source text into manageable
units known as "segments." Typically,
each source-text sentence or sentence-like unit (headings,
titles, elements in a list) is considered a segment, although
texts are sometimes segmented into paragraphs instead of sentences.
As the translator works through a document, the translation
memory displays a source segment and a previous translation
for re-use, if such a previous translation exists, or prompts
the translator to enter a new translation. After the translation
for a segment is completed, the program stores the new translation
and moves onto the next segment. The translation memory, in
principle, is a simple database with a pair of entries for
each segment: an entry for the source segment and the corresponding
entry for the segment translation provided by the translator.
See the huge e-reference list coming soon!
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Cultural
Translation UK
This is a new area of interest
in the field of translation studies . Cultural translation
is a concept used in cultural studies to denote the process
of transformation, linguistic or otherwise, in a given culture
. The concept uses linguistic translation as a tool or metaphor
in analysing the nature of transformation in cultures. For
example, ethnography is
considered a translated narrative of an abstract living culture.
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Criticism
of Translation UK
From time to time, criticism
can be made of the act of translation. One such criticism
is the lack of "coherence" in translation.
The criticism can be stated as follows. If a story originally
written in English, and taking place in an English speaking
country, is translated into French, for example, it can lose
its logic because of sentences like "Do you speak English?" The
critic asks what the translation should be. "Parlez-vous anglais?" or "Parlez-vous
français?". According to this criticism, the answer
will be self-contradictory. If the answer to the question were
yes, for the first translation this would mean something like, "Yes
I speak a language you are not using and that is absolutely
irrelevant". For the second translation it would mean "Yes,
this is an English speaking country, and yet everyone, including
myself, is speaking French." The gist of this criticism that
one of the main rules in translation is to "keep the context",
and that the language of the document is itself the heart of
the context.
This criticism can be rebutted
in several ways. First, this kind of situation arises rarely
in real-world translations. When it does, the translator
can use techniques to avoid the problem by, for example,
translating "Do you speak English?" by "Do
you speak my language?" or "Do you understand what I say?" Another
point is that a French-speaking reader who is reading a book
written by, say, Agatha Christie describing
a murder in an English stately
home ,
most likely realises that the characters were speaking English
in the original.
Another criticism is of
a more philosophical nature. It claims that translation can
be described as writing what you have read in another language.
The question arises whether the reader can know whether the
translator understands the original author perfectly. While
this is the translator's job, it is the author who is praised
for the work; but can a translation of Asimov be considered
as Asimov's work? According to this criticism, translation
could even be seen as "legal plagiarism ".
Translations can be quite different from the original: for
instance, the name of Zaphod
Beeblebrox in The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas
Adams was translated into French by Jean
Bonnefoy as Zapi Bibici .
While this is not a huge difference, it is there. Adams may
not have been completely happy with this change, and it is
by a series of such small changes that a translation becomes
an adaptation, according to this criticism.
This is a long-time complaint
of translation, that is expressed in the Italian expression Traduttore,
traditore - every translation is a betrayal .
On the other hand, rarely is a work of fiction translated without
a negotiation as to rights, and many an author will be happy
to put aside reservations about the names of characters for
the opportunity to increase his readership.
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