Translation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production, in another language, of a new, equivalent text — the target text, or translation.

Traditionally, translation has been a human activity, although attempts have been made to automate and computerize the translation of natural-language texts (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).

The goal of translation is to establish a relation of equivalence of intent between the source and target texts (that is, to ensure that both texts communicate the same message), while taking into account a number of constraints. These include context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, their idioms, and the like.

The term and the concept of “translation”

Etymologically, “translation” is a “carrying across” or “bringing across.” The Latin “translatio” derives from the past participle, “translatus,” of “transferre” (“to transfer” — from “trans,” “across” + “ferre,” “to carry” or “to bring”). The modern Romance, Germanic and Slavic European languages have generally formed their own equivalent terms for this concept after the Latin model — after “transferre” or after the kindred “traducere” (“to bring across” or “to lead across”).

Additionally, the Greek term for “translation,” “metaphrasis” (“a speaking across”), has supplied English with “metaphrase” — a “literal translation,” or “word-for-word” translation — as contrasted with “paraphrase” (“a saying in other words,” from the Greek “paraphrasis“).

Common misconceptions

Many newcomers to translation erroneously believe it to be an exact science, and mistakenly assume that firmly-defined one-to-one correlations exist between words and phrases in different languages, thus rendering translations fixed and identically-reproducible, much as in cryptography. They assume that all that is needed in order to translate a text is to encode and decode between languages, using a translation dictionary as the codebook.

On the contrary, such a fixed relationship would only exist, were a new language synthesized and continually synchronized with another, existing language in such a way that each word would forever carry exactly the same scope and shades of meaning, with careful attention being given to the preservation of etymological roots and lexical “ecological niches,” assuming that these were known with certainty.

If the new language were then ever to take on a life of its own apart from such cryptographic use, each word would naturally begin to assume new shades of meaning and cast off previous associations, thereby vitiating any such synthetic synchronization. Henceforth translation would require the disciplines described in this article.

There is debate as to whether translation is an art or a craft. Literary translators, such as Gregory Rabassa in If This Be Treason, argue that translation is an art, though one that it is teachable. Other translators, mostly those who work on technical, business or legal documents, regard their métier as a craft, one that can not only be taught but that is subject to linguistic analysis and that benefits from academic study.

Most translators will agree that the situation depends on the nature of the text being translated. A simple document, e.g. a product brochure, can in many cases be translated quickly, using simple techniques familiar to advanced language-students. By contrast, a newspaper editorial, political speech, or book on almost any subject will require not only the craft of good language skills and research technique, but the art of good writing and cultural sensitivity.

Translating vs. interpreting

A distinction is made between translation, which is the transferring from one language to another of ideas that are expressed in writing, and interpreting, which is the transferring of ideas expressed orally or by gestures (as in the case of sign language).

Although interpreting can be considered a subcategory of translation in regard to the analysis of the processes involved (translation studies), in practice the skills required for these two activities are quite different. Translators and interpreters are trained in entirely different manners. Translators receive extensive practice with representative texts in various subject areas, learn to compile and manage glossaries of relevant terminology, and master the use of both current document-related software (for example, word processors, desktop publishing systems, and graphics or presentation software) and computer-assisted translation (CAT) software tools.

Interpreters, by contrast, are trained in precise listening skills under taxing conditions, memory and note-taking techniques for consecutive interpreting (in which the interpreter listens and takes notes while the speaker speaks, and then after several minutes provides the version in the other language), and split-attention for simultaneous interpreting (in which the interpreter, usually in a booth with a headset and microphone, listens and speaks at the same time, usually producing the interpreted version only seconds after the speaker provides the original).

The industry expects interpreters to be about 70% accurate; that is to say that interpretation is an approximate version of the original. Translations should be over 99% accurate, by contrast.

Translation process

The translation process, whether it be for translation or interpreting, can be described as:

1. Decoding the meaning of the source text; and
2. 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 analyze 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, in general, 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 under discussion is essential.

In recent years, studies in cognitive linguistics have provided valuable insights into the cognitive process of translation.

Measuring success

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:

1. 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
2. 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 two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

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 with only a humorous value (see round-trip translation).

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.

In recent decades, the most prominent advocates of non-transparent translation modes include the French translation scholar Antoine Berman who identified twelve deforming tendencies inherent in most prose translations (L’épreuve de l’étranger, 1984), and the American theorist Lawrence Venuti who called upon translators to apply “foreignizing” translation strategies instead of domesticating ones (see, for example, his ‘Call to Action’ in The Translator’s Invisibility, 1994).

Many non-transparent translation theories draw on concepts of German Romanticism, with the most obvious influence on latter-day theories of foreignization being the German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his seminal lecture “On the Different Methods of Translation” (1813) he distinguished between translation methods that move “the writer toward [the reader]“, i.e. transparency, and those that move the “reader toward [the author] “, i.e. respecting the foreignness of the source text. Schleiermacher clearly favored the latter. It is worth pointing out, however, that his preference was motivated not so much by a desire to embrace the foreign but was rather intended as a nationalist practice to oppose France’s cultural domination and to promote German literature.

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.

Translation problems:

1. 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 or difficult-to-read text
  • Misspelled or misprinted text
  • Incomplete text
  • Poorly written text (ambiguity or incomprehensibility)
  • Missing references in the text (for example the translator is to translate captions to missing photos)
  • The source text contains a translation of a quotation that was originally made in the target language, and the original text is unavailable, making word-for-word quoting nearly impossible
  • Obvious inaccuracies in the source text (for example “prehistoric Buddhist ruins”, when Buddhism was not founded during prehistoric times)

• Language problems
  • Dialect terms and neologisms
  • Unexplained acronyms and abbreviations
  • Proper names of people, organizations, places, and the like (often there are already official target-language translations, but if they are not supplied with the source text they can be difficult to find)
  • Obscure jargon
  • Obscure idioms
  • Slang
  • Stylistic differences, such as redundant phrases in a source language, when redundancy is frowned upon in the target language
  • Differences between languages with respect to punctuation conventions

• Other
  • Rhymes, puns and poetic meters
  • Subtle but important properties of language such as euphony or dissonance
  • Highly specific cultural references
  • Humor
  • Words that are commonly known in one culture but generally unknown by the layperson in another culture, such as Chinese 芬多精 (fen1 duo1 jing1) meaning phytoncide: these generally require the addition of an explanation.

… to be continued…