TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATING

1.Equivalence in Translation

2.Questions to Be Answered in Translation

3.The Rules and Principles of Translation

4.The Translator’s Informational Capacity

5. Learning to Be a Translator

6. Pragmatic Difficulties in Translation

7. The Beginning of Translation Science in Britain

• The study of translation has been dominated , and to a degree still is, by the debate about the status as an art or a science.

• The linguist approaches translation from a “scientific” point of view, seeking to create some kind of “objective” description of the phenomenon .It is easy to see how such a view could have held sway in the last century when scholars for the most part dilettante translators engaging in translation as a pastime were preoccupied with the translation of literary texts and in particular classical authors. It is also understandable that this attitude have continued into the present century during which both translation and translation theory have been dominated at least until very recently by Bible translators.

• It is less comprehensible that this view still persist in our time when the vast majority of translations are not literary texts but technical , medical, legal, administrative ones, and the vast majority of translators are professionals engaged in making a living rather than whiling away time in an agreeable manner translating the odd ode or two on winter evenings.

• The supposed dichotomy between “art” and “ science” is still current enough.

• But we , as professional translators , should look at it as a science.

• Translation has been variously defined in the dictionaries of linguistics in the following way:

• -translation is the expression in another language ( or Target language or Metalanguage) of what has been expressed in another Source language or Protolanguage preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.

• - translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language (protolanguage, source language) by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language(metalanguage, target language).

• 1. Equivalence: Semantic and Stylistic• Texts in different languages can be equivalent

in different degrees (fully or partially equivalent), in respect of different levels of presentation (equivalent in respect of context, of semantics, grammar, lexis, etc…) and at different ranks (word-for-word, phrase-for-phrase, sentence-for-sentence).

• It is apparent, and has been for a very long indeed, that the ideal of total equivalence is a chimera. Languages are different from each other; they differ in form, have distinct codes and rules regulating the construction of grammatical stretches of language and these forms have different meanings.

• To shift from one language to another is to alter the forms. Further, the contrasting forms convey meanings which cannot but fail to coincide totally; there is no absolute synonymy between words in the same language, that’s why we can’t speak about absolute synonymy of different languages.

• Something is always “lost” or sometimes “gained” in the process of translation and translators can find themselves being accused of reproducing only part of the original and so “betraying” the author’s intentions. If equivalence is to be preserved at a particular level at all costs it is not clear at what level it should be.

• The nature of the language is dual. Language is a formal structure – a code – which consists of elements which can contribute to signal semantic ‘sense’ and at the same time a communication system which uses the forms of the code to refer to entities and create signals which possess communicative ‘value’. The translator has the option then of focusing on finding formal equivalents which ‘preserve’ the context-free semantic sense of the text at the expense of its context-sensitive communicative value or finding functional equivalents which preserve the context-sensitive communicative value of the text at the expense of its context-free semantic sense.

•

• The choice is between translating word-for-word (literal translation) or meaning-for-meaning translation.(free translation). Pick the first and the translator is critisized for the "ugliness" Qf a "faithful" translation; pick the second and the translator is critisized for the "inaccuracy" of a "beautiful" translation. Either way, it seems, the translator cannot win, even though we recognize that the crucial variable is the purpose for which the translation is being made, not some inherent characteristics of the text.

• 2. Questions to Be Answered in Translation• Faced by a text -written or spoken- in a

language which we know, we are able to work out not only -the semantic sense of each word and sentence but also its communicative value as well as its place in time and space and information about the participants involved in its production and reception. According to all said above we should answer five questions:

• -What? It is the message contained in the text; the content of the signal; the propositional content of the speech acts.

• Why? This question orients us towards the intention of the sender, the purpose for which the text was issued, the communicative forces of the speech acts which constitute the underlying structure of the text; the discourse.

• When? This question is concerned with the time of the communication realized in the text and setting it in its historical context; contemporary or set in the recent or remote past or future. How? Is ambiguous, since it can refer to : - manner of delivery : serious or ironic...

• -medium of communication: the mode of the discourse(way of doing); the channels - verbal/non verbal; oral speech/writing -selected to carry the signal.

• Where? Is concerned with the place of communication; the physical location of the speech event realized in the text.

• Who? Refers to the participants involved in the communication: the sender and the receiver. Both spoken and written texts will reveal , to a greater or lesser extent, characteristics of the speaker or writer as an individual and also, by inference, the attitude the sender adopts in relation to the receiver and to the message being transmitted.

• Any language is a code which possesses features -phonological, syntactic, lexical and semantic - and that language use is made possible by making selections from among these sets of code features in order to create texts which act as adequate vehicles for the communication of meaning.

• 3. The Rules and Principles.• Translation theory today is strongly connected

with the normative approach which was elaborated in 1721 by famous translator A.Tytler. L The normative approach sets up a series of maxims consisting of do's and don'ts. Tytler describes a good translation as that in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language , as to be distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which the language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work. From this, he gives three laws of translation:

• - the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work;

• - the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original;

• - the translation should have all the ease of the original composition.

• All these Tytler's rules are normative prescriptions deriving directly from the subjective and evaluative description of the "good translation". They are like the rules of etiquette: what people are told they ought and ought not to do in particular circumstances, by reference to essentially arbitrary norms of behavior.

• Grammatical examples of such rules are such classics as "do not end a sentence with a preposition", "do not split infinitive" and so fourth. The fact of the matter is that a preposition is often a useful form to complete a clause or sentence The "rules" and "principles" promulgated for translation have , for centuries, been of this normative, regulatory type. Translators have been told what to do (prescriptive rules) and what not to do (proscriptive rules) but very rarely why they are to conform to these dictates.

• The rules discussed in linguistics , on the other hand, seek to be of the second, descriptive, constitutive type. The rules of the code - what elements are available and how they may legitimately combine -are straightforward examples ; rules which determine relationships and are all-or-none in application.A particular string of sounds or letters, for example, either does or does not constitute a word in a particular language : "The" in English does, while " teh, hte, eht” do not. In recent works on the theory of translation not prescriptive but the descriptive approach prevails. The scholars are in search of descriptive rules which help to understand the process, not normative rules which are used to monitor and judge the work of other translators.

• 4. The Translator’s Informational Capacity• What is meant by “knowing” a word? It is a well-

known fact that the translator always works with particular word-senses highlighted by particular contexts. But the level of his awareness of the semantics of even one word may vary considerably. It is useful to distinguish five different levels of “knowing” a word-sense, or five different levels of the translator’s informational capacity.

• Level 1. The translator is able to associate a word-sense with some general field of human knowledge or practical activity, i.e. with a certain very wide class of things or ideas. E.g. Hydrophobia = an illness.

• Level 2. The translator is able to refer the word-sense to a particular genus of things or ideas. E.g. Hydrophobia= an affliction of the nervous system.

• Level 3. The translator is able to refer the word-sense to the particular species of things or ideas. Hydrophobia = a disease that kills animals and people, that you can catch if you are bitten by an infected dog.

• Level 4. The translator possesses encyclopedic details of the phenomenon described by the conception in question. E.g. Hydrophobia= rabies = an acute infectious often fatal virus disease of most warm-blood animals, especially wolves, cats and dogs that attacks the central nervous system and is transmitted by the bite of infected animal.

• Level 5. In addition to encyclopedic knowledge the translator possesses a scientific knowledge of the concept in question. Scientific knowledge allows a systematic description of the essential qualities of a thing or idea, their connections with other things and ideas and the way they have developed up to now and are expected to develop in the future. For example, the translator knows in what essential ways hydrophobia is different from other virus diseases that attack the central nervous system, when it was first identified, how it was treated in the past and how it is treated now, and what the prospects are of eliminating the risk of this disease altogether.

• Bilingual dictionaries do not define; they give cross-language translation synonyms. They provide the translator with the outward shape of the word-sense without describing its inner content. To translate effectively one has to have at least three levels of informational capacity. Level 4 and in some cases level 5 of informational capacities are strongly advisable, especially in translation for specific purposes.

• 5. Learning to Be a Translator • In this light, learning to be a translator entails

more than just learning lots of words and phrases in two or more languages and transfer patterns between them; more than just what hardware and software to own and what to charge. It entails also, and perhaps most importantly, grounding yourself in several key communities or social networks, in fact in as many as you can manage — and as thoroughly as you can manage in each.

• Above all, perhaps, in the translator community.

• Translators know how languages and cultures interact. Translators know how the marketplace for intercultural communication works (hardware and software, rates, contracts, etc.). Translators will get you jobs: if they can't take a job and want to suggest someone else for an agency or client to call, and they know you from a conference or a local or regional translator organization, they'll dig out your card and suggest you; or if they've enjoyed your postings in an on-line discussion group, they'll give the agency or client your e-mail address. Translators have to be grounded in many social networks, and will almost always know someone to call or fax or e-mail to get an answer to a difficult terminological problem — so that being grounded in the translator community gives you invaluable links to many other communities as well. Hence the importance of belonging to and getting involved in translator organizations, attending translator conferences, and subscribing to translator discussion groups on the Internet.

• But you should also, of course, be grounded in as many other communities as you can: people who use specific specialized discourses and people who don't; specialists at work, at professional conferences, and at the bar; people who read and /or write for professional journals, or for "general" periodicals for news, science, and culture, and/or for various popular magazines and tabloids; people who tell stories, things they saw on or read in the news, things that happened to them or their friends, jokes they've heard recently, things they've made up.

• Translating is, very much akin to other forms of reading and writing, telling and listening; it is a form of communication, a channel for the circulation of ideas and opinions, information and influence. And translators have a great deal in common with people who use other channels for circulating those things both within and between cultures. It is essential for translators to ground themselves in the communities that use these channels in at least two language communities, of course — this is the major differ ence between translators and most other communicators — but it helps translators to think and act globally to imagine their job as one of building communicative connections with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different social networks all over the world.

• Eugene Nida has written : - translation is transmission; - translators are links in the communicative chain; - translation is synaptic action in the global brain.

• It is not particularly scandalous that few translators have been kings, princes or priests. There is even a certain pride to be taken in the fact that political and moral authorities have had to trust the knowledge conveyed by their translating servants. But how might the person know that a particular translator is worthy of trust? It would be foolish to suggest that all translators are equally competent, that their fidelity corresponds automatically to what they are paid, or that their loyalty is beyond doubt. Some kind of extra-textual support is ultimately necessary. Perhaps the persons’ confidence is based on a diploma from a specialised translation institute, references from previous employers, compari sons with other translators, or even on what the individual translator is able to say about the practice of translating, since theorisation is itself a mode of professional self-defence.

• 6. Pragmatic Difficulties in Translation

• Every translation activity has one or more specific purposes and whichever they may be the main aim of translation is to serve as a cross-cultural bilingual communication vehicle among people. In the past few decades this activity has developed because of rising international trade, increased migration, globalization and the expansion of mass media and technology. For this reason the translator plays an important role as a bilingual or multi-lingual cross-cultural transmitter of culture and truths by attempting to interpret concepts and speech in a variety of texts as faithfully and accurately as possible .

• Most translation theories agree that translation is understood as a transfer process from a foreign language – or a second language- to the mother tongue. However, market requirements are increasingly demanding that translators transfer texts to a target language that is not their mother tongue but a foreign one. This is what P.Newmark calls “service translation” .

• This fact makes the translation a very hard task because any text should be revised and post-edited before delivery to the client.

• It is a well-known fact that the consequences of wrong translations can be catastrophic – especially if done by laypersons – and mistakes done in the performance of this activity can obviously be irreparable. Just think of what could happen in cases of serious inadequacy in knowledge areas such as science, medicine, legal matters or technology.

• It is quite clear that a poor translation can not only lead to hilarity or to minor confusion but it can also be a matter of life and death.

• To a great extent the quality of translation depends on the quality of translator, i.e. his knowledge, skills, training, cultural background, expertise and even mood. P.Newmark distinguishes some essential characteristics that any good translator should have:

• -Reading comprehension ability in a foreign language

• -knowledge of the subject• -sensitivity to language (both mother tongue and

foreign language)• -competence to write the target language

dexterously, clearly, economically and resourcefully.

•

• Moreover, many authors speak about intuition or common sense as the most common sense of all senses; in other words making use of that sixth sense, a combination of intelligence, sensitivity and intuition. Thus, we can speak about, so-called, translator’s triangle, i.e. - the profound knowledge of languages he works with; - the knowledge of psychology; - the extralinguistic knowledge.

• Translation is closely connected to pragmatics. Pragmatics – a branch of linguistics dealing with language in use and the context in which it is used. Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as commun icated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning .

• This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they're talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.

• This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpreta tion of the speaker's intended meaning. This type of study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning. Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said .

• Doing the translation it is very important to know not only the linguistic differences between the SL and the TL but the cultural differences as well. There are many examples when the ignorance of the knowledge of the culture of the Target Language leads to some funny and sometimes tragic mistakes.

• There are some vivid examples of such mistakes:

• The famous Company “General Motors” failed at the Latin American market with its new car “Chevrolet Nova”. It appeared that in Spanish “No va” means “can’t move’.

• - The perfumery company ‘Clairol’ presented its new dry deodorant in Germany using the slogan ‘ Mist Stick’. It appeared that in German slang the word ‘mist’ means ‘muck’

• - The American company ‘Pepsi’ translated word-for-word its main advertising slogan ‘Come Alive with Pepsi Generation’ The Chinese were shocked because for them it meant ‘ ‘Pepsi’ would make your ancestors come from the graves’.

• - It was very difficult for the ‘Coca Cola’ company to find a proper name for its marketing in China. The Chinese people pronounce it as ‘Kekukela’ that means ‘Bite the wax tadpole’. The company tried about 40 thousand variants of this name and at last they succeeded finding the name ‘Koku Kole’ that in Chinese means ‘happiness in the mouth’.

• - The American company ‘Frank Purdue’ world famous for its chicken meat uses the slogan ‘It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken’. When it was translated into Spanish it acquired the meaning ‘A sexually excited man is needed to make a hen tender’.

• All these examples are funny enough but sometimes the translator’s mistakes lead to tragic mistakes.