Strategies Used by Professional Translators: Dealing with Non-Equivalence in Translation | Schemi e mappe concettuali di Lingua Inglese

In Other Words

Examples chapter 2

Strategies used by professional translators

We can look at examples of strategies used by professional translators for dealing with various

types of non-equivalence.

(a) Translation by a more general word (superordinate) This is one of the commonest

strategies for dealing with many types of non-equivalence, particularly i the area of

propositional meaning. It works equally well in most languages, since the hierarchical

structure of semantic fields is not language-specific. (add image)

The above examples illustrate the use of a general word (superordinate) to solve a relative

lack of specificity in the target language compared to the source language. What the

translator of the above extracts have done is go up in a given semantic field to find a more

general word that covers the core propositional meaning of the missing hyponym in the

target language.

(b) Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word (add image)

There’s an important difference in the expressive meaning of mumble and its nearest

Italian equivalent, mugugnare. The English verb mumble suggests confusion, disorientation

or embarrassment; examples: ‘Sorry’, she managed to mumble incoherently. I was doing a

three-point-turn manoeuvre to get us back onto the road when he woke up, lifted his hat

and mumbled: ‘where are we?’’ […]. The Italian near equivalent mugugnare tends to

suggest dissatisfaction rather than embarrassment or confusion. (add image )

The translator could have used Japanese phrase which means ‘behind the times’ and which

could have been closer to both the propositional and expressive meaning of archaic. This

would have been too direct, too openly disapproving by Japanese standards, so the

expressive meaning of archaic is lost in translation. (add image)

Exotic has no equivalent in Chinese and other oriental languages. It’s a word used by

westerners to refer to unusual, interesting thing which come from a distant country such

as China. The orient doesn’t have a concept of what is exotic in this sense, so the

expressive meaning is lost in translation. (add image)

There is an equivalent for mystery in Chinese, but is mostly associated with religion. The

translator felt that it would be wrong to use it in a zoological context.

(add image) Home has no direct equivalent in Chinese; in fact it’s difficult to translate into

many languages. In the examples it’s replaced with a Chinese near-equivalents which are

both less expressive and more formal. (add image)

As we can see, It’s sometimes possible to retain expressive meaning by adding a modifier.

The adjective ‘ugly’ does not appear in the source text. But in Italian the word has a

pejorative connotation.

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In Other Words

Examples chapter 2

Strategies used by professional translators We can look at examples of strategies used by professional translators for dealing with various types of non-equivalence. (a) Translation by a more general word (superordinate) This is one of the commonest strategies for dealing with many types of non-equivalence, particularly i the area of propositional meaning. It works equally well in most languages, since the hierarchical structure of semantic fields is not language-specific. (add image) The above examples illustrate the use of a general word (superordinate) to solve a relative lack of specificity in the target language compared to the source language. What the translator of the above extracts have done is go up in a given semantic field to find a more general word that covers the core propositional meaning of the missing hyponym in the target language. (b) Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word (add image) There’s an important difference in the expressive meaning of mumble and its nearest Italian equivalent, mugugnare. The English verb mumble suggests confusion, disorientation or embarrassment; examples: ‘Sorry’, she managed to mumble incoherently. I was doing a three-point-turn manoeuvre to get us back onto the road when he woke up, lifted his hat and mumbled: ‘where are we?’’ […]. The Italian near equivalent mugugnare tends to suggest dissatisfaction rather than embarrassment or confusion. (add image ) The translator could have used Japanese phrase which means ‘behind the times’ and which could have been closer to both the propositional and expressive meaning of archaic. This would have been too direct, too openly disapproving by Japanese standards, so the expressive meaning of archaic is lost in translation. (add image) Exotic has no equivalent in Chinese and other oriental languages. It’s a word used by westerners to refer to unusual, interesting thing which come from a distant country such as China. The orient doesn’t have a concept of what is exotic in this sense, so the expressive meaning is lost in translation. (add image) There is an equivalent for mystery in Chinese, but is mostly associated with religion. The translator felt that it would be wrong to use it in a zoological context. (add image) Home has no direct equivalent in Chinese; in fact it’s difficult to translate into many languages. In the examples it’s replaced with a Chinese near-equivalents which are both less expressive and more formal. (add image) As we can see, It’s sometimes possible to retain expressive meaning by adding a modifier. The adjective ‘ugly’ does not appear in the source text. But in Italian the word has a pejorative connotation.

(c) Translation by cultural substitution This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item or expression with a target language item which doesn’t have the same propositional meaning but it have a similar impact on the target reader, for instance by evoking a similar context in the target culture. This strategy gives the reader a concept with she/he can identify something similar. The translator’s decision to use this strategy depend on –how much license is given to her/him by those who commission the translation; -the purpose of the translation; -the translator’s own judgement of the opportunity or otherwise of obscuring the cultural specificity of the source text. In general the decision will also reflect the norms of translation prevailing in a given community and it can varies considerably across different communities and temporal locations. (add image) The above example illustrates a very interesting use of the strategy of cultural substitution. N decided that this can be obtain by introducing the reader to characters which are familiar and interesting rather than to foreign characters and stereotypes with which the readers may not identify. Alice in Wonderland is apparently well known in Greece. In the source text some stereotypes image isn’t accessible to people from other cultures. For this there are a series of interesting substitutions. (add image) In Britain, cream tea, is a typical tradition common for the English culture, that doesn’t exist in another culture. The Italian translator replaced it with pastry which doesn’t have the same meaning, but it’s familiar to the Italian reader and so it provides a good cultural substitution. (add image) Porca is literally the female of swine. A translator’s footnote explains that the Italian word referred to a women indicates unchastity, harlotry. Bitch represents a good cultural substitute even the literal meanings of porca and bitch are different. (add image) (d) Translation using a loan word or a loan word plus explanation This strategy is particularly common in dealing with culture-specific items, modern concepts and buzz words. Following the loan word with an explanation is very useful when the word in question is repeated several times in the text. Once explained, the loan word can be used on its own and the readers can understand it. (add image) As mentioned above, the English cream-tea custom is culture-specific; Germans have coffee and cakes. The German translator could have used the strategy of cultural substitution, and ‘coffee and cakes’ could have replaced with cream tea , but the translator seems to have decided that the kind of educated German know about the English cream- tea custom. This also explains the use of the loan word on its own without an explanation and we can note that the transferred English expression is in inverted commas. So the use of hyphens is a compromise between the norms of two languages. We can see the differences between the translation of the same text in Italian, German, French and Japanese. (add image) Shaman is a technical word used in religious studies to refer to a priest among the northern tribes of Asia. It has no ready equivalent in Japanese and the equivalent used in the translation is made up of shaman as a loan word, written in katakana script. (add image) Note that the explanation which follows the loan word is based on modifying a

(h) Translation by illustration This is a useful option if the word which lacks an equivalent in the target language refers to a physical entity which can be illustrated, particularly if there are restrictions on space and if the text has to remain short, concise and to the point.

Examples chapter 3

Here are some examples of translations which have adopted for naturalness at the expense of accuracy. (add image) Rich colours are vivid and deep. The Arabic collocation suggests brightness rather than depth of colour. (add image) Crowd pullers isn’t an acceptable collocation in Chinese, and the expression is quite informal. Much of the expressive and evoked meaning of crowd puller is lost in translation and the collocation used to replace it’s more natural stylistically more acceptable. (add image) Critical time is replaced by a more typical Chinese fixed expressions which has a similar, though perhaps more emphatic meaning. (add image) Crisp writing is clear, concise writing. The collocation suggests approval. In Arabic ‘sharp pen’ is a common and typical collocation. However, both is propositional and expressive meanings are quite different from those of crisp writing in English. (add image) To describe someone as having oily charm in English means not only that they are insincere, but also that there’s something particularly unpleasant in the way they show excessive politeness people. In Arabic, ‘false charm’ suggests that someone who appears charming at first sight may not turn out be as good as they think to be. Culture-specific collocations Some collocations reflect the cultural setting in which they occur. If the cultural settings of the source and target languages are significantly different, there will be instances when the source text will contain collocations which convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas. Such culture-specific collocations express ideas. Such culture-specific collocations express ideas previously unexpressed in the target language. (add image) in English academic writing it’s common and acceptable to talk about ‘lesser-known languages’ as well as ‘major languages’ and ‘minor languages’. Russian has no equivalent collocations and furthermore the political and social settings of Russian makes it potentially offensive to draw a distinction between better-known and lesser-known/major and minor languages. In the translation inverted commas are used around ‘small’ and ‘big’ and they’re each followed by a paraphrase, and the whole expression is preceded by ‘so-called’ which is used to distance the writer/translators from the associations made. (add image) Common collocates of hair in English include dry, oily, damaged, permed, fine, flyaway and brittle. These collocations reflect cultural reality in the English-speaking world. Common collocations in Arabic are mainly ‘split-ends’, ‘dry’, ‘oily’, ‘coarse’, and ‘smooth’. These colocations also reflect the cultural reality of the Arabic-speaking world. The colocations damaged hair and brittle hair have no close equivalents in Arabic. The translator of the above extract nevertheless feels obliged to reproduce every possible aspect of meaning conveyed in the source text.

Marked collocations in the source text Unusual combinations of words are sometimes used in the source text in order to create new images. Ideally the translation of a marked collocation will be similarly marked in the target language. This is, however, always subject to the constraints of the target language and to the purpose of the translation in question. (add image) the reader of the source text is alerted to the writer’s wish to communicate an unusual image by the inverted commas around entrench. In the target text, the marked collocation is further highlighted by means of an interjection from the translators. (add images) Note again the use of the inverted commas around marked collocations in the source and target texts. Language is not made up of large number of words which can be used together in free variation. Words have a certain tolerance of compatibility. Like individual words, collocational patterns carry meaning and can be culture-specific and this gives rise to many pitfalls and problems in translation. The translation of idioms: strategies The way in which an idiom or a fixed expression can be translated into another language depends on many factors. It’s not only a question of whether an idiom with a similar meaning is available in the target language. Other factors include the significance of the specific lexical items which constitute the idiom, that’s whether they are manipulated elsewhere in the source text, verbally or visually, as well as the appropriateness or inappropriateness of using idiomatic language in a given register in the target language. The acceptability or non-acceptability of using any of the strategies described below will depend on the context in which a given idiom is translated. Examples. (a) Using an idiom of similar meaning and form This strategy involves using an idiom in the target language which conveys roughly the same meaning as that of the source-language idiom and consists of equivalent lexical items. This kind of can only occasionally be achieved. (images) The Arabic expression, which means ‘upside down’, is similar in form only to another English idiom, head over wheels, meaning ‘very much in love’. (images) (b) Using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form It’s often possible to find an idiom or fixed expression in the target language which has a meaning similar to that of the source idiom or expression, but which consists of different lexical items. For example, the English expression one good deserves another and the French expression à beau jeu, beau retour use different lexical items to express more or less the same idea. (image) The Chinese idiom used to replace the it consists of a measure word based on a ten-point-scale, plus ‘self at ease’. The measure word means ‘100 per cent’, but the scale used is out of 10 rather than out of 100. (image) The above statement is addressed to an ice monster. The German expression dir werde ich einheizen means literally as possible ‘I will put the heating on you’. (c) Borrowing the source language idiom Just as the use of loan words is a common strategy in dealing with culture-specific items it’s not unusual for idioms to be borrowed in their

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In Other Words

Examples chapter 2

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