Study Material for the students of B. A. Prog.

II Year

SEC- Translation Studies

Dr. Shubha Dwivedi

Assistant Professor

Department of English

ARSD College

Why do we need translations?

“Translation matters because it’s the best way for those of us who can’t read in other languages
to learn about the rest of the world.”

-Susan Harris, Editorial director of “Words Without Borders”

Translation is a meaningful intellectual activity. It has a wide-ranging multidimensional

In a multilingual multicultural context, translation becomes an extremely useful activity as it

In the era of globalization and greater outreach communication among people of different speech
communities is feasible only through translation activity.

Translation is useful in everyday interaction, and even for understanding and negotiation
between heterogeneous cultures.

Translation has paved the way for global interactions, also advancements in diverse fields of
knowledge and the effective dissemination of ideas etc.

Translation has a vital impact on social and political consciousness.

It expands cultural understanding.

What is Translation?

Translation is essentially the communication of the meaning of a source language text by means
of an equivalent target language text.

Translation is a uni-directional process that it is a change from SL to TL.

Simplistically speaking, translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language

Translation is an extremely complex activity because there is no one to one coordination between
any two languages in terms of grammar, composition and meanings.

The term translation is defined in The Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopaedia Dictionary as an act
of turning words, sentences or books from one language into another or expressing the sense of
something in another form of words. The etymological meaning of the word is “carrying across”
or “bringing across”. The word translation derives from the Latin word translation ( which itself
comes from trans- and fero, together meaning “to carry across” or “to bring across” .The modern
Romance Languages use words for translation derived from that source and from the alternative
Latin traduce “to lead across”. The Germanic and Slavic languages likewise use calques based
on these Latin sources. The ancient 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 Greek, paraphrasis.
Metaphrase correspomds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to “formal equivalence”; and
paraphrase, to “dynamic equivalence.”

By way of explanation, the concept of metaphrase “word for word translation” –is an imperfect
concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and
because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one
word. In spite of that, “metaphrase” and “paraphrase” maybe useful as ideal concepts that mark
the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.

Questions that pop up while attempting a translation

Whether the spirit of the text remains intact or unscathed in the translated version or otherwise.

To what extent the translation is faithful to the text?

Is the translation liberal in its reincarnated form or is it a literal translation.

The most intriguing problem of translation has always been whether to translate literally or
freely. In response to this question, various theories have been propsed enveloping the purpose of
translation, the nature of the readers, the form of text etc. While free translation was preferred
upto the beginning of the 19th century, translators subsequently advocated ‘free’ translation,
where sense mattered not the words; the message rather than the form; the spirit of the text was
deemed important than the letters. In the wake of the cultural anthropology it was held that
language being the product of culture was insurmountable, therefore, translation was impossible
and if attempted at all, had to be, as literal as possible. This observation culminated in the
statements of the extreme ‘literalists’ Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nabokov.

The various methods of translation could be understood through the following table
Translation with SL emphasis Translation with TL emphasis
Word –for-word translation Adaptation
Literal Translation Free Translation
Faithful Translation Idiomatic Translation
Semantic translation Communicative Translation

Some ideas related to Translation

Dryden described Translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when
selecting in the target language: ‘choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.”

Claques and loanwords enrich the language.

The concept of metaphrase ‘word for word’ is an imperfect one.

Fidelity and transparency- dual ideals in translation are often at odds.

Faithfulness is the extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text
without damage to its overall effect.

Transparency is the extent to which a translation appears to have a native speaker of the Target
language confirming to its grammar, syntax and idioms.

Both the readers as well as the practitioners of translations should be equipped with certain
emotional and aesthetic resources such as inquisitiveness about the world, keenness to learn,
broad mindedness, faculty of imagination, empathy and receptivity.

Things to look for when attempting a translation:

The form of the text

Context

Cultural specificities (social realities, practices, norms conventions etc.)

Point of View

Tone

Diction

(Literary, culture specific, mythical, technical, modal particles, jargons, grammatically bound
ones, associations of words)

Symbolism
Figures of Speech

Theme

Overt and covert allusions

Equivalent Effect in Translation

The translation experts often say that the prime reason of any translation should be to achieve
‘equivalent effect,’ i.e. to produce the same effect as that of the original. This is also referred as
the ‘equivalent response’ principle. Eugene Nida calls it ‘dynamic equivalence’. Peter Newmark
observes that ‘equivalent effect’ is the desirable result, rather than the aim of any translation,
bearing in mind that it is an unlikely result in two cases: (a) if the purpose of the SL text is to
affect and the TL translation is to inform (or vice versa); (b) if there is a pronounced cultural gap
between the SL and the TL text.

However, in the communicative translation of vocative texts, equivalent effect is not only
desirable, it is essential; it is the criterion by which the effectiveness, and therefore, the value of
the translation of notices, instructions, propaganda or perhaps popular fiction is to be assessed.

However, in texts embedded with cultural meanings, the equivalent effect is less conceivable
unless the reader is imaginative, sensitive and steeped in the SL culture.

Tanslating

Translation has a three stage process (Eugene Nida):

1. Analysis
 Grammatical meaning
 Referential Meaning
 Connotational Meaning
 Socio-Cultural Meaning
2. Transfer
3. Restructuring

References

Newmark, Peter. A textbook of Translation. New York: Prentice hall, 1988.

Tiwari, Anjana. “Translation or Transcreation,” Studies in Translation,ed. Mohit K Ray, New