Chapter 1

TRANSLATION: BASIC CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

1.1 What is translation?

Translation refers to a “process” of “rendering” a text into another language where
translators take definite actions to achieve their task.

It can also mean “reproducing” a “natural equivalent” of a source language (SL)

message, taking into consideration the target language (TL) norms that aim for
naturalness.

The concept of translating is sometimes linked to more complex paratextual elements

as the intention of the ST author and the sociocultural context.

# What affect on paratextual elements? A- the intention of the ST author

B- the sociocultural context.

In Arabic, the word ‫ترجم‬means “to explain speech into another language” and “transfer
speech into another language”. Rids defines ‫ترجم كالمه‬as “explained it.” Naturally, one
cannot expect one definition to be an ideal match for a wide range of contexts,
languages, purposes, and readership.

Scholar maintains that “The goal of translation is to achieve linguistic, cultural and
psychological equivalence and judging its quality is a great concern, especially since
there are no specific criteria to guide that process.

# Factors affect the quality of translation? Linguistic, cultural, psychological

equivalence

Back to see translation process page 2

 Need for translation
Why do we need translation?
1- Enabling different countries to promote interactive relationships aiming at
advancements in technology, politics, trade, and peace.
2- Being a traditional means of communication, translation promotes transmitting
knowledge and protects cultural heritage.

Scholar maintains that the value behind translation is based on two

elements:
1- being a text and occupying a position in a certain language and culture
2- constituting a representation in that language or culture of another.

Why do we need translation or what is the importance of translation?

Translation protects literature and promotes the understanding of the other. In the present fast-
paced world, spreading news, academic literature, medical advances, scientific innovations,
and other aspects of knowledge is only possible through translation. On a country level,
translation can promote external affairs and boost the tourism sector, which can include public
or private bodies. As we shall see in Chapter 2, translation, however, is an ideal tool for self-
presentation and denial of the other through ideologically motivated rewritings of news stories.
Additionally, legal documents between individuals or states are usually translated when the
parties to these agreements speak different languages. It should thus be highlighted that
translation serves different purposes, texts, and people. Without such a must- activity, the
world could remain disconnected areas.
1.2 Equivalence: an illusion
There has been no consensus on translation equivalence, which has encouraged a continuous
debate among translation theorists for decades. The concept is linked to complex factors
beyond simply replacing words.

Nida introduced formal equivalence focusing on SL message form and content and dynamic
equivalence aiming at an “equivalent effect.” Practically, formal equivalence between Arabic
and English does not pose a challenge unlike the dynamic equivalence because the chances of
achieving the latter heavily rely on paralinguistic factors.

Newmark argues that translation equivalence is useless and that “perfect translation is
illusionary”.

Some scholars stress the impossibility of achieving exact equivalence between any language
pair.

Some scholars maintain that linguistic and cultural factors make equivalence relative.

On the intralingual level, finding two words bearing the same meaning in all contexts is “a luxury
a language can do without”.
#Explain

Lack of equivalence can be attributed to lexical, syntactic, or pragmatic differences between

different languages that makes it difficult to provide perfect guidelines to deal with various
types of non- equivalence.

# Factors that affect the selection/choice of equivalence? Lexical, syntactic, pragmatic

differences between different languages.

Differences in the components and relations of meaning between a pair of languages can lead
to two consequences for translation as well as equivalence issues.

Being the basis for any translation practice that heavily relies on equivalence relations, 1-
meaning is usually determined through situation and context rather than through the dictionary.
2- Meaning can also be governed by translators’ interference in transferring texts between a pair
of languages.

# What is the result of having the relationship between different components and meaning?
 Equivalence and translation
# in the exam, you can use these examples when you illustrate something
Back to page 4-5 to read the examples.

Despite its significance, equivalence remains a relative debatable concept, achieving

which is governed by linguistic and cultural factors. English and Arabic are two distinct
languages linguistically and culturally and one naturally expects to encounter
difficulties in rendering various levels and types of texts between this language pair.
(IMP) Although it is sometimes impossible to think of equivalence when the ST lexical
unit is completely absent in the TL, a translator can employ different methods to render
or explain a term or concept to target readership.

1.3 Translation strategies

1- Literal translation
Despite its practicality in specific translation activities, literal translation has long
been considered a source-text-biased strategy.

Let us examine the problems of literal translation here:

A- Problem 1: No respect for TL grammar
1 Sally is a student. ‫طالب يكون سالي‬
Adopting word-for-word translation or literal translation to translate the preced- ing
example reflects that literal translation violates the grammatical rules of Arabic in terms
of sentence word order and gender. The first problem in the translation is that be is not
translated into Arabic when in the present tense and the translation of such a sentence
into Arabic should produce a nominal sentence .‫جملة اسمية‬The second problem lies in
deleting the feminine gender marker from the word ,‫طالب‬which should be inflected to
feminine gender following the noun ‫سالي‬to which it refers. This is based on the
assumption that each word is translated alone. The acceptable Arabic rendering of the
preceding is: ‫سالي طالبة‬.

B- Problem 2: Loss of collocational meanings

2 Deliver a baby. ‫طفل يسلم‬
3 The court made a final judgment. .‫حكم نهائي صنع المحكمة‬
The collocational meanings are lost in (2) and (3).
While deliver in deliver a baby is accurately translated into Arabic as ,‫تلد المرأة‬,made in
(3) is translated as ‫أصدرت‬and:
The acceptable Arabic renderings of (2) and (3) are : ‫تلد المرأة و أصدرت المحكمة حكما نهائيًا‬
 Problem 3: Idiomatic expressions
4- on a high horse ‫حصان عالي على‬
5- break a leg ‫قدم يكسر‬
6 - rain cats and dogs ‫وكالب قطط تمطر‬
As can be noticed, the idiomatic meanings in (4), (5), and (6) are lost due to the
rendering of individual words separately. On a high horse means arrogant, break a leg
means good luck, and to rain cats and dogs means to rain heavily. The accurate
ً ‫ أتمنى لك ح‬، ‫ متغطرس أو متكبر‬In order to
translation of (4), (5), and (6) are ‫ظا طيبًا و تمطر بغزارة‬
render accurate translations, students of translation are advised to consult a
monolingual or bilingual dictionary of idioms to familiarize themselves with the meaning
of the SL idiom.

2- Semantic and communicative translation

Newmark argues that communicative translation focuses on the effect of translation on the
target readers whereas semantic translation focuses on rendering texts according to the
syntactic and semantic structures of the TL.
# Which one is left for the translator? Communicative
ST TT
Let bygones be bygones ‫إللي فات مات‬
‫ممنوع التدخين‬ No smoking
‫ال شكر على واجب‬ Don’t mention it
‫ضرب عصفورين بحجر‬ To kill two birds with one stone

3- Free translation
When adopting free translation, which is usually TL biased, translators are at liberty to render
STs, maintaining the content of the ST message.

4- Adaptation
Translators adopt this translation strategy( adaptation )when the source text contains
something specific to the source language culture to be expressed in a completely different
way that is familiar to the culture of the target language. Adaptation is therefore a shift in
cultural environment.
5- Translation by addition
Translation by addition strategy simply refers to adding something, not present in the ST, to
the TT. This strategy is commonly used when translating from Arabic into English as in
adding the word days to the English translation of ‫منذ الهيمنة التركية‬making it “since the days of
the Turkish hegemony”. This example is IMP.
6- Translation by omission
translation by omission refers to deleting ST lexical units from the TT. Some scholars
explain that “the most obvious form of translation loss is when something that occurs in
the ST is simply omitted from the TT.” For example , The Arabic phrase ,‫هذا و‬used to
introduce information related to a previous textual material, is usually omitted when we
translate into English.

7- Translating using general words

Translation by a more general word is one of the common strategies adopted to deal with
many types of non-equivalence. An example of translation using a general word is
translating mother tongue into ‫اللغة األصلية‬where tongue is replaced in the TL by a
more general word , ‫لغة‬.
8- Paraphrase
Translators adopt this translation strategy to paraphrase an ST in the TT when the concept
expressed by the source item is lexicalized in the target language in a different format.
9- Couplets and multiple strategies
Newmark defined this strategy as using two procedures to deal with one problem.
Consider the following examples:
1 Proletariat: .‫ طبقة الكادحين‬:‫البروليتاريا‬In this example, borrowing, phonological modification,
and description are used to render the meaning of the ST word.
2 Bourdon gauge: .‫مقياس بوردن لقياس ضغط السوائل‬Translation, borrowing, and explanation are
used to render the ST term.
3 Bourgeoisie: .‫ الطبقة المتوسطة‬:‫البورجوازية‬Here borrowing, phonological modification, and
explanation are used.
This procedure can also apply to examples from Arabic into English as in:
4 ‫عدة‬: iddah( a religiously sanctioned waiting period a Muslim woman must observe after
the death of her husband or divorce during which she may not marry). This is an example of
a semantically complex word the translation of which requires detailed familiarity with
Islamic terms.
1.4 Language variation
Language variation here refers to the regional variation that results in using different lexical
items to refer to one thing. This type of variation can pose challenges to translators who are
strongly advised to take the target language setting into consideration when rendering words
that can have different equivalents in different countries. An English word can be translated
differently in different Arab countries and, likewise, an Arabic word can have different
equivalents in British English and American English. ✅
1.5 Translation quality
There are no unanimous criteria to judge the quality of a translation process or product due
to linguistic and paralinguistic differences between the SL and TL, translators’ familiarity
with SL and TL norms, text genres, purpose of translation, and commission. General
guidelines that translators can follow ensure producing translations that meet the
expectations for which translation processes are initiated.

Understanding the source language and target language linguistic and cultural norms is
a decisive factor in the process of translation.

The thorough understanding of a source text linguistic and paralinguistic aspects enables
translators to analyze the components of the text, use suitable translation methods, and
consequently produce accurate translations according to the target language norms.

Misunderstanding the ST can, in certain cases, lead to not only undesired results but also
catastrophic consequences. ✅

Translation can be influenced by factors that are beyond translators’ control .

These mainly include the ideological values of translators, institutions, or target readers.

An example of a translation that takes target readers’ ideology into account is the
translation of Palestinian terrorist into ,‫مقاوم فلسطيني‬which indicates a significant departure
from the ST. Cultural references may be deleted from TTs in order to respect the cultural
values of target readers. Consider the following example where bacon was translated as ‫لحم‬
‫مقدد‬.
1.6 Decision making
The essence of translation is nothing but decision making, a stage requiring transla-
tors to select certain alternatives that define the factors governing all aspects of the
translation process.

Someone explains that it is necessary to present a standard procedural notion of

decision making. The notion is based on six stages as follows:
1- Problem identification
2- Problem clarification (description)
3- Research on, and collection of, background information
4- Deliberation of how to proceed (pre-choice behavior)
5- Moment of choice
6- Post-choice behavior (evaluation of translation results)

Someone stress that achieving equivalence involves a complex decision-making

process and that translation decisions are not straightforward and “sequential.”
They are rather hierarchal, highly complex, and motivated by the following
factors:
1- Aesthetics: The nature of decision making is driven by a number of subjective
factors, such as the translator’s own “aesthetic standards”.

2- Cognition and knowledge: The authors assert that the translator’s own socio-
cognitive system (the translator’s culture and system of values, beliefs, etc.) is less
subjective than aesthetics. The system plays a significant role in informing
translation decisions.

3- Commission: someone point out that the task specification agreed with clients can
significantly influence the decision-making process. This highlights translation
purpose, loyalty, and conflict of interests, among other factors. Someone maintain
that the nature of the commission is a central factor in defining the purpose of the
translation.

#What makes it difficult to achieve the equivalence? The Three factors mentioned
before which are, Aesthetics, Cognition and knowledge, Commission
1.7 Translators tools
The internet has become a quick, valuable, and free source of information for students and
translators. Students can find words easily and quickly in different domains using Google
Search and Google Translate. However, attention should be paid to the linguistic and semantic
problems of translation when using Google Translate to translate sentences between English
and Arabic.

Google translates ‫يا له من كرسي متعب‬into What a tired chair!; ‫متعِب‬means uncomfortable rather
than tired.The word, read as ,‫متَعب‬means tired. The problem here lies in the fact that Google
Translate does not distinguish the different readings of the word and consequently cannot
select the accurate translations associated with these different readings. Translation software
or Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools, especially those having translation memory as in
TRADOS, can be of great use for students and translators. However, translations using such
software many not be accurate due to syntactic structures or lexical ambiguities.