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Translation

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Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

For article translations in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Translation.

For other uses, see Translation (disambiguation).

1 The term
2 Misconceptions
3 Interpreting
4 Fidelity vs. transparency
5 Equivalence
6 Literary translation
7 History
8 Religious texts
9 Machine translation
10 Computer-assisted translation
11 Translating for legal equivalence
12 Accreditation of translators
13 Notes
14 References
15 See also
16 External links

Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language (the "source text") and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text (the "target text," or "translation") that communicates the same message.

Translation must take into account a number of constraints, including context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms.

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

Perhaps the most common misconception about translation is that there exists a simple "word-for-word" correspondence between any two languages, and that translation is therefore a straightforward mechanical process. On the contrary, every language is a historically-evolved self-contained system, and historically-determined differences between languages may dictate differences of expression.

Translation is fraught with uncertainties as well as the potential for inadvertent "spilling over" of idioms and usages from one language into the other, producing linguistic hybrids, for example, "Franglais" (French-English), "Spanglish" (Spanish-English), "Poglish" (Polish-English) and "Portunhol" (Portuguese-Spanish).

The term

Rosetta Stone.

Etymologically, "translation" is a "carrying across" or "bringing across." The Latin "translatio" derives from the perfect passive participle, "translatum," 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").^[1]

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").^[2]

Misconceptions

Newcomers to translation sometimes proceed as if translation were an exact science — as if consistent, one-to-one correlations exist between the words and phrases of different languages, thereby rendering translations fixed and identically-reproducible, much as in cryptography. Such novice translators may assume that all that is needed to translate a text is to "encode" and "decode" equivalencies between the languages, using a translation dictionary as the "codebook."^[3]

On the contrary, such a fixed relationship would only exist, were a new language synthesized and simultaneously matched to a pre-existing language's scopes of meaning, etymologies, and lexical ecological niches. ^[4]

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

There has been debate as to whether translation is art or craft. Literary translators, such as Gregory Rabassa in If This Be Treason, argue that translation is an art, though a teachable art. Other translators, mostly technical, commercial, and legal, regard their métier as a craft — one that can be taught, is subject to linguistic analysis, and that benefits from academic study.

Whether or not translation is art or craft depends upon the nature of the text to be translated. A relatively simple document, e.g. a product brochure, sometimes may be translated quickly, with the techniques of advanced language-students. By contrast, a newspaper editorial, a political speech, or a book on almost any subject ordinarily requires not only the craft of good language skills and research, but substantive knowledge of the pertinent subject and culture, and of the art of writing.

Translation has served as a writing school for many recognized writers. Translators, including the early modern European translators of the Bible, in the course of their work have shaped the very languages into which they have translated. They have acted as bridges for conveying knowledge and ideas between cultures and civilizations. Along with ideas, they have imported into their own languages, calques of grammatical structures and of vocabulary from the source languages.

Interpreting

Balcerzan, Edward, ed., Pisarze polscy o sztuce przekładu, 1440-1974: Antologia (Polish Writers on the Art of Translation, 1440-1974: an Anthology), Poznań, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1977.

Berman, Antoine (1984). "L'épreuve de l'étranger". Excerpted in English in: Venuti, Lawrence, editor (2002, 2nd edition 2004). The Translation Studies Reader.

Darwish, Ali (1999). "Towards a Theory of Constraints in Translation". (@turjuman Online).

Kasparek, Christopher, "The Translator's Endless Toil," The Polish Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 2, 1983, pp. 83-87. Includes a discussion of European-language cognates of the term, "translation."

Kelly, L.G. (1979). The True Interpreter: a History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West. New York, St. Martin's Press. ISBN.

Muegge, Uwe (2005). Translation Contract: A Standards-Based Model Solution. AuthorHouse. ISBN.

Rose, Marilyn Gaddis, guest editor (1980). Translation: agent of communication. (A special issue of Pacific Moana Quarterly, 5:1)

Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1813). "Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens". Reprinted as "On the Different Methods of Translating" in: Venuti, Lawrence, editor (2002, 2nd edition 2004). The Translation Studies Reader.

Simms, Norman, editor (1983). Nimrod's Sin: Treason and Translation in a Multilingual World.

Venuti, Lawrence (1994). The Translator's Invisibility. Routledge. ISBN.

External links

Resources

UNESCO Clearing House for Literary Translation
Meaning and Music — essay discussing the translation of song lyrics, specifically from English into Spanish. Sample verses from Disney's High School Musical.
EN-15038:2006 (English) .pdf file, Final draft January 2006
Early Theories of Translation, available at Project Gutenberg. 1920 text by Flora Ross Amos from the series Columbia University studies in English and comparative literature.
Biblos an extension of the Online Parallel Bible Project., Parallel Translations of the Bible

Publications

Multilingual Computing
Translation Journal, quarterly edited by Gabe Bokor
Translation Review, published three times annually by the Center for Translation Studies
Translation News, news about translations

Associations

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Contents

1 The term
2 Misconceptions
3 Interpreting
4 Fidelity vs. transparency
5 Equivalence
6 Literary translation
7 History
8 Religious texts
9 Machine translation
10 Computer-assisted translation
11 Translating for legal equivalence
12 Accreditation of translators
13 Notes
14 References
15 See also
16 External links