how translation theory informs the translation process
We all know that the craft of translation requires more than intimate knowledge of both source and target language and culture. But do we share the insight that translation also requires professional training?
Personally I like to describe translators as decision makers. There are plenty of decisions - which is the right terminological choice, the best sentence structure, or even if something can get lost in translation or not. Anyway - the thing with decisions is that they had better be informed by something - unless you are happy to act randomly.
Andrew Chesterman wrote an article titled “Psst! Theory can be useful!” on http://ec.europa.eu/translation/reading/articles/pdf/2000_tp_chesterman.pdf. Commenting on a EU test translations, he says
Quote:
“When assessing the scripts, I had the feeling that many of these would-be professional translators were working like amateur carpenters, trying to make a decent book-case but without using obvious things like a saw, hammer, screw-driver etc. Here are a few simple theoretical tools that would have been useful in deciding how to translate the example sentence.”
Using a fairly complex translation example, he suggest how ideas about transposition, deverbalisation, iconicity, or relevance could inform the translator’s decision making process.
I have to admit that I don’t remember too many names and details of translation theories (though Vermeer still rings a bell, and names like “Kussmaul and Hönig” are just difficult to forget (more difficult than their theories). But I do remember the concepts - and when ever I translate, they do come in handy when it comes to crunching difficult passages.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
As a translator of Ancient Greek and Latin on my spare time, I do not feel that a ‘theory’ is particularly necessary towards making a useful and well-put translation. Rather, from each text that you read, you should get a feeling of rapport with the author. Depending on that rapport, you should get a feeling for how well you match the writer and whether you are capable of transforming the writers thoughts into another language. For example, my own style as a writer is rather brisk and to the point, whereas other writers such as Umberto Eco can go on and on forever about the same thing, so I would match well with brisk writers such as chroniclers and historians, while he would go well with oftentimes religious texts and rhetors. However, this does not mean that you cannot grow as a writer to translate a text, it just takes a good thesaurus and a lot of work!
Furthermore, I think a knowledge, at least a reading knowledge, is necessary of as many languages as possible that contribute to your source language and language to translate to because languages build and thrive off of one another. An example of this comes from a letter that I was recently looking at where the writer Michael Psellos was describing his loneliness not having his friends there and how ‘zw de peri ta biblia kai tas apsychous homilias twn syngrapsamenwn auta’, where the writer leaves a blank for us as to what is meant by apsychous. Does he mean the company (homilias) is dead, ‘without a spirit.’ Obviously not, but I found the best rendering of these words could be used through a knowledge of Latin where animus is the ’spirit’, where in English ‘unanimated’ would be the best equivalent and still keep some of the rhetorical cleverness of the writer that was based off the derivations of words.