What is Translation?

Week 1

- Basil Hatim and Jeremy Munday (2004).
Translation. An Advanced Resource Book.
Routledge: London & New York
Section A
Chapter: 1
Section B
Chapter: 1

- Jeremy Munday (2001). Introducing Translation
Studies. Routledge: London & New York
pp. 4-14
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary
Translation:
1. The act or an instance of translating
2. A written or spoken expression of the
meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in
another language

1. Process
2. Product
Dictionary of Translation Studies
Translation An incredibly broad notion which
can be understood in many different ways. For
example, one may talk of translation as a
process or a product, and identify such sub-
types as literary translation, technical
translation, subtitling and machine translation;
moreover, while more typically it just refers to
the transfer of written texts, the term
sometimes also includes interpreting.
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

- British English: biscuits, football, Mummy,
rounders, sherbet lemons, got, dived, at
weekends
- American English: cookies, soccer, Mommy,
baseball, lemon drops, gotten, dove, on
weekends

The ambit of translation:

1. The process of transferring a written text from SL
to TL, conducted by translator, or translators, in a
specific socio-cultural context.
2. The written product, or TT, which results from
that process and which functions in the socio-
cultural context of the TL.
3. The cognitive, linguistic, visual, cultural and
ideological phenomena which are an integral
part of 1 and 2.
Hatim & Munday, 2004, p. 6
What is Translation Studies?
James S. Holmes, The Name and Nature of
Translation Studies, 1972

A new discipline concerned with the complex
of problems clustered round the phenomenon
of translating and translations.
- Pure areas of research:
1) The description of the the phenomena of
translation (descriptive translation theory)

2) The establishment of general principles to
explain and predict such phenomena
(translation theory)
- Product-oriented DTS
- Function-oriented DTS
- Process-oriented DTS
Applied

TRANSLATOR
TRAINING
TEACHING
METHODS
TESTING
TECHNIQUES
CURRICULUM
PLANNING
TRANSLATION
AIDS
IT APPLICATIONS DICTIONARIES GRAMMARS
Translation software
On-line databases
Use of Internet
TRANSLATION
CRITICISM
REVISION
EVALUATION
OF TRANSLATIONS
REVIEWS
Roman Jakobson, On linguistic
Aspects of Translation, 1959
3 ways of interpreting a verbal sign:
1) It may be translated into other signs of the same
language (Intralingual translation or rewording)
2) It may be translated into another language
(Interlingual translation or translation proper)
3) It may be translated into a nonverbal system of
symbols (Intersemiotic translation or
transmutation)

Untranslatability and translatability
All cognitive experience and its classification is
conveyable in any existing language.
Whenever there is deficiency , terminology may
be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan-
translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and
finally, by circumlocution.
- screw = rotating nail (Northeast Siberian
language)
- electrical horsecar = horseless street car
(Russian)
No lack of grammatical device in the language translated
into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire
conceptual information contained in the original [].
If some grammatical device is absent in a given language,
its meaning may be translated into this language by lexical
means.

- Dual forms like old Russian constructions can be
translated with the help of a numeral (e.g. two )
- What happens when translating She has brothers into
a language which discriminate dual and plural?
- Choice
- Supplementary information (the richer the context of a
message, the smaller the loss of information)
All cognitive experience and its classification is
conveyable in any existing language

Only poetry by definition is untranslatable, as
the form contributes to the construction of the
meaning of the text.
Dichotomy
Sense/content form/style

Examples
Names
Meaningful names
- Conventional and loaded proper names
(Hermans, 1988)
- Fluffy Fuffi
- Muggles Babbani
- Dumbledore Silente
- Tom Marvolo Riddle (I am Lord Voldemort)
Tom Orvoloson Riddle (Son io Lord
Voldemort)