LALC20302 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION 2009-2010

WEEK 4
Translation Strategies and Techniques II
James St. Andr
james.st-andre@manchester.ac.uk
0161-2758126, Room W3.08, Samuel Alexander Building

1. Translation techniques as per Molina & Hurtado Albir (2002)

Literal Translation
Borrowing
Calque
Established equivalent
Generalization
Particularization
Linguistic amplification
Linguistic compression
Amplification To introduce details
that are not formulated in the ST:
information,
explicative
paraphrasing. Footnotes are a type
of amplification. Amplification is in
opposition to reduction.
Reduction To suppress a ST
information item in the TT, e.g.,
the month of fasting in opposition
to Ramadan when translating into
Arabic. It is in opposition to
amplification.
Description To replace a term or
expression with a description of its
form or/and function.
Adaptation To replace a ST
cultural element with one from the
target culture.
Compensation To introduce a ST
element of information or stylistic
effect in another place in the TT
because it cannot be reflected in
the same place as in the ST.
Transposition
To
change
a
grammatical category, e.g., noun
for verb, preposition for verb, etc.

***Re-arrangement of order of
elements in a sentence (obligatory

(All discussed in Week 3)

when translating Ramadan from Arabic, translate as

Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.
Note: this is often accomplished with parenthetical phrases.
The example under Reduction above can be reversed as an
example of this.
Hu Jintao, the President of China, said yesterday
into Chinese as [Hu Jintao yesterday said]
(note also the change of order of information)

Panettone (It.) as traditional Italian cake eaten on New

Years Eve.
to change baseball for ftbol in a translation into
Spanish.
Or to change baseball into cricket for translation from
American English to British English!
I was seeking thee, Flathead. from Kiplings Jungle Book
Kipling used the archaic thee, instead of you, to express
respect, but none of the equivalent French pronoun forms
(tu, te, toi) have an archaic equivalent, so the translator
expressed the same feeling by using the vocative, O, in
another part of the sentence: En verit, cest bien toi que je
cherche, O Tte-Plate.
Expditeur (Fr) versus From on a parcel (Note: some people
might consider this a case of established equivalence)
He limped across the street translated into French as
Il a travers la rue en boitant.
He will soon be back translated into Spanish as No tardar
en venir, changing the adverb soon for the verb tardar,
instead of keeping the adverb and writing: Estar de vuelta
pronto.
Ich weiss nicht. / Je ne sais pas / I dont know (placement
of negative; normally obligatory)

and optional) (Not

Molina and Albir)

included

in

Discursive Creation To establish

a temporary equivalence that is
totally unpredictable out of
context.
Variation To change linguistic or
paralinguistic elements (intonation,
gestures) that affect aspects of
linguistic variation: changes of
textual tone, style, social dialect,
geographical dialect, etc., e.g., to
introduce or change dialectal
indicators for characters when
translating for the theatre, changes
in tone when adapting novels for
children, etc.
Modulation To change the point of
view, focus or cognitive category in
relation to the ST; it can be lexical
or structural. Abstract for concrete,
cause for effect, means for result, a
part for the whole, subject for
object, etc.
Substitution
(linguistic,
paralinguistic). To change linguistic
elements
for
paralinguistic
elements (intonation, gestures) or
vice versa.
***Omission (Not included in
Molina and Albir)

I need to go to the bank today and withdraw money.

. [Today I need to go to the bank and
withdraw money]
Spanish translation of film Rumble fish as La ley de la calle.
Note: this technique is often used for book and film titles.
[Qing Hong, the name of the main female character];
film title, translated as Shanghai Dreams
Think about the film Trainspotting, and how you might deal
with subtitling it in a foreign language.
Exercise: think of a film you have seen in your foreign
language that contains the use of dialect, and think about
how you would go about rendering it in English.

you are going to have a child, instead of, you are going to be
a father.
First phrase focuses on the child, second sentence focuses
on the father

to translate the Arab gesture of putting your hand on your

heart as Thank you. It is used above all in interpreting.

Yan Fus translation of Aldus Huxley, Evolution and Ethics,

omits the first paragraph, which contains a summary of Jack
and the Beanstalk, because it is not central to the main
argument and would have been unfamiliar to his readers.

2. Points for Discussion

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.

What is the relation between translation problems, methods and techniques?

Is it possible to use more than one technique to solve any given problem? Can you give an
example to support your argument? If the answer is yes, how would you decide which one
to use?
Is it possible to use two or more techniques in the same sentence, or even phrase? Come
up with at least one example.
the techniques discussed by Maeve Olohan are generally considered to be more direct or
straightforward, whereas the ones that I have discussed are seen as oblique or indirect.
Of those two broad categories, which do you think is generally preferred, and why?
Do the same problems and solutions apply for all language combinations? Go through a
paragraph in English with people who speak different foreign languages than you and
identify what problems would arise translating into French, German, and Spanish, and how
you might deal with them.

3. Appendix
Molina, Luca and Amparo Hurtado Albir (2002) Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic
and Functionalist Approach. Meta, XLVII, 4. 498-512.

Nord, Christiana (2005) Text Analysis in Translation: Theory, methodology, and didactic
application of a model for translation-oriented text analysis. 2nd edition. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Levy, Jiri (2000) Translation as a Decision Process in The Translation Studies Reader, edited
by Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, pp. 148-59. (First published 1967)