Central issues in translation

Realized by: El yaakoubi Abdelhamid

 Content
1 • Language and Culture
2 • Types of Translation
3 • Decoding and Recoding
4 • Problems of Equivalence
5 • Loss and Gain
6 • Untranslatability
7 • Science or Secondary event
Language and Culture
• Translation involves a set of extra-linguistic criteria which is part and parcel of
culture and cultural differences.
• Language is embedded in culture.
• “ no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and no
culture can exist which does not have at its center the structure of natural
language,”. Juri Lotman.
• Languages differ according to specific culture that envelops them. Thus, each
language represents a completely different social reality.
• “ no two languages are sufficiently similar to be recognized as representing
the same social reality”. Edward Sapir
Types of Translation
Roman Jacobson distinguishes three types of translation in his article ‘ on
lingistic aspects of translation’:
1. Intralingual translation, or rewording (an interpretation of verbal signs by
means of other signs in the same language).
2. Interlingual translation, or translation proper ( an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of some other languages).
3. Intersemiotic translation, or transmutation ( an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.)
 The central problem with all the three types of translation is the absence of
full equivalence. Therefore, the translator has to resort to a combination of
code units in order to fully interpret the meaning of a simple unite.
‘ All poetic art in therfore technically untranslatable, and only creative
transposition is possible’.
‘ translation is a series of operations of which the starting point and end
Responsable
product are significations and functions within a given culture.
qualité
Decoding and Recoding
• The job of a translator is not merely to substitute linguistic elements of one
language by others of other languages
• A translator has to operate criteria that transcend the purely linguistic
According to Nida’s model of translation, translators have to pass through the
following steps in their process of decoding and recoding of a text:
1. Decoding the source text: analyse the message of the source text into its
simplest and structurally clearest form
2. Transfer: transfering the units to the language to be translated
3. Restructure: restructuring the units transfered using the appropriate langege
for the intended readers
Problems of equivalence
• The non-existance of corresponding equivalence at all the levels of idioms and
metaphors
• Idioms are culturally bound
• Metaphor, even in the source language, is considered a new piece of
performance and a semantic novelety
• A translator has to look for an idiom in the target language that servs the same
function as the source language idiom
• Metaphors can only be reproduced because they are unique expressions and
can have no equivalence in the target language
Popovich distinguishes four types of equivalence:
1. Linguistic equivalence, where there is homogeneity on the linguistic level of both SL
and TL texts, i.e. word for word translation.
2. Paradigmatic equivalence, where there is equivalence of ‘the elements of a
paradigmatic expressive axis’, i.e. elements of grammar, which Popovič sees as
being a higher category than lexical equivalence.
3. Stylistic (translational) equivalence, where there is ‘functional equivalence of
elements in both original and translation aiming at an expressive identity with an
invariant of identical meaning’.
4. Textual (syntagmatic) equivalence, where there is equivalence of the syntagmatic
structuring of a text, i.e. equivalence of form and shape.
• Eugene Nida distinguishes two types of equivalence:

Formal Dynamic
• Focuses on the message • Based on equivalent effect
itself on both form and
content
• It allows the reader to • The relationship between
understand as much of the receiver and message
source language context as should be the same as that
possible between original receiver
and the source language
message
Loss and gain
coming to the conclusion that full equivalence is impossible, the question of Loss
and Gain arises
• Authors have often focused on what is gained and ignored what is lost in the
process of translation
• The loss can be on both levels, linguistic and cultural

Linguistic loss cultural loss

• The lack of some terms

in the target language
Untranslatability
Catford two types of untransatability

Linguistic untranslatability Cultural untranslatability

• When there is no lexical or syntactical • Cultural untranslatability is due to the

substitute in the target language absence in the target language culture
for the source term of a relevant situational feature of
the source language text
Science or Secondary activity
• The purpose of the translation theory is to reach an understanding of the process
undertaken in the act of translation and not to provide a set of norms for effecting
the perfect translation
• Translation is not a science; there is no normative theory in translation
• Translation theories try to investigate the translation process and how it occurs
only
• Translation is not a secondary event as well, as the pragmatic dimension of a text
can not be reproduced
• Translation studies function beyond these old terminological distinctions as
scientific or creative
According to Octovio Paz, translation is the base of all texts. He claims that there is
no text that is entirely original because language itself is not original; it is a
translation of the non verbal word. But at the same time he claims that all texts are
original since every translation is distinctive.
Thank you for your attention