The Analysis of a Text

You begin the job by reading the original for two purposes: first, to understand what it is about; second, to analyze it from a ‘translator’s’ point of view, which is not the same as a linguist’s or a literary critic’s. you have to determine its intention and the way it is written for the purpose of selecting a suitable translation method and identifying particular and recurrent problems. In principle, a translational analysis of the Source Language (SL) text based on its comprehension is the first stage of translation and the basis of the useful discipline of translation criticism. In fact, such an analysis is, I think, an appropriate training for translators, since by underlining the appropriate words they will show they are aware of difficulties they might otherwise have missed. Thus you relate translation theory to its practice. A professional translator would not usually make such an analysis explicitly, since he would need to take only a sample in order to establish the properties of text. A translation critic, however, after determining the general properties – first of the text and secondly of the translation (both these tasks would centre in the respective intentions of translator and critic) – would use the underlined words as a basic for detailed comparison of two text. To summarize, you have to study the text not for itself but as something that may have to be reconstituted for a different readership in a different culture. Underline only the items where you see a translation problem, and bear in mind that it is often helpful to srudy such an item first in context, then in isolation, as though it were a dictionary or an encyclopedia entry only, and finally in context again.