Jumat, 20 Maret 2009

The Process of Translation


The process of translating begins with choosing a method of approach. Secondly, when we are translating, we translate with four levels more or less consciously in mind: (1) the science of language text level, the level of language, where we begin and which we continually (but not continuously) go back to;

(2) the referential level , the level of objects and events, real or imaginary, which we progressively have to visualize and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then of the reproduction process;

(3) the cohesive level, which is more general, and grammatical, which traces the train thought, the feeling tone (positive or negative) and the various presuppositions of the science of language text. This level encompasses both comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which we may have to adjust the language level;

(4) the level of naturalness, of common languages appropriate the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. Again, this a generalized level, which constitutes a band within which the translator works, unless he is translating an authoritative text, in which case he sees the level of naturalness as a point of reference to determine the deviation - if any – between the authors level he is pursuing and the natural level. This level of naturalness is concerned or staggered according to the situation. The four levels are distinct from but frequently impinge on and maybe in conflict with each other. Your first and last level is the text; then you have to continually bear in mind the level of reality (which may be stimulated, as well as real), but you let it filter into the text only when it is necessary to complete or secure the readership’s understanding of the text, and then normally only within informative and vocative texts. As regards the level of naturalness, you translate informative and vocative text on this level irrespective of the naturalness of the original, bearing in mind that naturalness in, say, formal texts is quite different from naturalness in colloquial texts. For expressive and authoritative texts, however, you keep to a natural level only if the original is written in ordinary language.; if the original is linguistically or stylistically innovative, you should aim at a corresponding degree of innovation, representing the degree of deviation from naturalness, in your translation – ironically, even when translating these innovative texts, their natural level remains as a point of reference.

Translation ‘qualifies’ as research if it requires substantial academic research and a preface of considerable length, giving evidence of this research and stating the translator’s approach to his original, and the translated text is accompanied by an apparatus of notes, a glossary and a bibliography.

Translation is most clearly art, when a poem is sensitively translated into a poem. But any deft ‘transfusion’ of an imaginative piece of writing is artistic, when it conveys the meaning through a happy balance or resolution of some of the tensions in the process.

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