THE ART OF TRANSLATION

Abstract

"This paper focuses on the art of translation especially translation practice, which is useful to those who would like to enter the translator's profession. I will make references to the key aspects of the process of translation. The current paper is intended to inspire and encourage the readers to discover the secrets of the art of translation, because understanding someone else's words or written message in a foreign language is far more complicated than we are inclined to think."

Headnote

Motto: "The present-day rapid development of science and technology, as well as the continuous growth of cultural, economic, and political relations between nations, has confronted humanity with exceptional difficulties in the assimilation of useful and necessary information. No way has yet been found to solve the problems in overcoming language barriers and of accelerated assimilation of scientific and technological achievements by either the traditional or modern methods of teaching. A new approach to the process of teaching and learning is, therefore, required if the world is to meet the needs of today and tomorrow."1

Abstract: "This paper focuses on the art of translation especially translation practice, which is useful to those who would like to enter the translator's profession. I will make references to the key aspects of the process of translation. The current paper is intended to inspire and encourage the readers to discover the secrets of the art of translation, because understanding someone else's words or written message in a foreign language is far more complicated than we are inclined to think."

Keywords: translation, linguistic equivalence, accuracy, abduction, induction, translator's reliability.

Outside and inside perception of translation

Nowadays every aspect of our social and political life is mediated by translators and interpreters. Translation and interpreting are part of the academic landscape and numerous universities offer programmes in the field. Translation is a point of contact between peoples, and the translator is the mediator, who makes explicit the differences between cultures in the world. Translation can be perceived from the outside (user's point of view), or from the inside (translator's point of view). For people who are not translators it is simply a text; for people who are, it is mainly an activity.

From the inner point of view of the translator, the activity is most important: the process of becoming a translator, doing research, and networking, translating texts, editing the translation, and delivering the finished reliable text to the teacher/client.

Inside/internal perception: a translator thinks about translation from inside the process, knowing how it's done, having a practical sense of the problems he has encountered, some solutions to those problems, and the limits on them (the translator is aware of the fact that a translation will never be a perfect reflection of the original).

Outside/external perception: a non-translator thinks about translation from outside the process, not knowing the whole process of it, how it's done, but believing that it's a well-made translation. Outside translation users would like to have a text translated reliably and rapidly.

Reliability

Text reliability consists in the trust a user can place in it as a representation or reproduction of the original. A discussion of text reliability is venturing into the territory traditionally called "accuracy" or "equivalence" or "fidelity". There is no single touchstone for a reliable translation, no single formula for abstract "equivalence" that can be applied easily in every case. The translation should be reliable, accurate and effective, literal and readable in the target language. A text that meets these demands is called a "good" or "successful" translation.

Some users demand literal translations, others demand semantic (sense-for-sense) equivalence. "Fidelity" of a translation means not an exact one-to-one correspondence between original and translation. Reliably translated texts cover a wide range from the lightly edited to the substantially rewritten, with the "accurate" or "faithful" translation somewhere in the middle. From the translator's internal point of view, "creative interpretation" signals the undeniable fact that all text-processing involves some degree of interpretation and thus some degree of creativity, and the translator's sense that every target language is more or less resistant to his/her activities.

The translator's reliability means professionalism.

The translator should be accurate, attentive to details, her/his work must be correct. A good and versatile translator knows that her/his task requires not only "accuracy" but also some commentary, adaptation, and sometimes even imaginative re-creation.

Aspects of translator's reliability

Reliability regarding the text

1. The translator is very attentive to the meaning of each word in the context;

2. Research: the translator does careful research, in reference books, and internet databases;

3. Checking: the translator always checks her/his translation closely before delivering to the client.

Reliability regarding the client

1. The translator should feel entirely competent in her/his area of specialization. The translator also knows whether she/he can handle the task or not. If the translation is beyond her/his abilities than the translator refuses it politely;

2. Promises: the translator should make realistic promises to clients regarding delivery dates and times, and then keeps those promises.

3. Friendliness: the translator is friendly, and offers helpful advice.

4. Confidentiality: the translator must never disclose confidential matters learned through the process of translation to third parties.

Reliability regarding the technology

1. Hardware and software: the translator works with a modern type of computer, a recent version of Microsoft Word, an Internet connection, an e-mail address, and a scanner.

The process of translation: abduction, induction, deduction2

The translator is a lifelong learner. Translation for the professional translator is a constant learning cycle that moves through the stages of instinct, experience, and habit, and, within experience, through the stages of guesswork (abduction), pattern-building (induction), and rules and theories (deduction). The translator is at the same time a professional for whom complex mental processes have become second nature, and thus subliminal, and a learner who must face and solve some problems in conscious analytical ways.

Charles Sanders Peirce3, the American philosopher and founder of semiotics, described the process of translation in three terms:

Instinct - the translator begins with an intuitive, and instinctive sense of what a word or phrase means, how a syntactic structure works;

Experience - the translator looks for the unknown words and phrases in a source text, then translates them, moving back and forth between the two languages, feeling the similarities and dissimilarities between words and phrases and structures; and

Habit - in time the translator sublimates specific solutions to specific experiential problems into unconscious behavior patterns, which help her or him to translate more rapidly, decreasing the need to stop and solve such problems.

The translator's experience is more complicated than simply what s/he experiences in the act of translating. Charles Sanders Peirce4 described the translator's experience in terms of abduction, induction and deduction. This is what Peirce calls abduction: the act of making an intuitive leap from confusing/unexplained data to a reasonable hypothesis. Competent native speakers of a language do not always use that language in a way that certain observers are pleased to call rational: they do not say what they mean, they omit crucial information, they conceal their true intentions, they use irony or sarcasm, and they speak metaphorically. The philosopher explained how we make sense of speakers who flout the rational rules of conversation; the listeners, the interpreters make inspired guesses, or abductions. Understanding or intuiting problematic utterances has as much to do with creative imagination, and intuition. Learning a foreign language obviously requires thousands of guesses. And, of course, translators are forever stumbling upon words they have never seen before, words that appear in no dictionary they own, words for which they must find exact target-language equivalent by tomorrow. A translator may spend hours tracking down a difficult word: poring through dictionaries on the shelf and online, calling and emailing friends who might know it. A translator may hate or love this part of this job; the reasons to continue the search are the following:

· Translator ethics, the professional's determination to submit an accurate and correct translation;

· Professional pride, the translator's need to feel good about the work s/he does;

· Love of language, producing a deep satisfaction in the word-hunt or the "rightness" of the right word, or both;

· A pragmatic concern for repeat business: the client who is pleased with the translator's work will call her or him again.

From the linguistic point of view, the translator is experiencing a transformation of what people do with words - language is what people do with words. The translator transforms what people do with words. In order to translate quickly and accurate a professional translator should internalize words and certain linguistic transfer patterns - well-worn pathways from one language to another that s/he has traveled so many times. Practice doesn't make perfect, but it brings exponential increases in speed and reliability.

"Induction, is the type of logical reasoning, beginning with specifics and moving toward generalities, and deduction beginning with general principles and deducing individual details from them"5. Peirce considered that "neither induction nor deduction is capable of generating new ideas"6. Using these three approaches to processing experience Peirce explained "the translator's move from untrained instinct through experience to habit" 7 . The translator's experience begins "abductively" first at the beginning of her/his activity when s/he makes a first approach to the foreign language, leaping from incomprehensible sounds to a wild guess at what the words might mean; and a second approach to the source text, leaping from an expression that makes sense but seems to resist translation (seems untranslatable) to a target-language equivalent. The abductive form of this experience is one of not knowing how to proceed, being confused, but somehow making the leap to understanding or reformulating an utterance.

The meaning of a word is its use in the context-language

Translation is considered to be an activity about words and their meanings: what the words in the source text mean, and what words in the target language will best capture or convey that meaning. Words and meanings are only important for the translators in the context.

The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein considered that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language"8. Words and meanings take on their importance in intimate connection with people. They tell us a lot about the people around us, and help us to understand them better.

We almost learn words and their meanings from people and as a function of our complex relationships with people. The only really reliable way to learn a new word, in fact, is in context, as used by someone else in a real situation, whether spoken or written. Only then does the new word carry with it some of the human emotional charge given it by the person who used it. A word learnt in a dictionary will most often feel ordinary, awkward, even if its dictionary meaning is correct; other people who know the word will feel uncomfortable with its user.

A prime example of this are the students' control papers full with words taken straight out of a dictionary, words that they have never heard before in a real conversation. For the teacher who knows those words, the test papers seem gibberish, because the words are used mechanically and without attention to the nuances of actual human speech or writing.

Another example is the bad translation done by someone who doesn't speak the target language fluently, and has painstakingly found all the words in a dictionary.

Cultural knowledge

The translators should always be aware of the far more complex phenomena of cultures and intercultural competence that arise out of experience of cultures. They need to know, for example, how to say "mi-e dor" in English, German and so on, and the more aware the translators become of these complexities, the better translators they'll be.

Translation theorists have been aware of the problems attendant upon cultural knowledge and cultural difference at least since ancient Rome, and translators almost certainly knew all about those problems long before theorists articulated them.

Some Renaissance translators were inclined to accuse medieval literal translators of being ignorant of cultural differences; but a large number of researchers demonstrated the opposite aspect. The Medieval translators were not ignorant of cultural or linguistic difference; they noticed all the differences they encountered, set them aside, and proceeded as if they did not exist. That was of course the tradition imposed by the audiences for whom they translated in the Middle Ages.

Cultural knowledge and cultural difference have been a major focus of translator training and translation theory for as long as either has been in existence. The main emphasis was put on the so-called "realia", words and phrases that are so and exclusively grounded in one culture that they are almost impossible to translate into the terms of another, as for instance: "doina de dor ?i jale" (Romanian popular song). There were long debates held over when to paraphrase, when to coin a new word by translating literally, and when to transcribe. And these "untranslatable" culture-bound words and phrases continue to fascinate translators and translation theorists. How can be defined the points where one culture stops and another begins? The borders are no easier to draw than those between languages or communities.

Immersion in cultures

The professional translators continue to immerse themselves in cultures: local cultures, regional cultures, national cultures, and international cultures. They read voraciously. They learn new foreign languages and sometimes, they spend as much time as possible in the countries where those languages are natively spoken. They nose out differences: if things are done a little bit differently, a word or phrase is pronounced differently or given a slightly unexpected twist, people walk differently, dress differently, gesture differently, the translators pay attention. Perhaps there is a cultural boundary that needs to be crossed. Why do translators want to cross it? Simply. Because it's there. Because that is what translators do, they cross boundaries. No matter what else they do, translators should continually immerse themselves in cultures of the world.

The importance of text analysis

The ability to analyze a source text linguistically, culturally, and politically is very important for the translator. The importance of analysis goes most without saying. Wherever translation is taught, the importance of analysis is taught. The following tips were highlighted by R. Douglas9 in his work, and I must confess, that they are very helpful for future translators:

· "Never assume you understand the source text perfectly.

· Never assume your understanding of the source text is detailed enough to enable you to translate it adequately.

· Always analyze for text type, genre, register, rhetorical function, etc.

· Always analyze the source text's syntax and semantics, making sure you know in detail what it is saying, what it is not saying, and what it is implying.

· Always analyze the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relationship between the source language and the target language, so that you know what each language is capable and incapable of doing and saying, and can make all necessary adjustments.

· Always pay close attention to the translation commission (what you are asked to do, by whom, for whom, and why), and consider the special nature and needs of your target audience; if you aren't given enough information about that audience, ask; if the commissioner doesn't know, use your professional judgment to project an audience."10

The six analytical principles mentioned above are taught at translation training courses because they do not come naturally; they must be taught by a translation teacher and by experience.

The most experienced professional translators will gradually move "beyond" analysis in much of their work, precisely by internalizing or sublimating it. It will seem to professional translators as if they rarely analyze a text or cultural assumptions, because they do it so unconsciously and so rapidly. The analytical procedures taught in most translator training programs are not consciously used by professional translators in most of their work, because they have become second nature. And this is the desideratum of professional training: to help students first to learn the analytical procedures, then to sublimate them, make them so unconscious, so automatic, and so fast, that translation at professional speeds becomes possible.

Footnote

1 Lozanov, G., Suggestology and Outlines of Suggestopedy, Philadelphia: Gordon & Breach, 1992, p. 9.

2 Peirce, C.S, quoted in Douglas, R., Becoming a Translator, London and New York, Routledge, 2012, p.63.

3 Ibidem, p.62.

4 Ibidem, p.64.

5 Ibidem, p.64.

6 Ibidem, p.64.

7 Ibidem, p.64.

8 Ibidem, p. 90.

9 Robinson, D. English professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong/ Robinson, D. Profesor de englez? la Universitatea Lingnan, Hong Kong.

10 Ibidem, pp. 198-199.

References

REFERENCES

Baker, M., (2011), In Other Words - A Course book on Translation, London and New York, Routledge.

Lozanov, G., (1992), Suggestology and Outlines of Suggestopedy. Philadelphia, Gordon & Breach.

Robinson, D., (2003), Performative Linguistics: Speaking and Translating as Doing Things with Words, London and New York, Routledge.

Robinson, D., (2012), Becoming a Translator, London and New York. Routledge.