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Specialitatea 223.1 Limbi moderne

Theory and Practice of Translation / Traductology

1. Speak on the Science of Translating.

Translation is a means of interlingual communication. The translator makes possible an exchange of

information between the users of different languages by producing in the target language a text which has an
identical communicative value with the source text (ST). This target text is not fully identical with ST as to
its form or content due to the limitations imposed by the differences between the source language (SL) and
TL.
The science of translation or translatology is concerned both with theoretical and applied aspects of
translation.
The translator has to deal with works of the great authors of the past and of the leading authors of today.
In simultaneous interpretation the translator is expected to keep pace with the fastest speakers, to understand
all kinds of foreign accents and defective pronunciation, to guess what the speaker meant to say but failed to
express due to his inadequate proficiency in the language he speaks.
In consecutive interpretation he is expected to listen to long speeches, taking the necessary notes, and then to
produce his translation in full or compressed form, giving all the details or only the main ideas.
An important branch of the theory of translation is concerned with the study of ST and TT units which can
replace each other in the translating process.
Of particular interest is that branch of the theory of translation which is concerned with the translating
process itself. The study of the translating process reveals both the translator's general strategy and specific
techniques used to solve typical translation problems.
In conclusion, mention should be made of one more branch of the theory of translation which deals with the
pragmatic aspects of the translating process. The communicants involved in interlingual communication
speak different languages but they also belong to different cultures, have different general knowledge,
different social and historical background.

2. Types of Translations.
Different types of translation can be singled out depending on the form of speech involved in the translation
process.
Literary translation deals with literary texts, i.e. works of fiction or poetry whose main function is to make
an emotional or aesthetic impression upon the reader. Their communicative value depends on their artistic
quality and the translator's primary task is to reproduce this quality in translation.
Informative translation is rendering into the target language non-literary texts, the main purpose of which is
to convey a certain amount of ideas, to inform the reader. A literary text may, in fact, include some parts of
purely informative character.
Translation of scientific and technical materials has a most important role to play in our age of the
revolutionary technical progress. In technical translation the main goal is to identify the situation described
in the original.
English newspaper reports differ greatly from their counterparts due to the frequent use of colloquial, slang
and vulgar elements, various paraphrases, eye-catching headlines, etc.
Apart from technical and newspaper materials it may be expedient to single out translation of official
diplomatic papers as a separate type of informative translation. They are important documents every word of
which must be carefully chosen as a matter of principle.
Journalistic (or publicistic) texts dealing with social or political matters are sometimes singled out among
other informative materials because they may feature elements more commonly used in literary text
(metaphors and other stylistic devices) which cannot but influence the translator's strategy.

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There are also some minor groups of texts that can be considered separately because of the specific
problems their translation poses to the translator. They are film scripts, comic strips, commercial
advertisements and the like. In dubbing a film the translator is limited in his choice of variants by the
necessity to fit the pronunciation of the translated words to the movement of the actor's lips. Translating the
captions in a comic strip, the translator will have to consider the numerous allusions to the facts well-known
to the regular readers of comics but less familiar to the foreigners. And in dealing with commercial
advertisements he must bear in mind that their sole purpose is to win over the prospective customers.
In oral translation or interpretation the interpreter listens to the oral presentation of the original and
translates it as an oral message in TL. As a result, in the first case the Receptor of the translation can read it
while in the second case he hears it.
In written translation the original can be read and re-read as many times as the translator may need or like.
The translator can re-read his translation, compare it to the original, make the necessary corrections or start
his work all over again. The conditions of oral translation impose a number of important restrictions on the
translator's performance. Here the interpreter receives a fragment of the original only once and for a short
period of time. His translation is also a one-time act with no possibility of any return to the original or any
subsequent.
There are two main kinds of oral translation - consecutive and simultaneous.
In consecutive translation the translating starts after the original speech or some part of it has been
completed. Here the interpreter's strategy and the final results depend, to a great extent, on the length of the
segment to be translated. If the segment is just a sentence or two the interpreter closely follows the original
speech. As often as not, however, the interpreter is expected to translate a long speech which has lasted for
scores of minutes or even longer. In this case he has to remember a great number of messages and keep them
in mind until he begins his translation. To make this possible the interpreter has to take notes of the original
messages, various systems of notation having been suggested for the purpose.
Sometimes the interpreter is set a time limit to give his rendering, which means that he will have to reduce
his translation considerably, selecting and reproducing the most important parts of the original and
dispensing with the rest. The interpreter must obviously be a good and quick-witted thinker.
In simultaneous interpretation the interpreter is supposed to be able to give his translation while the speaker
is uttering the original message. This can be achieved with a special radio or telephone-type equipment. The
interpreter receives the original speech through his earphones and simultaneously talks into the microphone
which transmits his translation to the listeners.

3. Levels of Equivalence of Translation.

Each level of equivalence is characterized by the part of information the retention of which distinguishes it
from the previous level. The list of levels, therefore, includes: 1) the level of the purport of communication;
2) the level of (the identification of) the situation; 3) the level of the method of description (of the situation);
4) the level of syntactic meanings; 5) the level of word semantics.
Let us first of all single out translations in which the degree of semantic similarity with ST seems to be the
lowest.
(1) Maybe there is some chemistry between us that doesn't mix.
, .
An absolute dissimilarity of language units is accompanied by the absence of obvious logical link between
the two messages which could lead to the conclusion that they are "about the same thing", that they describe
one and the same situation. Yet, it is evident that the two sentences have something in common as to their
meaning.
The second group of translations can be illustrated by the following examples:
(2) He answered the telephone.
.
This group of examples is similar to the first one. At the same time it is obvious that there is a greater
proximity of contents than in the preceding group. Both texts give different information about the same, or,
they express the same idea "using different words".

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In the next group of translations the part of the contents which is to be retained is still larger. This type of
equivalence can be exemplified as follows:
(3) Scrubbing makes me bad-tempered.
Or .
The translation contains the same general notions as the original. This means that the translation is a
semantic paraphrase of the original, preserving its basic seems and allowing their free reshuffle in the
sentence.
The fourth group of translations can be illustrated by the following samples:
(4) He was never tired of old songs.
.
In such translations the syntactic structures can be regarded as derived from those in the original through
direct or backward transformations. This includes cases when the translation makes use of similar or parallel
structures.
(5) I saw him at the theatre.
.

4. Machine Translation and its Perspectives xerox

5. Translation of Phraseological Units

Phraseological units are figurative expressions often described as "idioms". Idioms can be positive, negative
or neutral. It is clear that "to kill two birds with one stone" is good, "to find a mare's nest" is a ludicrous
mistake while "Rome was not built in a day" is a neutral statement of fact. They can also differ in their
stylistic usage: they may be bookish (to show one's true colours) or colloquial (to be a pain in the neck).
There are four typical methods to handle a SL idiom in the translating process:
1. Translating the SL idiom by an identical TL idiom is, obviously, the best way out. However, the list of
such direct equivalents is rather limited. The translator has a good chance of finding the appropriate TL
idiom if the SL idiom, is, so to speak, international, that is, if it originated in some other language, say Latin
or Greek, and was later borrowed by both SL and TL. Cf. the English "Achilles' heel" and the Russian
.
2. Whenever the translator fails to find an identical TL idiom he should start looking for an expression with
the same figurative meaning but a different literal meaning. Cf. "to get out of bed on the wrong side" -
. Here the change in the literal meaning of the idiom does not detract much from its effect.
3. A word-for-word translation of the SL idiom is not possible unless the Russian reader will be able to
deduce its figurative meaning. Therefore a calque of the English idiom "a skeleton in the cupboard" will be
counterproductive, while "to put the cart before the horse" can be well rendered as
.
4. Obviously an explication cannot reproduce the semantics of the SL idiom in a satisfactory way and should
be used only in the absence of a better alternative. Cf. "to cut off with a shilling" and
or "to dine with Duke Humphrey and .

6. Stylistic Aspects of Translation

The principal stylistic effect of the text is created, however, with the help of special stylistic devices.
Stylistically-marked units may also be certain types of collocations. A frequent use of paraphrases is a
characteristic feature of the English language.
A special group of paraphrases are the names of countries, states and other geographical or political entities:
the Land of Cakes (Scotland), the Badger State (Wisconsin), the Empire City (New York). As a rule, such
paraphrases are not known to the foreign reader and they are replaced by official names in the translation. (A
notable exception is "the eternal city" .)
Complicated translation problems are caused by ST containing substandard language units used to produce a
stylistic effect. The ST author may imitate his character's speech by means of dialectal or contaminated
forms. SL territorial dialects cannot be reproduced in TT, nor can they be replaced by TL dialectal forms. It
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would be inappropriate if a black American or a London cockney spoke in the Russian translation in the
dialect, say, of the Northern regions of the USSR. Fortunately, the English dialectal forms are mostly an
indication of the speaker's low social or educational status.
Contaminated forms are used to imitate the speech of a foreigner. Sometimes, both SL and TL have
developed accepted forms of representing the contaminated speech by persons of foreign origin. For
example, the speech of a Chinese can be represented in English and in Russian in a conventional way, which
facilitates the translator's task:
Me blingee beer. Now you pay.
, .

7. Types of Transformations in the Process of Translation /lexical, grammatical, syntactic,

miscellaneous types/

The transformational model postulates that in any two languages there are a number of nuclear structures
which are fully equivalent to each other. It is presumed that the translator does the translating in three
transformational strokes. First - the stage of analysis -he performs transformation within SL. Second -the
stage of translation proper -he replaces the SL nuclear structures with the equivalent nuclear structures in
TL. And third -the stage of synthesis - he develops the latter into the terminal structures in the text of
translation.
Another approach to the description of the process of translating consists in the identification of different
types of operations performed by the translator. The type of operation is identified by comparing the initial
and the final texts.
The first group of operations (or transformations) is characterized by imitation of the form of a word or of a
collocation. In the first case the translator tries to represent the pronunciation or the spelling of the foreign
word with the TL letters. Thus we get such translations as , , etc. This method is
usually called translational transcription.
The second group of operations includes all types of lexical transformations.
One type of lexical transformations is often called "modulation". It involves the creation of an equivalent by
replacing a unit in SL with a TL unit the meaning of which can be logically deduced from it and which is
just another way of referring to the same object or an aspect of the same situation.
The third group of translating procedures comprises all types of transformations involving units of SL
grammar. The translator may solve his problems by preserving the syntactic structure of the source text and
using the analogous TL grammatical forms or "a word-for-word translation". This may be called "a zero
transformation" and can be easily exemplified.
As a rule, the translator renders the original text sentence by sentence and the number of sentences remains
the same. However, it may so happen that the structural and semantic problems of a translation event can be
best solved by breaking an original sentence into two parts, i.e. translating it with two sentences in TL.
Another type of such partitioning is to replace a simple sentence in the original with a complex one in the
translation, comprising one or several subordinate clauses.
Another type of grammatical transformations is characterized by the 36 translator's refusal to use
analogous grammatical units in TT. He tries to render the meaning of SL units by changing the grammatical
form of a word, the part of speech or the type of the sentence. Such changes are very common and the
translator should never hesitate to use them whenever necessary.
Finally, there is a group of transformations which involve a different arrangement of ideas, a different point
of view and other semantic modifications whenever a direct translation of a SL unit proves impossible. A
typical example of such a procedure is the so-called antonymous translation describing the situation, as it
were, from the opposite point of view and rendering an affirmative SL structure by a negative TL one or vice
versa:
The door was not unbolted. .
A complex change also occurs in explicatory translations in which a SL unit is replaced by a TL word
combination describing or defining its meaning: A demonstration of British conservationists was held in

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Trafalgar Square yesterday. -
.
In conclusion, we should mention one more specific procedure which may come handy to the translator
when he is baffled by an apparently un-solvable translation problem. It may be called the compensation
technique and is defined as a deliberate introduction of some additional elements in translation to make up
for the loss of similar elements at the same or an earlier stage.

8. Professional Translation: An Act of Communication

The professional translation is an activity with a communication function, performed in a

professional setting with a professional aim.
The best known type is school translation. Its aims are to improve and/or test students' passive and
active knowledge of a foreign language: translating into and from the foreign language.
Another case is the translation of a text in a foreign language into one's own language for easier personal
use at a later stage. Yet another case is the translation of a piece of literature, in particular poetry, for the
translator's pleasure. As for interpretation, is occasional help given to friends, relatives, or tourists during
visits, sightseeing, shopping, etc.
Professional Translation differs from all these in two basic respects: Professional Translation is aimed at
a Receiver (reader or listener) other than the Translator him-or herself; Professional Translation is done on
request and for a financial reward.
Professional Translation is therefore professional act of communication, and as such, it is subjected to
professional rules.
Interpretation differs from translation in that the speaker generally speaks either to the target-language
listeners only or to both source-language listeners and target-language readers. In interpreting, all parties
concerned are aware of the communication situation and all parties wish to communicate. This includes
cooperation from speakers, who may try to speak more slowly, enunciate more clearly, choose certain terms
and structures and avoid others, and clarify terms and concepts . Cooperation may also be forthcoming from
listeners, especially in consecutive, where they can help the interpreter with word equivalents and generally
listen sympathetically, though this is not always the case. On the other hand, delegates may therefore put
pressure on the interpreter to be very brief or summarize, and will not cooperate in other ways.

9. Differences between Interpretation and Translation

Interpretation differs from translation on two important points:

It is generally less demanding as regards linguistic "correctness" of terminological usage;
In conference interpretation, a significant amount of relevant information is available to interpreters
from conference documents and from the presence of experts on the premises.
Essentially, the types of information required for interpretation and translation are similar in nature and in
use:
-Linguistic information
Terminological information is necessary to understand more about source-language terms and to reexpress
referents in target-language terms. The acquisition of terminological information is one of the most time
-consuming and difficult tasks in translation, while it is probably also the intellectually least gratifying to
most people.
Stylistic information is required mainly for the purpose of reformulating the message in the target language
along the same stylistic lines as those followed by native authors writing the same type of text in the target
language
-Extralinguistic information
Extralinguistic information is required when linguistic cues in the source-text are not sufficient to allow the
translator to understand it well enough to translate it. This may happen when the text is editorially unclear, in
particular when it is ambiguous, when it contains mistakes, or when target-language rules require explicit
mention of information that is not explicit in the source language ( for instance, when translating "Dr.
Jones" into French and having to decide whether it will be " Monsieur Jones," "Madame Jones," etc.).
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10. Knowledge Acquisition in Written Translation

Information sources for Knowledge Acquisition can be classified in several ways. One is the distinction
between sources on paper, human sources and electronic sources (data stored on computer disks, diskettes,
magnetic tapes or CD-ROMs).
Non-human sources can be divided further into terminological and non-terminological or indirect sources.
The former-dictionaries, glossaries, terminological files, etc.-are essentially designed to provide information
about the meaning of terms and are used by translators for the purpose of gaining better understanding.
Indirect or non-terminological sources are texts NOT designed with terminological use in mind: thematic
articles, books, catalogs, etc.
Source variables in translation work For the professional translator, the usefulness of sources for
Knowledge Acquisition revolves around five major variables:
(1) Existence: it is an important one-which has implications for Knowledge Acquisition strategies.
(2) External access: This variable reflects the cost of access to the source in terms of time, financial
outlay, and effort or unpleasantness.
(3) Internal access: This variable is defined by the time and effort required to retrieve the precise
information sought from the time the source becomes available.
(4)Coverage: This variable is defined by the ratio of information sought to information found in the source,
which makes it a highly subjective variable.
(5) Reliability: This variable indicates the degree to which information found in the source is reliable. A
distinction can be made between linguistic reliability-how language is used to represent reality, and
extralinguistic reliability--if information given by the source reflects reality.

11. Knowledge Acquisition in Interpretation

Three steps of preparation of conferences:

a.Advance preparation Conference organizers are systematically asked by the interpreters to provide them
with a full set of documents in all the working languages of the conference well before the meeting. The
documents requested include the conference program, list of participants, background information about the
conference, and, most important, documents on the content of the conference, etc.
Briefings. Briefings are potentially a very useful part of advance preparation. They are meetings organized
for the interpreters, with the participation of the organizers of the conference, and experts in the field. They
generally last about half an hour to a few hours. During briefings, general information is given to the
interpreters, who can ask specific questions, generally on concepts and terminology. Most briefings are held
very close to the beginning of the conference, often a few minutes before the opening.
b.Last-minute preparation It is a fact of life that conference documents are not always available, mostly for
organizational reasons. People who hire interpreters are not always the ones who do the actual organizing on
the participant and they may not be in a position to collect the necessary data. As for the speakers, they do
not always have a paper ready in advance, and some are unwilling to disclose the content of their
presentation before it is their turn to speak, let alone in written form. It follows that many documents are
only available at the very last moment, on the premises. Some speakers come to the booth of their own
accord to give a copy of their paper to interpreters and to solve potential problems. Others have to be asked
for help specifically.
c.In-conference preparation Finally, much information is gained during the conference itself, through
documents which are only handed out after it has started, partly through conversations with participants
during breaks, and partly through the content of presentations and discussions, which provide more
information than do documents. Even after the conference has started, knowledge gained is useful, because
it improves conditions for interpretation of the subsequent presentations. An exception to the rule are large
international organizations such as UN agencies, European agencies, etc., in which an effort is generally
made to provide documents in at least two languages.
Preparation as it is practiced -Advance preparation consists mainly of reading documents, taking notes,
preparing glossaries, marking documents with pencil and marker to highlight important concepts and
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problems, writing comments, explanations, or glosses on the documents or in one's own notebook, etc. In
briefings and in last-minute preparation, the consultation of experts also comes in. In in-conference
preparation there is Knowledge Acquisition from listening to the conference itself, as well as from
documents available in the booth, including dictionaries.
Interpreter glossaries -Interpreter glossaries are prepared more rapidly than translator glossaries because of
time pressure: typically, a few hours are available for advance preparation during a crowded conference
period, and additional entries are added and corrections are made during the conference itself, i.e. over one
to a few days. Glossaries are primarily prepared for immediate communication in a given context, not to
serve as a reference for long periods or for a wide range of conferences.
Reference documents - As explained previously, interpreters prepare for specific conferences under severe
time pressure, and they work on a very wide variety of themes, some of which they encounter only once or
twice throughout their career. This is probably one of the reasons why they tend not to keep exhaustive
written records of information they acquire-the other reason being the sheer mass of documents that comes
their way during interpretation work.

12. Four Schools of Translation

1. The Ancient Chinese Schools

The earliest historical records show sporadic translation activities in China in the eleventh century B.C.
Documents from that time indicate that translation was carried out by government clerks, who were
concerned primarily with the transmission of ideologies. In a written document from the late Zhou dynasty,
Jia Gongyan, an imperial scholar, wrote: "Translation is to replace one written language with another
without changing the meaning for mutual understanding." This definition of translation, although primitive,
proves the existence of translation theory in ancient China. Serious discussions on translation, however, did
not begin until the introduction of Buddhism into the country during the Six Dynasties (222-589), when
Buddhist monks began translating classics of Buddhism into Chinese. By the end of the fourth century,
translation was officially organized on a large scale in China. A State School of Translation was founded for
this purpose and Dao An, an imperial officer, was appointed its director. In 379 Dao An was abducted to
Chang'an (Xi'an) where he started the famous Chang'an School. It was at this time that monks from Kashmir
began to enter China in large numbers, bringing with them many texts from their homeland, which they
translated into Chinese and making the school one of the most important translation centers of the time.
Three of the most accomplished translators of the Chang'an school adopted different theories regarding
translation. Dao An insisted on a strict literal translation i.e., the source text translation word by word. The
Indian scholar Kumarajiva, on the other hand, took up an opposite view and advocated a completely free
translation method for the sake of elegance and intelligibility in the target language.
In his own translation practice, Chinese Buddhist scholar Xuan Zang combined the advantages of both Dao
An's respect for the form of the source text, and Kumarajiva's free style of translation. Xuan Zang aimed to
achieve an intelligibility of the translation for the target language readers, and developed his criteria that
translation "must be truthful and intelligible to the populace." It might be during this period of time that
there was the first discussion on literal translation vs. free translation - a core issue of translation theory.

2. The Academy of Jundishapur

After all, the Arabs brought with them into Spain the Arabic versions of the Greek works, from
which translations were made into Latin and spread throughout Europe, which was then in its dark age. It is
this Greek body of knowledge that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance - the
rebirth or revival. The question remains, however: by whom, where, and when was the Greek body of
knowledge transmitted to the Arabs themselves? In his book "How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs",
historian De Lacy O'Leary explains: "Greek scientific thought had been in the world for a long time before it
reached the Arabs, and during that period it had already spread abroad in various directions. So it is not
surprising that it reached the Arabs by more than one route. It came first and in the plainest line through
Christian Syrian writers, scholars, and scientists. Then the Arabs applied themselves directly to the original
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Greek sources and learned over again all they had already learned, correcting and verifying earlier
knowledge." Among the scholars at the center were Greek philosophers and teachers who had fled the closed
Plato's Academy at Athens. Among the works they brought with them were Euclid's works in mathematics,
the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, works by Ptolemy and others. Along with Nestorian scholar-refugees,
they held discussions with the king, wrote, taught and translated. These Syriac translators thought it was
essential to get as close to the original meaning of the Greek as possible. But, this method led to a style of
translation that was virtually word-for-word, doing great injustice to Syriac word order, and also later to
Arabic word order when the same technique was used for the first translations into Arabic. Also brought to
the school were Indian scholars who discussed moral and ethical teachings, Indian astronomy, and Indian
mathematics with its Hindi numerals, which came to the Academy on its way to Muslim lands and later to
Renaissance Europe. When the city of Jundishapur surrendered to Muslim military leaders in the year 636,
the Academy was left undisturbed. Combining the scientific traditions of the Greeks, Persians and Indians, it
became the most important medical centre in the world, continuing its influence into the eleventh century,
even during the height of Baghdad's reign as an intellectual centre.

3. The House of Wisdom

For the history of Western civilization, the demise of Rome was a turning point. Having reached a
high level of classical culture and learning, the fall of Rome was seen as a great decline. In Europe, the time
of tumult and so-called barbarian invasions turned a sparkling civilization into forgotten ruins. Learning and
culture retreated into fortress-like monasteries, where it mouldered for centuries with little improvement. It
was in Baghdad that the Muslims founded their great school of translation known as the House of Wisdom.
Their formidable ambition was to translate as much as they could find of mathematics, astronomy, astrology,
ethics, geography, mechanics, music, medicine, physics, philosophy and the construction of scientific
instruments . The first Arabic translations used the literal style of the Syriac translators. Syriac had evolved
as a written language through translations of the New Testament, where it was thought to be essential to get
as close to the original meaning of the Greek as possible. This led to a style that was virtually word-for-word
translation. The Arabs later abandoned the tradition of literal translation and concentrated on making the
sense of the Greek writers comprehensible to the reader. They went back to the original Greek texts and
translated them directly into Arabic, revising earlier translations into Syriac and Aramaic.
The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) was started by Caliph al-Mamun in 830 AD. It was the
center of Islamic learning, where great translation projects took place to convert the great works of different
cultures into Arabic. During Baghdad's golden age there was no censorship or religious bigotry and the Arab
elite welcomed influences equally from Indians, Chinese, Christians, Jews and Pagans. The Baghdad school
employed a diverse team of Christian and Muslim translators to help translate books from around the world.
One of the House of Wisdom's most famous scholars was Hunayn ibn Ishaq, who eventually
translated the entire canon of Greek medical works into Arabic, including the Hippocratic Oath. The book
was translated into Latin and for centuries was the authoritative treatment of the subject in both Western and
Eastern universities.
Some translators were paid an equal weight of gold to their translated manuscripts. It meant
sometimes traveling as far as India to look for original manuscripts and study the mathematics and
philosophy of those who had written in classical Sanskrit centuries earlier.
The first great advance on the inherited mathematical tradition was the introduction of Arabic
numerals, which actually originated in India and which simplified calculation of all sorts and made possible
the development of algebra.
This translation of knowledge is considered to be one of the main events of the Middle Ages. The
House of Wisdom's main concern was foreign knowledge, and around it the Baghdad School evolved. Great
libraries and schools thrived on the works that the translators contributed. The House of Wisdom restored the
continuity of human knowledge by learning and translating from the older cultures. Without the ancient
knowledge that was preserved and translated through the dark ages of medieval Europe, the Renaissance
would not have been possible.

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 4. The School of Toledo

In 1085, Toledo, Spain was taken from the Muslims by Alfonso VI of Leon. It soon became the
capital of Castile and a community of scholars. There, the transmission of ancient knowledge reached its
peak through the School of Toledo where translations were made from Arabic to Latin and later to Spanish,
and helped the scientific and technological development in the years of the European Renaissance. Toledo
took the place of Baghdad as the new great translation center of the world. Under the leadership of French
Archbishop Raymond, who reigned from 1126 until his death in 1152, the Toledo School's Bureau of
Translation attracted first rate scholars from all over Europe. Raymond knew the wealth of knowledge and
scientific expertise, which the Muslim world possessed, and desired that Christendom gain access to its
riches. Archdeacon Dominic Gundisalvi undertook many translations and directed the Bureau of Translation
that Raymond had founded. Among the school's great scholars were Gherard of Cremona, John of Seville,
Adelard of Bath, Robert of Chester, Rudolf of Bruges, Hermann of Carinthia, and Michael Scot. The twelfth
century came to be known as the Age of Translation.
By the middle of the thirteenth century, scholars such as these had translated the bulk of ancient
science into Latin, including the writings of such greats as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and Hippocrates, which
had been preserved in Arabic for hundreds of years. These writings were Arabic manuscripts still held today
in the Vatican Library in Rome.
Etienne Dolet (1509-1546), a French humanist was tried for translating one of Plato's "Dialogues" in
such a way as to imply disbelief in immortality. Dolet did in fact add three extra words to a text he was
translating from Greek, one of his biographers defends their use as adding to the clarity. He was condemned
as an atheist, tortured and strangled at the age of thirty-seven and his body was burned with copies of his
books at his feet.
The second translator to die for his transgressions was Bible translator and reformer William Tyndale
(1494-1536), who was so impressed by Luther's teachings that he created an English version of both the
Christian texts and the Torah, which were then smuggled into England.
Tyndale was forced to flee England but was eventually arrested in Belgium in 1535, then strangled
and burned at the stake after a year and a half of imprisonment. As a translator, Tyndale crafted many
everyday phrases, including: "Let there be light", "Eat, drink and be merry", "The powers that be", "Ye of
little faith", "Ami my brother's keeper", "A man after his own heart", and "Signs of the times". His
translation of the Bible is credited with influencing the later "King James" version.
The last of the three 'translator-warriors' was the charismatic and successful Martin Luther (1483-
1546). In 1540, Luther wrote the self-promoting and nationalistic Sendbrielvom Dolmetschen, in which he
criticized Latin, Hebrew and other languages for being full of "stones and stumps", in contrast to his
'smooth' German writing. As a poet, writer and translator, Luther 'reformed' the German language in ways
that can still be felt today. He is often considered the "father of the modern German language." Still, Luther
was constantly forced to defend his principles of meaning-oriented translation and he was eventually put
under the ban of the Empire. Fearing for his safety, his own friends once even kidnapped him to protect him.
Until the passage of these ten pivotal years, translators in the West had been viewed far more readily
as heroes than as villains. They had opened all the ancient arts and sciences to the world around them, not
only philosophy, astronomy, and geometry but the more advanced range of Arab mathematics, not to
mention medicine, optics, and other sciences. They had even opened the door to the enormously popular
studies of alchemy, and astrology. As Giordano Bruno himself would say: "From translation all science had
its off-spring." After 1546, public attitude began to change and translators were no longer viewed as heroes.
Increasing emphasis would be placed on the inadequacy of translators and even the translation process itself,
a view which has largely prevailed until the present day.

13. Loss and Gain in Translation

Once the principle is accepted that sameness cannot exist between two languages, it becomes possible to
approach the question of loss and gain in the translation process.
Eugene Nida is a rich source of information about the problems of loss in translation, in particular about the
difficulties encountered by the translator when faced with terms or concepts in the SL that do not exist in
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the TL. He cites the case of Guaica, a language of southern Venezuela, where there is little trouble in
finding satisfactory terms for the English murder, stealing, lying, etc., but where the terms for good, bad, ugly
and beautiful cover a very different area of meaning.

Loss: temporal factors

In translating a text belonging to the past, the translator "usually actualizes it making it accessible to her
contemporaries.The two most popular orientations can be schematized in this way:- a conservative or
historicizing orientation (retentive translation); - a modernizing orientation (re-creative translation).In the
former case, the translator is focused on the prototext's author, while in the latter she is primarily focused on
the needs of the model reader of the metatext.
Among the forms of modernization there can be two types:
"traditional" modernization, i.e. relative modernization, in which the translator modifies lexicon and syntax
to make them more easily read by the contemporary reader;
"radical" modernization, in which theme and socio-cultural aspects of the text are also modified, a horse, for
example, may become a motorcycle.

Translation loss: cultural factors

In translation, a balanced interaction of source culture and receiving culture takes place. Since in a
translation only one version is expressed, the translator must solve these contradictions in one of three ways.
Each way produces a different kind of loss.
If the translator chooses the first solution, the reader of the translation comes across many elements of the
protoculture, and the communication loss mostly consists in the readability of the text and of other culture-
specific elements.
If the translator chooses the second solution, the reader of the translation is dealing with a text that is very
readable and fluent, where culture-specific elements were substituted by elements that are culture-specific in
the reader's culture, a text that has lost its cultural identity for the benefit of readability.
If the translator chooses the third solution, the translation loss will be mixed: it will consist in part of culture-
specific elements, and in part of linguistic and construction elements.

14. Translation of Terms and Professionalisms

There should be mentioned that there is difference between terms and professionalisms. Professionalisms are
the words used in a definite trade, profession or simply by a group of people connected by common interests
both at work and at home.
Unlike professionalisms the terms may have different meanings in different texts. Their translation depends
on the context. In order to translate a term in a proper way the translator should know the context.
For translator/interpreter it is not difficult to translate professionalisms if he knows the branch of science he
works with. But the problem arises when the professionals use the words from neutral layer as
professionalism. Sometimes it is twice as difficult to translate because the translator/interpreter knows all
words in their neutral meaning but in some professional context he cant understand them. The only way out
for the translator is to study the specialty not in detail but to know some principal facts about it. In modern
world many interpreters/translators are specializing in some definite branch. For example, they work in one
definite branch such as medicine, economics, etc.
Morphology of the term
According to their structure all terms are divided into :
-simple (circuit, feeder);
- complex( flywheel - , clock-work - );
- terms-phrases or compound terms (trip coil - , earth fault - ,
circuit breaker - ).
In technical and scientific literature the compound terms are the ones which are very often used. All
compound terms are divided into 3 groups.

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1) The first group consists of the compound terms each element of which is a special term. We can find this
term in a special dictionary. They can be used separately because they have their own meaning. Brake -
; gear .
But when these words are combined to form a special compound term their meaning can be different.

2) The second group of compound terms consists of two words one of which is a special term and the other a
word from common lexis. The components of such group can be two nouns or a noun and an adjective.
3.The third group of compound terms consists of the words which are the elements of neutral (common,
general) lexis and only their combination gives them the meaning of a special term.
These compound terms are idiomatic; their components are not used separately.
The translation of the compound terms begins with the translation of the noun which is the main component
of this phrase generally it is done from the left to the right.

15. Types of Translation Difficulties

All types of translation difficulties can be divided into three groups.

The first one is the case where a word can be either a word of general vocabulary or a specialized term.
Consider the word "bus". When this word is used as a word of general vocabulary it is understood by all
native speakers of English to refer to a roadway vehicle for transporting groups of people. However, it can
also be used as an item of specialized terminology. In the domain of computers the term "bus" refers to a
component of computer that has several slots into which cards can be placed. One card may control a CD-
ROM drive. Another may contain a fax/modem. As always, there is a connection between the new meaning
and the old one. The new meaning involves carrying cards while the old one involves carrying people. The
way to overcome this difficulty is to recognize whether we are using the word as an item of general
vocabulary or as a specialized term. At first it is necessary to detect that a word is a specialized term and
used in a particular domain. Then it is often merely a matter of consulting a terminology database for that
domain to find the standard translation of that term in that domain.
The second type of difficulty is distinguishing between various uses of a word of general vocabulary. We
have already seen with several examples (fish, run, etc...) that it is essential to distinguish between general
uses of a word in order to choose an appropriate translation. The point is that accurate translation requires an
understanding of the text, which includes the understanding of the situation and an enormous variety of facts
about the world in which we live.
The third type of difficulty is the need to be sensitive to the total context, including the intended audience of
the translation. Being sensitive to the audience means using a level of language that is appropriate.
Sometimes a misreading of the audience merely results in innocuous boredom. Moreover, it can also have
serious long-term effects.
Thus we see that there can be identified three translation difficulties:
- distinguishing between general vocabulary and specialized terms;
- distinguishing between various meanings of a word of general vocabulary;
- taking into account the total context including the intended audience and important details such as
regionalism.

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