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Translation
The word translation may refer to three things (Munday, 2001: 4-5). It can
refer to the general subject field, the process and the product. The first, translation can be
seen as a field of study. As a general subject field, translation is a discipline which
concerns itself with problems raised by production and description of translations
(Lafevere in Shuttleworth, 1997: 183). As a process, translation is the process of the
changing of original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language
(the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal
language (the target language or TL) (Munday, 2001: 4-5). As a product, translation is a
written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in another
language.
Many translation experts propose their definitions of translation based on their
ideas whether translation is seen as a process or a product.
According to Brislin (1976: 1), who sees translation as a process, translation is a
general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language to another,
whether the language is in written or oral form, whether the languages have established
orthographies or not; or whether one or both languages is based on signs, as with signs of
the deaf. Similarly, according to Wills (1982: 3), translation is a transfer process which
aims at the transformation of a written source language text (SLT) into an optimally
equivalent target language text (TLT), and which requires the syntactic, the semantic and
the pragmatic understanding and analytical processing of the source text. While
according to Hartmann and Stork (in Bell, 1991: 6), translation is the replacement of a
representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a
second language
Seeing it as a product, Dubois (in Bell, 1991: 5) sees translation as the
expression in another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in other,
source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.
Kinds of translation
Roman Jakobson differentiates three kinds of verbal sign translation. This
categorization are very often quoted or reprinted in textbooks on translation (Venuti,
2000: 113-118, Munday, 2001: 5, Hatim and Munday, 2004: 124-125). The three kinds of
translation are as follows:
1)
2)
3)
categorization Jakobson uses the word verbal signs, which can be written or spoken.
Thus, it covers also the translation of spoken text. In textbooks on translation, the
translation of spoken text is usually called interpreting (Hatim and Munday, 2004: 4).
The types of translation can also be based on the purpose of translating the text.
There are two types here: inbound and outbound translation
(www.languagepartners.com). Inbound translation is done to understand the content of
the text. For such documents, poor translation will do. For outbound translation, which
is done to communicate, the quality standard is higher so as to prevent misunderstanding.
Theories on Translation Equivalence
Equivalence is the mainstay of translation theory as translating is basically producing the
target text that is equivalent with the source text. The discussion on the concept of
equivalence is as old as the translation study itself. Catford (1965) makes distinction
between formal correspondence and textual equivalent. Formal correspondence is
any TL category, which may be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the same place in
the system hierarchy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL (1965: 32).
TL category here is unit, class, structure, element of structure, etc. Thus, this is syntactic
functional equivalence. Referential equivalence condition states that the TL text should
refer to the same segment of reality, to the same facts, events and phenomena as the SL
text. The contextual equivalence requires that individual sentences should occupy the
same position in the whole of the TL text as their correspondents in the whole of the SL
text. Finally, functional equivalence demands that the TL text play the same role in the
community of TL readers as the SL text in the community of SL readers (this role may
involve transfer of information, provoking certain emotions, appeal, etc.)
The discussion on the nature of equivalence offers an impression that later and
later theme of translation equivalence discussion shifts from meaning vs form
equivalence dichotomy to sentential vs textual or functional equivalence dichotomy. This
functional orientation is to be discussed further in the subsequent sections (skopos
theory). This might be related with the fact that later theorists do not only talk about
literary translation from linguistic point of view but also about non-literary translation
from various point of views in an increasing volume and depth.