Translation Studies

Theory ,description and application : of interpretation , of translation and

,of localization of text

• Appeared first in James S Holmes paper in ‘’The name and nature of translation study’’

Tracing from antiquity :

Always been prescriptive (from Greek to Roman times) Greek texts ____ into Latin

Buddhist sutras were translated in China (began discussion on how to translate)

• Debate arose regarding literary trend vslinguistic trends in translation (1980’s -1990’s)

Whether scientific theory could be applied to cultural product?? Facts of the target culture??

1984___Skopos theory paradigm shift to ‘’purpose to be filled rather than prioritizing’’

New developments :

Gender, post-colonialism , cultural studies

Globalization , trend of the use of new technologies

A lot of emerging trends and paradigms: possible source of conflict in the discipline

• Trends and paradigms:

Target language Source language

Inter-change in culture through transformation

Homi Bhaba_ Post-colonial texts ‘’Humour: can you translate?’’

Is it ethically doubtful or translator and the writer share an inter-personal relationship?

• How to act ethically independent from own judgements?

• Translating and interpreting as bearing social-political influence

• Translation :(to bring across-carry across)

equivalence of meaning-source language text and target language text.

Spill over of language usage into the target language (enriched language/ translators have shaped the languages)

Meta-phrase vs para-phrase (word to word /meaning to meaning)

• If translation be an art, it is no easy one.

• [T]ranslation... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not the labor and portion of common minds;

ISLAMIC TRADITION: ARABIC/GREEK TEXT INTO PERSIANTEXT

• FAITHFUL VS BEAUTIFUL :

Trnasparency(syntax,grammar ,idiom) ---Idiomatic nature

Word to Word translation of machines :

• Tributes of competent translators

Interpreting, or "interpretation," is the facilitation of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two, or among more, speakers who are not speaking, or signing, the same language.( a translator- interpretor)

Machine-translation: computer , internet –through dictionaries.

Speed up and facilitate human translation

(communication in human language is context embedded) ignores that

Literary pieces Vs poetry in translation:

Jewish scriptures in Alexandria ( to Greek)

Arabs Greek texts (deciphering knowledge)

Chaucer’s work takes themes from Italian poets

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Edward Fitzgerald-1959)

Poetry : Challenging

• a good translation of a poem must convey as much as possible of not only its literal meaning but also its form and structure (meter, rhyme or alliteration scheme, etc.)

Semiotician Roman Jakobson went so far as to declare that "poetry by definition [is] untranslatable".

Robert Frost was equally pessimistic: "Poetry is that which is lost in translations."

Terms to follow:

Literal translation

Language transfer

Linguistic validation

Technical translation

Skopos theory

Translating for legal equivalence

Translation of the Quran

• Miraculous: shades of meaning in Arabic, Hebrew , Armanaic…

• Possible interpretations, translation of the meanings…

• Some methods of translation:

1. paraphrase:"...a paraphrase is guided by the translators' skill in simplifying , also by the clarity of his understanding of what the author meant

2. Dynamic equivalence method: to translate what they think the writer of the original meant (in sentence form) and then restructurethe result of that process to what they think the person reading it will be able to understand .

Translators silence an illusion?

“reading like a piece originally written in the target language” is

regarded as what translators should aim for …

that his/her choices and strategies when producing the text are not

apparent and the reader is not aware of them.

Historically inferior status of translator/translated work

• Illusion of transparency:

Claims for having read Kafka Or Dostoevsky?

Can the differences in culture or language be neutralized?...or all interpretative possibilties be exhausted in one text?

"creative versus derivative work, primary versus secondary, art versus craft.” (debate)

Linguistic approach to translation

• Structural linguistics and functional linguistics:Linguistic meaning and equivalence are the key issues for the Russian structuralist Roman Jakobson who, in his 1959 work On Linguistic Works of Translation, states that there are 3 types of translation:1) intralingual – rewording or paraphrasing, summarizing, expanding or commenting within a language2) interlingual – the traditional concept of translation from ST to TT or the “shifting of meaning from one language to another” 3) intersemiotic – the changing of a written text into a different form, such as art or dance