The document discusses two approaches to translation: the semantic approach and the communicative approach. The semantic approach attempts to render the exact meaning of the original text, making it more complex and prone to overtranslation. The communicative approach attempts to produce a similar effect on the target language readers as the original, making it smoother and clearer but risking undertranslation. Both overtranslation and undertranslation have drawbacks, with overtranslation providing excess information and undertranslation potentially lacking necessary details.

1. Semantic and Communicative
Approaches

2. Semantic Approach
• ‘Semantic translation attempts to render,
as closely as the semantic and syntactic
structures of the second language allow,
the exact contextual meaning of the
original’
Newmark (1981)

3. • More complex, detailed, concentrated
• Tendency to overtranslate
• It’s more appropriate for serious literature,
autobiography and any important political
statement
• It’s more accurate in the reproduction of
the significance of the ST
• Always ‘inferior’ to the ST. It’ll always
possess some kind of ‘loss’ in meaning

4. Communicative approach
• ‘Communicative translation attempts to
produce on its readers an effect as close
as possible to that obtained on the readers
of the original’
Newmark (1981)

5. • Smoother, simpler, dearer, more direct,
more conventional
• Tendency to undertranslate
• It’s appropriate for the vast majority of
texts (non-literary writing, technical and
informative text, publicity, standardized
types, etc)
• It’s more accurate in the communication of
the ST message in the TT
• May be ‘better’ than the ST. It ‘gains’ clarity
even if it loss semantic content

6. Overtranslation and
Undertranslation

7. Overtranslation
• It tends to give more information than the ST
provides
• It tends to add more words than in the ST
• It could lead to a misunderstanding between
the SL and the TL

8. Undertranslation
• It tends to use less words than the ST
• It overestimate the knowledge of the TL
readers
• It could lead to a lack of necessary information
• It’s briefer and simpler