Transparency and Fidelity Translation and Editing of Text

1. Fidelity and
Transparency

2. The concept of fidelity and transparency
Fidelity (or faithfulness) and transparency are
two qualities that, for millennia, have been
regarded as ideals to be striven for in
translation, particularly literary translation.
These two ideals are often at odds.Thus a 17th-
century French critic, Gilles Ménage,
coined the phrase les belles infidèles to suggest
that translations, like women, could be either
faithful or beautiful, but not both at the same
time.

3. The concept of fidelity and transparency
Fidelity pertains to the extent to which a translation
accurately renders the meaning of the source text, without
adding to or subtracting from it, without intensifying or
weakening any part of the meaning, and otherwise without
distorting it.
Transliteration with machine translation comes closest to
this school of thought, with the caveat that it usually fails to
properly convey the message because of its rigid faithfulness
to the original document

4. The concept of fidelity and transparency
Transparency pertains to the extent to which a translation appears to a
native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in
that language, and conforms to the language's grammatical, syntactic and
idiomatic conventions.
The translation caters to native speakers and the target audience, such
that idiomatic, syntactic, and grammatical conventions are followed while
cultural, political, and social context is kept in mind at all times.
Adaptation and localization comes closest to this school of thought, with
the caveat that a bit of sacrifice in terms of the intended message will
inevitably happen whenever translators use this approach in their
translation

5. The concept of fidelity and transparency
A few simple examples should illustrate some of the choices and strategies
that translators need to make, which confer them a voice in the resulting
translation, together with a brief explanation of the process of selecting a
particular strategy. In the localization project of a British software license
reselling company introducing their services in Spain, which involved the
translation of their website and related documentation, the translator
decided to keep a number of IT references in English (software, hardware,
type of licenses). In translational terms, this would be seen as a foreignizing
strategy, or the use of source text loan words in the target text. However,
the translator was aware of the acceptance of some of this terminology by
the Real Academia Española (the authority in Spanish language matters)

6. The concept of fidelity and transparency
and the perceived preference in Spain of English terms in dealing with IT topics. In
the translation of the home page, “Are you taking advantage of the current
exchange rate?” was rendered as “ Aproveche la actual cotización de la libra
esterlina”. This is an example of transposition, where the interrogative sentence was
changed into an imperative one, reflecting a more direct style preferred by Spanish
speakers. In another section, the webpage referred to software licensing
procurement explaining the process of insolvency of British companies, including
terms such as insolvency practitioners and case managers.This required the
adaptation not only of the specific terminology but also of the process of company
insolvencies in Spain in order to successfully communicate the operational issues
involved in the procurement of licenses.

7. Are you taking advantage
of the current exchange
rate?
Aproveche la actual
cotización de la libra
esterlina
Take advantage of the
current price of sterling

8. English
•please, buy me a bottle of sunflower
oil in the retail store
Filipino
•mangyaring, bumili ako ng isang bote
ng langis mirasol sa tingian tindahan

9. The concept of fidelity and transparency
One final situation where a reader is aware of the presence of the translator is bad
translations.
In this example of reverse translation, it is obvious that the process of recoding suffers
from a lack of knowledge of theTL and the reader is well aware that s/he is reading the
words of the “translator.”
“Please, buy me a bottle of sunflower oil in retail stores”
“Mangyaring, bumili ako ng isang bote ng langis mirasol sa mga tindahang”

10. In all these examples--even in the last one--the purpose behind
the selection and application of translation strategies by the
translator is to produce aTT that “respects the norms of the
target language, that has vis à vis sentence structure,
terminology, cohesion of the text and fidelity to the author and
his/her intention" (CIOL 2006:16).Venuti (1995), though, goes
further and states that nowadays aTT is deemed acceptable by
readers, publishers and reviewers when there is an absence of
foreign linguistic or stylistic peculiarities and it reads fluently in
theTL.The Chartered Institute of Linguists (2006:12) seem to
prove this point, as in their criteria for assessing translations
“reading like a piece originally written in the target language” is
regarded as what translators should aim for when producing a
TT.

11. However,Venuti warns us (1995), the more fluent a translation is the
more invisible the translator becomes. Schaffner (1999:61) believes
that the expectation is that the translator will produce “a faithful
reproduction, a reliable duplicate or a quality replica" of the ST that is
as good as reading the original, thus rendering the translator
“transparent.”This shows a trust in the integrity of the translator and in
his/her capability to produce a text that is as good as the real thing and
without whom intercultural communication would not be possible
(Hermans 1996). Interestingly, however, the expectation also is that a
TT is most successful when it is not obvious that it is a translation,
requiring the translator not to leave any trace of his work (Schaffner
1999:62).

12. So it could be argued that, on the one hand, the translator is--or should
be--regarded as the central piece allowing communication between
languages and cultures to take place and that a translation is deemed
good when it reads as fluently as if it was written originally in theTL. On
the other hand, however, for this to take place it is necessary that the
translator stays as invisible and quiet as possible, so that his/her choices
and strategies when producing the text are not apparent and the
reader is not aware of them.Thus, a translation is good when it does
not read like a translation and when it produces the impression of being
an original.

13. Citations
. - See more at:
http://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/fidelity-versus-
transparency-translation#sthash.SZyQ2FZQ.dpuf
http://www.translationjournal.net/journal/62xparency.htm
http://top100opinions.com/2011/07/fidelity-transparency-translation/
https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/Mangyaring%2C%20bumili%20
ako%20ng%20isang%20bote%20ng%20langis%20mirasol%20sa%20
mga%20tindahang