Translation techniques

1. The concept of translation and its complexity
Tutor:
Brenda Liceth Vargas
Camilo Stiven Naranjo Acuña
14 May 2018
Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia
Licenciatura en inglés como lengua extranjera
Translation techniques
551037_2

2. TASK 1
El arte de la perfumería tiene una herencia antigua y global. El arte floreció en la
antigua Roma, donde se decía que los emperadores tomaban un baño en esencias. Después
de la caída de Roma, mucho conocimiento sobre esto se perdió, pero sobrevivió en las
civilizaciones islámicas en las edades medias. Farmaceutas árabes y persas desarrollaron
aceites esenciales de plantas aromáticas de la península india. Desarrollaron el proceso de
destilación y suspensión en alcohol, el cual permitió usar más pequeñas cantidades de
materiales puros que en los procesos antiguos, en las cuales los pétales de las flores eran
puestas en remojo en aceite tibio. Este conocimiento fue devuelto a monasterios europeos
durante las Cruzadas.
TASK 2
The text was simple for me. It was interesting to do this work because I like
translation as well. Nevertheless, I had a little problem with the sentence: “…where the
emperors were said to bathe in scent” due to the use of the passive voice, which gives a
special meaning with a different translation without changing the idea. For this reason, I
could say that I use transposition and modulation because I had to change the parts of the
speech in the sentence to give it sense, and at the same time, I translate it in order to give
the same idea of the first language to the second one. Of course, in different parts of the text
I use the word-for-word translation because it was possible to do it. Another difficult I
could fine was some words as a vocabulary I didn’t know, but in general it was normal. I
would say that I also use calque when the text names: “Ancient Rome” so what I did was to
translate it into “la Antigua Roma”; or “Middle ages” into “edad media”; or “Indian
peninsula” into “peninsula India”. In few words, I would say that translating this paragraph
was great and even more, knowing the techniques that exist.
TASK 3
Concept Example
Method Ways of carrying out a
translation, focusing on the
whole text
Idiomatic translation: “Hold
your horses!” could be into
Spanish as “espera un
momento”
Strategy Procedure for solving a
problem while translating
Finding the way of
translating a sentences using
a technique.
technique A way of translating
sentences and smaller units
of language
Modulation: “you got it!”
could be translated into
Spanish as “¡entendiste!”