The document discusses various translation strategies, techniques and methods. It defines translation strategy and discusses three global strategies employed by translators. It then discusses translation methods and procedures, and defines word-for-word, literal, faithful, semantic and idiomatic translation. Direct and oblique translation techniques are also explained, including borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, reformulation, adaptation and compensation.

1. Translation Strategies,Te
chniques and Methods

2. • Krings (1986:18) defines translation
strategy as "translator's potentially
conscious plans for solving concret
e translation problems in the frame
work of a concrete translation task.''

3. • Seguinot (1989) believes that there are at l
east three global strategies employed by t
he translators: (i) translating without interru
ption for as long as possible; (ii) correcting
surface errors immediately; (iii) leaving the
monitoring for qualitative or stylistic errors i
n the text to the revision stage.
•

4. • Venuti (1998:240) indicates that
translation strategies "involve th
e basic tasks of choosing the fo
reign text to be translated and d
eveloping a method to translate
it."
•

5. • Newmark mentions the difference be
tween translation methods and transl
ation procedures. He writes that, "[w]
hile translation methods relate to wh
ole texts, translation procedures are
used for sentences and the smaller
units of language"
•

6. Newman goes on to refer to the follo
wing methods of translation:
•Word-for-word translation: in which th
e SL word order is preserved and the
words translated singly by their most c
ommon meanings, out of context.

7. • Literal translation: in which the SL gramm
atical constructions are converted to their
nearest TL equivalents, but the lexical wor
ds are again translated singly, out of conte
xt.
•
• Faithful translation: it attempts to produce
the precise contextual meaning of the origi
nal within the constraints of the TL gramm
atical structures.

8. • Semantic translation: which differs from 'faithfu
l translation' only in as far as it must take more
account of the aesthetic value of the SL text.
•
• Adaptation: which is the freest form of translati
on, and is used mainly for plays (comedies) an
d poetry; the themes, characters, plots are usu
ally preserved, the SL culture is converted to th
e TL culture and the text is rewritten.

9. • Idiomatic translation: it reproduces the 'mess
age' of the original but tends to distort nuance
s of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and
idioms where these do not exist in the original
.
•
• Communicative translation: it attempts to ren
der the exact contextual meaning of the origin
al in such a way that both content and langua
ge are readily acceptable and comprehensibl
e to the readers.

10. Translation
Techniques

11. Direct Translation Technique
s
•
• Direct Translation Techniques a
re used when structural and con
ceptual elements of the source l
anguage can be transposed into
the target language.

12. • Direct translation technique
s include:
1.Borrowing
2.Calque
3.Literal Translation

13. BORROWING
• Borrowing is when words are taken fr
om one language to another without
any translation. This is seen in Englis
h frequently, when using words such
as résumé, à la mode and café ( all b
orrowed from French ).

14. • English borrows numerous words from oth
er languages; abbatoire, café, passé and r
ésumé from French; hamburger and kinde
rgarten from German; bandana, musk and
sugar from Sanskrit.
•
• Borrowed words are often printed in italics

15. CALQUE
• A calque is when an entire p
hrase is borrowed from anot
her language and translated
word-for-word instead of con
ceptually.

16. • Oftentimes when various idioms,
metaphors and phrases are trans
lated from one language to anoth
er word-for-word, the original me
aning of the sentence is complet
ely lost.

17. • As a simple example, the word ‘ki
ndergarten’ in German translates l
iterally to “children garden”. Howe
ver, the word ‘kindergarten’ in En
glish simply refers to the year of s
chool between pre-kindgergarten
and first grade.
•

18. LITERAL TRANSLATION
• A literal translation can be used
between some languages but n
ot others. Literal translation, alt
hough it seems like it, is not a w
ord-for-word translation.

19. • It is only used when the struct
ures and concepts of the lang
uage run parallel to each othe
r, allowing the proper imagery
and style to come through.
•

20. • El equipo está trabajando para terminar e
l informe would translate into English as T
he team is working to finish the report. So
metimes it works and sometimes it does n
ot. For example, the Spanish sentence ab
ove could not be translated into French or
German using this technique because the
French and German sentence structures
are different.

21. • And because one sentence can be t
ranslated literally across languages
does not mean that all sentences ca
n be translated literally. El equipo ex
perimentado está trabajando para te
rminar el informe translates into Eng
lish as The experienced team is wor
king to finish the report (experienced
" and "team" are reversed).

22. Oblique Translation Techniqu
es
• Oblique Translation Techni
ques are used when the str
uctural or conceptual eleme
nts of the source language
cannot be directly translate
d without altering meaning
or upsetting the grammatica
l and stylistics elements of t
he TL.

23. •Oblique translation techniques include:
Transposition
Modulation
Reformulation or Equivalence
Adaptation
Compensation

24. TRANSPOSITION
• Transposition is where the location of v
arious parts of speech within a sentenc
e are switched based on the particular l
anguage. In English sentences, the ver
b is often closer to the beginning of the
sentence. Yet in Spanish sentences, th
e verb is often closer to the end of the
sentence.

25. • In order to translate one to the oth
er, the placement of the verb must
be altered. It is also possible to ch
ange the word class without chang
ing the overall meaning of the sent
ence. For example, changing “eati
ng is very important” to “to eat is v
ery important” does not affect the
meaning.
•

26. • For example:
English Hand knitted (noun + partici
ple) becomes Spanish Tejido a mano
(participle + adverbial phrase).

27. MODULATION
• Modulation consists of using a phrase
that is different in the source and targe
t languages to convey the same idea:
Te lo dejo means literally I leave it to y
ou but translates better as You can ha
ve it. It changes the semantics and shif
ts the point of view of the source langu
age.

28. • Through modulation, the translator
generates a change in the point of v
iew of the message without altering
meaning and without generating a s
ense of awkwardness in the reader
of the target text. It is often used wit
hin the same language.

29. • The expressions es fácil de entend
er (it is easy to understand) and no
es complicado de entender (it is no
t complicated to understand) are ex
amples of modulation.

30. • Although both convey the same me
aning, it is easy to understand simpl
y conveys "easiness" whereas it is n
ot complicated to understand implie
s a previous assumption of difficulty
that we are denying by asserting it i
s not complicated to understand.

31. REFORMULATION
• When translating difficult phrases such as
idioms, the translator needs to understan
d the meaning behind the idiom. For exa
mple, the idiom “don’t put all of your eggs
in one basket” would be lost on someone
of another language if it was directly trans
lated. Because of this, translators often tr
anslate these phrases into easy-to-under
stand equivalents.

32. • The phrase “don’t put all of your eggs in
one basket” may be translated to “keep y
our options open” in order to be understo
od in various languages. There are phras
es in some languages that simply cannot
be expressed directly in other languages,
which is where equivalence comes into pl
ay.
•

33. ADAPTATION
•Adaptation, also called cultural substitution o
r cultural equivalent, is a cultural element whi
ch replaces the original text with one that is b
etter suited to the culture of the target langua
ge. This achieves a more familiar and compre
hensive text.
Example: baseball ⇒ football

34. COMPENSATION
• In general terms compensation can be
used when something cannot be transl
ated, and the meaning that is lost is ex
pressed somewhere else in the transla
ted text. Peter Fawcett defines it as: "...
making good in one part of the text so
mething that could not be translated in
another".

35. • One example given by Fawcett is the
problem of translating nuances of for
mality from languages that use forms
such as Spanish informal tú and form
al usted, French tu and vous, and Ger
man du and sie into English which onl
y has 'you', and expresses degrees of
formality in different ways.
•