This document discusses untranslatability in translation. It defines untranslatability and identifies two main types - linguistic and cultural. Examples are provided of untranslatability due to register, grammar, vocabulary, family relations, puns/wordplay, and procedures that can help compensate for untranslatability, such as adaptation, borrowing, calque, compensation, paraphrase, and translator's notes.

1. Untranslatability in
Translation
Prepared by
Mohsine MAHRAJ
Hassan II University, Ain Chock, Casablanca

3. Untranslatability defined
“The degree of difficulty of translation
depends on their nature, as well as on
the translator's abilities.”

5. Types of untranslatability
Catford distinguishes two types which
he terms linguistic and cultural

9. Examples of untranslatability

10. 1. Register
 Although Thai lgge has words that can be
used as equivalent to English "I", "you", or
"he/she/it", they are relatively formal terms;
 In most cases, Thai people use words which
express the relation between speaker and
listener according to their respective roles.
 for a mother to say to her child "I'll tell you a
story", she would say "(mae ja bawk luuk
nitaan), or "Mother will tell child a story".

11. Grammar
 Chinese has no tenses per se, only three aspects.
The English verb to be does not have a direct
equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where
to be leads to an adjective ("It is blue"), there is no
to be in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in
Chinese, instead there are stative verbs that don't
need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb
verb
"zài" ( 在 ) is used, as in "We are in the house". And
in most other cases, the verb "shì" ( 是 ) is used, as
in "I am the leader." Any sentence that requires a
play on those different meanings will not work in
Chinese.

12. Vocabulary
 German, as well as Dutch, has a wealth of modal
particles that are particularly difficult to translate as
they convey sense or tone more rather than strictly
grammatical information. The most infamous
example perhaps is doch (Dutch: toch), which
toch
roughly means "don't you realize that...?", or "in fact
that
it is so, though someone is denying it". What makes
it
translating such words difficult is their different
meanings depending on intonation or the context.

13. Family (Siblings)
 In Arabic, "brother" is often translated into ‫أخ‬
(Akh). However, while this word may describe
a brother who shares either one or both
parents, there is a separate word - ‫شقيق‬
(Shaqeeq) - to describe a brother with whom
one shares both parents.

14. Family (Grandparents)
 Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have the
terms farmor and farfar for paternal
grandparents, and mormor and morfar for
maternal grandparents. The English terms
great-grandfather and great-grandmother
also have different terms in Swedish,
depending on lineage. This distinction
between paternal and maternal grandparents
is also used in Bengali, Chinese, and Thai.

15. Family (Aunts and Uncles)
 Arabic contains separate words for "mother's
brother" ‫( خال‬Khal) and "father's brother" ‫عم‬
('am). The closest translation into English is
"uncle", which gives no indication as to
lineage, whether maternal or paternal.
Similarly, in Arabic, there are specific words
for the father's sister and the mother's sister.

16. Family (Nephews, Nieces, and Cousins)
 Whereas English has different words for the child of
one's sibling based on its gender (nephew for the
son of one's sibling, niece for the daughter), the
word cousin applies to both genders of children
belonging to one's aunt or uncle. Many languages
approach these concepts very differently:
 Spanish distinguishes in both cases: the son of a
sibling is sobrino, whereas a daughter is sobrina,
sobrino sobrina
equally a male cousin is primo, while a female
primo
cousin is prima.
prima

17. Family (Nephews, Nieces, and Cousins)
 Though Italian distinguishes between
male (cugino) and female (cugina) cousins
cugino cugina
where English does not, it uses “nipote”
(nephew/niece) for both genders

18. Family (Relations by marriage)
 in American English the term "my brother-in-
law" covers "my spouse's brother", "my
law
sister's husband", and "my spouse's sister's
husband". In British English, the last of these
is not considered strictly correct.

19. Puns and Wordplay
 Similarly, consider the Italian adage
"traduttore, traditore": a literal translation is
traditore
"translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though
the meaning persists. (A similar solution can
be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying a
“fordítás: ferdítés”, which roughly translates
ferdítés”
as "translation is distortion".)

20. Procedures to compensate for
this problem
The translation procedures that are
available in cases of lacunae, or lexical
gaps, include the following:

21. Adaptation
 An adaptation, also known as a free
translation, is a translation procedure
whereby the translator replaces a social, or
cultural, reality in the source text with a
corresponding reality in the target text; this
new reality would be more usual to the
audience of the target text.

22. Adaptation
 In the Belgian comic book “The Adventures
of Tintin”, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick
“Milou” is translated as “Snowy” in English,
“Bobbie” in Dutch, and “Struppi” in German;
likewise the detectives “Dupont and Dupond”
become “Thomson and Thompson” in
English, “Jansen and Janssen” in Dutch,
“Schultze and Schulze” in German,
“Hernández and Fernández” in Spanish

23. Borrowing
 Borrowing is a translation procedure
whereby the translator uses a word or
expression from the source text in the target
text unmodified.
 In English text, borrowings not sufficiently
anglicized are normally in italics.

24. Calque
 Calque entails taking an expression,
breaking it down to individual elements and
translating each element into the target
language word for word.
 the German word:
"Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be
calqued to "single-representation-claim", but
a proper translation would result in:
"Exclusive Mandate” .

25. Compensation
 Compensation is a translation procedure
whereby the translator solves the problem of
aspects of the source text that cannot take
the same form in the target language by
replacing these aspects with other elements
or forms in the source text.

26. Compensation
 Many languages have two forms of the second
person pronoun, namely an informal form and a
formal form. This is known as T-V distinction,
found in French (tu vs. vous), Spanish (tú/vos vs.
usted), and German (du vs. Sie), for example, but
not contemporary English.
 the translator may have to compensate by using a
first name or nickname, or by using syntactic
phrasing that are viewed as informal in English (I'm,
you're, gonna, etc.), or by using English words of the
formal and informal registers, to preserve the level
of formality.

27. Paraphrase
 Paraphrase, sometimes called periphrasis,
is a translation procedure whereby the
translator replaces a word in the source text
by a group of words or an expression in the
target text.
 The Portuguese word “saudade” is often
translated into English as "the feeling of
missing a person who is gone".
gone

28. Translator's note
 A translator's note is a note added by the
translator to the target text to provide
additional information pertaining to the limits
of the translation, the cultural background, or
any other explanations;
 Some translation exams allow or demand
such notes. Some translators regard
resorting to notes as a failure.

29. Thank You for your
Attention