Number Gender Strategies in Grammatical Level Equivalence

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2.5.3 Strategies in Grammatical Level Equivalence

2.5.3.1 Number

Not all languages have grammatical category of number, it is why the translators often face difficulties and make some adjustments by changing the information. The strategies used by the translator depend on the grammatical rules in the target language. The common problem arises when a translator working from a language with has number distinctions into a language with no category of number. The followings are some example of strategies used : a Omitting the relevant information on number • Source text English : China’s Panda reserves • Target text Back-translated from Chinese : China’s Panda Protection-Zone. ‘Protection zone’ is a literal rendering of the accepted Chinese translation of reserve. It is not marked for number. The reader of the Chinese text has no way of knowing, from this title, whether China has one or more than one panda reserves. b Encoding this information lexically • Source text English : The heads of the ministries created in 1869 were not directly … • Target text Back-translated from Japanese: The head s of various ministryies created in Meiji 2 nd are not directly … A Japanese word meaning ‘various’ is added in the translation to indicate that reference is made to more than one ministry and, by implication, more than one head of ministry. 25

2.5.3.2 Gender

The common strategy used to overcome the problem caused by gender in translation is making the necessary adjustment, for instance by adding the gender dimension in the target text. For example : • Source text English : Kolesteral Super : Shampoo the hair with a mild WELLA-SHAMPOO and lightly towel dry. • Target text back translated from Arabic : The hair is washed with ‘wella’ shampoo provided that it is a mild shampoo. Then the hair is dried by means of a towel, a simple drying so that the hair is left damp. An Arabic or writer has to select between ‘you, masculine’ anta and you feminine anti in case of the second-person singular. Moreover, this type of information must be signaled of the verb itself : an Arabic verb has different forms depending on whether its subject is, for instance, second-person singular feminine or third-person plural masculine. In fact, pronouns such as ‘she’ and ‘I’ are usually redundant in Arabic and are used mainly for emphasis, since all the information they carry is incorporated in the form of the verb.

2.5.3.3 Person