Translation Difficulty THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
which the meaning of a text is transferred from one language to another”.
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Each polar element in the translating process is construed as an absolute, and meaning
is transposed from one pole to the other. But the fixity implied in the oppositions between languages, between
original or copy, authors or translator, and by analogy, male or female, cannot be absolute; these terms are rather to be placed on a continuum where each can be
considered in relative terms. Attention must shift to those areas of identity where the intermediate comes into play. Equivalence in translation, as contemporary
translations theory emphasizes, cannot be one to one preposition. The process of translation must be seen as a fluid production of meaning, similar to other kinds of
writing. The hierarchy of writing roles, like gender identities, is increasingly to be recognized as mobile and per formative.
Translating is an act of interpretation. Religious authorities have always recognized this fact and that is why each major religious denomination has its own
approved translation of the Bible. Certain translations have been decisive in redirecting the meaning of the Bible at pivotal moments in history. The aim of
conversion which motivates evangelistic translations undertaken by missionaries around the globe is clearly stated; these translations based on the idea that the
Bible translations are target centered that is focused parameters of understanding of the readership.
The question of whether particular words are untranslatable is often debated, with lists being produced from time to time. These lists often include a
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Sherry Simon, Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London; Routledge 1991. p. 11.
Portuguese word also used in Spanish as an example of a hard word to translate. It translates quite neatly as sorrowful longing, but has some nuances that are
hard to include in a translation; for instance, it is a positive-valued concept, a subtlety which is not clear in this basic translation. “Some words are only hard to
translate if one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category”.
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Cultural aspects can render translation problematic. Consider the example of a word like
bread. At first glance, it is a very simple word, referring in everyday use to just one thing, with obvious translations into other languages. But ask people from
England, France and China to describe or draw bread, and you will achieve quite different results. They will be envisioning completely different things.
The problem often lies in failure to distinguish between translation and glossing. Glossing is what a glossary does: give a short usually one-word
equivalent for each term. Translation, as explained above, is decoding meaning and intent at the text level not the word level or even sentence level and then re-
encoding them in a target language. Indeed, one of the main rules in translation is to keep the context, but is
not the language of the document itself the heart of the context that should be kept. Another serious problem of translation is that translating can be described as
writing what you have read in another language. Yet how can one expect that the translator perfectly understands the original author, while this is the translators
job. It is the author who is praised for the work, Could translation even be seen as legal plagiarism “Translations can be quite different from the original.
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Httpwww.wordiq.comdefinitiontranslation