intralingual translation – translation within the same language, which can

Unit A2 Translation strategies If we were to sample what people generally take ‘translation’ to be, the consensus would most probably be for a view of translating that describes the process in terms of such features as the literal rendering of meaning, adherence to form, and emphasis on general accuracy. These observations would certainly be true of what translators do most of the time and of the bulk of what gets translated. As we shall see as this book progresses, these statements require much refinement and betray a strongly prescriptive attitude to translation. But they are also the product of some of the central issues of translation theory all the way from Roman times to the mid- twentieth century. FORM AND CONTENT Roman Jakobson makes the crucial claim that ‘all cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language’ Jakobson 1959:238, see Text B1.1. So, to give an example, while modern British English concepts such as the National Health Service, public–private partnership and congestion charging, or, in the USA, Ivy League universities, Homeland Security and speed dating, might not exist in a different culture, that should not stop them being expressed in some way in the target language TL. Jakobson goes on to claim that only poetry ‘by definition is untranslatable’ since in verse the form of words contributes to the con- struction of the meaning of the text. Such statements express a classical dichotomy in translation between sensecontent on the one hand and formstyle on the other. sense form content style The sense may be translated, while the form often cannot. And the point where form begins to contribute to sense is where we approach untranslatability. This clearly is most likely to be in poetry, song, advertising, punning and so on, where sound and rhyme and double meaning are unlikely to be recreated in the TL. 10 A SECTION Task A2.1 ➤ The spoken or written form of names in the Harry Potter books often con- tributes to their meaning. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, one of the evil characters goes by the name of Tom Marvolo Riddle, yet this name is itself a riddle, since it is an anagram of ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ and reveals the character’s true identity. Think how you might deal with this form–content problem in translation into another language. In the published translations, many of the Harry Potter translators have resorted to altering the original name in order to create the required pun:in French, the name becomes ‘Tom Elvis Jedusor’ which gives ‘Je suis Voldemort’ as well as suggesting an enigmatic fate with the use of the name Elvis and the play on words ‘jeudusor’ or ‘jeu du sort’, meaning ‘game of fate’. In this way the French translator, Jean-François Ménard, has preserved the content by altering the form. LITERAL AND FREE The split between form and content is linked in many ways to the major polar split which has marked the history of western translation theory for two thousand years, between two ways of translating:‘literal’ and ‘free’. The origin of this separation is to be found in two of the most-quoted names in translation theory, the Roman lawyer and writer Cicero and St Jerome, who translated the Greek Septuagint gospels into Latin in the fourth century. In Classical times, it was normal for translators working from Greek to provide a literal, word-for-word ‘translation’ which would serve as an aid to the Latin reader who, it could be assumed, was reasonably acquainted with the Greek source language. Cicero, describing his own translation of Attic orators in 46 BCE , emphasized that he did not follow the literal ‘word-for-word’ approach but, as an orator,‘sought to preserve the general style and force of the language’ Cicero 46 BC 1960:364. Four centuries later, St Jerome described his Bible translation strategy as ‘I render not word-for-word but sense for sense’ Jerome 3951997:25. This approach was of particular importance for the translation of such sensitive texts as the Bible, deemed by many to be the repository of truth and the word of God. A translator who did not remain ‘true’ to the ‘official’ interpretation of that word often ran a considerable risk. Sometimes, as in the case of the sixteenth-century English Bible translator William Tyndale, it was the mere act of translation into the vernacular that led to persecution and execution. The literal and free translation strategies can still be seen in texts to the present day. The shoe-cleaning machine example Example C1.1 could be considered a literal translation of the Spanish – so literal, it remains part Spanish Example A2.1 below, from a tourist brochure for a vintage train line in Mallorca, shows how a literal translation may be the norm between two closely related languages, in this case ST T r a n s l a t i o n s t r a t e g i e s 11 A SECTION ★