![Charles V ordonnant la traduction d'Aristote copy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Charles_V_ordonnant_la_traduction_d%27Aristote_copy.jpg)
Translation is the communication of the
meaning of a
source-language text by means of an
equivalent
Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry
* Equivalence class (music)
*'' Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre
*''Equiva ...
target-language text. The English language draws a
terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''translating'' (a written text) and ''
interpreting
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous inter ...
'' (oral or
signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of
writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...
within a language community.
A translator always risks inadvertently introducing source-language words,
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
, or
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
into the target-language rendering. On the other hand, such "spill-overs" have sometimes imported useful source-language
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
s and
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s that have enriched target languages. Translators, including early translators of
sacred text
Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual prac ...
s, have helped shape the very languages into which they have translated.
Because of the laboriousness of the translation process, since the 1940s efforts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to
automate translation or to
mechanically aid the human translator. More recently, the rise of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
has fostered a
world-wide market
In economics, a market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering ...
for
translation services
The language industry is the industry (economics), sector of activity dedicated to facilitating multilingual communication, both oral and written. According to the European Commission, European Commission's Directorate-General of Translation, the ...
and has facilitated "
language localisation
Language localisation (or language localization) is the process of adapting a product's translation to a specific country or region. It is the second phase of a larger process of product translation and cultural adaptation (for specific countries ...
".
Etymology
![Rosetta Stone BW](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Rosetta_Stone_BW.jpeg)
The
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
word "translation" derives from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
word , which comes from ''
trans
Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond", or "on the other side of".
Used alone, trans may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Trans (festival), a former festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
* ''Trans'' (film ...
'', "across" + ''
ferre'', "to carry" or "to bring" (''-latio'' in turn coming from ''latus'', the
past participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
of ''ferre''). Thus ''translatio'' is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across"—in this case, of a text from one language to another.
Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...
, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 83.
Some
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...
and the
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
(other than
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
and
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...
) have
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
d their words for the
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
of "translation" on ''translatio'', substituting their respective Slavic or Germanic root words for the Latin roots.
The remaining Slavic languages instead calqued their words for "translation" from an alternative Latin word, , itself derived from ("to lead across" or "to bring across")—from ("across") + , ("to lead" or "to bring").
The
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
and
East Slavic languages
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Sibe ...
(except for
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
) adopted the pattern, whereas Russian and the
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West and East) ...
adopted the pattern. The
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
s, deriving directly from Latin, did not need to ''calque'' their equivalent words for "translation"; instead, they simply adapted the second of the two alternative Latin words, .
The
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
term for "translation", (''metaphrasis'', "a speaking across"), has supplied English with "
metaphrase
Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line" translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual ...
" (a "
literal", or "word-for-word", translation)—as contrasted with "
paraphrase
A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''.
History
Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...
" ("a saying in other words", from , ''paraphrasis'').
"Metaphrase" corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "
formal equivalence
The terms dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, coined by Eugene Nida, are associated with two dissimilar translation approaches that are employed to achieve different levels of literalness between the source and target text, as evidenc ...
"; and "paraphrase", to "
dynamic equivalence
The terms dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, coined by Eugene Nida, are associated with two dissimilar translation approaches that are employed to achieve different levels of literalness between the source and target text, as evidenc ...
".
[Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 84.]
Strictly speaking, the concept of metaphrase—of "word-for-word translation"—is an
imperfect
The imperfect (abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to w ...
concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, "metaphrase" and "paraphrase" may be useful as ''ideal'' concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.
Theories
Western theory
![John Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/John_Dryden_by_Sir_Godfrey_Kneller%2C_Bt.jpg)
Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into
antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The
ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cultu ...
distinguished between ''metaphrase'' (literal translation) and ''paraphrase''. This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
(1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts," or
equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language:
![Cicero - Musei Capitolini](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Cicero_-_Musei_Capitolini.JPG)
Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e., of adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..."
This general formulation of the central concept of translation—
equivalence—is as adequate as any that has been proposed since
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
and
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
, who, in 1st-century-BCE
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" ().
Despite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual ''practice'' of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking
equivalents—"literal" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary—for the original
meaning and other crucial "values" (e.g.,
style
Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to:
* Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable
* Design, the process of creating something
* Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...
,
verse form
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
, concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech
articulatory movements) as determined from context.
![Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds_2.png)
In general, translators have sought to preserve the
context
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to su ...
itself by reproducing the original order of
sememe
__NOTOC__
A sememe () is a semantic language unit of meaning, analogous to a morpheme. The concept is relevant in structural semiotics.
A seme is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible. A sememe can be the ...
s, and hence
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
—when necessary, reinterpreting the actual
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
structure, for example, by shifting from
active
Active may refer to:
Music
* ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea
* Active Records, a record label
Ships
* ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name
* HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
to
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
, or ''vice versa''. The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order"
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s (e.g. English,
French,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
) and "free-word-order" languages (e.g.,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, Latin,
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
,
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
) have been no impediment in this regard.
The particular syntax (sentence-structure) characteristics of a text's source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language.
![Martin Luther, 1529](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Martin_Luther%2C_1529.jpg)
When a target language has lacked
term
Term may refer to:
* Terminology, or term, a noun or compound word used in a specific context, in particular:
**Technical term, part of the specialized vocabulary of a particular field, specifically:
***Scientific terminology, terms used by scient ...
s that are found in a source language, translators have borrowed those terms, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other languages, there are few
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
s that are "
untranslatable" among the modern European languages.
A greater problem, however, is translating terms relating to cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a
gloss.
Generally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of
metaphrase
Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line" translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual ...
to
paraphrase
A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''.
History
Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...
that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in
ecological niche
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.
Three variants of ecological niche are described by
It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for ...
s of words, a common
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English ''actual'' should not be confused with the
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
French ("present", "current"), the Polish ("present", "current," "topical", "timely", "feasible"),
[Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 85.] the Swedish ''aktuell'' ("topical", "presently of importance"), the Russian ("urgent", "topical") or the Dutch ''actueel'' ("current").
The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between cultures has been discussed at least since
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...
, the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, and so has also been compared to that of an
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
. The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
. Dryden observed that "Translation is a type of drawing after life..." Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
's remark about
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
playing
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
on a
flageolet, while Homer himself used a
bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuo ...
.
![Herder by Kügelgen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Herder_by_K%C3%BCgelgen.jpg)
In the 13th century,
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiri ...
wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s, as well as the
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
that he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation and translators altogether.
![Krafft the Elder Ignacy Krasicki (detail)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Krafft_the_Elder_Ignacy_Krasicki_%28detail%29.jpg)
The translator of the Bible into German,
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...
(1483–1546), is credited with being the first European to posit that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language. L.G. Kelly states that since
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism.
Biography
Born in Mohrun ...
in the 18th century, "it has been axiomatic" that one translates only toward his own language.
Compounding the demands on the translator is the fact that no
dictionary
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
or
thesaurus
A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
Synonym diction ...
can ever be a fully adequate guide in translating. The Scottish historian
Alexander Tytler, in his ''Essay on the Principles of Translation'' (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including listening to the
''spoken'' language, had earlier, in 1783, been made by the Polish poet and
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
ian
Onufry Kopczyński.
[Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 86.]
The translator's special role in society is described in a posthumous 1803 essay by "Poland's
La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine (, , ; 8 July 162113 April 1695) was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his '' Fables'', which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Eu ...
", the Roman Catholic
Primate of Poland
This is a list of archbishops of the Archdiocese of Gniezno, who are simultaneously primates of Poland since 1418.[encyclopedist
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...]
,
author
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek,
Ignacy Krasicki
Ignacy Błażej Franciszek Krasicki (3 February 173514 March 1801), from 1766 Prince-Bishop of Warmia (in German, ''Ermland'') and from 1795 Archbishop of Gniezno (thus, Primate of Poland), was Poland's leading Enlightenment poet"Ignacy Krasic ...
:
Other traditions
Due to
Western colonialism
The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs.
Colonialism in the modern sense began ...
and cultural dominance in recent centuries, Western translation traditions have largely replaced other traditions. The Western traditions draw on both ancient and medieval traditions, and on more recent European innovations.
Though earlier approaches to translation are less commonly used today, they retain importance when dealing with their products, as when historians view ancient or medieval records to piece together events which took place in non-Western or pre-Western environments. Also, though heavily influenced by Western traditions and practiced by translators taught in Western-style educational systems, Chinese and related translation traditions retain some theories and philosophies unique to the Chinese tradition.
Near East
Traditions of translating material among the languages of ancient
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
,
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
,
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
(
Syriac language
The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic language, Aramaic dialect that emerged during ...
),
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
, and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
(
Hebrew language
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
) go back several millennia. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian ''
Epic of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh ...
'' (c. 2000 BCE) into
Southwest Asia
Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Anat ...
n languages of the second millennium BCE.
An early example of a
bilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
document is the 1274 BCE
Treaty of Kadesh
A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal pe ...
between the
ancient Egyptian and
Hittie empires.
The Babylonians were the first to establish translation as a profession.
The first translations of Greek and Coptic texts into Arabic, possibly indirectly from Syriac translations, seem to have been undertaken as early as the late seventh century CE.
The second Abbasid Caliph funded a translation bureau in Baghdad in the eighth century.
Bayt al-Hikma, the famous library in Baghdad, was generously endowed and the collection included books in many languages, and it became a leading centre for the translation of works from antiquity into Arabic, with its own Translation Department.
Translations into European languages from Arabic versions of lost Greek and Roman texts began in the middle of the eleventh century, when the benefits to be gained from the Arabs’ knowledge of the classical texts were recognised by European scholars, particularly after the establishment of the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo in Spain.
William Caxton
William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer (publisher), printer to be the first English retailer of printed boo ...
’s ''Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres'' (Sayings of the Philosophers, 1477) was a translation into English of an eleventh-century Egyptian text which reached English via translation into Latin and then French.
The translation of foreign works for publishing in Arabic was revived by the establishment of the Madrasa al-Alsum (‘School of Tongues’) in Egypt in 1813 CE.
Asia
![Jingangjing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Jingangjing.jpg)
There is a separate tradition of translation in
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
,
Southeast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
and
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
(primarily of texts from the
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n and
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
civilizations), connected especially with the rendering of religious, particularly
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
, texts and with the governance of the Chinese empire. Classical Indian translation is characterized by loose adaptation, rather than the closer translation more commonly found in Europe; and
Chinese translation theory
Chinese translation theory was born out of contact with vassal states during the Zhou Dynasty. It developed through translations of Buddhist scripture into Chinese. It is a response to the universals of the experience of translation and to the s ...
identifies various criteria and limitations in translation.
In the East Asian sphere of Chinese cultural influence, more important than translation ''per se'' has been the use and reading of Chinese texts, which also had substantial influence on the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, with substantial
borrowings of Chinese vocabulary and writing system. Notable is the Japanese
kanbun
A is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. ...
, a system for
glossing Chinese texts for Japanese speakers.
Though Indianized states in Southeast Asia often translated
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
material into the local languages, the literate elites and scribes more commonly used Sanskrit as their primary language of culture and government.
![VOA Perry Link](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/VOA_Perry_Link.jpg)
Some special aspects of translating from
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
are illustrated in
Perry Link's discussion of translating the work of the
Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
poet
Wang Wei (699–759 CE).
Once the untranslatables have been set aside, the problems for a translator, especially of Chinese poetry, are two: What does the translator think the poetic line says? And once he thinks he understands it, how can he render it into the target language? Most of the difficulties, according to Link, arise in addressing the second problem, "where the impossibility of perfect answers spawns endless debate." Almost always at the center is the letter-versus-spirit
dilemma
A dilemma ( grc-gre, δίλημμα "double proposition") is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The possibilities are termed the ''horns'' of the dilemma, a clichéd usage, but disti ...
. At the literalist extreme, efforts are made to dissect every conceivable detail about the language of the original Chinese poem. "The dissection, though," writes Link, "normally does to the art of a poem approximately what the
scalpel
A scalpel, lancet, or bistoury is a small and extremely sharp bladed instrument used for surgery, anatomical dissection, podiatry and various arts and crafts (either called a hobby knife or an X-acto knife.). Scalpels may be single-use disposa ...
of an
anatomy
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...
instructor does to the life of a frog."
Chinese characters, in avoiding
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
specificity, offer advantages to poets (and, simultaneously, challenges to poetry translators) that are associated primarily with absences of
subject,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, and
tense.
[ Perry Link, "A Magician of Chinese Poetry", '']The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIII, no. 18 (24 November 2016), p. 50.
It is the norm in classical Chinese poetry, and common even in modern Chinese prose, to omit subjects; the reader or listener infers a subject. The grammars of some Western languages, however, require that a subject be stated (although this is often avoided by using a passive or impersonal construction). Most of the translators cited in Eliot Weinberger's ''19 Ways of Looking at
Wang Wei'' supply a subject. Weinberger points out, however, that when an "I" as a subject is inserted, a "controlling individual mind of the poet" enters and destroys the effect of the Chinese line. Without a subject, he writes, "the experience becomes both universal and immediate to the reader." Another approach to the subjectlessness is to use the target language's
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...
; but this again particularizes the experience too much.
Noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s have no
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
in Chinese. "If," writes Link, "you want to talk in Chinese about one rose, you may, but then you use a "
measure word
In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of something represented by some noun.
Description
Measure words denote a unit or measurement and are used with mass nouns ...
" to say "one blossom-of roseness."
Chinese
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s are
tense-less: there are several ways to specify when something happened or will happen, but
verb tense
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns.
The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...
is not one of them. For poets, this creates the great advantage of
ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
. According to Link, Weinberger's insight about subjectlessness—that it produces an effect "both universal and immediate"—applies to timelessness as well.
Link proposes a kind of uncertainty principle that may be applicable not only to translation from the Chinese language, but to all translation:
Islamic world
Translation of material into
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
expanded after the creation of
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
in the 5th century, and gained great importance with the rise of
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
and Islamic empires. Arab translation initially focused primarily on politics, rendering Persian, Greek, even Chinese and Indic diplomatic materials into Arabic. It later focused on translating classical Greek and Persian works, as well as some Chinese and Indian texts, into Arabic for scholarly study at major Islamic learning centers, such as the
Al-Karaouine (
Fes
Fez or Fes (; ar, فاس, fās; zgh, ⴼⵉⵣⴰⵣ, fizaz; french: Fès) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. It is the second largest city in Morocco, with a population of 1.11 mi ...
,
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
),
Al-Azhar
Al-Azhar Mosque ( ar, الجامع الأزهر, al-Jāmiʿ al-ʾAzhar, lit=The Resplendent Congregational Mosque, arz, جامع الأزهر, Gāmiʿ el-ʾazhar), known in Egypt simply as al-Azhar, is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt in the historic ...
(
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
), and the
Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad
Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad ( ar, المدرسة النظامية), one of the first nezamiyehs, was established in 1065. In July 1091, Nizam al-Mulk appointed the 33-year-old Al-Ghazali as a professor of the school. Offering free education, it has be ...
. In terms of theory, Arabic translation drew heavily on earlier Near Eastern traditions as well as more contemporary Greek and Persian traditions.
Arabic translation efforts and techniques are important to Western translation traditions due to centuries of close contacts and exchanges. Especially after the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
, Europeans began more intensive study of Arabic and Persian translations of classical works as well as scientific and philosophical works of Arab and oriental origins. Arabic, and to a lesser degree Persian, became important sources of material and perhaps of techniques for revitalized Western traditions, which in time would overtake the Islamic and oriental traditions.
In the 19th century, after the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
's
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
ic clerics and copyists
A translator who contributed mightily to the advance of the Islamic Enlightenment was the Egyptian cleric Rifaa al-Tahtawi (1801–73), who had spent five years in Paris in the late 1820s, teaching religion to Muslim students. After returning to Cairo with the encouragement of
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, a ...
(1769–1849), the
Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, al–Tahtawi became head of the new school of languages and embarked on an intellectual revolution by initiating a program to translate some two thousand European and Turkish volumes, ranging from ancient texts on geography and geometry to
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...
's biography of
Peter the Great
Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
, along with the ''
Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song was written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg after the declaration of war by France against Austria, and was originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du R ...
'' and the entire ''
Code Napoléon''. This was the biggest, most meaningful importation of foreign thought into Arabic since
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib ...
times (750–1258).
![Muhammad Abduh (trimmed)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Muhammad_Abduh_%28trimmed%29.JPG)
The movement to translate English and European texts transformed the Arabic and
Ottoman Turkish languages, and new words, simplified syntax, and directness came to be valued over the previous convolutions. Educated Arabs and Turks in the new professions and the modernized
civil service
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
expressed
skepticism
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
, writes
Christopher de Bellaigue
Christopher de Bellaigue (born 1971 in London) is a journalist who has worked on the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His work mostly chronicles developments in Iran and Turkey.
Biography
De Bellaigue, who attended Eton College, is from an ...
, "with a freedom that is rarely witnessed today ... No longer was legitimate knowledge defined by texts in the religious schools, interpreted for the most part with stultifying literalness. It had come to include virtually any intellectual production anywhere in the world." One of the
neologisms
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
that, in a way, came to characterize the infusion of new ideas via translation was ''"darwiniya"'', or "
Darwinism
Darwinism is a scientific theory, theory of Biology, biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of smal ...
".
[
One of the most influential liberal Islamic thinkers of the time was ]Muhammad Abduh
; "The Theology of Unity")
, alma_mater = Al-Azhar University
, office1 = Grand Mufti of Egypt
, term1 = 1899 – 1905
, Sufi_order = Shadhiliyya
, disciple_of =
, awards =
, infl ...
(1849–1905), Egypt's senior judicial authority—its chief mufti
A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion ('' fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important rol ...
—at the turn of the 20th century and an admirer of Darwin who in 1903 visited Darwin's exponent Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...
at his home in Brighton
Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London.
Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...
. Spencer's view of society as an organism with its own laws of evolution paralleled Abduh's ideas.
After World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, when Britain and France divided up the Middle East's countries, apart from Turkey, between them, pursuant to the Sykes-Picot agreement—in violation of solemn wartime promises of postwar Arab autonomy—there came an immediate reaction: the Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan ...
emerged in Egypt, the House of Saud
The House of Saud ( ar, آل سُعُود, ʾĀl Suʿūd ) is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. It is composed of the descendants of Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the Emirate of Diriyah, known as the First Saudi state (1727–1818), and ...
took over the Hijaz
The Hejaz (, also ; ar, ٱلْحِجَاز, al-Ḥijāz, lit=the Barrier, ) is a region in the west of Saudi Arabia. It includes the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif, and Baljurashi. It is also known as the "Western Provinc ...
, and regimes led by army officers came to power in Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
and Turkey. " th illiberal currents of the modern Middle East," writes de Bellaigue, "Islamism and militarism, received a major impetus from Western empire-builders." As often happens in countries undergoing social crisis, the aspirations of the Muslim world's translators and modernizers, such as Muhammad Abduh, largely had to yield to retrograde currents.
Fidelity and transparency
Fidelity
Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of ''fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word ''fidēlis'', meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London f ...
(or "faithfulness") and felicityMarina Warner
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publicatio ...
, "The Politics of Translation" (a review of Kate Briggs Kate name may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Kate (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname
* Gyula Káté (born 1982), Hungarian amateur boxer
* Lauren Kate (born 1981), American autho ...
, ''This Little Art'', 2017; Mireille Gansel, translated by Ros Schwartz Ros Schwartz is an English literary translator, who translates Francophone literature into English. In 2009 she was awarded the Chevalier d’Honneur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her services to French literature.
Career
Alongside ...
, 2017; Mark Polizzotti
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Fi ...
, ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', 2018; Boyd Tonkin
Boyd Tonkin Hon. FRSL is an English writer, journalist and literary critic. He was the literary editor of ''The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 2013. A long-time proponent of foreign-language literature, he is the author of ''The 100 Best Nov ...
, ed., ''The 100 Best Novels in Translation'', 2018; Clive Scott
Jigsaw was an English pop rock band best known for their 1975 hit "Sky High". The band was fronted by the singer-songwriter duo of Clive Scott and Des Dyer for most of its life. Following Scott's death in 2009, it has been the platform for Dye ...
, ''The Work of Literary Translation'', 2018), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', vol. 40, no. 19 (11 October 2018), p. 22. (or transparency), dual ideals in translation, are often (though not always) at odds. A 17th-century French critic coined the phrase "" to suggest that translations can be either faithful or beautiful, but not both. Fidelity is the extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
, without distortion. Transparency is the extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom. John Dryden (1631–1700) wrote in his preface to the translation anthology ''Sylvae'':
A translation that meets the criterion of fidelity (faithfulness) is said to be "faithful"; a translation that meets the criterion of transparency, "idiomatic
Idiom, also called idiomaticness or idiomaticity, is the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language. Idiom is the realized structure of a language, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have develop ...
". Depending on the given translation, the two qualities may not be mutually exclusive. The criteria for judging the fidelity of a translation vary according to the subject, type and use of the text, its literary qualities, its social or historical context, etc. The criteria for judging the transparency of a translation appear more straightforward: an unidiomatic translation "sounds wrong" and, in extreme cases of word-for-word translation, often results in patent nonsense.
Nevertheless, in certain contexts a translator may consciously seek to produce a literal translation. Translators of literary, religious, or historic texts often adhere as closely as possible to the source text, stretching the limits of the target language to produce an unidiomatic text. Also, a translator may adopt expressions from the source language in order to provide "local color".
While current Western translation practice is dominated by the dual concepts of "fidelity" and "transparency", this has not always been the case. There have been periods, especially in pre-Classical Rome and in the 18th century, when many translators stepped beyond the bounds of translation proper into the realm of ''adaptation
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...
''. Adapted translation
Literary adaptation is the adapting of a literary source (e.g. a novel, short story, poem) to another genre or medium, such as a film, stage play, or video game.
It can also involve adapting the same literary work in the same genre or medium ju ...
retains currency in some non-Western traditions. The India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n epic, the ''Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...
'', appears in many versions in the various Indian languages, and the stories are different in each. Similar examples are to be found in medieval Christian
Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (). The end of the period is variously defined. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman ...
literature, which adjusted the text to local customs and mores.
Many non-transparent-translation theories draw on concepts from German Romanticism, the most obvious influence being the German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional P ...
. In his seminal lecture "On the Different Methods of Translation" (1813) he distinguished between translation methods that move "the writer toward he reader
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
, i.e., transparency, and those that move the "reader toward he author
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
, i.e., an extreme fidelity to the foreignness of the source text. Schleiermacher favored the latter approach; he was motivated, however, not so much by a desire to embrace the foreign, as by a nationalist desire to oppose France's cultural domination and to promote German literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...
.
In recent decades, prominent advocates of such "non-transparent" translation have included the French scholar Antoine Berman
Antoine Berman (; 24 June 1942 – 22 November 1991) was a French translator, philosopher, historian and theorist of translation.
Life
Antoine Berman was born in the small town of Argenton-sur-Creuse, near Limoges, to a Polish-Jewish father and ...
, who identified twelve deforming tendencies inherent in most prose translations, and the American theorist Lawrence Venuti
Lawrence Venuti (born 1953) is an American translation theorist, translation historian, and a translator from Italian language, Italian, French language, French, and Catalan language, Catalan.
Career
Born in Philadelphia, Venuti graduated from Te ...
, who has called on translators to apply "foreignizing" rather than domesticating translation strategies.
Equivalence
The question of fidelity
Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of ''fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word ''fidēlis'', meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London f ...
vs. transparency has also been formulated in terms of, respectively, "''formal'' equivalence" and "''dynamic'' r ''functional''equivalence" – expressions associated with the translator Eugene Nida
Eugene A. Nida (November 11, 1914 – August 25, 2011) was an American linguist who developed the dynamic equivalence, dynamic-equivalence Bible translation, Bible-translation theory and one of the founders of the modern discipline of transla ...
and originally coined to describe ways of translating the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
; but the two approaches are applicable to any translation. "Formal equivalence" corresponds to "metaphrase", and "dynamic equivalence" to "paraphrase". "Formal equivalence" (sought via "literal" translation) attempts to render the text literally, or "word for word" (the latter expression being itself a word-for-word rendering of the classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later periods ...
) – if necessary, at the expense of features natural to the target language. By contrast, "dynamic equivalence" (or "''functional'' equivalence") conveys the essential thoughts expressed in a source text—if necessary, at the expense of literality, original sememe
__NOTOC__
A sememe () is a semantic language unit of meaning, analogous to a morpheme. The concept is relevant in structural semiotics.
A seme is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible. A sememe can be the ...
and word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
, the source text's active vs. passive voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
, etc.
There is, however, no sharp boundary between formal and functional equivalence. On the contrary, they represent a spectrum of translation approaches. Each is used at various times and in various contexts by the same translator, and at various points within the same text – sometimes simultaneously. Competent translation entails the judicious blending of formal and functional equivalents.
Common pitfalls in translation, especially when practiced by inexperienced translators, involve false equivalents such as "false friend
In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
s" and false cognate
False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engl ...
s.
Source and target languages
In the practice of translation, the source language is the language being translated from, while the target language, also called the receptor language, is the language being translated into. Difficulties in translating can arise from lexical
Lexical may refer to:
Linguistics
* Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language
* Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification
* Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
* Lex ...
and syntactical differences between the source language and the target language, which differences tend to be greater between two languages belonging to different language families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hi ...
.
Often the source language is the translator's second language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...
, while the target language is the translator's first language
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
. In some geographical settings, however, the source language is the translator's first language because not enough people speak the source language as a second language. For instance, a 2005 survey found that 89% of professional Slovene translators translate into their second language, usually English. In cases where the source language is the translator's first language, the translation process has been referred to by various terms, including "translating into a non-mother tongue", "translating into a second language", "inverse translation", "reverse translation", "service translation", and "translation from A to B". The process typically begins with a full and in-depth analysis of the original text in the source language, ensuring full comprehension and understanding before the actual act of translating is approached.
Translation for specialized or professional fields requires a working knowledge, as well, of the pertinent terminology in the field. For example, translation of a legal text requires not only fluency in the respective languages but also familiarity with the terminology specific to the legal field in each language.
While the form and style of the source language often cannot be reproduced in the target language, the meaning and content can. Linguist Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,[Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...]
suggests that the limits are not of translation ''per se'' but rather of ''elegant'' translation.[ ]
Source and target texts
In translation, a source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
(ST) is a text written in a given source language which is to be, or has been, translated into another language, while a target text (TT) is a translated text written in the intended target language, which is the result of a translation from a given source text. According to Jeremy Munday's definition of translation, "the process of translation between two different written languages involves the changing of an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL)". The terms 'source text' and 'target text' are preferred over 'original' and 'translation' because they do not have the same positive vs. negative value judgment.
Translation scholars including Eugene Nida
Eugene A. Nida (November 11, 1914 – August 25, 2011) was an American linguist who developed the dynamic equivalence, dynamic-equivalence Bible translation, Bible-translation theory and one of the founders of the modern discipline of transla ...
and Peter Newmark
Peter Newmark (12 April 1916 – 9 July 2011) was an English professor of translation at the University of Surrey.
Biography
Newmark was born on 12 April 1916 in Brno in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic. He was ...
have represented the different approaches to translation as falling broadly into source-text-oriented or target-text-oriented categories.
Back-translation
A "back-translation" is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Comparison of a back-translation with the original text is sometimes used as a check on the accuracy of the original translation, much as the accuracy of a mathematical operation is sometimes checked by reversing the operation. But the results of such reverse-translation operations, while useful as approximate checks, are not always precisely reliable. Back-translation must in general be less accurate than back-calculation because linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
symbols (word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s) are often ambiguous
Ambiguity is the type of meaning (linguistics), meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations wikt:plausible#Adjective, plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It ...
, whereas mathematical symbols are intentionally unequivocal. In the context of machine translation, a back-translation is also called a "round-trip translation." When translations are produced of material used in medical clinical trial
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietar ...
s, such as informed-consent forms, a back-translation is often required by the ethics committee
An ethics committee is a body responsible for ensuring that medical experimentation and human subject research are carried out in an ethical manner in accordance with national and international law.
Specific regions
An ethics committee in the E ...
or institutional review board
An institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), or research ethics board (REB), is a committee that applies research ethics by reviewing the methods proposed for research to ens ...
.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
provided humorously telling evidence for the frequent unreliability of back-translation when he issued his own back-translation of a French translation of his short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its orig ...
". He published his back-translation in a 1903 volume together with his English-language original, the French translation, and a "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story". The latter included a synopsized adaptation of his story that Twain stated had appeared, unattributed to Twain, in a Professor Sidgwick's ''Greek Prose Composition'' (p. 116) under the title, "The Athenian and the Frog"; the adaptation had for a time been taken for an independent ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
precursor to Twain's "Jumping Frog" story.
When a document survives only in translation, the original having been lost, researchers sometimes undertake back-translation in an effort to reconstruct the original text. An example involves the novel ''The Saragossa Manuscript
''The Manuscript Found in Saragossa'' (; also known in English as ''The Saragossa Manuscript'') is a frame-tale novel written in French at the turn of 18th and 19th centuries by the Polish author Count Jan Potocki (1761–1815). It is narrated ...
'' by the Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki
Count Jan Potocki (; 8 March 1761 – 23 December 1815) was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a celebrated figure in Poland. He is known chiefly for his pi ...
(1761–1815), who wrote the novel in French and anonymously published fragments in 1804 and 1813–14. Portions of the original French-language manuscript were subsequently lost; however, the missing fragments survived in a Polish translation, made by Edmund Chojecki
Edmund Franciszek Maurycy Chojecki (; Wiski, Podlasie, 15 October 1822 – 1 December 1899, Paris) was a Polish journalist, playwright, novelist, poet and translator.'' Encyklopedia Polski'' (Encyclopedia of Poland): "Chojecki, Edmund"; p. 98, i ...
in 1847 from a complete French copy that has since been lost. French-language versions of the complete ''Saragossa Manuscript'' have since been produced, based on extant French-language fragments and on French-language versions that have been back-translated from Chojecki's Polish version.
Many works by the influential Classical physician Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one of ...
survive only in medieval Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
translation. Some survive only in Renaissance Latin
Renaissance Latin is a name given to the distinctive form of Literary Latin style developed during the European Renaissance of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, particularly by the Renaissance humanism movement.
Ad fontes
''Ad fontes' ...
translations from the Arabic, thus at a second remove from the original. To better understand Galen, scholars have attempted back-translation of such works in order to reconstruct the original Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
.
When historians suspect that a document is actually a translation from another language, back-translation into that hypothetical original language can provide supporting evidence by showing that such characteristics as idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
s, pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
s, peculiar grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
structures, etc., are in fact derived from the original language. For example, the known text of the ''Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel (; nds, Dyl Ulenspegel ) is the protagonist of a German chapbook published in 1515 (a first edition of ca. 1510/12 is preserved fragmentarily) with a possible background in earlier Middle Low German folklore.
Eulenspiegel is ...
'' folk tales is in High German
The High German dialects (german: hochdeutsche Mundarten), or simply High German (); not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called ''High German'', comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and ...
but contains puns that work only when back-translated to Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
. This seems clear evidence that these tales (or at least large portions of them) were originally written in Low German and translated into High German by an over- metaphrastic translator.
Supporters of Aramaic primacy
The Aramaic original New Testament theory is the belief that the Christian New Testament was originally written in Aramaic.
There are six versions of the New Testament in Aramaic languages:
#the ''Vetus Syra'' (Old Syriac), a translation fr ...
—the view that the Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
or its sources were originally written in the Aramaic language
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
—seek to prove their case by showing that difficult passages in the existing Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
text of the New Testament make much more sense when back-translated to Aramaic: that, for example, some incomprehensible references are in fact Aramaic puns that do not work in Greek. Due to similar indications, it is believed that the 2nd century Gnostic Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas is a non-canonical Gnostic gospel. The content consists of conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot. Given that it includes late 2nd-century theology, it is widely thought to have been composed in the 2nd century (prior ...
, which survives only in Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
, was originally written in Greek.
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
(1631–1700), the dominant English-language literary figure of his age, illustrates, in his use of back-translation, translators' influence on the evolution of languages and literary styles. Dryden is believed to be the first person to posit that English sentences should not end in preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions. Dryden created the proscription against "preposition stranding Historically, grammarians have described preposition stranding or p-stranding as the syntactic construction in which a so-called ''stranded'', ''hanging'' or ''dangling'' preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding o ...
" in 1672 when he objected to Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
's 1611 phrase, "the bodies that those souls were frighted from", though he did not provide the rationale for his preference. Dryden often translated his writing into Latin, to check whether his writing was concise and elegant, Latin being considered an elegant and long-lived language with which to compare; then he back-translated his writing back to English according to Latin-grammar usage. As Latin does not have sentences ending in prepositions, Dryden may have applied Latin grammar to English, thus forming the controversial rule of no sentence-ending prepositions, subsequently adopted by other writers.
Translators
Competent translators show the following attributes:
*a ''very good'' knowledge of the language, written and spoken, ''from which'' they are translating (the source language);
*an ''excellent'' command of the language ''into which'' they are translating (the target language);
*familiarity with the subject matter of the text being translated;
*a profound understanding of the etymological
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...
and idiomatic
Idiom, also called idiomaticness or idiomaticity, is the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language. Idiom is the realized structure of a language, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have develop ...
correlates between the two languages, including sociolinguistic register when appropriate; and
*a finely tuned sense of when to ''metaphrase'' ("translate literally") and when to ''paraphrase'', so as to assure true rather than spurious '' equivalents'' between the source and target language texts.
A competent translator is not only bilingual but bicultural
Biculturalism in sociology describes the co-existence, to varying degrees, of two originally distinct cultures.
Official policy recognizing, fostering, or encouraging biculturalism typically emerges in countries that have emerged from a histo ...
. A language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
is not merely a collection of word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s and of rules of grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
and syntax for generating sentences, but also a vast interconnecting system of connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...
s and cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
references whose mastery, writes linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
Mario Pei
Mario Andrew Pei (February 16, 1901March 2, 1978) was an Italian-born American linguist and polyglot who wrote a number of popular books known for their accessibility to readers without a professional background in linguistics. His book ''The Sto ...
, "comes close to being a lifetime job." The complexity of the translator's task cannot be overstated; one author suggests that becoming an accomplished translator—after having already acquired a good basic knowledge of both languages and cultures—may require a minimum of ten years' experience. Viewed in this light, it is a serious misconception to assume that a person who has fair fluency in two languages will, by virtue of that fact alone, be consistently competent to translate between them.
Emily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and herself a translator, writes: " is ardto produce a good literary translation. This is certainly true of translations of ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
and Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
texts, but it is also true of literary translation in general: it is very difficult. Most readers of foreign languages are not translators; most writers are not translators. Translators have to read and write at the same time, as if always playing multiple instruments in a one-person band. And most one-person bands do not sound very good."
When in 1921, three years before his death, the English-language novelist Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
– who had long had little contact with everyday spoken Polish – attempted to translate into English Bruno Winawer
Bruno Winawer (17 March 1883, Warsaw, Poland – 11 April 1944, Opole Lubelskie, Poland) was a Jewish-descended Poles, Polish physicist, columnist, and author of comedy, comedies, science fiction novels, short stories, and poetry.
Life
Winawer st ...
's short Polish-language play, ''The Book of Job'', he predictably missed many crucial nuances of contemporary Polish language.
The translator's role, in relation to the original text, has been compared to the roles of other interpretive artists, e.g., a musician or actor who interprets a work of musical or dramatic art. Translating, especially a text of any complexity (like other human activities), involves ''interpretation'': choices must be made, which implies interpretation. Mark Polizzotti writes: "A good translation offers not a reproduction of the work but an interpretation, a re-representation, just as the performance of a play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* Pla ...
or a sonata
Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...
is a representation of the script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
or the score, one among many possible representations." A translation of a text of any complexity is – as, itself, a work of art – unique and unrepeatable.
Conrad, whose writings Zdzisław Najder
Zdzisław Najder (; 31 October 1930 – 15 February 2021) was a Polish literary historian, critic, and political activist.
He was primarily known for his studies on Joseph Conrad, for his periods of service as political adviser to Lech Wałęs ...
has described as verging on "auto-translation" from Conrad's Polish and French linguistic personae, advised his niece and Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
translator Aniela Zagórska
Aniela Zagórska (26 December 1881, Lublin – 30 November 1943, Warsaw) was a Polish translator who rendered into Polish nearly all the works of Joseph Conrad.
Life
Aniela Zagórska was a niece of Joseph Conrad. In 1923–39 she translated ...
: " n't trouble to be too scrupulous ... I may tell you (in French) that in my opinion ''il vaut mieux interpréter que traduire'' t is better to interpret than to translate
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is der ...
...''Il s'agit donc de trouver les équivalents. Et là, ma chère, je vous prie laissez vous guider plutôt par votre tempérament que par une conscience sévère ...'' t is, then, a question of finding the equivalent expressions. And there, my dear, I beg you to let yourself be guided more by your temperament than by a strict conscience.... Conrad advised another translator that the prime requisite for a good translation is that it be "idiomatic". "For in the idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
is the ''clearness'' of a language and the language's force and its picturesqueness—by which last I mean the picture-producing power of arranged words." Conrad thought C.K. Scott Moncrieff
Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (25 September 1889 – 28 February 1930) was a Scottish writer and translator, most famous for his English translation of most of Marcel Proust's , which he published under the Shakespearean title '' Remembranc ...
's English translation of Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
's ''À la recherche du temps perdu'' (''In Search of Lost Time
''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...
''—or, in Scott Moncrieff's rendering, ''Remembrance of Things Past'') to be preferable to the French original.
Emily Wilson writes that "translation always involves interpretation, and equiresevery translator... to think as deeply as humanly possible about each verbal, poetic, and interpretative choice
A choice is the range of different things from which a being can choose. The arrival at a choice may incorporate motivators and models. For example, a traveler might choose a route for a journey based on the preference of arriving at a giv ...
." Translation of other than the simplest brief texts requires painstakingly close reading
In literary criticism, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text. A close reading emphasizes the single and the particular over the general, effected by close attention to individual words, the syntax, ...
of the source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
and the draft translation, so as to resolve the ambiguities inherent in language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
and thereby to asymptotically
In analytic geometry, an asymptote () of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as one or both of the ''x'' or ''y'' coordinates tends to infinity. In projective geometry and related contexts, ...
approach the most accurate rendering of the source text.Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...
, translator's foreword to Bolesław Prus
Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, as well as a distinctive voice in world li ...
, ''Pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...
'', translated from the Polish, with foreword and notes, by Christopher Kasparek, Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
, 2020, ASIN:BO8MDN6CZV.
Part of the ambiguity, for a translator, involves the structure of human language. Psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
and neural scientist Gary Marcus
Gary F. Marcus (born February 8, 1970) is a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. In 2014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company later acquired by Uber. Marcus's books include '' Guita ...
notes that "virtually every sentence hat people generateis ambiguous
Ambiguity is the type of meaning (linguistics), meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations wikt:plausible#Adjective, plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It ...
, often in multiple ways. Our brain is so good at comprehending language that we do not usually notice." An example of linguistic ambiguity is the "pronoun disambiguation problem" ("PDP"): a machine has no way of determining to whom or what a pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
in a sentence—such as "he", "she" or "it"—refers. Such disambiguation is not infallible by a human, either.
Ambiguity is a concern both to translators and – as the writings of poet and literary critic William Empson
Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first ...
have demonstrated – to literary critics
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis, philosophical discussion of literature' ...
. Ambiguity may be desirable, indeed essential, in poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
and diplomacy
Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.Ronald Peter Barston, ''Modern diplomacy'', Pearson Education, 2006, p. 1 ...
; it can be more problematic in ordinary prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
.
Individual expression
Expression may refer to:
Linguistics
* Expression (linguistics), a word, phrase, or sentence
* Fixed expression, a form of words with a specific meaning
* Idiom, a type of fixed expression
* Metaphorical expression, a particular word, phrase, o ...
s – word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s, phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
s, sentences – are fraught with connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...
s. As Empson demonstrates, any piece of language seems susceptible to "alternative reactions", or as Joseph Conrad once wrote, "No English word has clean edges." All expressions, Conrad thought, carried so many connotations as to be little more than "instruments for exciting blurred emotions."
Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...
also cautions that competent translation – analogously to the dictum, in mathematics, of Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imme ...
's incompleteness theorems
Complete may refer to:
Logic
* Completeness (logic)
* Completeness of a theory, the property of a theory that every formula in the theory's language or its negation is provable
Mathematics
* The completeness of the real numbers, which implies t ...
– generally requires more information about the subject matter than is present in the actual source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
. Therefore, translation of a text of any complexity typically requires some research on the translator's part.
A translator faces two contradictory tasks: when translating, to strive for omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an God#General conceptions, attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In B ...
concerning the text; and, when reviewing the resulting translation, to adopt the reader's unfamiliarity with it. Analogously, " the process, the translator is also constantly seesawing between the respective linguistic and cultural features of his two languages."
Thus, writes Kasparek, "Translating a text of any complexity, like the performing of a musical or dramatic work, involves ''interpretation'': choices must be made, which entails interpretation. Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
, aspiring to felicitous understanding of literary works, wrote in the preface to his 1901 volume, ''Three Plays for Puritans
''Three Plays for Puritans'' is a collection of plays by George Bernard Shaw published in 1901.
It consists of '' The Devil's Disciple'' (1897), '' Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1898) and ''Captain Brassbound's Conversion'' (1900), with a long preface ...
'': 'I would give half a dozen of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's plays for one of the prefaces he ought to have written.'"
Translators may render only parts of the original text, provided that they inform readers of that action. But a translator should not assume the role of censor and surreptitiously delete or bowdlerize
Expurgation, also known as bowdlerization, is a form of censorship that involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work or other type of writing or media.
The term ''bowdlerization'' is a pejorative term for the practi ...
passages merely to please a political or moral interest.[Billiani, Francesca (2001)]
Translating has served as a school of writing for many an author, much as the copying of masterworks of painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
has schooled many a novice painter. A translator who can competently render an author's thoughts into the translator's own language, should certainly be able to adequately render, in his own language, any thoughts of his own. Translating (like analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
) compels precise analysis of language elements and of their usage. In 1946 the poet Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
, then at St. Elizabeth's Hospital
St. Elizabeths Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Southeast, Washington, D.C. operated by the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health. It opened in 1855 under the name Government Hospital for the Insane, the first federally oper ...
, in Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, advised a visitor, the 18-year-old beginning poet W.S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thema ...
: "The work of translation is the best teacher you'll ever have." Merwin, translator-poet who took Pound's advice to heart, writes of translation as an "impossible, unfinishable" art.
Translators, including monks who spread Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
texts in East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
, and the early modern European translators of the Bible, in the course of their work have shaped the very languages into which they have translated. They have acted as bridges for conveying knowledge between culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
s; and along with ideas, they have imported from the source languages, into their own languages, loanwords and calques of grammatical structures, idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
s, and vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...
.
Interpreting
Interpreting
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous inter ...
is the facilitation of oral
The word oral may refer to:
Relating to the mouth
* Relating to the mouth, the first portion of the alimentary canal that primarily receives food and liquid
**Oral administration of medicines
** Oral examination (also known as an oral exam or or ...
or sign-language communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two, or among three or more, speakers who are not speaking, or signing, the same language. The term "interpreting," rather than "interpretation," is preferentially used for this activity by Anglophone interpreters and translators, to avoid confusion with other meanings of the word " interpretation."
Unlike English, many languages do not employ two separate words to denote the activities of written
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
and live-communication (oral
The word oral may refer to:
Relating to the mouth
* Relating to the mouth, the first portion of the alimentary canal that primarily receives food and liquid
**Oral administration of medicines
** Oral examination (also known as an oral exam or or ...
or sign-language) translators. Even English does not always make the distinction, frequently using "translating" as a synonym for "interpreting."
Interpreters have sometimes played crucial roles in human history
Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied throug ...
. A prime example is La Malinche
Marina or Malintzin ( 1500 – 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche , a Nahua peoples , Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an in ...
, also known as ''Malintzin'', ''Malinalli'' and ''Doña Marina'', an early-16th-century Nahua
The Nahuas () are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, a ...
woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississ ...
. As a child she had been sold or given to Maya
Maya may refer to:
Civilizations
* Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America
** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples
** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples
* Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...
slave-traders from Xicalango, and thus had become bilingual. Subsequently, given along with other women to the invading Spaniards, she became instrumental in the Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
conquest of Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, acting as interpreter, adviser, intermediary and lover to Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...
.
Nearly three centuries later, in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, a comparable role as interpreter was played for the Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select gro ...
of 1804–6 by Sacagawea
Sacagawea ( or ; also spelled Sakakawea or Sacajawea; May – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884)[Sacagawea]
...
. As a child, the Lemhi Shoshone
The Lemhi Shoshone are a tribe of Northern Shoshone, also called the Akaitikka, Agaidika, or "Eaters of Salmon".Murphy and Murphy, 306 The name "Lemhi" comes from Fort Lemhi, a Mormon mission to this group. They traditionally lived in the Lemhi Ri ...
woman had been kidnapped by Hidatsa
The Hidatsa are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent t ...
Indians and thus had become bilingual. Sacagawea facilitated the expedition's traverse of the North American continent
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
to the Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
.
The famous Chinese man of letters Lin Shu (1852 – 1924), who knew no foreign languages, rendered Western literary classics into Chinese with the help of his friend Wang Shouchang (王壽昌), who had studied in France. Wang interpreted the texts for Lin, who rendered them into Chinese. Lin's first such translation, 巴黎茶花女遺事 (''Past Stories of the Camellia-woman of Paris'' – Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas (; 27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) was a French author and playwright, best known for the romantic novel ''La Dame aux Camélias'' (''The Lady of the Camellias''), published in 1848, which was adapted into Giuseppe Verdi's 1 ...
's, ''La Dame aux Camélias
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...
''), published in 1899, was an immediate success and was followed by many more translations from the French and the English.
Sworn translation
Sworn translation, also called "certified translation," aims at legal equivalence between two documents written in different languages. It is performed by someone authorized to do so by local regulations, which vary widely from country to country. Some countries recognize self-declared competence. Others require the translator to be an official state appointee. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, certain government institutions require that translators be accredited by certain translation institutes or associations in order to be able to carry out certified translations.
Telephone
Many commercial services exist that will interpret spoken language via telephone. There is also at least one custom-built mobile device that does the same thing. The device connects users to human interpreters who can translate between English and 180 other languages.
Internet
Web-based human translation is generally favored by companies and individuals that wish to secure more accurate translations. In view of the frequent inaccuracy of machine translations, human translation remains the most reliable, most accurate form of translation available. With the recent emergence of translation crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
, translation memory A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translati ...
techniques, and internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
applications, translation agencies have been able to provide on-demand human-translation services to business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
es, individuals, and enterprises.
While not instantaneous like its machine counterparts such as Google Translate
Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API t ...
and Babel Fish (now defunct), web-based human translation has been gaining popularity by providing relatively fast, accurate translation of business communications, legal documents, medical records, and software localization
In computing, internationalization and localization ( American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities an ...
. Web-based human translation also appeals to private website users and bloggers. Contents of websites are translatable but URLs of websites are not translatable into other languages. Language tools on the internet provide help in understanding text.
Computer assist
Computer-assisted translation (CAT), also called "computer-aided translation," "machine-aided human translation" (MAHT) and "interactive translation," is a form of translation wherein a human translator creates a target text
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator.
Computer-assisted translation can include standard dictionary
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
and grammar software. The term, however, normally refers to a range of specialized programs available to the translator, including translation memory, terminology
Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A ''term'' is a word, compound word, or multi-wor ...
-management, concordance
Concordance may refer to:
* Agreement (linguistics), a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase
* Bible concordance, an alphabetical listing of terms in the Bible
* Concordant coastline, in geology, where beds, or la ...
, and alignment programs.
These tools speed up and facilitate human translation, but they do not provide translation. The latter is a function of tools known broadly as machine translation. The tools speed up the translation process by assisting the human translator by memorizing or committing translations to a database (translation memory database) so that if the same sentence occurs in the same project or a future project, the content can be reused. This translation reuse leads to cost savings, better consistency and shorter project timelines.
Machine translation
Machine translation (MT) is a process whereby a computer program analyzes a source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
and, in principle, produces a target text without human intervention. In reality, however, machine translation typically does involve human intervention, in the form of pre-editing and post-editing
Post-editing (or postediting) is the process whereby humans amend machine-generated translation to achieve an acceptable final product. A person who post-edits is called a post-editor. The concept of post-editing is linked to that of pre-editing. ...
.[See th]
annually performed NIST tests since 2001
and Bilingual Evaluation Understudy With proper terminology
Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A ''term'' is a word, compound word, or multi-wor ...
work, with preparation of the source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
for machine translation (pre-editing), and with reworking of the machine translation by a human translator (post-editing), commercial machine-translation tools can produce useful results, especially if the machine-translation system is integrated with a translation memory or translation management system
A translation management system (TMS), formerly globalization management system (GMS), is a type of software for automating many parts of the human language translation process and maximizing translator efficiency. The idea of a translation mana ...
.
Unedited machine translation is publicly available through tools on the Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
such as Google Translate
Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API t ...
, Babel Fish (now defunct), Babylon
''Bābili(m)''
* sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠
* arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel''
* syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel''
* grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn''
* he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel''
* peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru''
* elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...
, DeepL Translator
DeepL Translator is a neural machine translation service launched in August 2017 and owned by DeepL SE, based in Cologne. The translating system was first developed within Linguee and launched as entity ''DeepL''. It initially offered translati ...
, and StarDict
StarDict, developed by Hu Zheng (胡正), is a free GUI released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license for accessing StarDict dictionary files (a ''dictionary shell''). It is the successor of StarDic, developed by Ma Su'an (馬蘇安), continuing ...
. These produce rough translations that, under favorable circumstances, "give the gist" of the source text. With the Internet, translation software can help non-native-speaking individuals understand web pages published in other languages. Whole-page-translation tools are of limited utility, however, since they offer only a limited potential understanding of the original author's intent and context; translated pages tend to be more erroneously humorous and confusing than enlightening.
Interactive translations with pop-up windows are becoming more popular. These tools show one or more possible equivalents for each word or phrase. Human operators merely need to select the likeliest equivalent as the mouse glides over the foreign-language text. Possible equivalents can be grouped by pronunciation. Also, companies such as Ectaco
ECTACO Inc. (East-Coast Trading American Company Incorporated) is a US-based developer and manufacturer of hardware and software products for speech recognition and electronic translation. They also make jetBook eBook readers.
Speech recognit ...
produce pocket devices that provide machine translations.
Relying exclusively on unedited machine translation, however, ignores the fact that communication in human language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
is context
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to su ...
-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely human-generated translations are prone to error; therefore, to ensure that a machine-generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human. Claude Piron
Claude Piron, also known by the pseudonym Johán Valano, was a Swiss psychologist, Esperantist, translator, and writer. He worked as a translator for the United Nations from 1956 to 1961 and then for the World Health Organization.
He was a prolif ...
writes that machine translation, at its best, automates the easier part of a translator's job; the harder and more time-consuming part usually involves doing extensive research to resolve ambiguities
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
in the source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
, which the grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
and lexical
Lexical may refer to:
Linguistics
* Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language
* Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification
* Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
* Lex ...
exigencies of the target language require to be resolved. Such research is a necessary prelude to the pre-editing necessary in order to provide input for machine-translation software, such that the output will not be meaningless.
The weaknesses of pure machine translation, unaided by human expertise, are those of artificial intelligence itself. As of 2018, professional translator Mark Polizzotti held that machine translation, by Google Translate
Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API t ...
and the like, was unlikely to threaten human translators anytime soon, because machines would never grasp nuance and connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...
. Writes Paul Taylor: "Perhaps there is a limit to what a computer can do without knowing that it is manipulating imperfect representations of an external reality."
Literary translation
Translation of literary works
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
(novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
s, short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
, plays
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
, poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...
, etc.) is considered a literary pursuit in its own right. Notable in Canadian literature
Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, Indigenous languages, and many others such as Canadian Gaelic. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both ge ...
''specifically'' as translators are figures such as Sheila Fischman
Sheila Leah Fischman (born 1 December 1937) is a Canadian translator who specializes in the translation of works of contemporary Quebec literature from French to English.
Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, she was brought up in Ontario. She hold ...
, Robert Dickson, and Linda Gaboriau; and the Canadian Governor General's Awards
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of annual awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, recognizing distinction in numerous academic, artistic, and social fields.
The first award was conceived and inaugurated in 1937 by the ...
annually present prizes for the best English-to-French and French-to-English literary translations.
Other writers, among many who have made a name for themselves as literary translators, include Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (russian: Василий Андреевич Жуковский, Vasiliy Andreyevich Zhukovskiy; – ) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19 ...
, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński
Tadeusz Kamil Marcjan Żeleński (better known by his pen name, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński or simply as Boy; 21 December 1874 – 4 July 1941) was a Polish stage writer, poet, critic and, above all, the translator of over 100 French literature , Frenc ...
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
, Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
, Robert Stiller
Robert Reuven Stiller (25 January 1928 – 10 December 2016) was a Polish Multilingualism, polyglot, writer, poet, translator, and editor.
Life
Robert Stiller was born in Warsaw, Poland, to Polish parents and spent his early childhood in what is n ...
, Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...
, Haruki Murakami
is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his ...
, Achy Obejas
Achy Obejas (born June 28, 1956) is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in Benicia, California. She frequently writes on her sexuality and nationality, and has received numerous awards fo ...
, and Jhumpa Lahiri
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" LahiriMinzesheimer, Bob ''USA Today'', August 19, 2003. Retrieved on 2008-04-13. (born July 11, 1967) is an American author known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italia ...
.
In the 2010s a substantial gender imbalance was noted in literary translation into English, with far more male writers being translated than women writers. In 2014 Meytal Radzinski launched the ''Women in Translation'' campaign to address this.
History
The first important translation in the West was that of the Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...
, a collection of Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
ish Scriptures translated into early Koine Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
in Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. The dispersed Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
s had forgotten their ancestral language and needed Greek versions (translations) of their Scriptures.
Throughout the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, Latin was the ''lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' of the western learned world. The 9th-century Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great (alt. Ælfred 848/849 – 26 October 899) was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who bot ...
, king of Wessex
la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons
, common_name = Wessex
, image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg
, map_caption = S ...
in England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, was far ahead of his time in commissioning vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
translations of Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
's ''Ecclesiastical History
__NOTOC__
Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception.
Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual ...
'' and Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
' ''Consolation of Philosophy
''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he ...
''. Meanwhile, the Christian Church
In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym fo ...
frowned on even partial adaptations of St. Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is com ...
's ''Vulgate
The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...
'' of c. 384 CE, the standard Latin Bible.
In Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
, the spread of Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
led to large-scale ongoing translation efforts spanning well over a thousand years. The Tangut Empire
The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...
was especially efficient in such efforts; exploiting the then newly invented block printing
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...
, and with the full support of the government (contemporary sources describe the Emperor and his mother personally contributing to the translation effort, alongside sages of various nationalities), the Tanguts took mere decades to translate volumes that had taken the Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
centuries to render.
The Arabs
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...
undertook large-scale efforts at translation. Having conquered the Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
world, they made Arabic versions of its philosophical and scientific works. During the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, translations of some of these Arabic versions were made into Latin, chiefly at Córdoba in Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
.[J.M. Cohen, p. 13.] King Alfonso X the Wise
Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, es, el Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germ ...
of Castile in the 13th century promoted this effort by founding a ''Schola Traductorum'' (School of Translation) in Toledo. There Arabic texts, Hebrew texts, and Latin texts were translated into the other tongues by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars, who also argued the merits of their respective religions. Latin translations of Greek and original Arab works of scholarship and science helped advance European Scholasticism
Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translate ...
, and thus European science and culture.
The broad historic trends in Western translation practice may be illustrated on the example of translation into the English language.
The first fine translations into English were made in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
, who adapted from the Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
of Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was somet ...
in his own '' Knight's Tale'' and ''Troilus and Criseyde
''Troilus and Criseyde'' () is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was written in '' rime royale'' an ...
''; began a translation of the French-language ''Roman de la Rose
''Le Roman de la Rose'' (''The Romance of the Rose'') is a medieval poem written in Old French and presented as an allegorical dream vision. As poetry, ''The Romance of the Rose'' is a notable instance of courtly literature, purporting to provid ...
''; and completed a translation of Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
from the Latin. Chaucer founded an English poetic
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...
tradition on ''adaptations
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the ...
'' and translations from those earlier-established literary language
A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langu ...
s.[
The first great English translation was the '']Wycliffe Bible
Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translati ...
'' (c. 1382), which showed the weaknesses of an underdeveloped English prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
. Only at the end of the 15th century did the great age of English prose translation begin with Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of '' Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of '' Le Morte d' ...
's '' Le Morte Darthur''—an adaptation of Arthurian romance
The Matter of Britain is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. It was one of the three great Western ...
s so free that it can, in fact, hardly be called a true translation. The first great Tudor translations are, accordingly, the '' Tyndale New Testament'' (1525), which influenced the ''Authorized Version
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
'' (1611), and Lord Berners
Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (18 September 188319 April 1950), also known as Gerald Tyrwhitt, was a British composer, novelist, painter, and aesthete. He was also known as Lord Berners.
Biography
Early life and education
...
' version of Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart ( Old and Middle French: '' Jehan'', – ) (also John Froissart) was a French-speaking medieval author and court historian from the Low Countries who wrote several works, including ''Chronicles'' and ''Meliador'', a long Arthuria ...
's ''Chronicles'' (1523–25).[
]
Meanwhile, in Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
, a new period in the history of translation had opened in Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
with the arrival, at the court of Cosimo de' Medici
Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici (27 September 1389 – 1 August 1464) was an Italian banker and politician who established the Medici family as effective rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. His power derived from his wealth ...
, of the Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
scholar Georgius Gemistus Pletho
Georgios Gemistos Plethon ( el, Γεώργιος Γεμιστός Πλήθων; la, Georgius Gemistus Pletho /1360 – 1452/1454), commonly known as Gemistos Plethon, was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byz ...
shortly before the fall of Constantinople
la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه
, alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...
to the Turks (1453). A Latin translation of Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's works was undertaken by Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino (; Latin name: ; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of ...
. This and Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' wa ...
' Latin edition of the ''New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
'' led to a new attitude to translation. For the first time, readers demanded rigor of rendering, as philosophical and religious beliefs depended on the exact words of Plato, Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
and Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
.[
Non-scholarly literature, however, continued to rely on ''adaptation''. ]France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
's '' Pléiade'', England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
's Tudor poets, and the Elizabethan
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
translators adapted themes by Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
, Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
, Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...
and modern Latin writers, forming a new poetic style on those models. The English poets and translators sought to supply a new public, created by the rise of a middle class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Commo ...
and the development of printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
, with works such as the original authors ''would have written'', had they been writing in England in that day.[
The Elizabethan period of translation saw considerable progress beyond mere paraphrase toward an ideal of stylistic equivalence, but even to the end of this period, which actually reached to the middle of the 17th century, there was no concern for verbal ]accuracy
Accuracy and precision are two measures of ''observational error''.
''Accuracy'' is how close a given set of measurements (observations or readings) are to their ''true value'', while ''precision'' is how close the measurements are to each other ...
.[J.M. Cohen, p. 14.]
In the second half of the 17th century, the poet John Dryden sought to make Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
speak "in words such as he would probably have written if he were living and an Englishman". As great as Dryden's poem is, however, one is reading Dryden, and not experiencing the Roman poet's concision. Similarly, Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
arguably suffers from Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
's endeavor to reduce the Greek poet's "wild paradise" to order. Both works live on as worthy ''English'' epics, more than as a point of access to the Latin or Greek.[
]
Throughout the 18th century, the watchword of translators was ease of reading. Whatever they did not understand in a text, or thought might bore readers, they omitted. They cheerfully assumed that their own style of expression was the best, and that texts should be made to conform to it in translation. For scholarship they cared no more than had their predecessors, and they did not shrink from making translations from translations in third languages, or from languages that they hardly knew, or—as in the case of James Macpherson
James Macpherson (Gaelic: ''Seumas MacMhuirich'' or ''Seumas Mac a' Phearsain''; 27 October 1736 – 17 February 1796) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of epic poem ...
's "translations" of Ossian—from texts that were actually of the "translator's" own composition.[
]
The 19th century brought new standards of accuracy and style. In regard to accuracy, observes J.M. Cohen, the policy became "the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text", except for any bawdy
Ribaldry or blue comedy is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to indecency. Blue comedy is also referred to as "bawdiness" or being "bawdy".
Sex is presented in ribald material more for the purpose of poking fun at ...
passages and the addition of copious explanatory footnote
A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the ...
s. In regard to style, the Victorians
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian ...
' aim, achieved through far-reaching metaphrase (literality) or ''pseudo''-metaphrase, was to constantly remind readers that they were reading a ''foreign'' classic. An exception was the outstanding translation in this period, Edward FitzGerald's '' Rubaiyat'' of Omar Khayyam
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam ( fa, عمر خیّام), was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, an ...
(1859), which achieved its Oriental flavor largely by using Persian names and discreet Biblical echoes and actually drew little of its material from the Persian original.[
In advance of the 20th century, a new pattern was set in 1871 by ]Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett (, modern variant ; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was an English tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican cleric, and a translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of Bal ...
, who translated Plato into simple, straightforward language. Jowett's example was not followed, however, until well into the new century, when accuracy rather than style became the principal criterion.[
]
Modern translation
As a language evolves, texts in an earlier version of the language—original texts, or old translations—may become difficult for modern readers to understand. Such a text may therefore be translated into more modern language, producing a "modern translation" (e.g., a "modern English translation" or "modernized translation").
Such modern rendering is applied either to literature from classical languages such as Latin or Greek, notably to the Bible (see "Modern English Bible translations
Modern English Bible translations consists of translations developed and published throughout the late modern period () to present-day (). A multitude of recent attempts have been made to translate the Bible into English. Most modern translations ...
"), or to literature from an earlier stage of the same language, as with the works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
(which are largely understandable by a modern audience, though with some difficulty) or with Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
's Middle-English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
''Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus' ...
'' (which is understandable to most modern readers only through heavy dependence on footnotes). In 2015 the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States, founded in 1935 by Angus L. Bowmer. The Festival now offers matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary pla ...
commissioned professional translation of the entire Shakespeare canon, including disputed works such as ''Edward III
Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377), also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death in 1377. He is noted for his military success and for restoring r ...
'', into contemporary vernacular English; in 2019, off-off-Broadway, the canon was premiered in a month-long series of staged readings.
Modern translation is applicable to any language with a long literary history. For example, in Japanese the 11th-century ''Tale of Genji
Tale may refer to:
* Narrative, or story, a report of real or imaginary connected events
* TAL effector (TALE), a type of DNA binding protein
* Tale, Albania, a resort town
* Tale, Iran, a village
* Tale, Maharashtra, a village in Ratnagiri distri ...
'' is generally read in modern translation (see " ''Genji:'' modern readership").
Modern translation often involves literary scholarship and textual revision, as there is frequently not one single canonical text. This is particularly noteworthy in the case of the Bible and Shakespeare, where modern scholarship can result in substantive textual changes.
Anna North writes: "Translating the long-dead language Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
used — a variant of ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
called Homeric Greek — into contemporary English is no easy task, and translators bring their own skills, opinions, and stylistic sensibilities to the text. The result is that every translation is different, almost a new poem in itself." An example is Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of Homer's ''Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'', where by conscious choice Wilson "lays bare the morals of its time and place, and invites us to consider how different they are from our own, and how similar."
Modern translation meets with opposition from some traditionalists. In English, some readers prefer the Authorized King James Version
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
of the Bible to modern translations, and Shakespeare in the original of ca. 1600 to modern translations.
An opposite process involves translating modern literature into classical languages, for the purpose of extensive reading
Extensive Reading (ER) is the process of reading longer easier texts for an extended period of time without a breakdown of comprehension, feeling overwhelmed, or the need to take breaks. It stands in contrast to intensive or academic reading, which ...
(for examples, see "List of Latin translations of modern literature A number of Latin translations of modern literature have been made to bolster interest in the language. The perceived dryness of classical literature is sometimes a major obstacle for achieving fluency in reading Latin, as it discourages students fr ...
").
Poetry
Views on the possibility of satisfactorily translating poetry show a broad spectrum, depending partly on the degree of latitude desired by the translator in regard to a poem's formal features (rhythm, rhyme, verse form, etc.), but also relating to how much of the suggestiveness and imagery in the host poem can be recaptured or approximated in the target language. Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...
, in his 1997 book, ''Le Ton beau de Marot
''Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language'' is a 1997 book by Douglas Hofstadter in which he explores the meaning, strengths, failings and beauty of translation. The book is a long and detailed examination of one short translati ...
'', argued that a good translation of a poem must convey as much as possible not only of its literal meaning but also of its form and structure (meter, rhyme or alliteration scheme, etc.).
The Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n-born linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and semiotician
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves Sign (semiotics), signs, where a sign is defined as anything that commun ...
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,[On Linguistic Aspects of Translation
''On Linguistic Aspects of Translation'' is an essay written by Russian- American linguist Roman Jakobson in 1959.Snell-Hornby (2006), p. 21 It was published in "On Translation", a compendium of seventeen papers edited by Reuben Arthur Brower. "O ...]
", declared that "poetry by definition suntranslatable". Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
, another Russian-born author, took a view similar to Jakobson's. He considered rhymed, metrical, versed poetry to be in principle untranslatable and therefore rendered his 1964 English translation of Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...
's ''Eugene Onegin'' in prose.
Hofstadter, in ''Le Ton beau de Marot
''Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language'' is a 1997 book by Douglas Hofstadter in which he explores the meaning, strengths, failings and beauty of translation. The book is a long and detailed examination of one short translati ...
'', criticized Nabokov's attitude toward verse translation. In 1999 Hofstadter published his own translation of ''Eugene Onegin'', in verse form.
However, a host of more contemporary literary translators of poetry lean toward Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, p ...
's notion of language as a "third universe" existing "midway between the phenomenal reality of the 'empirical world' and the internalized structures of consciousness." Perhaps this is what poet Sholeh Wolpé
Sholeh Wolpé ( fa, شعله ولپی) is an American poet, playwright, and literary translator. She was born in Iran, and lived in Trinidad and England during her teenage years, before settling in the United States.
Biography
Sholeh Wolpé was ...
, translator of the 12th-century Iranian epic poem ''The Conference of the Birds
''The Conference of the Birds'' or ''Speech of the Birds'' ( fa, منطق الطیر, ''Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr'', also known as ''Maqāmāt-uṭ-Ṭuyūr''; 1177) is a Persian poem by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, commonly known as Attar of Ni ...
'', means when she writes: Twelfth-century Persian and contemporary English are as different as sky and sea. The best I can do as a poet is to reflect one into the other. The sea can reflect the sky with its moving stars, shifting clouds, gestations of the moon, and migrating birds—but ultimately the sea is not the sky. By nature, it is liquid. It ripples. There are waves. If you are a fish living in the sea, you can only understand the sky if its reflection becomes part of the water. Therefore, this translation of ''The Conference of the Birds'', while faithful to the original text, aims at its re-creation into a still living and breathing work of literature.
Poet Sherod Santos writes: "The task is not to reproduce the content, but with the flint and the steel of one's own language to spark what Robert Lowell has called 'the fire and finish of the original.'"
According to Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
:While a poet's words endure in his own language, even the greatest translation is destined to become part of the growth of its own language and eventually to perish with its renewal. Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.
Gregory Hays, in the course of discussing Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
adapted translations of ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are ...
, makes approving reference to some views on the translating of poetry expressed by David Bellos
David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton ...
, an accomplished French-to-English translator. Hays writes:
Book titles
Book-title translations can be either descriptive or symbolic. Descriptive book titles, for example Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, simply known as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (, , ; 29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of s ...
's ''Le Petit Prince
''The Little Prince'' (french: Le Petit Prince, ) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and ...
'' (The Little Prince), are meant to be informative, and can name the protagonist, and indicate the theme of the book. An example of a symbolic book title is Stieg Larsson
Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson (, ; 15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the ''Millennium'' trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2 ...
's ''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'' (original title in sv, Män som hatar kvinnor , lit=''Men Who Hate Women'') is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954–2004). It was published posthumously in 2 ...
'', whose original Swedish title is ''Män som hatar kvinnor'' (Men Who Hate Women). Such symbolic book titles usually indicate the theme, issues, or atmosphere of the work.
When translators are working with long book titles, the translated titles are often shorter and indicate the theme of the book.
Plays
The translation of plays poses many problems such as the added element of actors, speech duration, translation literalness, and the relationship between the arts of drama and acting. Successful play translators are able to create language that allows the actor and the playwright to work together effectively. Play translators must also take into account several other aspects: the final performance, varying theatrical and acting traditions, characters' speaking styles, modern theatrical discourse, and even the acoustics of the auditorium, i.e., whether certain words will have the same effect on the new audience as they had on the original audience.
Audiences in Shakespeare's time were more accustomed than modern playgoers to actors having longer stage time. Modern translators tend to simplify the sentence structures of earlier dramas, which included compound sentences with intricate hierarchies of subordinate clauses.
Chinese literature
In translating Chinese literature, translators struggle to find true fidelity in translating into the target language. In ''The Poem Behind the Poem'', Barnstone argues that poetry "can't be made to sing through a mathematics that doesn't factor in the creativity of the translator".
A notable piece of work translated into English is the '' Wen Xuan'', an anthology representative of major works of Chinese literature. Translating this work requires a high knowledge of the genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
s presented in the book, such as poetic forms, various prose types including memorials, letters, proclamations, praise poems, edicts, and historical, philosophical and political disquisitions, threnodies and laments for the dead, and examination essays. Thus the literary translator must be familiar with the writings, lives, and thought of a large number of its 130 authors, making the ''Wen Xuan'' one of the most difficult literary works to translate.
Sung texts
Translation of a text that is sung in vocal music for the purpose of singing in another language—sometimes called "singing translation"—is closely linked to translation of poetry because most vocal music, at least in the Western tradition, is set to verse, especially verse in regular patterns with rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
. (Since the late 19th century, musical setting of prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
and free verse
Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.
Definit ...
has also been practiced in some art music
Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJacques Siron, ...
, though popular music tends to remain conservative in its retention of stanza
In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...
ic forms with or without refrain
A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the vi ...
s.) A rudimentary example of translating poetry for singing is church hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' ...
s, such as the German chorale
Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale:
* Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one of the t ...
s translated into English by Catherine Winkworth
Catherine Winkworth (13 September 1827 – 1 July 1878) was an English hymnwriter and educator. She translated the German chorale tradition of church hymns for English speakers, for which she is recognized in the calendar of the Evangelical Lut ...
.
Translation of sung texts is generally much more restrictive than translation of poetry, because in the former there is little or no freedom to choose between a versified translation and a translation that dispenses with verse structure. One might modify or omit rhyme in a singing translation, but the assignment of syllables to specific notes in the original musical setting places great challenges on the translator. There is the option in prose sung texts, less so in verse, of adding or deleting a syllable here and there by subdividing or combining notes, respectively, but even with prose the process is almost like strict verse translation because of the need to stick as closely as possible to the original prosody of the sung melodic line.
Other considerations in writing a singing translation include repetition of words and phrases, the placement of rests and/or punctuation, the quality of vowels sung on high notes, and rhythmic features of the vocal line that may be more natural to the original language than to the target language. A sung translation may be considerably or completely different from the original, thus resulting in a contrafactum
In vocal music, contrafactum (or contrafact, pl. contrafacta) is "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music". The earliest known examples of this procedure (sometimes referred to as ''adaptation''), date back ...
.
Translations of sung texts—whether of the above type meant to be sung or of a more or less literal type meant to be read—are also used as aids to audiences, singers and conductors, when a work is being sung in a language not known to them. The most familiar types are translations presented as subtitles or surtitles projected during opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
performances, those inserted into concert programs, and those that accompany commercial audio CDs of vocal music. In addition, professional and amateur singers often sing works in languages they do not know (or do not know well), and translations are then used to enable them to understand the meaning of the words they are singing.
Religious texts
An important role in history has been played by translation of religious texts. Such translations may be influenced by tension between the text and the religious values the translators wish to convey. For example, Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
s who translated the India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n sutra
''Sutra'' ( sa, सूत्र, translit=sūtra, translit-std=IAST, translation=string, thread)Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aph ...
s into Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
occasionally adjusted their translations to better reflect China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
's distinct culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
, emphasizing notions such as filial piety
In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian ''Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the late W ...
.
One of the first recorded instances of translation in the West was the 3rd century BCE rendering of some books of the biblical Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
from Hebrew into Koine Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
. The translation is known as the "Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...
", a name that refers to the supposedly seventy translators (seventy-two, in some versions) who were commissioned to translate the Bible at Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
, Egypt. According to legend, each translator worked in solitary confinement in his own cell, and all seventy versions proved identical. The ''Septuagint'' became the source text
A source text is a text (sometimes oral) from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.
Description
In historiography, distinctions are commonly m ...
for later translations into many languages, including Latin, Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
, Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, and Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
.
Still considered one of the greatest translators in history, for having rendered the Bible into Latin, is Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...
(347–420 CE), the patron saint
A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or perso ...
of translators. For centuries the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
used his translation (known as the Vulgate
The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...
), though even this translation stirred controversy. By contrast with Jerome's contemporary, Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...
(354–430 CE), who endorsed precise translation, Jerome believed in adaptation, and sometimes invention, in order to more effectively bring across the meaning. Jerome's colorful Vulgate translation of the Bible includes some crucial instances of "overdetermination". For example, Isaiah
Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named.
Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "the ...
's prophecy announcing that the Savior will be born of a virgin, uses the word almah'', which is also used to describe the dancing girls at Solomon
Solomon (; , ),, ; ar, سُلَيْمَان, ', , ; el, Σολομών, ; la, Salomon also called Jedidiah (Hebrew language, Hebrew: , Modern Hebrew, Modern: , Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yăḏīḏăyāh'', "beloved of Yahweh, Yah"), ...
's court, and simply means young and nubile. Jerome, writes Marina Warner
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publicatio ...
, translates it as ''virgo'', "adding divine authority to the virulent cult of sex
Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones ( ova, of ...
ual disgust that shaped Christian moral theology (the oslem''Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...
'', free from this linguistic trap, does not connect Mariam/Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
's miraculous nature with moral horror of sex)." The apple that Eve
Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...
offered to Adam
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
, according to Mark Polizzotti, could equally well have been an apricot
An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus ''Prunus''.
Usually, an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are also ...
, orange, or banana; but Jerome liked the pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
''malus/malum'' (apple/evil).
Pope Francis
Pope Francis ( la, Franciscus; it, Francesco; es, link=, Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. ...
has suggested that the phrase "lead us not into temptation", in the Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
found in the Gospels of Matthew (the first Gospel, written c. 80–90 CE) and Luke
People
*Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...
(the third Gospel, written c. 80–110 CE), should more properly be translated, "do not let us fall into temptation", commenting that God does not lead people into temptation—Satan
Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...
does. Some important early Christian authors interpreted the Bible's Greek text and Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...
's Latin Vulgate similarly to Pope Francis. A.J.B. Higgins in 1943 showed that among the earliest Christian authors, the understanding and even the text of this devotional verse underwent considerable changes. These ancient writers suggest that, even if the Greek and Latin texts are left unmodified, something like "do not let us fall" could be an acceptable English rendering. Higgins cited Tertullian
Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of L ...
, the earliest of the Latin Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical per ...
(c. 155–c. 240 CE, "do not allow us to be led") and Cyprian
Cyprian (; la, Thaschus Caecilius Cyprianus; 210 – 14 September 258 AD''The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite: Vol. IV.'' New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1975. p. 1406.) was a bishop of Carthage and an early Chri ...
(c. 200–258 CE, "do not allow us to be led into temptation"). A later author, Ambrose
Ambrose of Milan ( la, Aurelius Ambrosius; ), venerated as Saint Ambrose, ; lmo, Sant Ambroeus . was a theologian and statesman who served as Bishop of Milan from 374 to 397. He expressed himself prominently as a public figure, fiercely promo ...
(c. 340–397 CE), followed Cyprian's interpretation. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), familiar with Jerome's Latin Vulgate rendering, observed that "many people... say it this way: 'and do not allow us to be led into temptation.'"
In 863 CE the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius
Cyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
They are credited wit ...
, the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
's "Apostles to the Slavs", began translating parts of the Bible into the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
language, using the Glagolitic script
The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
that they had devised, based on the Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
.
The periods preceding and contemporary with the Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
saw translations of the Bible into vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
(local) European languages—a development that contributed to Western Christianity
Western Christianity is one of two sub-divisions of Christianity ( Eastern Christianity being the other). Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic ...
's split into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
over disparities between Catholic and Protestant renderings of crucial words and passages (and due to a Protestant-perceived need to reform the Roman Catholic Church). Lasting effects on the religions, cultures, and languages of their respective countries were exerted by such Bible translations as Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...
's into German (the New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
, 1522), Jakub Wujek
Jakub Wujek (1541 – 27 April 1597, son of Maciej Wujek) was a Polish Jesuit, religious writer, Doctor of Theology, Vice-Chancellor of the Vilnius Academy and translator of the Bible into Polish.
He is well-known for his translation of the Bi ...
's into Polish (1599, as revised by the Jesuits
The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
), and William Tyndale
William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his executi ...
's (New Testament, 1526 and revisions) and the ''King James Version
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
'' into English (1611).
Efforts to translate the Bible into English had their martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
s. William Tyndale
William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his executi ...
(c. 1494–1536) was convicted of heresy
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
at Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, , was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned. Earlier, John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of O ...
(c. mid-1320s – 1384) had managed to die a natural death, but 30 years later the Council of Constance
The Council of Constance was a 15th-century ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held from 1414 to 1418 in the Bishopric of Constance in present-day Germany. The council ended the Western Schism by deposing or accepting the res ...
in 1415 declared him a heretic and decreed that his works and earthly remains should be burned; the order, confirmed by Pope Martin V
Pope Martin V ( la, Martinus V; it, Martino V; January/February 1369 – 20 February 1431), born Otto (or Oddone) Colonna, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 11 November 1417 to his death in February 1431. Hi ...
, was carried out in 1428, and Wycliffe's corpse was exhumed and burned and the ashes cast into the River Swift
The River Swift is a 14-mile (23 km) long tributary of the River Avon that rises in south Leicestershire, and flows through the town of Lutterworth before joining the Avon at its confluence at Rugby in Warwickshire in the English Mi ...
. Debate and religious schism
A schism ( , , or, less commonly, ) is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a split in what had previously been a single religious body, suc ...
over different translations of religious texts continue, as demonstrated by, for example, the King James Only movement
The King James Only movement asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible. Adherents of the King James Only movement, mostly members of Conservative Anabaptist, Conservativ ...
.
A famous ''mistranslation'' of a Biblical
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
text is the rendering of the Hebrew word (''keren''), which has several meanings, as "horn" in a context where it more plausibly means "beam of light": as a result, for centuries artists, including sculptor Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...
, have rendered Moses the Lawgiver
''Moses the Lawgiver'' is a 6-hour Italian/British television miniseries filmed in 1973/74 and starring Burt Lancaster as Moses. It was an ITC/RAI co-production filmed in Rome and on location in Israel and Morocco.
Many of the writers, cast ...
with horns growing from his forehead.
Such fallibility of the translation process has contributed to the Islamic
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the mai ...
world's ambivalence about translating the ''Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...
'' (also spelled ''Koran'') from the original Arabic, as received by the prophet Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
from Allah
Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", an ...
(God) through the angel Gabriel
In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር ...
incrementally between 609 and 632 CE, the year of Muhammad's death. During prayers, the ''Quran'', as the miraculous and inimitable word of Allah, is recited only in Arabic. However, as of 1936, it had been translated into at least 102 languages.
A fundamental difficulty in translating the ''Quran'' accurately stems from the fact that an Arabic word, like a Hebrew or Aramaic word, may have a range of meanings, depending on context
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to su ...
. This is said to be a linguistic feature, particularly of all Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
, that adds to the usual similar difficulties encountered in translating between any two languages.[ There is always an element of human judgment—of interpretation—involved in understanding and translating a text. Muslims regard any translation of the ''Quran'' as but one possible interpretation of the Quranic (Classical) Arabic text, and not as a full equivalent of that divinely communicated original. Hence such a translation is often called an "interpretation" rather than a translation.
To complicate matters further, as with other languages, the meanings and usages of some expressions have changed ''over time'', between the Classical Arabic of the ''Quran'', and modern Arabic. Thus a modern Arabic speaker may misinterpret the meaning of a word or passage in the ''Quran''. Moreover, the interpretation of a Quranic passage will also depend on the historic context of Muhammad's life and of his early community. Properly researching that context requires a detailed knowledge of '']hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...
'' and '' sirah'', which are themselves vast and complex texts. Hence, analogously to the translating of Chinese literature, an attempt at an accurate translation of the ''Quran'' requires a knowledge not only of the Arabic language and of the target language, including their respective evolutions, but also a deep understanding of the two culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
s involved.
Experimental literature
Experimental literature, such as Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...
’s novel ''Don Quixote'' (1986) and Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include ''Empire of Dreams'' (1988), ''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) ''and United States of Banana'' (2011).
Braschi writes cross-genr ...
’s novel ''Yo-Yo Boing!
''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, an ...
'' (1998), features a translative writing that highlights discomforts of the interlingual and translingual encounters and literary translation as a creative practice. These authors weave their own translations into their texts.
Acker's Postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
fiction both fragments and preserves the materiality of Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His s ...
’s Latin text in ways that tease out its semantics and syntax without wholly appropriating them, a method that unsettles the notion of any fixed and finished translation.
Whereas Braschi's trilogy of experimental works (''Empire of Dreams
''Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy'' is a 2004 documentary film directed by Kevin Burns and narrated by Robert Clotworthy. It documents the making of the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy: ''Star Wars'' (1977), ''The Empire Stri ...
'', 1988; ''Yo-Yo Boing!
''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, an ...
'', 1998, and ''United States of Banana
''United States of Banana'' (2011) is a postmodern allegorical novel by the Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. It is a cross-genre work that blends experimental theatre, prose poetry, short story, and political philosophy with a manifesto o ...
'', 2011) deals with the very subject of translation. Her trilogy presents the evolution of the Spanish language through loose translations of dramatic, poetic, and philosophical writings from the Medieval, Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
, and Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
eras into contemporary Caribbean, Latin American, and Nuyorican Spanish expressions. Braschi's translations of classical texts in Iberian Spanish (into other regional and historical linguistic and poetic frameworks) challenge the concept of national languages.
Science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
being a genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
with a recognizable set of conventions and literary genealogies, in which language often includes neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s, neosemes, and invented languages
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
, techno-scientific and pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
vocabulary, and fictional representation of the translation process, the translation of science-fiction texts involves specific concerns. The science-fiction translator tends to acquire specific competences and assume a distinctive publishing and cultural agency. As in the case of other mass-fiction genres, this professional specialization and role often is not recognized by publishers and scholars.
Translation of science fiction accounts for the transnational nature of science fiction's repertoire of shared conventions and tropes. After World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, many European countries were swept by a wave of translations from the English. Due to the prominence of English as a source language, the use of pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
s and pseudotranslation
In literature, a pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language, even though no foreign language original exists.
History
The practice of writing works which falsely claimed to be translations began in me ...
s became common in countries such as Italy and Hungary, and English has often been used as a vehicular language to translate from languages such as Chinese and Japanese.
More recently, the international market in science-fiction translations has seen an increasing presence of source languages other than English.
Technical translation
Technical translation Technical translation is a type of specialized translation involving the translation of documents produced by technical writers (owner's manuals, user guides, etc.), or more specifically, texts which relate to technological subject areas or texts w ...
renders documents such as manuals, instruction sheets, internal memos, minutes, financial reports, and other documents for a limited audience (who are directly affected by the document) and whose useful life is often limited. Thus, a user guide for a particular model of refrigerator is useful only for the owner of the refrigerator, and will remain useful only as long as that refrigerator model is in use. Similarly, software documentation generally pertains to a particular software, whose applications are used only by a certain class of users.
See also
* American Literary Translators Association The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is an organization in the United States dedicated to literary translation. ALTA promotes literary translation through its annual conference, which draws hundreds of translators and literary profes ...
* Applied linguistics
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication rese ...
* Back-translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
* Bible translations
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and ...
* Bilingual dictionary
A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one lan ...
* Bilingual pun
* Bilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
* Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
* Certified translation
* Chinese translation theory
Chinese translation theory was born out of contact with vassal states during the Zhou Dynasty. It developed through translations of Buddhist scripture into Chinese. It is a response to the universals of the experience of translation and to the s ...
* Code mixing
Code-mixing is the mixing of two or more languages or Variety (linguistics), language varieties in speech.
Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably, especially in studies of syntax, Morphology (linguistics) ...
* Contrastive linguistics
Contrastive linguistics is a practice-oriented linguistic approach that seeks to describe the differences and similarities between a pair of languages (hence it is occasionally called "''differential'' linguistics").
History
While traditional ...
* Dictionary-based machine translation
Machine translation can use a method based on dictionary entries, which means that the words will be translated as a dictionary does – word by word, usually without much correlation of meaning between them. Dictionary lookups may be done with or ...
* Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled " ...
* European Master's in Translation
* Example-based machine translation
Example-based machine translation (EBMT) is a method of machine translation often characterized by its use of a bilingual corpus with parallel texts as its main knowledge base at run-time. It is essentially a translation by analogy and can be vi ...
* False cognate
False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engl ...
* False friend
In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
* First language
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
* Homophonic translation
Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, the English "sat on a wall" i ...
* Humour in translation ("howlers")
* Hybrid word
A hybrid word or hybridism is a word that etymologically derives from at least two languages.
Common hybrids
The most common form of hybrid word in English combines Latin and Greek parts. Since many prefixes and suffixes in English are of Latin ...
* Indirect translation
translation is a translation of a translation. It may be based on a translated version, or multiple translated versions, of the original or ultimate source text. For instance, if a text in Arabic is translated into Portuguese via English, the res ...
* International Federation of Translators
The Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (English: International Federation of Translators) is an international grouping of associations of translators, interpreters and terminologists. More than 100 professional associations are affiliate ...
* Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and ...
* Interpreting notes
Interpreting notes are used by some interpreters, who re-express oral communications (such as speeches) in whole or in part. Such notes may be used when the interpreter is working in " consecutive mode."
Interpreting notes are not part of any con ...
* Inttranet
The Inttranet is a multilingual portal for and global network of professional interpreters and translators, fully compatible with ISO 9001 quality assurance requirements, and was officially inaugurated in October 2002.
Its purpose is to provide al ...
* Language brokering
Language brokering, also known as child language brokering, refers to the informal act of translation by children and young people between a family member and a dominant language user, whereby children can influence both what is being said and ...
* Language industry
The language industry is the sector of activity dedicated to facilitating multilingual communication, both oral and written. According to the European Commission's Directorate-General of Translation, the language industry comprises the activitie ...
* Language interpretation
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous inter ...
* Language localisation
Language localisation (or language localization) is the process of adapting a product's translation to a specific country or region. It is the second phase of a larger process of product translation and cultural adaptation (for specific countries ...
* Language professional Language professionals are individuals who support authors in publishing by helping produce documents of appropriate scope and quality (in any language). Their role is particularly important in the research setting, especially when the authors are n ...
* Language transfer
Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual, from a mature sp ...
* Legal translation
Legal translation is the translation of language used in legal settings and for legal purposes. Legal translation may also imply that it is a specific type of translation only used in law, which is not always the case. As law is a culture-depende ...
* Lexicography
Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries.
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
* Theoretica ...
* Lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
* Linguistic validation
Linguistic validation is the process of investigating the reliability, conceptual equivalence, and content validityU.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), Center f ...
* List of translators
This is primarily a list of notable translators. Large sublists have been split off to separate articles.
By text
* List of Bible translators
* List of Qur'an translators
* List of Kural translators
*Harry Potter in translation
By target languag ...
* List of women translators
* Literal translation
Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence.
In Translation studies, trans ...
* Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...
* Medical translation
Medical translation is the practice of translating various documents—training materials, medical bulletins, drug data sheets, etc.—for health care, medical devices, marketing, or for clinical, regulatory, and technical documentation. Most cou ...
* Metaphrase
Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line" translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual ...
* Mobile translation
Mobile translation is any electronic device or software application that provides audio translation. The concept includes any handheld electronic device that is specifically designed for audio translation. It also includes any machine translation ...
* Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
* National Translation Mission
National Translation Mission is a Government of India initiative to make knowledge texts accessible, in all 22 official languages of India listed in the VIII schedule of the Constitution, through translation. NTM was set up on the recommendation ...
(NTM)
* Neural machine translation
Neural machine translation (NMT) is an approach to machine translation that uses an artificial neural network to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words, typically modeling entire sentences in a single integrated model.
Properties
They requi ...
* Paraphrase
A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''.
History
Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...
* Phonaesthetics
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and ...
* Phonestheme
A phonestheme (; phonaestheme in British English) is a pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a language. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth, who coined the term from the Greek ''phone'', ...
* Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with Phonetics, phonetically and semantically similar words or ...
* Postediting
Post-editing (or postediting) is the process whereby humans amend machine-generated translation to achieve an acceptable final product. A person who post-edits is called a post-editor. The concept of post-editing is linked to that of pre-editing ...
* Pre-editing
Pre-editing is the process whereby a human prepares a document before applying machine translation. The main goal of pre-editing is to reduce the post-editing workload by adapting the source document to improve the raw output of the machine transla ...
* Pseudotranslation
In literature, a pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language, even though no foreign language original exists.
History
The practice of writing works which falsely claimed to be translations began in me ...
* Register (sociolinguistics)
In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow pres ...
* Rule-based machine translation Rule-based machine translation (RBMT; "Classical Approach" of MT) is machine translation systems based on linguistic information about source and target languages basically retrieved from (unilingual, bilingual or multilingual) dictionaries and gram ...
* Second language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...
* Self-translation
* Skopos theory
Skopos theory (German: ''Skopostheorie''), a theory in the field of translation studies, employs the prime principle of a purposeful action that determines a translation strategy. The intentionality of a translational action stated in a translati ...
* Sound symbolism
In linguistics, sound symbolism is the resemblance between sound and meaning. It is a form of linguistic iconicity. For example, the English word ''ding'' may sound similar to the actual sound of a bell. Linguistic sound may be perceived as simi ...
* Statistical machine translation
Statistical machine translation (SMT) is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach contrast ...
* Syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
* Technical translation Technical translation is a type of specialized translation involving the translation of documents produced by technical writers (owner's manuals, user guides, etc.), or more specifically, texts which relate to technological subject areas or texts w ...
* Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (''speech'' or ''sign language'') or preexisting text in another writing system.
Transcription shoul ...
* Translating for legal equivalence
A certified translation is one which fulfills the requirements in the country in question, enabling it to be used in formal procedures, with the translator accepting responsibility for its accuracy. These requirements vary widely from country to ...
* Translation associations
{{Translation sidebar
This is a list of notable translator and interpreter organizations (professional associations, not commercial translation agencies) around the world.
Most of them are International Federation of Translators members as well.
...
* Translation criticism
* Translation memory A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translati ...
* Translation scholars
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
* Translation services of the European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
* Translation studies
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and Language localisation, localization. As an interdiscipline, translation studies borr ...
* Translation-quality standards
Like any supplier of goods or services, a translator potentially bears ethical and legal obligations toward his patron or employer. This has turned to be of enormous importance with the development of the language industry at global scale. For t ...
* Transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
* Untranslatability
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a ''lacuna'', or lexical gap. The term arises when descr ...
* Vehicular language
Notes
References
Bibliography
* Armstrong, Rebecca, "All Kinds of Unlucky" (review of ''The Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
, translated by Shadi Bartsch'', Profile, November 2020, , 400 pp.), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', vol. 43, no. 5 (4 March 2021), pp. 35–36.
*
*
*
* Excerpted in English in
* English translation:
*
* Bromwich, David, "In Praise of Ambiguity" (a review of Michael Wood, ''On Empson'', Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
, 2017), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
''), vol. LXIV, no. 16 (26 October 2017), pp. 50–52.
* Cohen, J.M., "Translation", ''Encyclopedia Americana
''Encyclopedia Americana'' is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first major multivolume encyclopedia that was published in the United States. With ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclo ...
'', 1986, vol. 27, p. 14.
*
Work in progress version (pdf).
*
* Fatani, Afnan, "Translation and the Qur'an", in Oliver Leaman
Oliver Leaman (born 1950) is a professor of philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic studies at the University of Kentucky, where he has been teaching since 2000. He studies the history of Islamic, Jewish and Eastern philosophy. He received hi ...
, ''The Qur'an: An Encyclopaedia'', Routledge, 2006, pp. 657–69.
* Poets and critics Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. , Charles Tomlinson
Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was an English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator.
He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
Life
After attending Longton High Sc ...
, Tim Parks
Timothy Harold Parks (born 19 December 1954) is a British novelist, translator, author and professor of literature.
Career
He is the author of eighteen novels (notably ''Europa'', which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997). His first ...
, and others discuss the theory and practice of translation.
*
* Gorra, Michael, "Corrections of Taste" (review of Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
Eagleton has published over forty books, ...
, ''Critical Revolutionaries: Five Critics Who Changed the Way We Read'', Yale University Press, 323 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIX, no. 15 (October 6, 2022), pp. 16–18.
*
* Greenblatt, Stephen, "Can We Ever Master King Lear?", ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIV, no. 3 (23 February 2017), pp. 34–36.
* Hays, Gregory, "Found in Translation" (review of Denis Feeney
Denis C. Feeney, FBA (born 1955) is Professor of Classics and Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University. He was born in New Zealand and educated at St Peter's College, Auckland and Auckland Grammar School. He received his B.A. (1974), M ...
, ''Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature'', Harvard University Press), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIV, no. 11 (22 June 2017), pp. 56, 58.
* Kaiser, Walter, "A Hero of Translation" (a review of Jean Findlay, ''Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff
Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (25 September 1889 – 28 February 1930) was a Scottish writer and translator, most famous for his English translation of most of Marcel Proust's , which he published under the Shakespearean title '' Remembranc ...
: Soldier, Spy, and Translator'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 351 pp., $30.00), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXII, no. 10 (4 June 2015), pp. 54–56.
* Includes a discussion of European language, European-language cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s of the term
Term may refer to:
* Terminology, or term, a noun or compound word used in a specific context, in particular:
**Technical term, part of the specialized vocabulary of a particular field, specifically:
***Scientific terminology, terms used by scient ...
, "translation".
* Christopher Kasparek, Kasparek, Christopher, translator's foreword to Bolesław Prus
Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, as well as a distinctive voice in world li ...
, ''Pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...
'', translated from the Polish, with foreword and notes, by Christopher Kasparek, Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
, 2020, ASIN:BO8MDN6CZV.
*
* Perry Link, Link, Perry, "A Magician of Chinese Poetry" (review of Eliot Weinberger, with an afterword by Octavio Paz, ''19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways)'', New Directions, 88 pp., $10.95 [paper]; and Eliot Weinberger, ''The Ghosts of Birds'', New Directions, 211 pp., $16.95 [paper]), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIII, no. 18 (24 November 2016), pp. 49–50.
* Gary Marcus, Marcus, Gary, "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish artificial intelligence from the natural kind", ''Scientific American'', vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), pp. 58–63. ''Multiple'' tests of artificial-intelligence efficacy are needed because, "just as there is no single test of Athletics (physical culture), athletic prowess, there cannot be one ultimate test of intelligence." One such test, a "Construction Challenge", would test perception and physical action—"two important elements of intelligent behavior that were entirely absent from the original Turing test." Another proposal has been to give machines the same standardized tests of science and other disciplines that schoolchildren take. A so far insuperable stumbling block to artificial intelligence is an incapacity for reliable disambiguation. "[V]irtually every sentence hat people generateis ambiguous
Ambiguity is the type of meaning (linguistics), meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations wikt:plausible#Adjective, plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It ...
, often in multiple ways." A prominent example is known as the "pronoun disambiguation problem": a machine has no way of determining to whom or what a pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
in a sentence—such as "he", "she" or "it"—refers.
*
* Ange Mlinko, "Whole Earth Troubador" (review of ''The Essential W.S. Merlin'', edited by Michael Wiegers, Copper Canyon, 338 pp., 2017), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIV, no. 19 (7 December 2017), pp. 45–46.
* Anka Muhlstein, Muhlstein, Anka, "Painters and Writers: When Something New Happens", ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIV, no. 1 (19 January 2017), pp. 33–35.
*
*
*
*
* Introduction by Stuart Berg Flexner, revised edition.
*
* Polizzotti, Mark, ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', MIT, 168 pp., 2018, .
*
*Malise Ruthven, Ruthven, Malise, "The Islamic Road to the Modern World" (review of Christopher de Bellaigue
Christopher de Bellaigue (born 1971 in London) is a journalist who has worked on the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His work mostly chronicles developments in Iran and Turkey.
Biography
De Bellaigue, who attended Eton College, is from an ...
, ''The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times'', Liveright; and Wael Abu-'Uksa, ''Freedom in the Arab World: Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century'', Cambridge University Press), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIV, no. 11 (22 June 2017), pp. 22, 24–25.
*
*
* Mary Snell-Hornby, Snell-Hornby, Mary; Schopp, Jürgen F. (2013)
"Translation"
''European History Online'', Mainz, Institute of European History, retrieved 29 August 2013.
*
*Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Tatarkiewicz, Władysław, ''O doskonałości'' (On Perfection), Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976; English translation by Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...
subsequently serialized in ''Dialectics and Humanism: The Polish Philosophical Quarterly'', vol. VI, no. 4 (autumn 1979)—vol. VIII, no 2 (spring 1981), and reprinted in Władysław Tatarkiewicz, ''On Perfection'', Warsaw University Press, Center of Universalism, 1992, pp. 9–51 (the book is a collection of papers by and about Professor Tatarkiewicz).
* Taylor, Paul, "Insanely Complicated, Hopelessly Inadequate" (review of Brian Cantwell Smith, ''The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment'', MIT, October 2019, , 157 pp.; Gary Marcus
Gary F. Marcus (born February 8, 1970) is a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. In 2014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company later acquired by Uber. Marcus's books include '' Guita ...
and Ernest Davis, ''Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust'', Ballantine, September 2019, , 304 pp.; Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie, ''The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect'', Penguin, May 2019, , 418 pp.), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', vol. 43, no. 2 (21 January 2021), pp. 37–39.
*Tobler, Stefan; Sabău, Antoaneta (2018)
''Translating Confession''
Review of Ecumenical Studies, ISSN: 2359–8093.
*
*
* Marina Warner, Warner, Marina, "The Politics of Translation" (a review of Kate Briggs, ''This Little Art'', 2017; Mireille Gansel, ''Translation as Transhumance'', translated by Ros Schwartz Ros Schwartz is an English literary translator, who translates Francophone literature into English. In 2009 she was awarded the Chevalier d’Honneur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her services to French literature.
Career
Alongside ...
, 2017; Mark Polizzotti, ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', 2018; Boyd Tonkin
Boyd Tonkin Hon. FRSL is an English writer, journalist and literary critic. He was the literary editor of ''The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 2013. A long-time proponent of foreign-language literature, he is the author of ''The 100 Best Nov ...
, ed., ''The 100 Best Novels in Translation'', 2018; Clive Scott
Jigsaw was an English pop rock band best known for their 1975 hit "Sky High". The band was fronted by the singer-songwriter duo of Clive Scott and Des Dyer for most of its life. Following Scott's death in 2009, it has been the platform for Dye ...
, ''The Work of Literary Translation'', 2018), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', vol. 40, no. 19 (11 October 2018), pp. 21–24.
* Emily Wilson (classicist), Wilson, Emily, "A Doggish Translation" (review of ''The Poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles'', translated from the Greek by Barry B. Powell, University of California Press, 2017, 184 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXV, no. 1 (18 January 2018), pp. 34–36.
* Emily Wilson (classicist), Wilson, Emily, "Ah, how miserable!" (review of three separate translations of ''The Oresteia'' by Aeschylus: by Oliver Taplin, Liveright, November 2018; by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein, Carcanet, April 2020; and by David Mulroy, Wisconsin, April 2018), ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of ...
'', vol. 42, no. 19 (8 October 2020), pp. 9–12, 14.
* Emily Wilson (classicist), Wilson, Emily, "The Pleasures of Translation" (review of Mark Polizzotti, ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', MIT Press, 2018, 182 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXV, no. 9 (24 May 2018), pp. 46–47.
*
Further reading
*
* Lydia Davis, Davis, Lydia, "Eleven Pleasures of Translating", ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXIII, no. 19 (8 December 2016), pp. 22–24. "I like to reproduce the word order, and the order of ideas, of the original [text] whenever possible. [p. 22] [T]ranslation is, eternally, a compromise. You settle for the best you can do rather than achieving perfection, though there is the occasional perfect solution [to the problem of finding an equivalent expression in the target language]." (p. 23.)
* Rudolf Flesch, Flesch, Rudolf, ''The Art of Clear Thinking'', chapter 5: "Danger! Language at Work" (pp. 35–42), chapter 6: "The Pursuit of Translation" (pp. 43–50), Barnes & Noble Books, 1973.
*
*
* Ross Amos, Flora, "Early Theories of Translation", ''Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature,'' 1920. At
Project Gutenberg
'.
*
* Wechsler, Robert, '':File:Performing Without a Stage - The Art of Literary Translation - by Robert Wechsler.pdf, Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation'', Catbird Press, 1998.
* Garry Wills, Wills, Garry, "A Wild and Indecent Book" (review of David Bentley Hart, ''The New Testament: A Translation'', Yale University Press, 577 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXV, no. 2 (8 February 2018), pp. 34–35. Discusses some pitfalls in interpreting and translating the New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
External links
{{Authority control
Translation,
Applied linguistics
Communication
Meaning (philosophy of language)