Three Methods Of Translation

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2.3. Methods of Translation As it was mentioned before, every translator of informative texts usually uses different strategies while translating texts in order to attain adequate and easily understandable information for the addressee. In some cases there are words or phrases that cannot be translated literally, for instance, dealing with non-equivalence; hence, when there is no word equivalence in the target language several specific strategies have to be used. Baker (1992) distinguishes the following most common problems of non-equivalence: 1. Cultural-specific items. That is, when the concept is completely unknown in the target language; 2. The source language concept is not lexicalized in the target language. In other words, when the…show more content…
45), the main problem for translators always was how to translate – literally or freely. This question was raised at least in the first century BC. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, some kind of “free” translation was favoured by many writers. They translated the spirit, not the letter, the sense, but not the words, the matter, not the manner and the message rather than the form. Later in the nineteenth century, cultural anthropologists suggested that language is the product of culture and translations must be as literal as possible. The argument was theoretical and neither the purpose of translation, nor the nature of readership, nor the type of text was discussed. Now the basic problems remains, but the context has changed. Moreover, it is important to note that informative texts usually are translated literally but there are several instances when other translation strategies are taken into account. In the Textbook of Translation, the main eight strategies of translation are introduced (Newmark 1988, p. 45): a) “Word-for-word translation.” This method might be called – interlinear translation, it means the target language words lies immediately below the source language words. The source language word order remains the same in the translation, the words are translated out of the context, by their most common meanings and cultural words are translated literally. The main purpose of using “word-for-word translation” is either to construe a difficult text as a pre-translation process or to understand the mechanics of the original

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