Translation Techniques

1. Translation Techniques

2. Quickly translate these sentences from English into Arabic (or vice versa) and think about the problems they raise: • I've been living here for about ten years • Time is money (proverb) • " رجع بخفي حنين “ (idiom) • " وافق شن طبقه “ • "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" • "وقد تأكد الآن أن العلم سوف يعجز عن القضاء على الدين، بل سوف يؤكد الدين" أنور الجندي • "ما تزال سيرة النبي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم وستظل على مدى الأجيال والقرون، وحتى يرث الله تبارك وتعالى الأرض ومن عليها نبراسًا للمسلمين وضوءًا كاشفًا في حياتهم وأعمالهم ووجهتهم" أنور الجندي • Translation is what I hate most

3. Introduction • The lack of complete equivalence between languages at the lexical, syntactic, stylistic and pragmatic levels makes translation, as a straightforward process, difficult. • Does this mean that translation is impossible? • Of course, not. Despite its numerous (linguistic, cultural and stylistic) difficulties, people have always resorted to translation to convey a message from one language to another. Furthermore, some of the most important books (including religious texts) are only available, or only known to the general public, in their translations (translation paradox)

4. Translation Techniques • This interlinguistic communication is achieved by resorting to translation techniques. • In this presentation, we will expose and exemplify the major techniques that have been used by translators unconsciously most of the time (and discussed by translation theorists) in order to convey the meanings, which are expressed in the SL, and yet preserve the structures and styles of the TL.

5. In a general sense, translation is different fromother kinds of linguistic activity such as adapting, précis writing, commenting and abstracting. • It may, however, in particular circumstances, involve special techniques (or procedures), about which the student of translation and the theorist should be concerned. • Needless to say that these translation techniques are only justified if straightforward translation fails.

6. Perhaps, the earliest formal account of translation techniques was given by Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet (1958, 1966 : 46-55) in their Stylistiquecomparée de l’anglais et du français (Paris, Didier) (translated as Comparative Stylistics of French and English: a Methodology for Translation).

7. Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet (1958, 1966 : 46-55) list seven translation techniques. • Many other translation theorists have discussed the issue (e.g. Fawcett, 1997:34-41) and some have come up with their own classifications. • For example, Newmark in his book Approaches to Translation (1981: 30-32) discusses seventeen translation techniques, that differ in importance according to the contextual factors of both the ST and the TT.

8. Given the fact that Vinay and Darbelnet’s taxonomy of translation techniques is one of the earliest and one of the widely-accepted and / or discussed lists of translation techniques, it will be discussed in this section in full with examples taken not only from French and English but also from Arabic. • Many other common and crucial translation techniques (taken from other sources) will also be discussed.

10. Vinay and Darbelnet’s taxonomy: • Vinayand Darbelnet’s translation techniques fall into3 Direct Translation Techniques and 4 Indirect (or Oblique) Translation Techniques. • Direct Translation Techniques are used when structural and conceptual elements of the SL can be transposed (i.e. transferred) into the TL. They include: Borrowing, Calque, and Literal Translation.

11. 1.1 Borrowing, Adoption or Loan Words (in French: emprunt) الترجمة بالاقتباس أو الترجمة بالدخيل • In a general sense, borrowing is the appropriation of words from another language. Such borrowed words are called loan words (or loanwords). • For example, in Arabic words like ديموقراطي, ديكتاتوري, إمبريالية , دمقرطة , برجوازية, which are used in politics, are borrowed from the English / French words democratic, dictatorial, imperialism, democratization, bourgeoisie and the words فونيم, مورفيم, تاكميم, which are used in linguistics, are borrowed from English /French phoneme, morpheme, tagmeme. • This phenomenon is known in Arabic as arabization and such words are called arabized words.

12. Borrowing is a widespread phenomenon in languages. • If it is evident that many languages borrow nowadays from English, the latter has also borrowed and still borrows numerous words from other languages. • In English, café and résumé are borrowed from French, hamburger and kindergarten from German and musk and sugar from Arabic. • In the past, Arabic borrowed from Greek (فندق وإزميل وأسطول) • and from Latin (قنطرة والقسطاس ( = ميزان) ودينار وفردوس)

13. In translation, borrowing is not always dictated by the lack of equivalent words in the target language. • Sometimes it is used to add a local color. For example, if a novel is set in France then the term ‘Monsieur’ is likely to occur even though the term ‘Mister’ and is well attested in English. Demoiselle has no single equivalentterm in English and couldbetranslated as ‘young lady’ • «Quand ces demoiselles voudront bien m'écouter.Ces demoiselles se croient tout permis » • ‘Intifada’, from Arabic, entered most European language since the first Palestenian uprising in 1987. • Since borrowing relies on ‘importing’ rather than searching for the culturally, linguistically and semantically equivalent words in the TL, it should always come as the last resort in finding adequate terms for new concepts.

14. Frequently, loan words involve some form of ‘naturalization’ (or adaptation), that is, they are made to conform to the rules of grammar or pronunciation of the TL (which is not the case in transcription and transliteration). • Borrowed words may sometimes have different meanings from those of the original language, hence the problem of ‘faux amis’. For instance, we are all familiar with the word ‘nervous’, which in most cases means ‘easily worried or frightened’ in English but ‘easily excited’ in French. Similarly, ‘to pass a test’ is not the same as ‘passer un examen’.

15. Borrowing can be resorted to for different reasons. For example, the target language may have no generally used equivalent, the source language word may sound "better" (i.e. more specific or more fashionable) or the translator may try to retain some "favor" of the source language. • In other words, borrowing, as a translation technique, is not always justified by a lexical gap in the TL; it can be simply used as a way to preserve the linguistic and cultural local color of the ST.

16. 1.2 Calque or Loan Translation الترجمة بالنسخ • A calque, or ‘Through Translation’ as Newmark (1981: 30) calls it, is a term or expression introduced into one language by 'literally' translating it from another language with no grammatical or semantic adjustments. • In other words, the translator imitates the structure or manner of expression of the ST at phrase level. Therefore, this is a type of borrowing at the level of structure or manner. • As such, it is very similar to literal translation (but, unlike the latter, it suggests a ). • loan translations often sound awkward at first, but come to be accepted with use

17. According to Vinay and Darbelnet (1958, 1966: ), Canadians are accustomed to use the expression 'les compliments de la saison', which is an imitation of the English expression 'season’s greetings‘ (or compliments of the season) , that is written for instance on cards to wish someone a happy Christmas, Easter, Festival, etc.

18. The following 'Arabic' structures and expressions are, in fact, loan translations from English or French because they were not attested in Classical Arabic. • -The use of أيّ 'ayy(a/u) in the contexts in which “any” is used in English as in: اشتر أيّ كتاب تريد “Buy any book you like”. • -لم و لن lam walan and لا و لن laawalan as in the examples لم و لن يفهمني “He didn’t and will not understand me”, and لا و لن أكتب إليه "I don't and will not write to him". • What would be a more natural arabic way of putting this? • -حتى hattaa as a translation of “even” in English as in لم يقبلوا حتى مناقشة الموضوع “They didn’t accept even the discussion of the subject”.

19. -The provision of the agent in a passive construction as in قبض اللص من طرف الشرطة “The thief was caught by the police” and وزعت الكتب بواسطة \ من طرف القنصليات “The books were distributed by the consulates”. (cf French de la part de ) • SL: He works as a teacher / iltravaillecommeenseignant or he works as a teacher • TL: يعمل كمدرسإنه • What would be a more natural arabic way of putting this? • SL il ajoué un rôle important dans cette affaire or He played an important role • TL لعب دوراً مهماً

20. Frequently, calques are meant to coin new terms for new concepts as in the following examples: • حرب باردة (cold war), • صلب القضية (the heart of the matter, F. le fond du problème), and, by far the best example, • صاروخ أرض جو (surface-to-air missile) (Darir, 2004: 40-41). • صاروخ سطح – جو، قذيفة أرض – جو thereishere a problem of parsing or more specificallyتشكيل Air-to-air missile Surface-to-air missile

21. Surface-to-air missile

22. http://www.arabdict.comمعجم الصواب اللغوي، أحمد مختار عمر • صاروخ أرض جَوّ • الحكم: مرفوضة السبب: لأن هذا التعبير غير مألوف في لغة العرب. المعنى: صاروخ ينطلق من الأرض إلى الجَوّ الصواب والرتبة: -صاروخ أرض جَوّ [صحيحة] التعليق:يرى البعض أن هذا التعبير يوجّه على أنه من قبيل المركب الإضافي وتكون الإضافة للتخصيص، أو بحمله على المركب المزجي. وقد أجازه مجمع اللغة المصري على أساس أنه من تتابع الإضافات.

23. Needless to say that these new constructions and new terms find their legitimacy and importance only if they have no real Arabic equivalents, which is not always the case. • For instance, for the modern expression الأغلبية الساحقة (the overwhelming majority, F. la majoritéécrasante) the ancient Arabs would have said السواد الأعظم (Darir, 2004: 41). • An unsuccessful calque can sound extremely unnatural, can cause unwanted humor and can be taken as evidence of the lack of expertise of the translator in the target language.

24. 1.3 Literal (or interlinear) translation الترجمة الحرفية Literal translation does not mean the same thing to all researchers. It is important to understand it here as a technique rather than a type of translation (the opposite of free translation)

25. In order to understand literal translation, it is good to start with the simplest type of translation, which is a word-for-word translation, which is after all what it means in this context. • Indeed, at its extreme, literal translation means just what it says, a one (word) by one translation. For example, the English sentence "The team is working to finish the report" can be literally –in this case word-for-word- translation- into Spanish with no adjustment as "El equipoestátrabajandoparaacabar el informe" but not into French or Arabic without resorting to the technique of transposition (see below) since grammatical structures are often not identical in all languages.

26. Thus, the same English sentence istranslatedinto French as “L'équipe travaille (ou est en train de travailler) pour finir le rapport » and intoArabic as يعمل الفريق على إنهاء التقرير. • Both sentences involve a slight change compared with the ST (some form of transposition).

27. In its strict sense, literal translation (or interlinear) can be used betweensome languages but not between others depending on structural similarities at the sentence level. • Of course, the fact that one sentence can be translated literally across two or more languages does not mean that all sentences can be translated literally across the same languages.

28. Literal (type of trans) vs. literal (technique of trans) • As a type of translation, Literal translation can start from a word by word translation but perform the basic type of morphological or grammatical adjustments to make it acceptable in the TL. • No such adjustment is understood in literal translation as a technique.

29. Literal translation- 2 • The sentence “She looked at him” can be literally –in a loose sense- translated into Arabic as "نظرت إليه“ with no form of adjustment (apart from omitting the subject pronoun. The French equivalent, on the other hand, “Elle le regarda” involves the omission of the particle ‘at’ since the verb is directly transitive in French and the prepositioning of the pronoun functioning as direct object. • Thus, the Arabic sentence is a literal translation in this sense but not the French one, which involves transposition.

30. From another perspective, • Consider the following two sentences: • (1) He looked at the map • (2) He looked the picture of health(Vinay & Darbelnet) • The first one can be translated literally into Arabic نظر إلى الخريطة or into any other languages but we cannot translate the second sentence in the same way. كان يبدو صورة الصحة is simply meaningless, on the other hand كان يبدو في صحة جيدة " أو " كانت تبدو عليه علامات الصحة " is acceptable. • J.P.Vinay, J.Darbelnet, Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais, Paris, Didier, 1958, 1999, pp. 47-48

31. Other examples of sentences that cannot be translated literally: • The English sentence: “He ran across the street” can only be translated into Arabic as “عبرالشارع جرياً“ not " جرى عبر الشارع " , and into French as“Il traversa la rue en courant.” • Whenintroducingthemselves, the English say: Mynameis John, the French say Je m’appelle Pierre, i.e. the English nounbecomes a verb in French and vice versa. In Arabic, itis possible to use both structures: أدعى فلاناً، واسمي كذا.

32. In brief • Literal translation, as a technique or as a method of translation, can be used as long as it yields acceptable translations respecting the meanings in the TL and not violating the structures of the TL. • In case the meanings are not respected,TL structures are violated or the translation sounds awkward then some other type of translation should be fetched. • .

33. Literal vs. loan translation

34. Are the expressions loan translations (Calques) or literal translations • 1. (Have) ‘a nice weekend’ • ‘bonne fin de semaine’ and • نهاية أسبوع سعيدة (cfعطلة نهاية أسبوع موفقة • 2 مائدة مستديرة • E. a round-table conference, • F. table ronde

35. 2. Oblique Translation Techniquesثانيا: الترجمة غير المباشرة ولها أنواع أربعة هي • Oblique (or Indirect) Translation Techniques are used when the structural or conceptual elements of the SL cannot be directly translated without significantly altering meaning or the grammatical and stylistic elements of the TL.

36. Oblique translation techniques in Vinay and Darbelnet’s taxonomy include: Transposition, Modulation, Reformulationor Equivalence, and Adaptation

37. 2.1 Transposition or shifts الترجمة بالتحوير or التبديل • Transposition can be defined as recategorization, i.e. a change at the level of grammar while translating from SL to TL. • Even within the same language, we come across cases of transposition (i.e. paraphrasing) with no or little change in meaning as in • اعمل ذلك قبل أن تذهب " أو " اعمل ذلك قبل ذهابك “” (notice the substitution of the subordinate clause in the first sentence with a noun phrase in the second. (similarly in French “Fais-le avant de partir” and “Fais-le avant ton départ” but not in English “Do it before you leave”).

38. Catford (1965: 73) uses the term ‘shift’, a much used term in translation studies, and defines it as “departure from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL”. • He (1965: 73) recognizes two major types: level shifts and category shifts. • By a shift of level he (1965: 73) means “that a SL item at one linguistic level (grammar or lexis) has a TL translation equivalent at a different level (grammar or lexis)” as in ‘after she had died’ being translated as بعد موتها. • Category shifts do not involve a change of level (from grammar to lexis or vice versa) (see type 1 below).

39. Newmark (1981) defines transposition as “the replacement of one grammatical unit by another” (which is of a different type). According to Newmark (1988: 85), transposition is motivated by four reasons, which result in four types of transposition.

40. The first type concerns the form and position of words. • For instance, the English single words: ‘furniture’ and ‘equipment’ are changed to plural in French ‘des meubles’ and ‘des équipements’. • Similarly, French masculine ‘le soleil’ is translated into Arabic by the feminine شمس and vice versa Arabic masculine القمر is translated into French by the feminine ‘la lune’. • Concerning changes in word position, this is clearly exemplified in the English/Arabic examples: 'afast car', ' سيارة سريعة'; 'a beautiful girl', 'فتاة جميلة', where the position of the adjective changes from English into Arabic. • Other syntactic types of change are evident since Arabic is a VSO whereas English is a SVO language. Both subtypes of change are automatic in the sense that they are dictated by the nature of language.

41. The second type of transposition is usually used when a SL grammatical structure does not exist in the TL. In this case, the translator looks for various options that help in conveying the meaning of the ST including shifts between grammatical categories. • For example, the gerund in the following English expression might be translated into Arabic in two variable ways: • ST: Talking to you was a pleasure • TT: من دواعي سروري الحديث معككان • سررت بالحديث معك

42. Other examples • In the case of an accident somebody says “Go for help”, which means in French “Allezchercher du secours” and in Arabic “اذهب واطلب النجدة " أو" اطلب النجدة ". . Thus the preposition in English plays the role of the verb in French or in Arabic.

43. In English they say “as soon as they returned home”, which is translated into French as “Dès leur retour chez eux” and into Arabic as “فور عودتهم إلى المنزل”, i.e. Arabic and French transform the verbal sentence into a noun phrase.

44. For the third type, Newmark (1988: 86) defines it as "the one where literal translation is grammatically possible but may not accord with the natural usage in the TL." • In English, there is the expression “Give way”, which is used in traffic regulations and means the same as the French expression “Priorité à droite” or in Arabic “” الأسبقية لليمين أو للقادم من اليمين“ . Thus, the English verb is substituted by a noun phrase in Arabic and French.

45. Transposition, here, offers translators plenty of possible versions. For instance, the SL adverbial phrase becomes an adverb in the TL: • ST: D'unefaçonbrutaleشرسةبطريقة • TT: brutally (‘in a brutal way’) • and a PP becomes an independent clause: • ST: ‘At every available opportunity’ • TT: كلما سنحت الفرصة

46. Concerning the fourth type, it occurs when the translator uses a grammatical structure as a way to fill a lexical gap in the TL. This falls in what Catford (1965: 73) calls level shifts. For the sake of clarification, we will quote two of the interesting examples provided by Newmark (1988: 87): • ST: Après sa sortie • TT: After he had gone out • ST: il atteint le total • TT: ittotals • SL: hepioneeredthisdrug • ((TL: il a été un des pionniers de ce médicament. :mod. • Here, we observe that in the course of translation the grammatical structure of the TL is used in a way to compensate for or replace the lexical gap existing in the linguistic system of the TL.

47. In short, transposition is the most frequent device used by translators since it offers a variety of possibilities that help in overcoming the problem of untranslatability. • Furthermore, most of the time, translators use transposition intuitively in their search for ways to transfer the ST into the TL. • (Compare Vinay & Darbenet’s exposition of transposition with Dickens & Hervey’s transposition Cultural

48. Special cases Similar to transposition are two special techniques: translation by addition and omission الترجمة بالزيادة أو النقصان and criss-cross transposition التحوير المتشابك

49. Criss-cross transposition المتشابكالتحوير • This technique which can also be called crossed transposition التحويرالمتقاطع is, in fact, a double transposition تحوير مزدوج. • In translating the English expression “He ran across the street” into French as “Il traversa la rue en courant” or Arabic “ اجتاز الشارع جرياً”there are two transpositions: (a) ‘across’ becomes a verb and (b) ‘ran’ as a verb becomes an adverbial in French and Arabic.

50. It is possible for criss-cross transposition to be incomplete in case the second word is understood from the context thus making it superfluous, as in: • SL: He walked across the street. • TL: Il traversa la rue. • TL: اجتاز الشارع . • (In the TT, the preposition ‘across’ becomes a verb, respectively ‘traversa’ in French and اجتاز in Arabic. It is needless to translate ‘walked’ as ‘en marchant’or ‘على الأقدامسيراً’ since that is evident.