Assignment Submitted to: Dr.

Priya Avais
Course: Translation Studies (ENG731)
Submitted by: Imran
ID:S2018084011

Q. What is the significance of the five-step-translation division? At what stage does the
translator need to pause and reflect and why?

Five steps in the process of translations are: 1. Overview 2. Initial Translation 3.

I will discuss each of these steps along with the significance of each.

1. Overview: In this first step, the translator looks through the text to be translated.
The translator looks into the content as well as the style of the text. He has an
overview of the syntactic and semantic equivalences of the source language and
target language.

Significance: The importance of this step is:

- In the wake of carrying out this step, the translator gets an impression of
the nature of the languages he is dealing with i.e the grammatical
structures, similarities between the structures and differences between
them. The main focus is, of course, on the source language, the language
of the given text.
- It is because of this step that the translator prepares himself for studying
additional material to cope with the variation between the source and
target language

2. Initial Translation: This is the step where the translator converts the text from the
source language into the target language. This can take place in two possible
ways: Literal and Free. The former is when the translator translates the text word
by word and the latter is when the text is translated not word by word but effect
by effect i.e the effect that the translated text has on the new reader should be
tantamount to the effect that the original text had on the original reader.

Significance:
 - It is this step where the text is practically shifted from one language to
another.
- This is the step when the translator tries to maintain not only the content
but also the structure of the source language. That is, he ought not to
compromise on the forms nor on the ideas.

3. Accuracy Check: In this stage the translator makes sure that the previous step
has been carried out accurately. The previous step is a very complex one since it
involves the actual conversion. In this third step, the translator goes back to the
original text and then compares it with the new product, the translated text. The
purpose is to double check that no content has been missed or
miscommunicated.

Significance:

- Fidelity to the original is ensured. That is, the translator ensures that the
message of the original writer is conveyed wholly and not partially.
- The grammatical functions are compared and adjusted if there is any
discrepancy. This is very important because with the change of a grammatical
function of a word in a sentence, the overall sense of the sentence changes. For
instance, in the sentence “Who did you think did this?”, “who” is the agent of the
verb “did”. A translator while translating chunks of the original text in step two
might consider this as a recipient rather than an agent, and with this
miscomprehension, the sentence’s meaning undergoes a change. Similarly, the
translator may consider this complex sentence as a simple sentence, which
might lead to a variation in the meanings. It is because of this third step that the
translator reconsiders the translated chunks to avoid and make up for such
blunders.

4. Take a break: The fourth stage is an intermediate step between the final polishing
and the practical translation process and accuracy check. Therefore, the
translator needs to fresh his mind. This step is important in that it gives vitality to
the translator to effectively perform the final stage. Before this stage, the
translator performs many processes, both mental and external, so, this step
provides him with moments to relax. Due to a tight deadline, this step is
sometimes skipped, which may lead to compromising the quality of the
translation.
5. Final Polishing: In this final stage, the translator only focuses on the product he
has obtained by converting the text chunk by chunk into the target language from
the source language. This step aims at making the new text flow smoothly. The
translator checks that the sentences in the target language are grammatically
constructed. It is ensured that the new text follows the sentence order of the
target language, not the source language. For example, if a text is translated
from Urdu to English, the sentence order of the new product should be SVO, the
sentence order of English, the target language, and not SOV, the sentence order
of the source language, Urdu. This step is significant since this rectifies the
mistakes the translator might have committed while doing the process of
conversion.

Each language has salient features. It is, therefore, important that the translator
gives a final polishing touch to the product. This step removes all the
shortcomings in the product that might occur due to language specific features of
the source language. For instance, if the source language is Pashto, the
translator might commit blunders of gender morphemes. This is due to the fact
that in Pashto, the gender is differentiated via pronoun morphemes, not through
verb morphemes as in Urdu. In the same kind of contexts, it is quite possible that
the translator considers the gender of a particular entity differently than it is in the
cultures in question. The word “class”, for example, is feminine in Urdu, but
masculine in Pashto.