Translation Techniques
Introduction to Translation
Translation is the process of replacing an original test, known as the source text within
substitute one known as the target text. The process is usually an interlingual translation in that
the message in the source language text is rendered as a target text in a different language.
Procedures are considered essential for translation and the translators need to use some
procedures for the realization of a translation that might be objectively correlative to the original
text both in form and content, some procedures are used by translators when they formulate an
equivalence for the purpose of transferring elements of meaning from the source texts to the
target text. This lectures reviews a taxonomy of translation procedures used for dealing with
the translation shifts proposed by two French scholars named Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean
Darbelnet who explored the linguistic aspects of translation and first proposed seven methods
or procedures in 1973, their work has opened the door for later taxonomies of translation
techniques, I decided to outline a widely-accepted list of these translation procedures and
techniques in the hope that the reader may become interested in knowing a little bit more about
translation procedures and their nuances. It is important that the student realizes that he /she
can call on a great many procedures or techniques to move from one language to another and
must at all costs avoid word-for-word translation, translation procedures are used for sentences
and smaller units of language within that text. the unit is defined as “the smallest segment of
the utterance whose signs are linked in such a way that they should not be translated
individually” (Vinay & Darbelnet 1958 ). The small, yet meaningful, changes that occur in the
process of translation are called translation shifts. Catford (1965/2000: 141) defines them as
“departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL”.
Although Catford was the first to use the term shift, a comprehensive taxonomy of shifts that
occur in translation was established by Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet (1958), who
developed a taxonomy of translation procedures.
Lecture 2 (Direct Translation Techniques)
When structural and conceptual elements of the source language can be transposed into
the target language the translator use direct procedures. The following are the main direct
procedures or techniques: Borrowing, Calque, Literal Translation.
1. Borrowing “This is the simplest, most straightforward technique in the translator's arsenal.
It consists, in fact, in not translating at all and in conserving unchanged a word or an expression
from the source language in the target language. It should not be a panacea and ought to be used
pertinently and parsimoniously, to give the passage a note of local colour or when no
satisfactory equivalent exists” see ( François gallix & Michael walsh.1997).
Examples: la Bibliothèque Nationale ... rue de Richelieu (the Bibliothèque Nationale ... the Rue
de Richelieu), These are obligatory borrowings, since all cultural institutions, including famous
streets, must be maintained in their original form. English does, however; apply its own rules
of orthography to the borrowing, hence the capital letter of "Rue"
More examples: -Software in the field of technology and funk in culture. Abbatoire, café, passé
and résumé from French
2. Calque is a particular type of borrowing in which the translator borrows an expression from
the source text by translating literally every part of the original elements. it can be in lexical or
in structural the system of the target text . Sometimes calques work, sometimes they don't.
examples:
Target language Source language
assurance qualité. Quality assurance
Breakfast Breakfast
désigner Designed to create
un ancien prisonnier. A former prisoner
location secret Secret location
marriage de convenance marriage of convenience
3. Literal Translation
Unlike the borrowing, the word-for-word or literal translation translates the word or the
expression literally. This option occasionally creates the frequently false impression that one
has avoided a lazy , A word-for-word translation can be used in some languages and not others
dependent on the sentence structure: In practice, literal translation occurs most commonly when
translating between two languages of the same family, such as French and Italian, and works
most efficiently when they also share the same culture. Despite seemingly limited scope of
applications, this procedure is among preferred ways of translating in those functional contexts
where more emphasis is laid on preserving the verbatim meaning of the original text than
attaining stylistic elegance, which is often the case with legal translation.
