Translation and Interpreting

• Also known as T&I

• Translation is going from one language to another in writing
• Interpreting is going from one language to another in speech

Source Text, Source Language

• The source text is the original text you are going to translate
• The source language is the language of the source text
• Often abbreviated as ST and SL

Target Text, Target Language

• The target text is the document the translator produces, the product
• The target language is the language of the target text
• Often abbreviated as TT and TL

Genre and Genre Conventions

• Genres are types or categories of texts
• Genres have conventions or rules that texts must adhere to
• Examples: business letters, tourism brochures, cookbooks, comics

3 Basic Language Functions

• Informative – provide information, present facts
• Vocative – influence the reader, make requests (appellative, persuasive)
• Expressive – express experiences, emotions, attitudes (artistic)
Karl Bühler (1879-1963)
Language Theorist

Equivalence Orientations
• Cognitive Equivalence – the content of the TT should match that of the ST
• Formal Equivalence – the form of the TT should match that of ST
 • Dynamic Equivalence – the reader experience of the TT should match that
of the ST reader (TT should have the “equivalent effect”)
Eugene Nida (1914-2011)
Linguist, Translation Theorist
Peter Newmark (1916-2011)
Translation Theorist

Register, Tone, and Style

• Register – the degree of formality of the language used
- Very formal
- Somewhat formal
- Informal
- Very informal
• Tone – the attitude the language used conveys about the topic
- Serious
- Optimistic
- Respectful
- Playful
- Ironic
• Style – the particular way in which a text, author, or speaker uses language
- Straightforward
- Transparent
- Complex
- Dense
- Generic
- Peculiar

Translation Approaches
• Description of the overall approach the translator adopted
• Translations are usually described as being literal or free
 • There are many other ways to talk about approaches
• In general, when people say literal translation they mean that the translator
was faithful to the source text and tried to reproduce it as closely as possible in the
target language (ST bias) – form over content
• When people say free translation they usually mean that the translator
focused on expressing the source text’s message in a way that is natural to target
language readers, taking lots of liberty with form (TL bias) – content over form

Translation Units or Segments

• Translation units or segments are the units of text that translators target for
equivalency
• Unit size can vary:
- Individual words
- Short phrases
- Thoughts or ideas
- Sentences
- Whole paragraphs
• In general, literal translation targets shorter units and free translation targets
longer segments

Translation Procedures
• Translation procedures are the specific operations translators perform to
produce equivalents for each unit they translate.
• There are many different translation procedures, including...
- Loanwords or borrowings (e.g. using the word feedback in a Spanish text)
- Standard translation (using the generally accepted equivalent)
- Shifts (e.g. replacing a noun with a verb)
- Direct translation (using the closest equivalent words and structure)
- Generalization (using a general term for a more specific word)
- Addition (introducing material not present in the ST, e.g. explanation)
 - Rearrangement (changing the order of phrases, clauses, or sentences)
Tools and Resources
• Professional translators use various traditional and online tools and
resources to increase their accuracy and efficiency
• Examples include:
- Computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools: term bases, translation
memories, MT
- Machine translation (MT), e.g. Google Translate
- Bilingual dictionaries and glossaries (print and online)
- Monolingual dictionaries (print and online)
- Search engines and websites (to research topics and confirm hunches)
- Image searches (to confirm understanding of terms)
- Parallel text aligners ([Link])
- Peer-to-peer language usage forums ([Link])

Hey hello everybody welcome to spanish 410 spanish translation with me

professor jolly i'm a professor of spanish head of the department of modern and
classical languages and your instructor in this course um so what i want to do is of
course welcome you to spanish 410 and this is going to be our initial video its title
is basic terms and concepts for talking about translation now what's this all about
um well it turns out the translation like any sort of industry or discipline has its
own terminology its own vocabulary and there are several terms and concepts that
i'm going to be talking about on day one or two of class and so you need to be
familiar with them so pay attention all right now i'm going to skip some obvious
things some terms you probably already know and we're going to focus on terms
you might not be familiar with in connection with the discipline or the industry of
translation and interpreting the definitions in this video are going to be brief on
purpose and sort of informal later on i'll give you some additional presentations or
readings and we'll dig a little bit deeper into these and other terms and concepts all
right that's pretty much it and of course we're going to be learning about these in
spanish as well this is going to kind of be a bilingual course out of necessity it's a
translation course so that's it pay close attention take notes rewind and review be
sure you come to class prepared to discuss these basic terms and concepts all right
let's get started all right so the first terms we're going to discuss today are
translation and interpreting also called tni as in the tni industry translation and
interpreting translation is when we go from one language to another in writing
while interpreting is going from one language to another in speech so try not to
confuse translation and interpreting translation is written interpreting is spoken
right our next basic set of terms are source text in source language now the source
text is the original text that you're going to translate from and the source language
is the language of the original text or the source text so these are often abbreviated
as st source text and sl source language so in this image i have is an example you
can see that the source language is english and the source text is part of the cdc
centers for disease control website so the source text is in english source language
is english all right now the flip side of that is the target text and the target language
so the target text is the document that the translator produces the product while the
target language is the language of the target text and so these abbreviations are tt
and tl and you'll see those used in this presentation and throughout the course t t t
sltl so again using the same source text we can see that the target text would be cdc
website in espanol and the target language is spanish another term or concept
you're going to hear me talk about a lot in the class is genre and genre conventions
so what's a genre right sometimes you hear people talk about musical genres or
film genres genres are just types or categories of texts or films or songs but in our
translation class remember writing we're going to talk about types of texts so a
genre is just a kind of text genres have conventions or rules that texts must adhere
to so to be a comic book the book has to have certain characteristics the language
is always used in a certain way the images are always used in a certain way right
has a certain range range of page numbers so everything about a comic book has to
adhere to the conventions of that genre or it doesn't belong to that genre so you see
some examples right if i ask you what's the genre of this text well it might be a
business letter it might be a tourism brochure it might be a cookbook it might be a
comic it might be a magazine advertis advertisement and so on so genre is a key
concept another thing we'll be discussing another set of terms and concepts we'll
discuss quite a bit when we're talking about how we analyze source texts before we
translate them are the three basic language functions the informative the vocative
and the expressive functions this was introduced by a language theorist named carl
buehler back in the early i'm guessing early 20th century and he said that all
language use can be boiled down to three primary or basic language functions so
anytime we're using language we're using it in one of these three ways using one of
the three basic functions the informative function is when we use language to
provide information to present facts the vocative or appellative or persuasive
function but we usually call it vocative is when we're using language to influence
the reader's behavior to make a request to try to convince the reader to do
something think about an advertisement or maybe a warning label or something
like that and finally expressive the expressive function its function is to use
language to express experiences emotions our attitude right what's inside us okay
so i sometimes call this the artistic function think about a personal letter or a poem
or a song lyric some other terms and concepts we'll use when we're talking about
strategizing and maybe deciding which translation approach to adopt that's on the
next slide i think our orientations now equivalence itself is an important concept in
translation because if you think about translating what we're trying to do is produce
a text in the target language that is the same it's equivalent it has equivalence or
correspondence at as many levels as possible these two theorists that you see on
this slide eugene nida and peter newmark very important in translation studies
they're the ones i credit for coming up with these three types of equivalence so
these are aspects of equivalence when we're going from source to target text that
we could focus on or maybe we focus on all three so i'll be talking about these a lot
in the class and so will you first one is cognitive equivalence that's equivalent
content so the fact the idea that the content of the target text should be the same or
correspond to the content of the source text that's a no-brainer in translation we
always want to communicate the same content and message what about formal
equivalence formal doesn't mean formal or informal use of language formal means
the forms and structures of the language form versus content so under formal
equivalence the idea is that the forms or structures the language of the target text
should match that of the source text so if i put them side by side and just glanced at
them they would look very similar just on the surface they would have formal or
structural equivalence that's ideal if you can attain it and then the the third type is
dynamic equivalence dynamic equivalence is the idea that the reader experience of
the target text should be the same as the reader experience of the source text in
other words the target text should have the equivalent effect so these are three
different types of equivalents that we can choose to emphasize or prioritize when
we translate okay the terms that we're looking at on this slide register tone and
style i like to think of them as sort of the byproducts of language use that we
perceive as readers but they're very important when we're analyzing a source text
but also when we're producing the target text register refers to how formal or
informal the language used in the text is is it very formal is it somewhat formal is it
very informal right how about the tone think about the tone the tone is the attitude
that the language used in the text conveys relative to its topic so this is a medical
brochure is the tone about vaccinations is it serious is it neutral is it playful that
would be weird right is it ironic so tone is attitude and finally style is the particular
way in which a text author or speaker uses language so you can characterize style
with words like oh that text has a straightforward style a transparent style or it's
more complex and dense or maybe it's just kind of a corporate generic style or
perhaps if you're reading a novel like something written by mark twain you can
identify a very individual or peculiar style so style is the way a text author or
speaker tends to use language or uses it in a specific text probably one of the most
important concepts when you talk about translation and get it all theoretical is the
idea of translation approaches now an approach what i mean by that is a
description of the overall approach that the translator adopted sometimes that's
thinking about it pre-translation sometimes that's post-translation looking back at
the product and saying wow this turned out more literal or more free than i
expected so translations are usually described as being you've heard this before
literal translations or free translations although there are many other ways to talk
about these approaches literal and free are the most classic traditional and they are
they are useful so what do they mean what does it mean when i say that's a literal
translation that's a free translation well in general when people say literal
translation they mean that the translator was faithful to the source text and tried to
reproduce it as closely as possible in this in the target language so in other words
the translator used source text bias everything's compared to the source text in in
terms of form and content trying to stay as close to the source text as possible so
form over content is another way to think about it or source text bias on the other
hand when people talk about free translation they usually mean that the translator
focused on expressing the message in the source text in a way that would be
natural sounding to target language readers that can often mean taking lots of
liberties with the target language itself the target text target language so in this
sense it's naturalness of content over form it's taking liberty with the source text
and source language so that it's more natural to target language readers so like i
said these are the two most kind of famous translation approaches i have an image
up here of the litv literal translation of the bible and there are other versions of the
bible that are more free translations now an idea that's closely related to the choice
of translation approach literal free or somewhere in between is that of translation
units or segments it this is pretty easy to understand a translation unit or segment is
just that part of a text that the translator focuses on when he or she is performing a
translation procedure and this unit size can vary it can be an individual word it can
be a short phrase like acquired assets in this graphic or the first quarter that's a
phrase that you're not going to break up that's a unit right it could be a thought or
an idea in a translation approach it's a little bit more free can be an entire sentence
so instead of saying i'm going to focus on an individual word i'm going to read that
sentence what's the thought or idea that sentence is expressing and i'm going to try
to capture that in a different sentence in the target language that would probably
correspond to a free translation approach or you might even do something like i'm
going to look at the whole paragraph what's that expressing and i'm going to
paraphrase it right which is an extreme extreme free approach so in general literal
translation approach targets shorter units and free translation targets longer
segments but the important thing is the translation unit or segment is that little part
of the text that the translator focuses on each time he or she is making a decision
about what to do so i alluded to translation procedures on the previous slide
translation procedures are different than approaches procedures are the specific
operations that translators perform to produce equivalents for each unit so it's
related to translation unit i'm looking at a unit how do i determine the equivalent
for that unit that's a translation procedure and there are lots i'm going to give you
guys a reading and another powerpoint presentation there's probably more than 25
or 30 different translation procedures that i've identified in my extensive research
but here are some examples right loanwords or borrowings so for example you
oftentimes in business texts that are in spanish or portuguese or japanese you'll find
words like feedback right english words that have been loaned into that language
and are being used or standard translation that's when i use the generally accepted
equivalent of a word shifts sometimes when i translate something from source to
target text it was a noun in the source text but i change it to a verb or an adverb or
an adjective in the target text to get that same idea across direct translation is is sort
of just localized literal translation right i see something a translation segment that's
three or four words and it works to translate it literally to use the closest equivalent
words and structures generalization is a procedure for individual words it's using a
more general term for a more specific word so imagine that i'm translating a
document for an auto manufacturer and i say suv instead of the specific make and
model that's a generalization in addition is when the translator inserts material
that's not present in the source text so for example if the source text references
something that's culturally specific i may have to add a few words to explain it to
my reader in the target language text and then just as a final example and
remember these are just examples of some specific procedures rearrangement
would be when to make the target text more clear or make more sense i might
change the order of phrases clauses or sentences that i find in the source text just
for clarity okay so these are examples of translation procedures that translators
apply as they're resolving individual translation problems all right and finally we'll
be talking quite a bit in class about different tools and resources so when i say tools
or resources right i'm referring to these types of things professional translators use
lots of traditional and online tools and resources to make their translations better
and to translate faster so for effectiveness accuracy and efficiency examples of the
tools that professional translators use are things called computer assisted
translation suites cat tools so computer assisted translation cat these are sweet
software suites like well we'll discuss them in class okay but they have multiple
tools like terminology bases translation memories and machine translation project
management all rolled up into one computer-assisted translation suite of software
machine translation right google translate believe it or not professional translators
rely on machine translation or la traducion automatica quite a bit bilingual
dictionaries and glossaries so obviously looking for the equivalent term in the other
language either in a broad dictionary or a more specific like a medical or a business
or a tech glossary there are monolingual dictionaries that are used to find out what
a term means in the in the source language sometimes we come across a term that
we don't know we want to make sure that we understand the term before we
translate it so we have to look it up in a monolingual dictionary bilingual
dictionaries usually don't have definitions they just tell us what the equivalent is uh
translators use search engines and websites extensively right whether it's to
research a topic you may the source text may be about something that you have
never dealt with in your entire life like hydroelective hydroelectric electricity
generators so you need to do some research even just to interpret the source text or
you may use a search engine or a website you come up with a hunch you think you
know what the equivalent is and you just want to confirm that in image search
third bullet from the bottom is very good for that make sure that the thing that i'm
saying corresponds to the picture we'll i'll show you examples of this in class
almost every time we meet parallel text aligners if you've ever used the website
[Link] you type in text and it searches for that text in documents that have
been translated so you can see how translators have translated those terms in the
past super helpful and finally language usage forums like [Link] you
might want to get onto a website and ask somebody i'm translating a text that uses
the term to make a difference right how do i say you know to make a difference in
spanish and then people will come and give you some help so these are examples
of the types of tools and resources that transitors use all the time and that i will be
teaching you how to use effectively and ethically