Translating and Editing Text

Submitted by: Divine Grace B. Lorenzo

Translating and Editing Text

Editing is the process of examining a text with the intention of improving the flow and quality of
writing. In other words, the process of checking and improving the copywriting of a
document. ... Proofreading implies checking a translated document against the original and
making sure that everything is correct.
Proponent of translation Theories

6 CONTEMPORARY THEORIES TO TRANSLATION

Today we’re going to get a little theoretical…after all, the blog of a translation agency should

also venture into the drylands of translation theory. Right? There are six main approaches within

contemporary translation theory: the sociolinguistic approach, the communicative approach, the

hermeneutic approach, the linguistic approach, the literary approach, and the semiotic approach.

Are you ready? Here we go…

1. THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

According to the sociolinguistic approach to translation, the social context defines what is and is

not translatable and what is or is not acceptable through selection, filtering and even censorship.

According to this perspective, a translator is inevitably the product of his or her society: our own

sociocultural background is present in everything we translate. This approach is associated with

the School of Tel Aviv and figures such as Annie Brisset, Even Zohar and Guideon Toury.

2. THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

This perspective is referred to as interpretive. Researchers like D. Seleskovitch and M. Lederer

developed what they called the “theory of sense,” mainly based on the experience of conference

interpreting. According to this perspective, meaning must be translated, not language. Language
is nothing more than a vehicle for the message and can even be an obstacle to understanding.

This explains why it is always better to deverbalize (instead of transcoding) when we translate.

3. THE HERMENEUTIC APPROACH

The hermeneutic approach is mainly based on the work of George Steiner, who believes that any

human communication is a translation. In his book After Babel he explains that translation is not

a science but an “exact art”: a true translator should be capable of becoming a writer in order to

capture what the author of the original text “means to say.”

4. THE LINGUISTIC APPROACH

Linguists like Vinay, Darbelnet, Austin, Vegliante, and Mounin, interested in language text,

structuralism, and pragmatics, also examined the process of translating. According to this

perspective, any translation (whether it’s a marketing translation, a medical translation, a legal

translation or another type of text) should be considered from the point of view of its

fundamental units; that is, the word, the syntagm and the sentence.

5. THE LITERARY APPROACH

According to the literary approach, a translation should not be considered a linguistic endeavor

but a literary one. Language has an “energy”:  this is manifested through words, which are the

result of experiencing a culture. This charge is what gives it strength and ultimately, meaning:

this is what the translation-writer should translate.

6. THE SEMIOTIC APPROACH

Semiotics is the science that studies signs and signification. Accordingly, in order for there to be

meaning there must be a collaboration between a sign, an object and an interpreter. Thus, from

the

perspective of semiotics, translation is thought of as a way of interpreting texts in which

encyclopedic content varies and each sociocultural context is unique.

REFERENCE: https://culturesconnection.com/6-contemporary-theories-to-translation/

History of translation

The history of translation has been a topic that has long been debated by scholars and historians,
though it is widely accepted that translation pre-dates the bible. The bible tells of different
languages as well as giving insight to the interaction of speakers from different areas. The need
for translation has been apparent since the earliest days of human interaction, whether it be for
emotional, trade or survival purposes. The demand for translation services has continued to
develop and is now more vital than ever, with businesses acknowledging the inability to expand
internationally or succeed in penetrating foreign markets without translating marketing material
and business documents.
Early History of Translation

The word ‘translation’ comes from a Latin term which means “to bring or carry across”. Another
relevant term comes from the Ancient Greek word of ‘metaphrasis’ which means “to speak
across” and from this, the term ‘metaphrase’ was born, which means a “word-for-word
translation”. These terms have been at the heart of theories relating to translation throughout
history and have given insight into when and where translation have been used throughout the
ages.

It is known that translation was carried out as early as the Mesopotamian era when the Sumerian
poem, Gilgamesh, was translated into Asian languages. This dates back to around the second
millennium BC. Other ancient translated works include those carried out by Buddhist monks
who translated Indian documents into Chinese. In later periods, Ancient Greek texts were also
translated by Roman poets and were adapted to create developed literary works for
entertainment. It is known that translation services were utilised in Rome by Cicero and Horace
and that these uses were continued through to the 17th century, where newer practices were
developed.

It is argued that the knowledge and findings of Greek academics was developed and understood
so widely thanks to the translation work of Arabic scholars. When the Greeks were conquered,
their works were taken in by Arabic scholars who translated them and created their own versions
of the scientific, entertainment and philosophical understandings. These Arabic versions were
later translated into Latin, during the Middle Ages, mostly throughout Spain and the resulting
works provided the foundations of Renaissance academics.
Religious Translation and Texts

The need for translation became greater with the development of religious texts and spiritual
theories. As religion developed, the desire to spread the word and encourage faith means that
religious texts needed to be available in multiple languages. One of the first translated religious
texts is known to have been that of the Old Testament which was translated into Greek in the 3rd
century BC. This translation refers to the ‘Septuagint’, which was a translation of the Hebrew
bible into Greek, with Septuagint coming from the Latin word ‘Septuaginta’, which means
seventy. This text is therefore often referred to the ‘Greek Old Testament’. Without the use of
our modern practices and tools, this translation was carried out by no less than 70 scholars who
painstakingly converted the text into Greek and this became the basis for future translations of
the bible in multiple languages.

Religion played such a critical role in translation development that the church even names Saint
Jerome as the patron saint of translation. Saint Jerome created a Latin bible in 4th century AD.
This bible became the predominant text used by the Roman Catholic Church. With the
introduction of Protestantism, the need to translate the bible and other religious texts into
European languages heightened, Through the rapid translation and distribution of the bible
during the Protestant Reformation, Christianity had two clear paths – Roman Catholicism or
Protestantism. One of the most clear differences between these two forms of the religion was the
disparity in texts and the differences between crucial words and passages of the bible.
Famous Translators Throughout Time
 

Translators have often been hidden characters, unnamed people who have paved the way for
some of the greatest contributions to the dissemination of ideas, knowledge and theories
throughout the ages. In some cases, working as a translator was incredibly dangerous and some
even lost their lives because of their work. This included famous translators such as William
Tyndale, who was executed in Holland in 1536 because he worked on translating the bible into
English. Other famous translators include:

Chinese monk Xuanzang who in 645 AD was credited with having translated 74 volumes on
Indian Buddhist scripts into Chinese.

Constance Garnett was a British translator who translated Russian classics including Tolstoy,
Chekhov, Turgenev and Gogol into English towards the end of the 19th Century.

Gregory Rabassa was an American literary translator who translated numerous Latin documents
into English throughout the 20th Century.
Modern Translation Practices and Understanding

Following on from the Industrial Revolution, the economy developed rapidly and evolved into a
machine with the potential for global success. New machinery allowed for swifter production of
texts and business related materials and this means that more time could be invested in evolving
a company and translating material to enter foreign markets. Since the 18th century, businesses
have benefitted from formalised translation services but the dawn of modern practice came with
the widespread introduction of the internet.

The internet has revolutionised the ability to access, translate and understand texts and
documents from all over the world, whether they be contemporary or historical pieces. Crucially,
the need to understand the culture of the original country and that of the target audience is further
enhanced by modern tools and practices. Although some instant translation services are capable
only of metaphase translation (literal word-for-word translation), specialist firms, platforms and
translators are able to translate texts and spoken word into multiple languages whilst observing
the relevance and culture of the target receiver

REFERENCE: https://www.kwintessential.co.uk/blog/general-interesttranslation/the-history-of-
translation

Eugene A. Nida (November 11, 1914 – August 25, 2011) was a linguist who developed

the dynamic-equivalence Bible-translationtheory and one of the founders of the modern

discipline of translation studies

Eugene Albert Nida was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on November 11, 1914. He became
a Christian at a young age, when he responded to the altar call at his church "to accept Christ as
my Saviour."[3]
He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California in 1936. After graduating he
attended Camp Wycliffe, where Bible translation theory was taught. He ministered for a short
time among the Tarahumara Indians in Chihuahua, Mexico, until health problems due to an
inadequate diet and the high altitude forced him to leave. Sometime in this period, Nida became
a founding charter member of Wycliffe Bible Translators, a related organization to the Summer
Institute of Linguistics.
In 1937, Nida undertook studies at the University of Southern California, where he obtained a
master's degree in New Testament Greek in 1939. In that same year he became interim pastor of
Calvary Church of Santa Ana, California following the resignation of its founding pastor.
[4]
 Despite his conservative background, in later years Nida became increasingly ecumenical and
New Evangelical[clarification needed] in his approach.[5]
In 1943, Nida received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan. He was
ordained as a Baptist minister. He married Althea Lucille Sprague in 1943 and settled in
Greenwich, Connecticut. Althea Sprague died in 1993. In 1997, he married María Elena
Fernandez-Miranda, a lawyer and diplomatic attache.
Nida retired in the early 1980s, although he continued to give lectures in universities all around
the world, and lived in Alpine, Arizona, USA ; Madrid, Spain and Brussels, Belgium [6]. He died
in Madrid on August 25, 2011, aged 96.[2]

Theories[edit]
Nida has been a pioneer in the fields of translation theory and linguistics.
His Ph.D. dissertation, A Synopsis of English Syntax, was the first full-scale analysis of a major
language according to the "immediate-constituent" theory. His textbook Morphology: The
Descriptive Analysis of Words was one of the major works of American Structuralism. It
remained the only thorough introduction to the field for decades and is still valuable for its many
examples and exercises.
His most notable contribution to translation theory is Dynamic Equivalence, also known as
Functional Equivalence. For more information, see "Dynamic and formal equivalence." Nida
also developed the componential analysis technique, which split words into their components to
help determine equivalence in translation (e.g. "bachelor" = male + unmarried). This is, perhaps,
not the best example of the technique, though it is the most well-known.
Nida's dynamic-equivalence theory is often held in opposition to the views of philologists who
maintain that an understanding of the source text (ST) can be achieved by assessing the inter-
animation of words on the page, and that meaning is self-contained within the text (i.e. much
more focused on achieving semantic equivalence).
This theory, along with other theories of correspondence in translating, are elaborated in his
essay Principles of Correspondence,[8] where Nida begins by asserting that given that "no two
languages are identical, either in the meanings given to corresponding symbols or in the ways in
which symbols are arranged in phrases and sentences, it stands to reason that there can be no
absolute correspondence between languages. Hence, there can be no fully exact
translations." [9] While the impact of a translation may be close to the original, there can be no
identity in detail.
Nida then sets forth three factors that must be taken into account in translating:

1. The nature of the message: in some messages the content is of primary consideration, and
in others the form must be given a higher priority.
2. The purpose of the author and of the translator: to give information on both form and
content; to aim at full intelligibility of the reader so he/she may understand the full
implications of the message; for imperative purposes that aim at not just understanding
the translation but also at ensuring no misunderstanding of the translation.
3. The type of audience: prospective audiences differ both in decoding ability and in
potential interest.
While reminding that while there are no such things as "identical equivalents" in translating,
Nida asserts that a translator must find the "closest natural equivalent." Here he distinguishes
between two approaches to the translation task and types of translation: Formal Equivalence (F-
E) and Dynamic Equivalence (D-E).
F-E focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. Such translations then
would be concerned with such correspondences as poetry to poetry, sentence to sentence,
and concept to concept. Such a formal orientation that typifies this type of structural equivalence
is called a "gloss translation" in which the translator aims at reproducing as literally and
meaningfully as possible the form and content of the original.
The principles governing an F-E translation would then be: reproduction of grammatical units;
consistency in word usage; and meanings in terms of the source context.
D-E on the other hand aims at complete "naturalness" of expression. A D-E translation is
directed primarily towards equivalence of response rather than equivalence of form. The
relationship between the target language receptor and message should be substantially the same
as that which existed between the original (source language) receptors and the message.
The principles governing a D-E translation then would be: conformance of a translation to the
receptor language and culture as a whole; and the translation must be in accordance with the
context of the message which involves the stylistic selection and arrangement of message
constituents.
Nida and Lawrence Venuti have proved that translation studies is a much more complex
discipline than may first appear, with the translator having to look beyond the text itself to
deconstruct on an intra-textual level and decode on a referential level—assessing culture-specific
items, idiom and figurative language to achieve an understanding of the source textand embark
upon creating a translation which not only transfers what words mean in a given context, but also
recreates the impact of the original text within the limits of the translator's own language system
(linked to this topic: George Steiner, the Hermeneutic Motion, pragmatics, field, tenor, mode and
the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary). For example, a statement that Jesus "met"
someone must be carefully translated into a language which distinguishes between "met for the
first time", "met habitually" and "encounter."

References[edit]

 Felber, Stefan. Kommunikative Bibelübersetzung. Eugene A. Nida und sein Modell der

dynamischen Äquivalenz, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2013, 2nd edition 2016, 481
pp. (contains comprehensive bibliography of Nida).
 Ma, H. J. 2003. A study of Nida’s translation theory. Beijing: Teaching and Research Press.
 Stine, Philip. 2005. Let the Words Be Written: The Lasting Influence of Eugene A. Nida. Brill
Academic Publishers.
 Stine, Philip. 2004. Eugene A. Nida: A Historical and Contemporary Assessment. The Bible
Translator 55.4:469-479.
 George, Calvin. The History of the Reina-Valera 1960 Spanish Bible, Morris Publishing,
2004. (Contains a lengthy chapter about Nida's life and religious beliefs) Still in print and
available
through https://web.archive.org/web/20080411033537/http://en.literaturabautista.com/node/
22
 Nida, Elena. Gene Nida: My Husband and my inspiration, Xulon Press, 2014.
 Nida, Eugene. “Principles of Correspondence”. The Translation Studies Reader. Ed.
Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004.
 Watt, Johnathan. 2005. The contributions of Eugene A. Nida to sociolinguistics. The Bible
Translator 56.1:19-28

ANNIE BRISSET
Annie Brisset, a member of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Professor of Translation

Studies and Discourse Theory at the School of Translation and Interpretation of the University of

Ottawa, Canada.[1]

Brisset has published extensively, and edited several academic articles and reviews in the area of
translation studies. Some of her publications are:

 A Sociocritique of Translation. Theatre and Alterity in Quebec;

 Poésie, cognition, traduction;
 « Traduire le texte dans son projet. Le littéralisme est soluble dans la poésie moderne :
Auden », in A. Brisset (éd.), TTR;
 « Clémence Royer, ou Darwin en colère », in J. Delisle (ed.), Portraits de traductrices,
Presses de l'U d'Ottawa, 2002, 173-203
 "Alterity in Translation : An Overview of Theories and Practices", in S. Petrilli (ed.);
 « Retraduire ou le corps changeant de la connaissance. Sur l'historicité de la traduction »,
Palimpsestes. Faut-il retraduire?;
 "Translation and Identity", in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, Londres/New
York, Routledge, 2004 [2000]
 « Le traducteur sujet du sens : conflit de représentations », in M. Lederer (éd »), Le sens en
traduction, Paris, Minard, 2006, 21-35
 « La notion de culture dans les manuels de traduction. Domaines allemand, anglais, coréen et
français ». Meta;
 Traduire la « création pure ». Altazor de Huidobro et la (dé)raison transformationniste,
Palimpsestes. Hommage à Paul Bensimon, no hors série,
 "Translation, theatre and society: Quebec's American dream"