Translation strategies

Literal versus Free

Jakobson’s distinction between the translatable and the untranslatable

Early systematic attempts at defining translation:Faithfulness versus spirit and truth

Dolet’s five principles (1540):

1 the translator must perfectly understand the sense and material of the original author, although he should feel free to clarify obscurities;2 the translator should have perfect knowledge of both the SL and TL, so as not to lessen the majesty of the language;3 the translator should avoid word-for-word renderings;4 the translator should avoid Latinate and unusual forms;5 the translator should assemble and liaise words eloquently to avoid clumsiness.

‘La manière de bien tradurre d’une langue en aultre’

Cowley and ‘Imitation’

Attacks poetry that is converted faithfully and word for word . His approach is also to counter the loss of beauty in translation ‘with our wit or invention’ to create new beauty.

He proposes the term imitation for this very free method of interpreting.

The idea was that this method allowed the translator to reproduce the ‘spirit’ of the original.

‘Preface’ to Pindaric Odes, 1640

John Dryden

Reduced translation to three categories:

‘metaphrase’ = word-for-word and line-by line;

‘Paraphrase’: a translation that does not follow the words as strictly as an author’s sense. This was Dryden’s preferred method.

‘Imitation’ : abandoning both words and sense a vey free translation which is more or less an adaptation. This is very close to Cowley’s approach.

‘Preface’ Ovid’s Epistles 1680

John Dryden

metaphrase

‘Servile, literal’

‘Tis much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs’

‘Imitation’

Allows the translator to become more visible.

‘Does the greatest wrong … to the the memory and reputation of the dead’.

‘Preface’ Ovid’s Epistles 1680

Alexander Fraser Tytler’s ‘principles of translation’ .

His principles contrast with Drydens’ writer oriented description (Write as the author would have written had he known the TL)

Tyler defines a ‘good’ translation in TL-oriented terms:

Complete transcription of ideas;

‘Same’ style and ‘character as original’;

Translation should have all the ease of original

Essay on the Principles of Translation, 1797.

Valorization of the foreign

SchleiermacherAnd

Venuti

Friederich Schleiermacher

The real question according to Schleiermacher is how to bring the ST writer and TT reader together. He moves beyond the issues of

word-for word and sense-for sense; Literal, faithful and free translation, and considers there to be only two paths for the true

translator

Schleiermacher’s alternatives:

“Either the translator leaves the writer alone as much as possible and moves the reader towards the writing, or he [sic] leaves the reader alone as much as possible and moves the reader towards the reader.”

‘Alientating’ as opposed to ‘naturalizing’ translation methods.

Valorizing the foreign and transferring that into the TT.

Orienting towards the ST language and content of the TT.

Schleiermacher’s preferred strategy is the first. This entails not writing as the author would have done had he been German but rather “giving the reader the same impression that he as a German would receive in reading the works in the original language”.

Lawrence VenutiRe-thinking translation:

‘foreignisation’ and ‘domestication’

Venuti takes up Schleiermacher’s opposites

‘alienating’ and ‘naturalizing’ as

‘foreignisation’ and ‘domestication’.

‘abusive fidelity’Venuti recommends ‘abusive fidelity’ or ‘foreignisation’. By which he means seeks to reproduce those very features of the foreign text that ‘abuse’ or resist the prevailing forms in the receiving culture, thereby allowing the translator to be faithful to aspects in the ST.

Political implications of abusive fidelityThe kinds of translation techniques advocated by Venuti preserve important elements of the source text that are frequently smoothed over, elided and /or adapted to the point that they are no longer recognizable. As such they are diametrically opposed to approaches which favour cohesion, similarity, fluency and acceptability.

Venuti’s theory shows that the manipulation of translation in terms of faithfulness to some sort of essential core have resulted in vast distortions:

•foreign style, syntax sublated to appear the same as English:

•metaphors and images altered to fit an Anglo-American conceptual system,

•cultural values either omitted or adapted to fit TC ways of thinking,

•innovative forms made to appear as forms commonly practised in the US.