Unit 10 basic transformations in translation

Main points:

10.1. The notion of transformations in translation

10.2. Classification of transformations in translation

10.3. Lexical transformations in translation

10.4. Grammatical transformations in translation

10.5. Lexico-grammatical transformations in translation 10.6. Buzzwords, weasel words and textspeak items as translation challenges

10.1. The notion of transformations in translation

Text analysis is an important first step in translator’s activity because it determines the tools, which translator is going to use to perform an equivalent (faithful) text rendering. Therefore translators, who work professionally, have to know basics of linguistic methodology of text analysis as the macro-sign of the relevant discourse, which includes structural, semantic, social, cultural and communicative (pragmatic) aspects.

Broadly speaking it is possible to speak about three stages in analyzing and translating texts: pre-translation text analysis (доперекладацький аналіз тексту), translation proper (or rather the process of translating in which transformations are analytically applied to textual items) and post-translation analysis (editing the translated text, comparing it with the original and proofreading it in order to get rid of mistakes) [Алексеева 2004; Комиссаров 2002]. However professional translators do not spend much time for the pre-translation stage (establishing the type of discourse the text belongs to, searching for unknown terminology or other peculiar lexical items). In fact, the most important and time-consuming stage is the process of translating, which by itself presupposes a good deal of analysis (choosing the transformation required by the context, looking for the best translation option, i.e. applying all possible strategies of translating). Editing the translated text is also important and time-consuming stage. It allows to get rid of mistakes, to minimize translation deformations and ensures that the translated text properly “fits” in the target language and culture. This stage is a kind of feedback and is essential for the “translation product” to be equivalent, adequate or faithful – whatever term is preferred by different schools off translation.

Thus, three stages of text analysis in translation or translation-oriented text analysis [Nord 2006] overlap to a great extent, which gives us all grounds to use Ukrainian term перекладацький аналіз тексту (Rus. переводческий анализ текста) as the one that covers all three stages [Цатурова, Каширина 2008; Каширина 2005].

Having analysed the text, a translator starts to transform the source language text, changing it so that it performs the same communicative function in the target language and culture. Therefore the overall aim of translation as a specific kind of interlingual and intercultural communication is in transforming the text so that the message produced by translator has the same effect upon the target language reader (listener) as it has upon the source language reader (listener). Translation is an informational process, which means that translator should transmit information as fully as possible. However, this can be achieved only if certain structural and semantic changes are introduced. These changes, which are caused by lexical and grammatical differences between languages, as well as by the differences between the respective cultures, are called transformations in translation.

The process of translation as means of transmitting information may be in the most general terms presented by the following scheme:

CULTURE 2

CULTURE 1

LANGUAGE 1 (SL) LANGUAGE 2 (TL)

TEXT 2

TEXT 1

TRANSLATION

(transformations)

For the sake of explaining this scheme, we may summarize that translation is a two-stage process of interlingual and intercultural communication when on the basis of analysed and transformed text in the SL a translator creates another text in the TL which substitutes the source text in the target language and culture. We may even argue that translating is an analytical process of inevitable applying translation transformations which is predetermined by the very nature of translation.