What Translation Involves

Thanks perhaps in part to the sci-fi genre (yes, I’m looking at you, Star Trek), people can have somewhat unrealistic expectations of translation, and are often not clear about what translation involves. If you have been to the FAQ page on this website, you will know that when we talk about translation, we’re actually talking about working with the written word rather than the spoken word. You will also have learned about what is expected from translators in general if you have been to the Document Translation page. But how does translation actually work?

A translator’s job involves more than just translating, in the purest sense of the term – translators may need to carry out research on the topic or on the client’s usual writing style; contact the author to clarify any ambiguities in the text; carefully format the translated text to match the original; etc. For this particular blog article, however, we will restrict ourselves to the act of translation alone and, in looking at its most fundamental aspects, will get down to the core of what translation involves.

Traducción = Translation – Done! Easy, Right?

As a matter of fact, translation involves much more than looking at a word in the source language (i.e. the language being translated out of) and writing that same word in the target language (i.e. the language being translated into). It is not a word-by-word substitution game. Let’s look at a couple of simple sentences as examples.

1. A common French phrase is “J’ai mal à la tête.” If we were to take each French word and substitute it with its English equivalent – thus translating literally, word for word – we would end up with this English translation: “I have ache at the head.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t sound like a real English sentence at all. A native English speaker would be much more likely to say “I have a headache.”
2. Another good example is this sentence in Spanish: “Tengo miedo.” A literal English translation here would be “I have fear”; however, English speakers don’t talk about fear in this way, and so it sounds unnatural. Instead, we would say “I am afraid.”

Thus, we can see how a naturally translated sentence will not necessarily line up with its source sentence word for word. What translators really do, in essence, is take the meaning from the source text and come up with a way to say the same thing in a manner that sounds natural in the target language. This is one of the reasons why it is so important for translators to only work into their native languages: we know what sounds right in the language that we grew up speaking, and we know how people usually say things – i.e. the common phrases that are used – in that language. Therefore, we will be able to find natural-sounding phrases when translating.

“Isn’t it” or “Ain’t it”

The next step up from getting the same meaning across is getting that meaning across in the same way. Translators need to recreate the source text exactly, which means that in addition to finding phrases that have the same meaning, they also have to find ways of keeping the style and register of the source text.

Let’s take the following sentence in German as another example: “Entschuldigung, aber könnten Sie mir helfen?” This sentence is quite formal – someone is politely asking a stranger for help. We could get the same essential meaning across if we translated this as “Hey, can you help me out here?” in English; however, this sentence is extremely informal: the register we have used here isn’t even close to the register used in the original German. “Excuse me, but could you help me?” would be much closer. This simple example demonstrates how translators can’t just come up with phrases that mean the same general thing: they also have to come up with wording that matches the register and style of the original writing.

Same, but Different

In an odd way, staying true to a text while recreating it for another audience can sometimes mean making changes. For texts where the key goal is to achieve the same impact on the new target audience that the source text achieved on its original audience, translators may need to do things quite differently. A good example of a type of text that often requires this kind of treatment – that is, adaptation for a new audience in a different location, or localization – is advertisements. French advertisements, for instance, are often written in a rather poetic, flowery style, which works quite well with French-speaking audiences. English-speaking audiences, however, are accustomed to snappier, glossier jargon in their ads; thus, if a translator were to translate a French ad into English and keep the original style, it would not have as big of an impact on its new audience. Therefore, due to the existence of different expectations and cultural norms, translators sometimes need to come up with a target text that is quite different from the source in order to ultimately get the same meaning across in a similarly appealing way.

The same thing can happen with cultural taboos, even in non-advertising texts. If a source text contains something that would be unacceptable or offensive in the culture of the target text’s readers, then the translator needs to remove it and, if possible, replace it with something else that would have the same effect on the new audience that the source wording had on its original audience. It is the translator’s job to spot such problematic areas and to come up with a text that will keep the meaning and intended impact of the original, while at the same time achieving the desired connection with the new audience.

A Complex Task

These elements are merely the bare bones of translation, and they demonstrate why translating is not a simple, straightforward process, even in cases where the original text is perfectly clear and cleanly written (which texts are often not). They also demonstrate why it is important to opt for professional, qualified translators when having a document translated and, to tie in with the previous blog, Get the Gist? Machine vs. Human Translation, why humans are still better at producing accurate and effective translations than software.