A TEXTBOOK OF

TRANSLATION

Peter Newmark

W
*MRtt

SHANGHAI FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION PRESS

CHAPTER 3

The Process of Translating

INTRODUCTION

My description of translating procedure is operational. It begins with choosing a

method of approach. Secondly, when we are translating, we translate with four levels
more or less consciously in mind: (1) the SL text level, the level of language, where we
begin and which we continually (but not continuously) go back to; (2) the referential
level, the level of objects and events, real or imaginary, which we progressively have to
visualise and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then
of the reproduction process; (3) the cohesive level, which is more general, and
grammatical, which traces the train of thought, the feeling tone (positive or negative)
and the various presuppositions of the SL text. This level encompasses both
comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which we may have
to adjust the language level; (4) the level of naturalness, of common language
appropriate to the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. Again, this is a generalised
level, which constitutes a band within which the translator works, unless he is
translating an authoritative text, in which case he sees the level of naturalness as a point
of reference to determine the deviation - if any - between the author's level he is
pursuing and the natural level. This level of naturalness is concerned only with
reproduction. Finally, there is the revision procedure, which may be concentrated or
staggered according to the situation. This procedure constitutes at least half of the
complete process.

THE RELATION OF TRANSLATING TO

TRANSLATION THEORY

The purpose of this theory of translating is to be of service to the translator. It is

designed to be a continuous link between translation theory and practice; it derives
from a translation theory framework which proposes that when the main purpose of the
text is to convey information and convince the reader, a method of translation must be
'natural*; if, on the other hand, the text is an expression of the peculiar innovative (or
cliched) and authoritative style of an author (whether it be a lyric, a

19
20 PRINCIPLES

prime minister's speech or a legal document), the translator's own version has to reflect any
deviation from a 'natural' style. The nature of naturalness is discussed in detail in my
exposition of the theory of translating below; 'naturalness' is both grammatical and lexical,
and is a touchstone at every level of a text, from paragraph to word, from title to punctuation.
The level of naturalness binds translation theory to translating theory, and translating
theory to practice. The remainder of my translating theory is in essence psychological - the
relationship between language and 'reality* (though all we know of 'reality' is mental images
and mental verbalising or thinking) - but it has practical applications.
If one accepts this theory of translating, there is no gap between translation theory and
practice. The theory of translating is based, via the level of naturalness, on a theory of
translation. Therefore one arrives at the scheme shown in Figure 2.

Three language functions

Expressive (authoritative) Informative Vocative (directive or persuasive'

T
Translation theory
z~
Semantic Communicative

, __ i ___
Translation theory frame of reference
Problem _________________ Contextual factors ______ Translation procedures

Theory of translating
Textual Referential
Cohesive Natural Levels

~l
translation practice Figure 2. A funt
tional theory of language

THE APPROACH

A translation is something that has to be discussed. In too many schools and universities, it is
still being imposed as an exercise in felicitous English style, where the warts of the original
are ignored. The teacher more or less imposes a fair copy which is a 'model' of his own
English rather than proposing a version for discussion and criticism by students, some of
whom will be brighter than he is.
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING 21

Translation is for discussion. Both in its referential and its pragmatic aspect, it has an
invariant factor, but this factor cannot be precisely defined since it depends on the
requirements and constraints exercised by one original on one translation. All one can do is
to produce an argument with translation examples to support it- Nothing is purely objective
or subjective- There are no cast-iron rules. Everything is more or less. There is an
assumption of 'normally* or 'usually' or 'commonly1 behind each well-established principle;
as I have stated earlier, qualifications such as "always1, 'never', 'must1 do not exist-there are
no absolutes.
Given these caveats, I am nevertheless going to take vou through my tentative
translating process.
There are two approaches to translating (and many compromises between them): (1)
you start translating sentence by sentence, for say the first paragraph or chapter, to get the
feel and the feeling tone of the text, and then you deliberately sit back, review the position,
and read the rest of the SL text; (2) you read the whole text two or three times, and find the
intention, register, tone, mark the difficult words and passages and start translating only
when you have taken your bearings.
Which of the two mernods you choose may depend on your temperament, or on
whether you trust your intuition (for the first method) or your powers of analysis (for the
second). Alternatively, you may think the first method more suitable for a literary and the
second for a technical or an institutional text. The danger of the first method is that it may
leave you with too much revision to do on the early part, and is therefore time-wasting. The
second method (usually preferable) can be mechanical; a transiational text analysis is useful
as a point of reference, but it should not inhibit the free play of your intuition. Alternatively,
you may prefer the first approach for a relatively easy text, the second for a harder one.
From the point of view of the translator, any scientific investigation, both statistical
and diagrammatic (some linguists and translation theorists make a fetish of diagrams,
scbemas and models), of what goes on in the brain (mind? nerves? cells?) during the process
of translating is remote and at present speculative. The contribution of psycholinguistics to
translation is limited: the positive, neutral or negative pragmatic effect of a word (e.g.
affecter, 'affect1, 'brutal', befremden, drame^ comedie, favoriser, denouement■>
extraordinaire', 'grandiose1, grandioznvi, 'potentate1, pontiff 'pretentious', *
arbitrary/arbitration', proposer^ exploit^ hauteur^ 'vaunt') e.g. Osgood's work on semantic
differentials is helpful, since the difference between 'positive' and 'negative1 (i.e. between the
writer's approval and his disapproval) is always critical to the interpretation of a text. The
heart of translation theory is translation problems (admitting that what is a problem to one
translator may not be to another); translation theory broadly consists of, and can be defined
as. a iarge number of generalisations of translation problems, A theoretical discussion of the
philosophy and the psychology of translation is remote from the translator's problems.
Whether you produce a statistical survey through questionnaires of what a hundred
translators think they think when they translate, or whether you follow what one translator
goes through, mental stage by mental stage. 1 do not see what use it is going to be to anyone
else, except perhaps as a corrective
22 PRINCIPLES

of freak methods - or ideas such as relying entirely on bilingual dictionaries. substituting

encyclopaedia descriptions for dictionary definitions, using the best-sounding synonyms for
literary translation, transferring all Graeco-Latin words, continuous paraphrasing, etc. But
there is never any point in scientifically proving the obvious.

THE TEXTUAL LEVEL

Working on the text level, you intuitively and automatically make certain 'conversions1; you
transpose the SL grammar (clauses and groups) into their 'ready1 TL equivalents and you
translate the lexical units into the sense that appears immediately appropriate in the context
of the sentence.
Your base level when you translate is the text. This is the level of the literal
translation of the source language into the target language, the level of the trans-lationese
you have to eliminate, but it also acts as a corrective of paraphrase and the parer-down of
synonyms. So a part of your mind may be on the text level whilst another is elsewhere.
Translation is pre-eminently the occupation in which you have to be thinking of several
things at the same time.

THE REFERENTIAL LEVEL

You should not read a sentence without seeing it on the referential level. Whether a text is
technical or literarv or institutional, you have to make up your mind. summarily and
continuously, what it is about, what it is in aid of. what the writer's peculiar slant on it is: say,
L'albumine et ses interactions medicamenteuses (It.: Ualhumina e le sue interazioni
medicamentose) - it may be the action of drugs on blood, the need to detect toxic effects, the
benefits of blood transfusion. Say, La pression quantitative - the large number of pupils in
schools, the demand for better-quality education, the need for suitable education for all. Say,
Recherches sur un facteur diureuque d'origine lymphatique - the attempt to find a substance
in the body fluid that promotes urine production, the disorders that inhibit the formation of
the substance, the attempts to isolate the substance. Always, you have to be able to
summarise in crude Jay terms, to simplify at rhe risk of over-simplification, to pierce the
jargon, to penetrate the fog of words. You get an abstraction like Ce phenomene s'avere; ce
phenomener exact pour cellules et fibres - referring to a tumour becoming so large that it
compresses the parenchyma next to it. Usually, a more specific reference is desirable in the
translation: the tumour's swelling, deterioration. etc. Thus your translation is some hint of a
compromise between the text and the facts.
For each sentence, when it is not clear, when there is an ambiguity, when the writing
is abstract or figurative, you have to ask yourself: What is actually happening here? and why?
For what reason, on what grounds, for what purpose? Can you
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING 23

see it in your mind? Can you visualise ii? If you cannot, you have to 'supplement1 the
linguistic level, the text level with the referential level, the factual level with the necessary
additional information (no more) from this level of reality, the facts of the matter. In real life,
what is the setting or scene, who are the actors or agents, what is the purpose? This may or
may not take you away temporarily from the words in the text. And certainly it is all LOO
easy to immerse yourself in language and to detach yourself from the reality, real or
imaginary, that is being described. Far more acutely than writers wrestling with only one
language, you become aware of the awful gap between words and objects, sentences and
actions (or processes'.. grammar and moods (or attitudes). You have to gain perspective
{distacco, recul'Aa stand back from the language and have an image of the reality behind the
text, a reality for which you, and not the author (unless it is an expressive or an authoritative
text), are responsible and liable.
The referential goes hand in hand with the textual level. All languages have
polysemous words and structures which can be finally solved only on the referential level,
beginning with a few multi-purpose, overloaded prepositions and conjunctions, through
dangling participles ('reading the paper, the dog barked loudly') to general words. The
referential level, where you mentally sort out the text, is built up out of, based on, the
clarification of all linguistic difficulties and, where appropriate, supplementary information
from the 'encyclopaedia' - my symbol for any work of reference or textbook. (Thus in pour le
passage de Flore, you find that Flore/Flora was an Italic goddess of flowers and gardens. As
it is in Claudel you translate: 'for the goddess Flora to pass' and leave the rest to the reader.)
You build up the referential picture in your mind when you transform the SL into the TL text;
and, being a professional, you are responsible for the truth of this picture.
Does this mean, as Seleskovitch claims, that lthe (SL) words disappear' or that you
l
deverbalize the concepts' (Delisle)? Not at all, you are working continuously on two levels,
the real and the linguistic, life and language, reference and sense, but you write, you
'compose1, on the linguistic level, where your job is to achieve the greatest possible
correspondence, referentially and pragmatically, with the words and sentences of the SI- text.
However tempting it is to remain on that simpler, usually simplified layman's level of reality
(the message and its function^ you have to force yourself back, in as far as the readership can
stand it, into the particularities of the source language meaning-

THE COHESIVE LEVEL

Beyond the second factual level of translating, there is a third, generalised, level linking the
first and the second level, which you have to bear in mind. This is the 'cohesive' level; it
follows both the structure and the moods of the text: the structure through the connective
words (conjunctions, enumerations, reiterations, definite article, general words, refetential
synonyms, punctuation marks) linking the sentences, usually proceeding from known
information (theme) to new infor-
 24 PRINCIPLES

mation (rhemc; proposition, opposition, continuation, reiteration, opposition, conclusion - for

instance - or thesis, antithesis, svnthesis. Thus the structure follows the train of thought;
determines, say, the 'direction1 afd'ailleurs ('besides1, 'further1, 'anyway') in a text, ensures
that a colon has a sequel, that ulterieur has a later reference; that there is a sequence of time,
space and logic in the text.
The second factor in the cohesive level is mood. Again, this can be shown as a
dialectical factor moving between positive and negative, emotive and neutral. It means
tracing the thread of a text through its value-laden and value-free passages which may be
expressed by objects or nouns (Margaret Masterman (1982) has shown how a text alternates
between 'help1 and 'disaster'), as well as adjectives or qualities. You have to spot the
difference between positive and neutral in, say, 'appreciate' and 'evaluate'; "awesome 1 and
'amazing1; 'tidy1 and 'ordered'; sauber andraVi; ^passed away1 (indicating the value of the
person) and *died\ Similarly you have to spot differences between negative and neutral in
say 'potentate' and 'ruler1, These differences are often delicate, particularly near the centre,
where most languages have words like 'fair', 'moderate1, mafiig, passable, assez bon whose
value cannot always be determined in the context.
My third level, this attempt to follow the thought through the connectives and the
feeling tone, and the emotion through value-laden or value-free expressions, is, admittedly,
only tentative, but it may determine the difference between a humdrum or misleading
translation and a good one. This cohesive level is a regulator, it secures coherence, it adjusts
emphasis. At this level, you reconsider the lengths of paragraphs and sentences, the
formulation of the title; the tone of the conclusion (e.g. the appropriateness of a tout prendre,
en definitive (often tricky), en fin de compte, enfini}), a la fin, en sommey en tout etat de
cause to summarise an argument at the beginning of a final sentence). This is where the
findings of discourse analysis are pertinent.

THE LEVEL OF NATURALNESS

With all that, for all texts (except the ones you know- are *udiT or badly written but
authoritative, innovatory or 'special1, e.g., where a writer has a peculiar way of writing
which has to be reproduced - so for philosophy, Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl; so for fiction any
surrealist, baroque, and certain Romantic writers) - for the vast majority of texts, you have to
ensure:: a; thai your translation makes sense; ■b^ that it reads naturally, that it is written in
ordinary language, the common grammar, idioms and words that meet that kind of situation.
Normally, vou can only do this by temporarily disengaging yourself from the SL text, by
reading your own translation as though no original existed. You get a piece like: Vne
doctrine nee dans une fraction dtt cierge de VAmenque latine qui fotwnrte sous diver ses
plumes et dans diverses chapelles el qui connait dejd un debut d application autontatre sous
la tutelle de I'Etat. <L*Express, July 1985.) The passage has various misleading cognates,
and vou can reduce it to sense bv gradually eliminating all the primary senses ijraction,
THE ANALYSIS OF A TEST 25

nee, plumes, ckapelles, connaii) to: LA doctrine originating amongst a fraction of the clergy
of Latin America which proliferates among various writers and in various coteries and which
already experiences the beginnings of an authoritarian application under the tutelage of the
State'.
Now you still have to make that passage sound natural, which will usually depend on
the degree of formality (see p. 14) you have decided on for the whole text. But you might
consider: lA doctrine originating in a group of Latin American clergy and proliferating
among various writers and coteries, which is now just beginning to be put into practice in an
authoritarian fashion under the auspices of the State' (note that dtija often translates as 'now'),
A word on 'naturalness1. A translation of serious innovative writing (maybe Rabelais,
Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, maybe Hegel, Kant, maybe any authority) may not sound
natural, may not be natural to you, though if it is good it is likely to become more so with
repeated readings:

The funnel unravels an enormous mass of black smoke like a plait of horsehair being
unwound,

La ckeminie dfrvide une enormefumee noire, paredle a une tresse de cnn qu'on detord.
(G. F. Ramuz/Leretourdumort\fromM?u^/te$,i

A still new patient, a thin and quiet person, who had found a place with his equally
thin and quiet fiancee at the good Russian Table, proved, just when the meal was in
full swing, to be epileptic, as he suffered an extreme attack of that type, with a cry
whose demonic and inhuman character has often been described, fell heavily on to the
floor and struck around with his arms and legs next to his chair with the most ghastly
contortions.

Ein noch neuer Patient, ein magerer und sailer Mensch, der mil seiner ebenfalls mageren und
stillen Braut am Guten Russentisch Platz gefunden hatte, envies sichy da eben das Essen in
vollem Gang wart ah epileptisch indent et einen krassen An/all dieser Art erlitt, mil jenem
Schrei dessen ddmonischer und aussermenschlicher Charackier oft geschildert warden ist> zu
Boden siiirzte undneben seinem Stuhl unterden scheusslichsten Verrenkungen milArmen und
Beinen um sick schlug.
fThomasMann, Der Zauberberg. <

You may find both these sentences unnatural- Yet, in spite of numerous lexical
inadequacies (we have no word for mager nor any as vivid as schildern, and few parallel
sound effects) this is what Ramuz and Thomas Mann wrote, and we cannot change that,
When you are faced with an innovatory expressive text, you have to try to gauge the
degree of its deviation from naturalness, from ordinary language and reflect this degree in
your translation. Thus in translating any type of text you have to sense 'naturalness', usually
for the purpose of reproducing, sometimes for the purpose of deviating from naturalness. In
a serious expressive text, in the sentence: ilpromenait son regard bleu sur la petite pelause,
'son regard bleu* has to be translated as 'his blue gaze', which is a deviation from the normal
or natural lesyeux bleus, 'his
26 PRINCIPLES

blue eyes1. Again Si le regard du pasteur se promenait sur la pelouse, etait-ce pour jouir de
la parfaite plenitude verte ou pour y trouver des idees (Drieu la Rochclle) is translated as
something like: Tf the pastor's gaze ran over the lawn, was it lo enjoy its perfect green
fullness, or to find ideas1, rather than 'Whenever the pastor cast a glance over the lawn it was
either to enjoy its perfect green richness, or to find ideas in it\
Again, son visage etait mauve, 'his face was mauve, sein Gesicht v:ar mauve
imalvenfarhen) are virtually precise translation equivalents. 'Mauve* is one of the few
secondary colours without connotations l though in France it is the second colour of
mourning, 'his face was deathly mauve' would be merely comic), and normally, like 'beige',
associated with dress - compare a mauve woman, a violet woman {'shrinking violet1?), but a
scarlet woman is different. In the 'mauve1 example, a retreat from the unnatural 'mauve' to
the natural 'blue1 would only be justified if the SL text was both 'anonymous 1 and poorly
written.
You have to bear in mind that the level of naturalness of natural usage is grammatical
as well as lexical (i.e., the most frequent syntactic structures, idioms and words that are
likely to be appropriately found in that kind of stylistic context), and, through appropriate
sentence connectives, may extend to the entire text,
In all 'communicative translation', whether you are translating an informa^ tive text, a
notice or an advert, 'naturalness' is essential. That is why you cannot translate properly if the
TL is not your language of habitual usage. That is why you so often have to detach yourself
mentally from the SL text; why, if there is time, you should come back to your version after
an interval. You have to ask yourself for others): Would you see this, would you ever see
this, in The Times, The Economist (watch that Time-Life-^ piegel style), the British Medical
Journal, as a notice, on the back of a board game, on an appliance, in a textbook, in a
children's book? Is it usage, is it common usage in that kind of writing? How frequent is it?
Do not ask yourself: is it English? There is more English than the patriots and the purists and
the chauvinists are aware of.
Naturalness is easily defined, not so easy to be concrete about. Natural usage
comprises a variety of idioms or styles or registers determined primarily by the 'setting1 of
the text, i.e. where it is typically published or found, secondarily by the author, topic and
readership, all of whom are usually dependent on the setting. It may even appear to be quite
'unnatural1, e.g, take any article in Foreign Trade Moscow): 'To put it figuratively, foreign
trade has become an important artery in the blood circulation of the Soviet Union's economic
organism', or any other exariple of Soviet bureaucratic jargon; on the whole this might
occasionally be tactfully clarified but it should be translated 'straight 1 as the natural language
of participants in that setting.
Natural usage, then, must be distinguished from 'ordinary language 1, the plain
non-technical idiom used by Oxford philosophers for (philosophical explanation, and 'basic'
language, which is somewhere between formal and informal, is easily understood^ and is
constructed from a language's most frequently used syntactic structures and words - basic
language is the nucleus of a language produced naturally. All three varieties - natural,
ordinary and basic - are
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING 21

formed exclusively from modern language. However, unnatural translation is marked

by interference, primarily from the SL text, possibly from a third language known to
the translator including his own, if it is not the target language. 'Natural 1 translation can
be contrasted with 'casual' language (Voegelin), where word order, syntactic structures,
collocations and words are predictable. You have to pay special attention to:
(1) Word order. In all languages, adverbs and adverbials are the most mobile
components of a sentence, and their placing often indicates the degree of
emphasis on what is the new information (rheme) as well as naturalness. They
are the most delicate indicator of naturalness:
He regularly sees me on Tuesdays. (Stress on ^regularly1.)
He sees me regularly on Tuesdays. (No stress.)
On Tuesdays he sees me regularly. (Stress on 'Tuesdays',)
(2) Common structures can be made unnatural by silly one-to-one translation from
any language, e.g.:
(a) Athanogore put his arm under that of {sous celuide) the young man: ('under
the young man's1),
(b) After having given his meter a satisfied glance {apres avoir lance): ('after
giving1).
Both these translations are by English students.
(c) The packaging having {etant muni de) a sufficiently clear label, the
cider vinegar consumer could not confuse it with , . . : ('as the packaging
had. . .').
(3) Cognate words. Both in West and East, thousands of words are drawing nearer to
each other in meaning. Many sound natural when you transfer them, and may still
have the wrong meaning: 'The book is actually in print' (Le livre est actuellement
sous presse). Many more sound odd when you transfer them, and are wrong -
avecy sans supplement, le tome VII ^ 'with, without a supplement, Vol.7' ('without
extra charge')- Thousands sound natural, have the same meaning, are right.
(4) The appropriateness of gerunds, infinitives, verb-nouns (cf. lthe establishment of,
'establishing', 'the establishing of,* to establish*).
(5) Lexically, perhaps the most common symptom of unnaturalness is slightly
old-fashioned, now rather 'refined', or 'elevated1 usage of words and idioms
possibly originating in bilingual dictionaries, e.g.
It fit ses necessity's: 'He relieved nature.'
Je m'en separe avec beaucoup de peine: Tin sorry to pan with it.1
ErstraubtesichmitHandenundFussen: 4He defended himself tooth and nail.'

Note (a) the fact that the SL expression is now old-fashioned or refined is
irrelevant, since you translate into the modern target language; (b) however, if
such expressions appear in dialogue, and are spoken (typically or say) by
middle-aged or elderly characters, then a correspondingly 'refined* translation
28 PRINCIPLES

is appropriate; (c) naturalness has a solid core of agreement, but the periphery is a taste area,
and the subject of violent, futile dispute among informants, who will claim that it is a
subjective matter, pure intuition; but it is not so. If you are a translator, check with three
informants if you can. If you are a translation teacher, welcome an SL informant to help you
decide on the naturalness or currency (there is no difference), therefore degree of frequency
of an SL expression. (6) Other 'obvious' areas of interference, and therefore unnaturalness,
are in the use of the articles; progressive tenses; noun-compounding; collocations; the
currency of idioms and metaphors; aspectual features of verbs; infinitives.
How do you get a feel for naturalness, both as a foreigner and as a native speaker?
The too obvious answer is to read representative texts and talk with representative TL
speakers (failing which, representative TV and radio) - and to get yourself fearlessly
corrected. Beware of books of idioms - they rarely distinguish between what is current (e.g,
'keep my head above water') and what is dead (e.g. Ldead as a door nail'),
There is a natural tendency to merge three of the senses of the word 'idiom': (a) a
group of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of their constituent
words (e.g. dog in the manger; Spielverderber; Vempecheur de tourner en rond\ (b) the
linguistic usage that is natural to native speakers of a language; -c)the characteristic
vocabulary or usage of a people. {Elle avail frappe a la bonne pone. {Qat crestdu franqais\)
when the original was merely Elie avail Irouve la solution ('She had found the solution'),
which is also perfectly good French.) The danger of this procedure is that it tends to devalue
literal language at the expense of 'idiomatic' language, as though it were unnatural. If
anything, the reverse is the case. Certainly, idiomatic language can, being metaphor, be more
pithy and vivid than literal language, but it can also be more conventional, fluctuate with
fashion, and become archaic and refined ('he was like a cat on a hot tin roof) (swr des
charbons ardents; wie auf glukenden Kohlen sitzen), and, above all, it can be a way of
avoiding the (literal) truth. In translating idiomatic into idiomatic language, it is particularly
difficult to match equivalence of meaning with equivalence of frequency.
Check and cross-check words and expressions in an up-to-date dictionary (Longmans,
Collins, COD)- Note any word you are suspicious of. Remember, your mind is furnished
with thousands of words and proper names that you half take for granted, that you seem to
have known all your life, and that you do not properly know the meaning of. You have to
start checking them. Look up proper names as frequently as words: say you get Dax, cite de
peiites H.L.M. - lDax, a small council flat estate' may sound natural, but looking up Dax will
show you it is incorrect, it must be 'Dax, a town of small council flats' - always assuming th
at * council flat' is good enough for the reader.
Naturalness is not something you wait to acquire by instinct. You work towards it by
small progressive stages, working from the most common to the less common features, like
anything else rationally, even if you never quite attain it.
There is no universal naturalness. Naturalness depends on the relationship
THE PROCESS OF TRANSI JVTING 29

between the writer and the readership and the topic or situation. What is natural in one
situation may be unnatural in another, but everyone has a natural, 'neutral' language where
spoken and informal written language more or less coincide. It is rather easy to confuse
naturalness with: (a) a colloquial style; (b) a succession of diched idioms, which some,
particularly expatriate teachers, think is the heart of the language; (c) jargon; fd) formal
language. I can only give indications:
(avantwut)(¥)
(a) first of all
(b) before you can say Jack Robinson
(c) in the first instance
(d) primarily plus
oumoins (F)
(a) more or less
(b) give or take
(c) within the parameter of an approximation
(d) approximately

COMBINING THE FOUR LEVELS

Kumistikky tour deforce, *feat of skill', dimosttazione di virtuosismo: summarising the

process of translating, I am suggesting that you keep in parallel the four levels - the textual,
the referential, the cohesive, the natural: they are distinct from but frequently impinge on and
may be in conflict with each other. Your first and last level is the text; then you have to
continually bear in mind the level of reality (which may be simulated, i.e, imagined, as well
as real), but you let it filter into the text only when this is necessary to complete or secure the
readership's understanding of the text, and then normally only within informative and
vocative texts. As regards the level of naturalness, you translate informative and vocative
texts on this level irrespective of the naturalness of the original, bearing in mind that
naturalness in, say, formal texts is quite different from naturalness in colloquial texts. For
expressive and authoritative texts, however, you keep to a natural level only if the original is
written in ordinary language; if the original is linguistically or stylistically innovative, you
should aim at a corresponding degree of innovation, representing the degree of deviation
from naturalness, in your translation — ironically, even when translating these innovative
texts, their natural level remains as a point of reference. For sineeVite explosive, 'impassioned,
enthusiastic, intense or violent, sincerity' may be natural, but nncerite'explosive is what the
text, a serious novel, says, so 'explosive sincerity' is what you have to write, whether you like
it or not (you will get accustomed toix,ons'y fait a tout)-unless? of course, you maintain (I
disagree) that the figurative sense of explosif {temperament explosif) has a wider currency
than the figurative sense of 'explosive1 Can explosive temperament'), when you are justified
in translating explosif by another word you claim comes within its semantic range ('fiery
sincerity1?).
30 PRINCIPLES

Paradoxically, it is at the 'naturalness* rather than the 'reality1 stage of translating that
accuracy becomes most important - therefore at the final stage. When you (reluctantly!)
realise that a literal translation will not don that it is cither unnatural or out of place, there is a
great temptation to produce an elegant variation simply because it sounds right or nice; say,
for Si mince, si depourvu de chair, qu'&n est bien oblige de comprendre les petits copains
feroces de la communale, qui Font surnomme Baton. (Bazin, L'Eglise verte.) You translate:
'So thin, so deprived of flesh that you really can't blame his spiteful little friends at the local
primary school who have nicknamed him "Stick"/ Here the main trouble is 'spiteful'
for/proa's: 'spiteful' simply isn't in the word feroce, it will not stretch that far and it is
unnecessary. The pragmatic (not the referential) component of copaxn is missed (but 'pals' or
'mates' won't fit). On est oblige is stretched a little too far, whilst depourvu de is deceptive, it
is such a common construction that even 'lacking in' is a little 'refined' or elevated. I would
suggest: 'So thin, so fleshless that you have to show understanding for his fierce (alt.
'ferocious') little friends at the local primary school, who have nicknamed him "Stick". *
This is a stab at accuracy as well as naturalness, and in the case of the on est oblige de
comprendre, it is not at the colloquial level of the first translation, but one could maintain
that the French is not racy or colloquial either. Admittedly, except for technical terms and for
well-used words for culturally overlapping familiar objects and actions, accuracy in
translation lies normally within certain narrow ranges of words and structures, certain
linguistic limits. It is not so precise as precise, it is not 'this word and no other'. It is not an
absolute (there are no absolutes in translation). It represents the maximum degree of
correspondence, referentially and pragmatically, between, on the one hand, the text as a
whole and its various units of translation (ranging usually from word to sentence) and, on the
other, the extralinguistic 'reality', which may be the world of reality or of the mind.
Admittedly it is harder to say what is accurate than what is inaccurate - translation is like
love; I do not know what it is but I think I know -vhat it is not - but there is always the
rappel a Vordre> usually to bring you back to a close translation, and at least to show you
there is a point beyond which you can't go.

THE UNIT OF TRANSLATING

Normally you translate sentence by sentence (not breath-group by breath-group), running the
risk of not paying enough attention to the sentence-joins. If the translation of a sentence has
no problems, it is based firmly on literal translation (the literal translation of comprihensif is
'understanding1 and of versatile, 'fieWe'), plus virtually automatic and spontaneous
transpositions and shifts, changes in word order etc. Thus:

MBt arrets a Pirigueux le 13 fforier, observe aeiuellemeni une greve de la farm.

MB, who was arrested in Perigueux on 13th February, is at present observing a hunger
strike.
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLAIING 31

The first sign of a translation problem is where these automatic procedures from language to
language, apparently without intercession of thought (scornfully referred to as transcodage
by the ESIT School of Paris), are not adequate. Then comes the struggle between the words
in the SL - it may be one word like 'sleazy', it may be a collocation like la dark horse1, it may
be a structure like 'the country's government' (who governs what?), it may be a referential,
cultural or idiolectal problem - in any event, the mental struggle between the SL words and
the TL thought then begins- How do you conduct this struggle? Maybe if you are an
interpreter, a natural communicator (I write half-heartedly), you try to forget the SL words,
you deverbalise, you produce independent thought, you take the message first, and then
perhaps bring rhe SL words in. If you are like me, you never forget the SL words, they are
always the point of departure; you create, you interpret on the basis of these words.
You abandon the SL text - literal translation if you like (which, for the purpose of this
argument, I couple with mandatory or virtually mandatory shifts and word-order changes)
only when its use makes the translation refercntially and pragmatically inaccurate, when it is
unnatural, when it will not work. By rule of thumb you know literal translation is likely to
work best and most with written, prosy? semi-formal, non-literary language, and also with
innovative language; worst and least with ordinary spoken idiomatic language. Further, it is
more often effectively used than most writers on translation, from Cicero to Nida and
Neubert, (but not Wilss) lead you to believe.
Since the sentence is the basic unit of thought, presenting an object and what it does,
is, or is affected by, so the sentence is, in the first instance, your unit of translation, even
though you may later find many SL and TL correspondences within that sentence. Primarily,
you translate by the sentence, and in each sentence, it is the object and what happens to it
that you sort out first. Further, if the object has been previously mentioned, or it is the main
theme, you put it in the early part of the sentence, whilst you put the new information at the
end, where it normally gets most stress:

Die Vignette hatie Thonualdten 1805 in Rom ennvorfen.

The vignette was designed by Thorwaldsen in 1805 in Rome.

Your problem is normally how to make sense of a difficult sentence. Usually you
only have trouble with grammar in a long complicated sentence, often weighed down by a
series of word-groups depending on verb-nouns. Grammar being more versatile than lexis,
you can render a sentence like the following in many versions:

1,'ahohtion de ce qui subsistmt des tutelles et la reorganisation du contrdle de legality

notamment par la creation des chambres rdgionales des comptes, le transfer! aux presidents
dyassemblies dehberantes de IQ fonaion executive, la creation de regions de plein exerace,
Vexiensicm de la capaciti d"int?rvention economique des collectivites territoriales, le transfer:
par blocs aux differentes categories de collectivites de competences anterieurement exercees par
VEtai, le transfert aux mimes collectivity des ressources d'F.iai correspondanfes, I'introduc-
32 PRINUP1 KS

tion de particulansmes dans la legislation, la creation d'une foncnon publique temtoriaie,

Fadaptation des rigles anterieures de deconcentration aux nouveaux rapports enire Etat et
col lee twites locales am cree une effervescence instuutionnelle comma noire administration
locale n'en avaitpas ctmnue depuis un siecle,
(Mr Duverger> Les Institutions francaises. 1

You can either plough through this sentence, keeping roughly to the French grammar
and keeping the reader guessing, or you can make compromises, or, at the other end of the
spectrum, in order to clarify the sentence as far as possible, you can try:

The following measures have profoundly shaken French institutions in a way that has
not been known in local government for a century: what has remained of government
supervision has been abolished; control of procedural legality has been reorganised
and regional audit offices established; executive power~has been transferred to the
chairmen of deliberative assemblies; regions with full powers have been created:
powers of economic intervention have been extended to regional and local authorities;
powers previously exercised by the State have been transferred in complete stages to
the various types of authorities; corresponding State resources have been transferred
to these authorities: specific local characteristics have been introduced into legislation;
a territorial civil service has been created and previous devolution regulations have
been adapted to the new relations between the State and the local authorities.

The above translation has converted a dozen verb-nouns into verbs, which goes
against the noun-forming tendency of most languages but perhaps clarifies the sentence.
Below the sentence, you go to clauses, both finite and non-finite, which, if you are
experienced, you tend to recast intuitively (see Chapter 8 on shifts or transpositions) as in the
previous long sentence, unless you are faced with an obscure or ambiguous sentence. Within
the clause, you may take next the two obviously cohesive types of collocations,
adjective-plus-noun or verb-plus-object, or the various groups that are less con text-bound, (I
think Masterman's breath-group units may be more applicable to interpreters than to
translators,)
Other difficulties with grammar are usually due to the use of archaic, little used,
ambiguously placed or faulty structures. You should bear in mind T however, that if long
sentences and complicated structures are an essential part of the text, and are characteristic
of the author rather than of the norms of the source language, you should reproduce a
corresponding deviation from the target language norms in your own version (as in Proust)-

THE TRANSLATION OF LEXIS

However, the chief difficulties in translating are lexical, not grammatical - i.e. words,
collocations and fixed phrases or idioms; these include neologisms and 'unfindabie' words,
which I deal with separately.
THE PROCESS OK TRAMS!.ATJNG 33

Difficulties with words are of two kinds: (a) you do not understand them; (b)
you find them hard to translate.
If you cannot understand a word, h may be because all its possible meanings are
not known to you, or because its meaning is determined by its unusual collocation or a
reference elsewhere in the text.
We have to bear in mind that many common nouns have four types of meaning:
(a) physical or material, (b) figurative, (c) Technical, (d) colloquial; thus:

Physical Figurative Technical Colloquial

maison house family home (a) home-made (a) first-rate

(b) firm (b) tremendous
Element dement (a) individual element, cell (a) (at) home
(b) component {dans son)
(c) faith
(d) principle
poire pear fa) pear-shaped (b) (a) switch (a) sucker
quality of a pear (b) syringe (b) face
(juiciness)

metier job (a) skill loom (a) (man)

occupation (b) experience (b) my line
trade
Zug pull fa) procession (a) platoon (a) streak
tug (b) feature (b) groove (b) tendency
draught (weapon)
(c) stop (organ)

Pfeife whistle tune pipe (organ) wash-out

The first thing to say about this diagram is that it is schematic, and that the
colloquial meanings are tied to collocations or fixed phrases. Secondly, the technical
meanings are often the worst translation traps (take enjoliveur, not 'prettifying* but
'hub cap') since you expect technical terms to be monosemous, i,e. have one meaning
only-a widespread illusion, (Admittedly, some of the technical terms mentioned are
'familiar alternatives1, and others are often compounded with their classifiers, e.g.
Orgelzug7 Orgelpfeife.)
My next point is that most nouns, verbs or adjectives can be used figuratively
and therefore can have figurative meanings - the more common the word, the more
contagious and accessible the figurative meanings. If we are desperate, we have to test
any sentence for a figurative meaning e.g., 'The man loved his garden 1. The garden
may symbolise privacy, beauty, fertility, simple hard work, sexual bliss, etc,
Other possible solutions to the lword problem' are that the word may have an
34 PRINCIPLES

archaic or a regional sense (consult appropriate dictionaries), may be used ironically, or in a

sense peculiar or private to the writer (idiolect), or it may be misprinted.
But be assured of one thing: the wriler must have known what he wanted to say: he
would never have written a drop of nonsense in the middle ot a sea of sense, and somehow
you have to find that sense, by any kind of lateral thinking: misprint, miseopying {anatomie
for autonomic), author's linguistic or technical ignorance. Freudian slip (prostate craniate;
craniate doesn't exist, crdnienne; fine, but what has a prostate to do with a skull? Skull, head,
top? Upper prostate?). You have to force your word (usually it is a word) into sense, you
have to at least satisfy yourself at last that there are no other reasonable alternatives, and you
have to write a footnote admitting this to be a lucus a non lucendo, a light (actually* a grovel
because there is no other light, a reduction to absurdity, and so "not found'.
So far I have been assuming that the word is more or less context-free - and I do think
that far more words are more or less context-free than most people imagine- However, the
meaning of many words is determined by their collocations, whether they appear in
compounded nouns (maison cenirale, prison; maison close, brothel; maison de culture, arts
centre; maison de rapport, apartment block; maison de repos, convalescent home; maison de
maitre, family mansion, etc.), in idioms or as an item in a lexical set (e.g., root, ratine,
Stamm in a text on linguistics). Very rarely, they can only be clarified by a reference to the
adjoining paragraphs or beyond: any mysterious object qualified by 'the 1 may take you far
outside your sentence.
Another general point about translating is that* in principle, since corresponding SL
and TL words do not usually have precisely the same semantic range (though many do in
cognate languages), you are over- or under-translating most of the time, usually the latter. In
fact, since in the majority of texts you are more concerned with the message (function) than
with the richness of description, and since the meanings of all but technical words are
narrowed down in their context. translation correspondence is usually close. However, we
must remember that a great number of words in one language include and overlap in varying
degrees of meaning the words they appear most obviously to translate into another language.
Thus French words like silhouette, discontinuite', assurer, descendre, phenomene, evolution,
egalemem are much more common and have a wider semantic range than their cognates in
English, and therefore more often than not they are translated by several different more
specific words. This illustrates one of the main problems in translation, the enforced shift
from generic to specific units or vice versa, sometimes due to overlapping or included
meanings, sometimes to notorious lexical gaps in one of the languages, which may be lacking
in a generic word for objects or processes (amenagement) or in common specific terms for
common parts of the body (nuque> reins, cshin', 'knuckle1, 'freckle'). Notoriously, there arc
surprising lexical gaps and virtual duplications (visage, figure, Meer, See^ in even' language,
and languages group objects differently (unfauteuil is not une chaise^ - it needs a translator to
expose the apparent bits of linguistic chaos in another language [nipote is a grandson, a
granddaughter, grandchild, nephew, niece)- English. apparently the richest language in the
world, cannot do better than 'bank', 'funny1,
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING 35

'plane', etc, for denoting very different referents. (Its numerous monosyllables make it
the most pun-prone language in Europe.) However, as long as you are sensitised to
these lexical facts, you will not find rhem a problem unless they are used
metalingually.
One little item - say, the precise meaning of a Hohenvergleicktafel: what is a
'panorama'? Is it the same in German? Can it be a Kupferstich? What is the difference
between an etching and an engraving? Between gravieren and einschnit-zen? AH this,
if you have no informant accessible, can take you longer than the 10—15 pages of the
text which follow, and you have ro be prepared to give all that time to it (but not in an
exam). In real life, you have to be ready to take more time over checking one figure,
chasing one acronym, or tracing one 'unfindable1 word than over translating the whole
of the relatively easy and boring piece you find it in.

THE TRANSLATION OF PROPER NAMES (see also p. 214)

You have to look up all proper names you do not know. First, geographical terms. In a
modern text, Beijing is no longer Peking; nor is Karl Marx Stadt now Chemnitz; nor is
Mutare (Zimbabwe) any longer Umtali; and in 1997 Hong Kong will be Xianggang.
Itn Saaletai is 'in the Saale valley1 not *in Saa!etal\ Do not normally call Polish or
Czechoslovak towns by their German names: Posen/ Poznan, Breslau/Wroc+aw,
Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary, Teschen/Decin. (The Polish Minister of Information rightly
protested to the West Germans about this habit recently.) Only the English refer to the
Channel as theirs. Consider giving classifiers to any town, mountain or river likely to
be unknown to the readership, Check the existence of any place name used in a work
of fiction: Tonio Kroger's Aarlsgaard does exist, but not in my atlas. Bear in mind and
encourage the tendency of place-names to revert to their non-naturalised names
(Braunschweig, Hessen, Hannover), but do not overdo it - let Munich remain Munich,
Do not take sides on any political disputes about place-names,
Be particularly careful of proper names in medical texts: a drug in one country
will be marketed under another brand name in another, or it may merely be a chemical
formula such as 'aspirin'. Tests, symptoms, diseases, syndromes, parts of the body are
named after one 'scientist' in one language community and a different one, or are given
a more general term, in another. Check the spelling of all proper names - this is where
misprints are most common. Remember that while English keeps the first names of
foreign persons unchanged, French and Italian sometimes arbitrarily translate them,
even if they are the names of living people,
In the period between translating and revision, you should not lose sight of the
linguistic problems of the text. (All translation problems are finally problems of the
target language.) Do not always be searching for synonyms. A change in word order
may be the answer (. . . de nouveaux types d'Electrodes indicairices - . . . 'new
indicative types of electrodes1 - i.e. types indicative of future ranges). If it is a fact, not
a word, you are searching for- How many casualties at Cassino? - let your mind
36 PRINCIPLES

play over the various types of reference books - or your own memories. I am not denying
neurolinguistic, psychological processes in translation, far from it, I am merely saying you
cannot analyse or schematise them; they arc unconscious, part of the imagination. If you are
lucky, when you brood, you find a solution suddenly surfacing,

REVISION

During the final revision stage of translating, you constantly try to pare down your version in
the interest of elegance and force, at the same time allowing some redundancy to facilitate
reading and ensuring that no substantial sense component is lost. (Another tension - the
translator of a demanding text is always on some tight-rope or other, like Nietzsche's
Ubermensch.) This means translating le pour-centage de grossesses menees a terme not as
l
the percentage of pregnancies brought to a successful conclusion', far less "pregnancies
taken up to term' but perhaps as 'successful pregnancies 1; faire fonctwnner as 'operating' not
'putting into operation'. You are trying to get rid of paraphrase without impairing your text,
the reality behind the text or the manner of writing you have preferred (natural, innovative or
stale)- The virtue of concision is its packed meaning - and the punch it carries. Your text is
dependent on another text but, paradoxically again, in communicative translation you have to
use a language that comes naturally to you, whilst in semantic translation, you have to
empathise with the author (the more you feel with the author, the better you are likely to
translate - if you dislike a literary text, better not translate it at all) - and in your empathy you
should discover a way of writing which, whilst normally not natural to you, expresses a
certain side of you 'naturally' and sincerely. A great translation is also a work of art in its own
right, but a good translation, even of a great work, need not be so.
But my last word is this: be accurate. You have no licence to change words that have
plain one-to-one translations just because you think they sound better than the original,
though there is nothing wrong with it; or because you like synonyms, because you think you
ought to change them to show how resourceful you are. Mind particularly your descriptive
words: adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs of quality. The fact that you are subjected as a
translator to so many forces and tensions is no excuse for plain inaccuracy.
'But that's what the author wrote.' Why do you want to change it? You couldn't have a
clearer indication that this is what the author would write in the foreign language, if he could.
Why do you think he wrote cigogne when you translate it as 'migrating bird'? Why did he noi
write oiseuu migratoire? Is it because you're into text-linguistics, because your overall text
strategies, your proto-typical structures, the global superstructures, the exciting new
developments in the broad interdisciplinary field of the science of cognition demand this
change? Surely not.
Many translators say you should never translate words, you translate sentences or
ideas or messages. I think they are fooling themselves. The SL texts
THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING 37

consist of words, that is all that is there, on the page. Finally all you have is words to
translate, and you have to account for each of them somewhere in your TL text,
sometimes by deliberately not translating them (e.g., words Yikcschon and dejd)^ or by
compensating for them, because if translated cold you inevitably over-translate them.
In another chapter (Chapter 19) I detail the various points you have to took out
for when you revise. Revision is also a technique that you acquire, I suggest you spend
on revising 50-70% of the time you took on translating, depending on the difficulty of
the text. If you have the time, do a second revision a day or so later. It is difficult to
resist making continual 'improvements1 in the taste area, and this is harmless provided
you make sure that each revised detail does not impair the sentence or the cohesion of
the text. If appropriate, the final test should be for naturalness: read the translation
aloud to yourself.

CONCLUSION

Thus one person's view of the translating procedure. But there is a caveat (a warning
and a proviso). I have tended to assume a demanding and challenging $L text. One can
admittedly find, somewhat artificially, translation problems in any text, any metaphor.
Unfortunately, there are a great many run-of-the-mill texts that have to be translated
which present few challenges once you have mastered their terminology, which carries
you through into a series of frankly boring and monotonous successors. They become
remotely challenging only if they are poorly written, or you have to skew the
readership, i.e. translate for users at a different, usually lower, level of language and/or
knowledge of the topic. Many staff translators complain of the wearisome monotony
of texts written in a humdrum neutral to informal style, full of facts, low on
descriptions, teetering on the edge of cliche; certainly my account of the translating
process will appear largely irrelevant to them. Enterprising translators have to appeal
to the research departments of their companies for more interesting papers, or
themselves recommend important original foreign publications in their field for
translation. Others transfer from, say, general administration to the human rights
department of their international organisation to find something worthwhile to do.
It is one of the numerous paradoxes of translation that a vast number of texts,
far from being 'impossible', as many linguists and men of letters (not usually in
agreement) still believe, are in fact easy and tedious and suitable for MAT
(machine-aided translation) and even MT (machine translation) but still essential and
vital, whilst other texts may be considered as material for a scholar, a researcher and
an artist.
I think that, academically, translation can be regarded as scholarship if:
(1) the SL text is challenging and demanding, e.g., if it is concerned with the frontiers of
knowledge (science, technology, social sciences) or if it is a literary
38 PRINCIPLES

or philosophical text written in innovatory or obscure or difficult or ancient

language,
(2) the text evidently requires some interpretation, which should be indicated in the
translator's preface,
(3) the text requires additional explanation in the form of brief footnotes.
I think translation 'qualifies1 as research If:
(1) it requires substantial academic research.
(2) it requires a preface of considerable length, giving evidence of this research and
stating the translator's approach to his original, (Bear in mind that all translated
books should have translators' prefaces.)
(3) the translated text is accompanied by an apparatus of notes, a glossary and a
bibliography.
Translation is most clearly art, when a poem is sensitively translated into a
poem. But any deft 'transfusion1 of an imaginative piece of writing is artistic, when it
conveys the meaning through a happy balance or resolution of some of the tensions in
the process.
CHAPTER

Translation Methods

INTRODUCTION

The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely.
The argument has been going on since at least the first century BC Up to the beginning of the
nineteenth century, many writers favoured some kind of Tree 1 translation: the spirit, not the
letter; the sense not the words; the message rather than the form: the matter not the manner-
This was the often revolutionary slogan of writers who wanted the truth to be read and
understood - Tyndale and Dolet were burned at the stake, Wycliff s works were banned.
Then at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested
that the linguistic barriers were insuperable and that language was entirely the product of
culture, the view that translation was impossible gained some currency, and with it
that,ifattemptedatall,it must be as literal as possible. This view culminated in the statements
of the extreme literalists' Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nabokov.
The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, the nature of the
readership, the type of text, was not discussed. Too often, writer, translator and reader were
implicitly identified with each other. Now the context has changed, but the basic problem
remains.
I put it in the form of a flattened V diagram:
SL emphasis TL emphasis
Word-for-word translation Adaptation
Literal translation Faithful Free translation
translation Semantic Idiomatic translation
translation Communicative translation

THE METHODS

Word-for-word translation
This is often demonstrated as interlinear translation, with The TL immediately below the SL
words. The SL word-order is preserved and the words translated

45
46 PRINCIPLES

singly by their most common meanings, out of context. Cultural words are translated literally.
The main use of word-for-word translation is either to understand the mechanics of the
source language or [o construe a difficult text as a pre-t ran slat ion process.

L i te ra] tra ns I ati on

The SL grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL equivalents but the
lexical words are again translated singly, out of context. As a pre-translation process, this
indicates the problems to be solved*

Faithful translation
A faithful Translation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original
within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures. It 'transfers' cultural words and
preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical 'abnormality' (deviation from SL norms) in
the translation. It attempts to be completely faithful to the intentions and the text-realisation
of the SL writer.

Semantic translation
Semantic translation differs from 'faithful translation' only in as far as it must take more
account of the aesthetic value (that is, the beautiful and natural sounds of the SL text,
compromising on 'meaning' where appropriate so that no assonance, word-play or repetition
jars in the finished version. Further, it may translate less important cultural words by
culturally neutral third or functional terms but not by cultural equivalents - une nonne
repassant un corporal may become 'a nun ironing a corporal cloth' - and it may make other
small concessions to the readership. The distinction between 'faithful' and ^semantic'
translation is that the first is uncompromising and dogmatic, while the second is more flexible,
admits the creative exception to 100% fidelity and allows for the translator's intuitive
empathy with the original.

Adaptation
This is the 'freest' form of translation. It is used mainly for plays (comediesl and poetry; the
themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the SL culture converted to theTL culture and
the text rewritten. The deplorable practice of having a play or poem literally translated and
then rewritten by an established dramatist or poet has produced many poor adaptations, but
other adaptations have 'rescued1 period plays.

Free translation
Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of
the original. Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a
TRANSLATION METHODS 41

so-called 'intralingual translation*, often prolix and pretentious, and not translation at
all.
Idiomatic translation
Idiomatic translation reproduces the 'message' of the original but tends to distort
nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not exist
in the original- (Authorities as diverse as Seteskovitch and Stuart Gilbert tend to this
form of lively, 'natural' translation.)

Communicative translation
Communicative translation attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the
original in such a wav that both content and language are readily acceptable and
comprehensible to the readership.

COMMENTS IN THESE METHODS

Commenting on these methods, I should first say that only semantic and communi-
cative translation fulfil the two main aims of translation, which are first, accuracy, and
second, economy. (A semantic translation is more likely to be economical than a
communicative translation, unless, for the latter, the text is poorly written.^ In general,
a semantic translation is written at the author's linguistic leve]> a communicative at
the readership's. Semantic translation is used for 'expressive' texts, communicative for
'informative' and 'vocative' texts.
Semantic and communicative translation treat the following items similarly:
stock and dead metaphors, normal collocations, technical Terms, slang, colloquialisms,
standard notices, phaticisms, ordinary language. The expressive components of
'expressive' texts (unusual syntactic structures, collocations, metaphors, words
peculiarly used, neologisms) are rendered closely, if not literally, bui where they
appear in informative and vocative texts, they are normalised or toned down (except in
striking advert isementsV Cultural components tend to be transferred intact in
expressive texts; transferred and explained with culturally neutral terms in informative
texts; replaced by cultural equivalents in vocativt texts. Badly and/or inaccurately
written passages must remain so in translation if they are ^expressive', although the
translator should comment on any mistakes of factual or moral truth, if appropriate.
Badly and/or inaccurately written passages should be 'corrected1 in communicative
translation, 1 refer to 'expressive' as Sacred1 texts; 'informative1 and 'vocative',
following Jean Delisle, as *anonymous\ since the status of their authors is not
important. (There are grey or fuzzy areas in this distinction, as in every' aspect of
translation.)
So much for the detail, but semantic and communicative translation must also
be seen as wholes. Semantic translation is personal and individual, follows the thought
processes of the author, tends to over-translate, pursues nuances of meaning, yet aims
at concision in order to reproduce pragmatic impact. Communi-
48 PR1NCIP1 ^

cative translation is social, concentrates on the message and the main force of the text, tends
to under-translate, to be simple, clear and brief, and is always written in a natural and
resourceful style. A semantic translation is normally interior in itv original- as there is both
cognitive and pragmatic loss 'Baudelaire's translation ol Poe is said to be an exception >: a
communicative translation is often better than its original. At a pinch, a semantic translation
has to interpret, a communicative translation to explain,
Theoretically, communicative translation allows the translator no more freedom than
semantic translation. In fact, it does, since the translator is serving a putative large and not
well defined readership, whilst in semantic translation, he is following a single well defined
authority, i.e. the author of the SI. text.

EQUIVALENT EFFECT

It has sometimes been said that the overriding purpose of any translation should be to
achieve 'equivalent effect1, i.e. to produce the same effect i'or one as close as possible) on the
readership of the translation as Has obtained on the readership of the original. (This is also
called the 'equivalent response' principle. Nida calls it "dynamic equivalence 1.^ As I see it,
'equivalent effect1 is the desirable result, rather than the aim of any translation, bearing in
mind that it is an unlikely result in two cases: (a) if the purpose of the SL text is to affect and
the TL translation is to inform (or vice versa); (b) if there is a pronounced cultural gap
between the SL and the TL text,
However, in the communicative translation of vocative texts, equivalent effect is not
onlv desirable, it is essential; it is the criterion bv which the effectiveness, and therefore the
value, of the translation of notices, instructions, publicity . propaganda, persuasive or eristic
writing, and perhaps popular fiction, is to be assessed. The reader's response - to keep off the
grass, to buy the soap, to join the Party, to assemble the device - could even be quantified as
a percentage rate of the success of the translation.
In informative texts, equivalent effect is desirable onlv in respect of their : in theory"i
insignificant emotional impact: it is not possible if SL and TL culture are remote from each
other, since normally the cultural items have to be explained by culturally neutral or generic
terms, the topic content simplified, SI. difficulties clarified. Hopefully, thcTL reader reads
the text with the same degree of interest as the SL reader, although the impact is different.
However, the vocative 'persuasive'1 thread in most informative texts has to be rendered with
an eye to ihe readership, i.e,. with an equivalent effect purpose,
In semantic translation, the first problem is that for serious imaginative literature,
there are individual readers rather than a readership. Secondly, whilst the reader is not
entirely neglected, the Translator is essentially trying to render the effect the SL text has on
himst?lf'xo feel with, to empathise with the author1, not on
 [RANSLA1 ION METHODS 49

any putative readership. Certainly, the more 'universal' the texr ''consider 'To be or not to be 1',
the more a broad equivalent effect is possible, since the ideals of the original go beyond any
cultural frontiers. The mctalingual sound-effects which the translator is trying to reproduce
are in fact unlikely to affect the TL reader, with his different sound-system, similarly, but
there may be compensation. In any event, the reaction is individual rather than cultural or
universal.
However, the more cultural ithe more local, the more remote in time and space') a text, the
less is equivalent effect even conceivable unless The reader is imaginative, sensitive and
steeped in the SL culture. There is no need to discuss again the propriety of'converting' Keats'
'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness1 or Shakespeare's 'Shall I compare thee to a
summer's day?1 into languages of countries where the autumns and summers are unpleasant.
Cultural concessions 'e.g., a shift to a generic term) are possible only where the cultural word
is marginal, not important for local colour, and has no relevant connotative or symbolic
meaning. Thus, in a Bazin text, it is inadequate to translate: // est le plus pelican des peres as
'He is the most devoted of fathers' or *He is a symbol of paternal love, a pelican.' A
compromise version, retaining the cultural element (pelican), might be *He is as devoted as a
pelican to his young.' Authoritative statements, being addressed to a readership rather than
individual readers, if written in 'public1 language should produce equivalent effect: Pericles,
Jefferson. Lincoln, Churchill, De Gaulle - the names suggest a universal appeal that asks for a
loud and modern echo in translation-Communicative translation,' being set at the reader's
level of language and knowledge, is more likely to create equivalent effect than is semantic
translation at the writer's level; bur a text written some hundred years ago gives the reader of
the translation an advantage over the SL reader; the inevitablv simplified, under-translated
translation in modern language may well have a greater impact than the original. Hence unser
(our) Shakespeare, as educated Germans used to know his work earlier inthecenturv.
Equivalent effect is an important intuitive principle which could be tested but, as is
often the case, the research would not be worth the effort; however, it is usefully applied in
reasonable discussion, particularly within the 'skill1 ''as opposed to the 'truth1, the lart' and the
"taste'l area of language. In translating *I haven't the foggiest idea 1, {aucune idee), would:
Keine hlasse Ahnung or Nickt die geringste Ahnung or Ick habe keinen hiassen Sckimmer
davon have the closest equivalent effect? f A translation is pre-eminently a matter for
discussion rather than fiat. Too often it is still being imposed as a teacher's 'fair copy' or
model. In fact, the simplest sentence - 'The gorgeous girl walked gingerly through the closet 1
- would, in or in spite of any contest, be translated variously by a dozen experts in a dozen
different languages.!
I have dealt at length with the 'equivalent effect1 principle because it is an important
translation concept which has a degree of application to any type of text, but nor the same
degree of importance.
50 PRINCIPLES

METHODS AND TEXT-CATEGORIES

Considering the application of the two translation methods i semantic and communicative) to
the three text-categories, J suggest that commonly vocative and informative texts are
translated too literally, and expressive texts not literally enough. Translationese is the bane
of rourist material and many public notices (toute circulation est interdite de 22 h a 6 h\
jeglkher Verkehr ist verhoten von 22 his 6 Uhn lall sexual intercourse is forbidden between
10 p.m. and 6 a.m/:. In the UK the standard of foreign language (FL'i publicity and notices is
now high but there are not enough of them. In 'informative' texts, iranslationese, bad writing
and lack of confidence in the appropriate linguisric register often go hand in hand: rhe
tendency with familiar-looking but unfamiliar collocations (station hvdrominerale:
'hydromineral station' - read lspa') is simply to reproduce them. On the other hand, the
inaccuracy of translated literature has much longer roots: the attempt to see translation as an
exercise in style, to get the 'flavour1 or the 'spirit' of the original: rhe refusal ro Translate by
any TL word that looks the least bit like the SL word, or even by the SL word's core
meaning fl am talking mainly of adjectives), so that the translation becomes a sequence of
synonyms ''grammatical shifts, and one-word to two- or three-word translations are usually
avoided), which distorts its essence,
In expressive texts, the unit of translation is likely to be small, since words rather than
sentences contain the finest nuances of meaning; further, there are likely to be fewer stock
language units ('colloquialisms, stock metaphors and collocations, etc. Uhan in other texts.
However, any type and length of cliche must be translated by its TL counterpart, however
badly it reflects on the writer.
Note that I group informative and vocative texts together as suitable (or
communicative translation. However, further distinctions can be made.
Unless informative texts are badly/inaccurately written, they arc translated more
closely than vocative texts. In principle fonly!\ as they are concerned with extra-linguistic
facts, they consist of third person sentences, non-emotive style, past tenses. Narrative, a
sequence of events, is likely to be neater and closer to translate than description, which
requires the mental perception ol adjectives and images.
The translation of vocative texts immediately involves translation in the problem of
the second person, the social factor which varies in its grammatical and lexical reflection
from one language to another. Further, vocative texts exemplify the two poles of
communicative translation. On the one hand translation by standard terms and phrases is
used mainly for nonces: 'transit lounge'. Tran$ukalh\ sal/e de transit. On the other hand,
there is. in principle, the 'recreative* translation that might be considered appropriate for
publicity and propagandas since the situation is more important than the language. In fact,
provided there is no cultural gap, such skilfully written persuasive language is often seen to
translate almost literal h\
Scanning the numerous multilingual advertising leaflets available today. I
TRANSLATION METHODS 5/

notice: (a) it is hardly possible to say which is the original; (h) how closely they translate
each other; (c) the more emotive their language, the more they vary from each other; (di the
variants appear justified. Thus:

Young, fresh and fashionable^7""tf* fnsch urtdmodisch.Jeune, /raiser elegant.

Indeed, this is Vanessa. In der Tat, so kbnnen Sie Vanessa heschreiben. Teh sont les
qualificatifs de Vanessa.

This mode! links up with ihelalesi trends in furniture design. Dieses Model schhe^st bei
den leizten Trends im Mobeldesign an. Ce modele esi le dernier cri dans le domaine des
meubles design. The programme exists out of different items. Das Programm besteht aus
verschiedenen Mobeln. Son programme se compose de differenls meubles. . . . which you
can combine as vou want . . . die Sie nach eigenem Bedurfnis zitsammensiellen
kotmen . . . a assembler selon vos besoms . . . (The three versions reflect the more
colloquial stvle of the English (two phrasal verbs'* and the more formal German, as
well as English lexical influence "design', 'trend1!,)

Where communicative translation of advertisements works so admirably, producing

equivalent pragmatic effect, there seems no need to have recourse to * co-writing', where
two writers are given a number of basic facts about one product and instructed to write the
most persuasive possible advert in their respective languages.
I should mention that I have been describing methods of translation as products rather
than processes, i.e,, as they appear in the finished translation.

TRANSLATING

As for the process of translation, it is often dangerous to translate more than a sentence or
two before reading the first two or three paragraphs, unless a quick glance through convinces
you that the text is going to present few- problems. In fact, the more difficult - linguistically,
culturally. l referent ialty* (i.e., in subject matter) - the text is, the more preliminary work I
advise you to do before you start translating a sentence, simply on the ground that one
misjudged hunch about a key-word in a text - say, humoral in le bilan humoral fa fluid
balance check-upi or Laetitia in Vactrice* une nouvelle Laetitia fa Roman actress or an
asteroid) - may force you to try to put a wrong construction on a whole paragraph, wasting a
lot of time before (if ever) you pull up and realise you are being foolish. This is another way
of looking at the wrord versus sentence conflict that is always coming up, Translate by
sentences wherever you can 'and always as literally or as closely as you can) whenever you
can see the wood for the trees or get the general sense, and then make sure you have
accounted for i which is not the same as translated) each word in the SL text. There are
plenty of words, like modal particles, jargon-words or grammatically-bound words,which for
good reasons you may decide nor to translate. But translate virtually by words first if they
are 'technical', whether they are
52 PRINCIPLES

'linguistic' (marigot), or cultural (sesterce"\ or referential 'sessile) and appear relatively

context-free. Later, you have to contextualise them, and be prepared to back-track if you
have opted for the wrong technical meaning,
Research is now proceeding on hovi people translate, but there may bt? many
factors'mood, deadline, need for a change of method \ which will not betaken into account.
Throughout the pre-translation process, yon keep a clear image of what is actually happening,
if only as a premiss that has to be continuously amended. This applies to poetrv as to
technical translation. Thus: Le soldi, sur le sable, 6 hmeitse endormie En For de tes cheveux
vhauffe un bain langoureux ' Mallarme. Tmiesse dyetf\ may suggest the sun bathing the
golden hair of a sleeping girt lying on the sand struggling (against what?) in languorous heat,
and this image has to be kept constantly in parallel with the oblique and elliptical version of
it rendered by the language.

OTHER METHODS

As a postscript to this chapter, I add further definitions of translation methods.

1
1: Service translation, i.e. translation from one's language of habitual use into another
language. The term is not widely used, but as the practice is necessary in most countries,
a term is required,
''2'' Plain prose translation. The prose translation of poems and poetic drama initiated by E.
V. Rieu for Penguin Books. Usually stanzas become paragraphs, prose punctuation is
introduced, original metaphors and SI. culture retained, whilst no sound-effects are
reproduced. The reader can appreciate the sense of the work without experiencing
equivalent effect. Plain prose translations arc often published in parallel with their
originals, to which, a l t e r a 'careful word-for-word comparison1, they provide ready and
full access.
'3' Information translation. This convevs all the information in a non-hierary text, somerimes
rearranged in a more logical form, sometimes partially summarised. and not in the form of a
paraphrase. 4: (Cognitive translation. This reproduces the information in a SL re?a
converting the SL grammar to its normal TL transpositions, normally reducing any
figurative to literal language. I do not know to what extent this is mainly a theoretical or a
useful concept, bur as a pre-translation procedure it is appropriate in a difficult, complicated
stretch of text. A pragmatic component ^ added to produce a semantic or a communicative
translation, 5' Academic translation. This type of translation, practised in some British uni-
versities, reduces an original SL text to an ^elegant' idiomatic educated TL version which
follows a ■ non-existent; literary register It irons out the expressiveness of a writer with
modish colloquialisms. The archetype ot this tradition. which is still alive at Oxbridge ' ' t h e
important thing is to get the flavour of the original"', was R. L. Graeme Ritchie, evidently a
brilliant teacher and trans-
TRANSLATION METHODS 53

lator, who was outstandingly more accurate than his imitators. I quote tiny scraps of
Ritchie's weaknesses: La Noire-Dame avanca - 'The Notre-Dame worked her way in';
La plme hromlla les objets - The rain obscured everything1; Cette vie $e surpassera par
le martyre t et le martyre ne tardera plus -That life was to Transcend itself through
martyrdom and now martyrdom was not to be long in coming1.
These last two concepts are mine, and only practice can show whether rhey will be
useful as terms of reference in translation.