Monday 21 December 2009

Translation Myths pt.1.2

Myth #1: Translation is all about Words pt.2

Welcome back to Myth #1 of our translation myths. In part 1, we found that languages have different ways to express the same meaning. In the last part we used the set phrase “what is your name” in French and English to demonstrate this point.

While some people may be convinced by this, many others feel that outside of such phrases and maybe a few idioms, you should always stick to the wording of the original. Let’s try another example to see if this works. Here is a sentence that can be translated several ways

I don’t like that man – Je ne l’aime pas, cet homme-là.
Moi, je n’aime pas cet homme.
Je n’aime pas cet homme.

How would a translator know which one to pick? All three French phrases have the same meaning as the English phrase. Which one is correct?

The truth is that any of the three may be right. In spoken language, the choice of phrase would be fairly easy.

You see, in English, we often emphasise something by saying it slightly louder or with slightly more force. So if I said “I don’t like that man,” the emphasis is on me. Perhaps I might say this if someone else does like him. If I said “I don’t like that man,” the emphasis is on that particular man rather than a man I do like. Of course, I can also just say “I don’t like that man” with no particular emphasis.

In French, they tend to emphasise things by changing the wording of the phrase. In our first example, the stress would be on that particular man, much like if you said “I don’t like that man” in English. The second phrase emphasises the person speaking, just like “I don’t like that man” in English and the last phrase is the same as using no particular emphasis in English.

If translation were all about words, we would only need one way to express this English meaning in French yet, as we have seen, there are at least three choices, depending on which part of the sentence you want to emphasise. Since translation isn’t about meaning, translators need to take care choosing the correct way of translating a phrase, taking into account many different factors. It is not simply a case of looking each word up in a dictionary and writing down the first translation of it you find.

It is clear then that since languages have so many different ways to express similar meanings, there is no way that we can assume that using dictionary equivalents of the same words will necessarily mean that we create the same meaning. We also have to abandon the idea that translation is all about words. If it were then learning a language would simply mean memorising a bilingual dictionary and, as we all know, that is simply not the case. Translation is all about meaning not words.

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