What Makes a Translator?

What Makes a Translator?

By Brett Jocelyn Epstein
[e-mail] www.brettdaniel.net

Source: Translation Directory

The "prison of language is only temporary…someday a merciful guard ? the perfect translator ? will come along with his keys and let us out," Wendy Lesser wrote in an article, "The Mysteries of Translation," in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2002. The following questions remain, however: Who is this translator? What does he do? And what skills should he possess?

Simply put, a translator is a person who recreates a text in another language, attempting to keep a delicate balance between being so literal that the text sounds awkward and unnatural in the new language or being so free that the text has become virtually unrecognizable. A translator has to not only translate the words, but also the concepts. In other words, a translator unlocks the prison of language, as Ms. Lesser said, and helps a text break free of its limited original language, culture, and audience. This service is an unfortunately under-appreciated art and craft.

To do all the above, a translator must have the following things: a native or near-native level of proficiency in both the source language (the language to be translated from) and the target language (the language to be translated to); the ability to thoroughly understand all that a text says and implies; and excellent writing and editing skills. Ideally, the translator would also have a lot of knowledge about both the source and target language cultures, as this affects word usage and meaning, as well as about the author of the original document and his style of writing.

It all sounds rather formidable, certainly, but not impossible. There are, in fact, many excellent practitioners out there who fulfill these hefty requirements, but the tiny number of translated books published in the United States each year reveals the sad fact that few people take up this challenging and stimulating work. If only more people would join the ranks of translators and help unlock the prison of language.

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Types of Translations

Types of Translations
(Source:  http://www.sil.org/)

Two translators may be translating from the same source text and into the same receptor language and yet the results may be very different. There is not one "correct" translation of a given text. Reasons for this variation include:

• the purpose of the translation,
• the translation team itself,
• the receptor language audience for whom the translation is intended.

The results are translations that fall someplace on a continuum from literal translations to idiomatic translations. Literal translations follow very closely the grammatical and lexical forms of the source text language, whereas idiomatic translations are concerned with communicating the meaning of the source text using the natural grammatical and lexical items of the receptor language. Translations that add to the source text or change certain information for a specific affect are called unduly free.

SIL members are trained for, and committed to, the production of idiomatic translations. However, since the projects they are involved in are found in a wide variety of communication situations, and with team members with different training and skills, the results may vary.

Choosing a translation type

There are various aspects of the communication situation that may determine the choice of type of translation produced. One of the goals of the translation team is to produce a translation that will be acceptable to the receptor language audience.

• The actual receptor language forms (grammar and lexicon) are chosen with the educational level of the audience in mind, as well as their previous knowledge of the subject matter.
• A newly literate audience will find it hard to read a translation intended for a highly literate readership.
• Some audiences have a strong opinion as to the type of translation that is acceptable. They may expect a close formal equivalence and will not accept a more idiomatic translation.

The ideal of accurate, natural, and communicative is still the goal. But, in practice, this goal may be carried out with differing result by different translation teams.