translation symmetry

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''translating'' (a written text) and '' interpreting'' (oral or signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.

A translator always risks inadvertently introducing source-language words, grammar, or syntax into the target-language rendering. On the other hand, such "spill-overs" have sometimes imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched target languages. Translators, including early translators of sacred texts, have helped shape the very languages into which they have translated.

Because of the laboriousness of the translation process, since the 1940s efforts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator. More recently, the rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated "language localisation".

Etymology

The English word "translation" derives from the Latin word , which comes from '' trans'', "across" + '' ferre'', "to carry" or "to bring" (''-latio'' in turn coming from ''latus'', the past participle of ''ferre''). Thus ''translatio'' is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across"—in this case, of a text from one language to another.Christopher Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 83.

Some Slavic languages and the Germanic languages (other than Dutch and Afrikaans) have calqued their words for the concept of "translation" on ''translatio'', substituting their respective Slavic or Germanic root words for the Latin roots. The remaining Slavic languages instead calqued their words for "translation" from an alternative Latin word, , itself derived from ("to lead across" or "to bring across")—from ("across") + , ("to lead" or "to bring").

The West and East Slavic languages (except for Russian) adopted the pattern, whereas Russian and the South Slavic languages adopted the pattern. The Romance languages, deriving directly from Latin, did not need to ''calque'' their equivalent words for "translation"; instead, they simply adapted the second of the two alternative Latin words, .

The Ancient Greek term for "translation", (''metaphrasis'', "a speaking across"), has supplied English with "metaphrase" (a " literal", or "word-for-word", translation)—as contrasted with " paraphrase" ("a saying in other words", from , ''paraphrasis''). "Metaphrase" corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "formal equivalence"; and "paraphrase", to "dynamic equivalence".Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 84.

Strictly speaking, the concept of metaphrase—of "word-for-word translation"—is an imperfect concept, because a given word in a given language often carries more than one meaning; and because a similar given meaning may often be represented in a given language by more than one word. Nevertheless, "metaphrase" and "paraphrase" may be useful as ''ideal'' concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation.

Theories

Western theory

Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity and show remarkable continuities. The ancient Greeks distinguished between ''metaphrase'' (literal translation) and ''paraphrase''. This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator John Dryden (1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts," or equivalents, for the expressions used in the source language:

Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e., of adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..."

This general formulation of the central concept of translation— equivalence—is as adequate as any that has been proposed since Cicero and Horace, who, in 1st-century-BCE Rome, famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" ().

Despite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual ''practice'' of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the Middle Ages, and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking equivalents—"literal" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary—for the original meaning and other crucial "values" (e.g., style, verse form, concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech articulatory movements) as determined from context.

In general, translators have sought to preserve the context itself by reproducing the original order of sememes, and hence word order—when necessary, reinterpreting the actual grammatical structure, for example, by shifting from active to passive voice, or ''vice versa''. The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order" languages (e.g. English, French, German) and "free-word-order" languages (e.g., Greek, Latin, Polish, Russian) have been no impediment in this regard. The particular syntax (sentence-structure) characteristics of a text's source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language.

When a target language has lacked terms that are found in a source language, translators have borrowed those terms, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other languages, there are few concepts that are " untranslatable" among the modern European languages. A greater problem, however, is translating terms relating to cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the target language. For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a gloss.

Generally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of metaphrase to paraphrase that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words, a common etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English ''actual'' should not be confused with the cognate French ("present", "current"), the Polish ("present", "current," "topical", "timely", "feasible"),Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 85. the Swedish ''aktuell'' ("topical", "presently of importance"), the Russian ("urgent", "topical") or the Dutch ''actueel'' ("current").

The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between cultures has been discussed at least since Terence, the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, and so has also been compared to that of an artist. The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as Cicero. Dryden observed that "Translation is a type of drawing after life..." Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to Samuel Johnson's remark about Alexander Pope playing Homer on a flageolet, while Homer himself used a bassoon.

In the 13th century, Roger Bacon wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both languages, as well as the science that he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation and translators altogether.

The translator of the Bible into German, Martin Luther (1483–1546), is credited with being the first European to posit that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language. L.G. Kelly states that since Johann Gottfried Herder in the 18th century, "it has been axiomatic" that one translates only toward his own language.

Compounding the demands on the translator is the fact that no dictionary or thesaurus can ever be a fully adequate guide in translating. The Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, in his ''Essay on the Principles of Translation'' (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including listening to the ''spoken'' language, had earlier, in 1783, been made by the Polish poet and grammarian Onufry Kopczyński.Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 86.

The translator's special role in society is described in a posthumous 1803 essay by "Poland's La Fontaine", the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland