Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

210 Riitta Jääskeläinen
Table 1. Back-translations of the headline
without instructions (N = 45) with instructions (N = 37)
The families of Medellín 24 The families of Medellín 27
Families of Medellín [PART] 1 Families of Medellín [PART] 1
Medellín, my hometown 2 The different families of Medellín 1
My hometown Medellín 1 The families of the city of Medellín 1
The children of Medellín 1 The families [EXT] of Medellín 2
Family life in Medellín 1
Family life [PART] in Medellín 1
The drug families of Medellín 1 Medellín is ruled by drug families [EXT] 1
Family life in the shadow of drugs 1
total 31 total 35
Life in Medellín 3 Life in Medellín 1
The inhabitants of Medellín 1 Life in Medellín, the centre of the 1
drug world
The city of Medellín 1
Which way, Medellín? 1
Medellín – the city of drugs 1
The Medellín cartel 1
Will drugs destroy Medellín ? 1
Medellín – hell on earth 1
The two faces of drug trade 1
The price of drugs 1
Rough game in Colombia 1
Once upon a time in Colombia 1
total 14 total 2
headlines have been back-translated from Finnish almost literally. Note that
in Finnish there are two equivalents for the word “family”; one which refers
to the immediate or nuclear family (perhe) and another one which refers to
the extended family with uncles and aunts and cousins (suku). I have also
kept apart the translations in which the word “families” is in the nominative
case (perheet) orinthepartitivecase(perheitä). The translations which retain
family/home are listed first, and below them the headlines where family/home
has been lost.
Table 1 shows that the students translating with instructions have tended to
retain the family in their headlines. In contrast, the students translating without
instructions have produced a wealth of alternative formulations (which,
admittedly, are often good descriptive headlines as such). Table 2 shows the
percentages of the headlines which retain or lose the family connection.