UTF-8__0415396417Translation

PETER NEWMARKonly depend on the particular thought and language of the translation. Inthese cases, a translation error is usually easier to indicate definitely (‘this iswrong’), than a correct translation choice (‘this is right’).The communicative stage in translation was heralded by the worldwideshowing of the Nuremberg Trials. Translation and interpreting became worldnews for perhaps the first time. It was also in this period that ‘linguisticians’,notably Eugene Nida in the USA, J.C. Catford in the UK, the Leipzig Schoolin East Germany (Otto Kade, Albrecht Neubert and the contributors to thejournal Fremdsprachen) and J.-P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet in Quebec, beganto turn their attention to translation as a form of applied linguistics. Mostprominently, Eugene Nida, a well-known American linguist(ician) and Bibletranslator, was the first writer on translation to apply linguistics to translation.With his theory of ‘dynamic’, later ‘functional’, equivalence, he introducedinto translation a third player, namely the readership, which had previouslybeen virtually identified with the translator, or with a vague, imaginary person.Nida (1964: 160) contrasted two types of translation:1. Functional equivalence. ‘The message of the original text is so transportedinto the receptor language that the response of the receptor is essentiallylike that of the original receptors’. The standard Biblical exampleis ‘He gave them a hearty handshake all round’.2. Formal correspondence (Nida and Taber 1969). 3 The features of the formof the source text are mechanically reproduced in the receptor language.Typically, formal correspondence distorts the grammatical and stylisticpatterns of the receptor language, and so potentially distorts the messageand misinforms the reader. The standard example is ‘He gave each of thema holy kiss’.Note that ‘equivalence’ implies close resemblance, whilst ‘correspondence’indicates a matching of identity between ST and TT. The latter immediatelycreates syntactic/semantic distortion; a translation of the French J’adore labeauté, for instance, would not normally be I adore the beauty.In his two seminal works, Toward a Science of Translating (Nida 1964)and The Theory and Practice of Translation (Nida and Taber 1969), Nidapointed out that both dynamic equivalence and formal correspondence couldvary, the first in strength of effect, the second in degree of resemblance,and that they could overlap where the form in one language approximatelyfollowed the form in the second. He overlooked the significance of thefamiliarization effect which, through numerous repetitions and some backgroundknowledge, can make a strange translation sound natural in thetarget language (e.g. that of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, Shall I compare thee toa summer’s day, the pleasant connotation of which may not initially work in alanguage such as Arabic, where the concept ‘summer’s day’ tends to connoteexcessive, uncomfortable heat).28