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T. MORRIS–TEACHING TRANSLATION STRATEGY FOR REFERENCE, CONCEPT & CONTEXT MEANINGS
TEACHING A TRANSLATION STRATEGY TO DERIVE
REFERENCE, CONCEPTUAL AND CONTEXTUAL MEANINGS IN
ENGLISH FROM SPANISH JOURNALISTIC TEXTS: A CASE STUDY
OF FINAL YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN LIVERPOOL
513
TERRY MORRIS
Liverpool John Moores University
Whilst in principle, the meaning of any word in any language is unique, due to
differences in frequency, usage, connotations and lexical gaps in other languages – in
context, the great majority of non-cultural words have perfectly satisfactory equivalents in
other languages. their number depends mainly on the degree of contact present and past
between the languages therefore the cultures in question (Peter NEWMARK.
“Translation”. The Linguist. 1990, vol. 29 (2), p. 51).
My sample of British and Irish university candidates who are translating from
Spanish in Liverpool will usually have at least three background problems in translating
from journalistic texts into English. The first two which I am going to mention
paradoxically reside in the “non-cultural words” with “satisfactory equivalents” referred to
by Newmark and this is because even these words and phrases are subject to conventions
of usage or register which are culturally conditioned, even if not culturally specific. The
contact between the languages as mentioned by Newmark is often intercultural rather than
purely cultural, i.e. it is a mutually aware and respectful, cultural relationship, but also often
involves appreciating distinct conventions, even within similar sociocultural/sociolinguistic
ranges. One interesting distinction which one of my students has drawn to my attention is
that in English journalese, names like King Juan Carlos are not generally subject to name
translation, whereas in a Spanish text we came across Carlos de Inglaterra for Prince
Charles.
The first textual background problem I mentioned centres on certain gaps in
students’ knowledge relating to the conventions/usage of the source language – European
Spanish in this case. Problem two is the problem of “translatese”, when student translators
may become embedded in the quest to keep faithful to the text (may also suffer from gaps
in their own specialised, target language, vocabulary) and thus miss the opportunity for
stylistic and even cultural matching of the words concerned. The third problem is not only
the linguistic context, but the extralinguistic context, drawing on general knowledge,
experience and expectations. For example, the phrase “indicadores económicos básicos”
would probably equate with “leading economic indicators” from familiarity with financial
language registers and there is the additional linguistic trap for the “traductor incauto”
whereby “económico” may be in the context of “economical” – or money-saving –
attributes, rather than “economic”, relating to the economy. Lack of experience of the
conventional target language jargon and its context is one shortcoming. Leading is different
from basic though the contexts of leading and básico are probably very similar. We may
well look to the context and /or the concept of the phrase within the context to try to
resolve the best TL version. Also, even with a previous experience, having read the phrase