Literary Translation,

Theories and Practice

 The concept of translation
The English term translation, first attested in
around 1340, derives either from Old
French translation or more directly from the
Latin translatio (“trans-porting’) itself
coming from the participle of the verb
transferre (‘to carry over’). In the field of
languages, translation today has several
meanings:
1) the general subject field or phenomenon
(‘I studied translation at university’)
2) the product – that is, the text that has
been translated (‘they published the
Arabic translation of the report’)
3) the process of producing the translation,
otherwise known as translating
(‘translation service’).
The process of translation between two different
written languages involves the changing of an original
written text (the source text or ST) in the original
verbal language (the source language or SL) into a
written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal
language (the target language or TL):

Source text (ST) Target text (TT)

in source language (SL) in target language
(TL)
Jakobson’s categories are as follows:
1) intralingual translation, or ‘rewording’ – ‘an
interpretation of verbal signs by means of
other signs of the same language’
2) interlingual translation, or ‘translation proper’
– ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of
some other language’
3) intersemiotic translation, or transmutation’ –
‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of
signs of non-verbal sign systems.’
The Holmes/Toury ‘map’
1) Product-oriented DTS examines existing translations.
This may involve the description or analysis of a single
ST-TT pair or a comparative analysis of several TTs of
the same ST (into one or more TLs).
2) By function-oriented DTS, Holmes (ibid.) means the
description of the ‘function [of translations] in the
recipient sociocultural situation: it is a study of
contexts rather than texts’.
3) Process-oriented DTS in Holmes’s framework is
concerned with the psychology of translation, i.e. it is
concerned with trying to find out what happens in
the mind of a translator.
 Medium-restricted theories subdivide according to
translation by machine and humans, with further
subdivisions according to whether the
machine/computer is working alone (automatic
machine translation) or as an aid to the human
translator (computer-assisted translation), to
whether the human translation is written or spoken
and to whether spoken translation (interpreting) is
consecutive or simultaneous.
 Area-restricted theories are restricted to specific
languages or groups of languages and/or cultures.
 Rank-restricted theories are linguistic theories that
have been restricted to a level of (normally) the word
or sentence.
 Text-type restricted theories look at
discourse types and genres; e.g. literary,
business and technical translation.
The term time-restricted is self-explanatory,
referring to theories and translations limited
according to specific time frames and
periods.
 Problem-restricted theories may refer to
certain problems such as equivalence (a key
issue that came to the fore in the 1960s and
1970s) or to a wider question of whether so-
called ‘universals’ of translation exist.
The ‘applied’ branch of Holmes’s framework
concerns applications to the practice of translation:

• translator training: teaching methods, testing

techniques, curriculum design;
• translator aids: such as dictionaries and grammars;
• translation criticisms: the evaluation of
translations, including the marking of student
translations and the reviews of published
translations.
The applied branch of translation studies
Discipline , interdiscipline or
multidiscipline
• linguistics (especially semantics, pragmatics,
applied and contrastive linguistics, cognitive
linguistics);
• modern languages and language studies;
• comparative literature;
• cultural studies (including gender studies and
postcolonial studies);
• philosophy (of language and meaning, including
hermeneutics and deconstruction and ethics);
Translation Theory before the 20th Century
Word-for-word or sense-for-sense

The distinction between ‘word-for-word’

(i.e. ‘literal’) and ‘sense-for-sense’ (i.e.’free’)
translation goes back to Cicero (106-43
@AC) and St Jerome (347-420 AC).
And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an
orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or as one might
say, the “figures’ of thought, but in language which
conforms to our usage. And in so doing, I did not hold it
necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the
general style and force of the language.

(Cicero 46 @AC/ 1960 AC: 364)

Now I not only admit but freely announce that in
translating from the Greek – except of course in the case of
the Holy Scripture, where even the syntax contains a
mystery – I render not word-for-word, but sense-for-sense.

(St Jerome 395 AC/ 1997: 25)

 In translating from foreign languages into
Chinese, there are five losses to the original:

1) The foreign words are entirely reversed,

and to make them follow the Chinese
[word order] is the first loss to the
original.
2) The foreign sutras esteem raw material
[i.e plain style], whereas the Chinese are
fond of [elegant] style; if the transmission is
to fit the feelings of the many [i.e. the
Chinese sangha], it will have to match
[elegant] style. This is the second loss to the
original.
3) The foreign sutras are minutely detailed,
and regarding their recitative exclamations
and repeated exhortations, they do not shy
away from reiterating them three or four
times. Now cutting them off is the third loss
to the original.
4) In the foreign sutras there are commentaries
which elucidate meaning that truly seem like
disorderly phrases. Examining these commentaries
with regard to the words [of the main text?] , one
finds that the text shows no difference. Removing
about 1,500 [ of the words? of the
commentaries?] entails the fourth loss to the
original.
5) After one subject is completed, it is approached
once more from [another side] side, and [the
authors] jump back to previous sentences [or: take
up previous sentences]; and what once was
previous, now becomes the new discourse, which
has been completely omitted, and that is the fifth
loss to the original.
(translation, with parenthetical comments, in
Lackner 2001: 362-3)
To summarize these changes involve:

1) coping with the flexibility of Sanskrit syntax by

reversing to a standard Chinese order;
2) the enhancement of the literariness of the ST
to adapt to an elegant Chinese style;
3) the omission of repetitive exclamations;
4) the reduction in the paratextual commentaries
that accompany the TTs ; and
5) reduction or restructuring to ensure more
logical and linear discourse.
Dao’ an also lists three factors (buyi, ‘difficulties’ or
‘not deviating from the text’) that necessitated special
care:

1) the directing of the message to a new

audience;
2) the sanctity of the ST words; and
3) the special status of the STs themselves
as the cumulative work of so many
followers.
Baker and Hanna (2009: 330), following Rosenthal
(1965/1994, describe the two translation methods
that were adopted during that period:

The first [method] = associated with

Yuhanna Ibn al-Batriq and Ibn Na’ima
al-Himsi, was highly literal and
consisted of translating each Greek
word with an equivalent Arabic word
and ,where none existed, borrowing
the Greek word into Arabic.
According to Baker and Hanna (ibid.), this word-for-
word method proved to be unsuccessful and was
later revised using the second, sense-for-sense
method:

The second method, associated with Ibn

Ishaq and al-Jawahari, consisted of
translating sense-for-sense, creating fluent
target texts which conveyed the meaning of
the original without distorting the target
language.
 Fidelity, spirit and truth
So, the concept of fidelity (or at least the
translator who was fidus interpres, i.e. the faithful
interpreter’) had initially been dismissed as literal
word-for-word translation by Horace.
Spirit as similarly having two meanings: the Latin
word spiritus denoted creative energy or
inspiration, proper to literature, but St Augustine
(354-430 AC) used it to mean the Holy Spirit of
God , and His contemporary St. Jerome employed
it in both senses.
For St. Augustine, spirit and Truth (Latin
Veritas) were intertwined, with truth having
the sense of ‘content’; for St Jerome, truth
meant the authentic Hebrew Biblical text to
which he returned in his Latin Vulgate
translation.
Grammar privilege words that exhibited the values
of proprietas (acceptability) , puritas (purity), and
perspecuitas (clarity); a word should be accepted
as an integral part of the language and commonly
understood, it should be have a long history and
be employed in the texts of high-status writers.

Rhetoric valued elegantia (elegance) and dignitas

(dignity), which were stylistic considerations that
covered structure, rhythm and musicality.
Dryden (1680/1992:25) reduces all
translation to three categories:
1) ‘metaphrase’: word by word and line by line’
translation, which corresponds to literal translation;
2) ‘paraphrase’: translation with latitude, where the
author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to
be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his
sense’: this involves changing whole phrases and more
or less corresponds to faithful or sense-for-sense
translation;
3) ‘imitation’: ‘forsaking’ both words and sense; this
corresponds to Cowley’s very free translation and is
more or less what today might be understood as
adaptation.
Graphically, we might represent this as follows:

Literal translation free translation adaptation

word for word sense for sense

metaphrase paraphrase imitation