Saturday, January 16, 2010

Linguistic issues with Translation

One of the distinctive properties of translation is creativity, by which we mean the ability of native speakers of a language to produce and understand new forms in their language. Even though creativity is most apparent when it comes to translation and sentence formation, it is also manifest in our lexical knowledge, where new words are added to our mental lexicon regularly.

Translation is always done in clear and grammatically correct language. Whether it is Hindi, English or any other language, it should be formed grammatically correct as well as grammatically sound. As an English to Hindi translator in Somya Translators Pvt Ltd. I would like to share some of my view on the issues we face while translating from native language to different and vise-a-versa.

Many times it had been noticed that we get so involve and used to technical translation that we forget that translation is not about translating every word, instead its all together a business of forming a whole new sentence from one language to other language conveying the same meaning. As I am not much aware of any other language I can only judge two languages, i.e. of course Hindi and English. Sometimes I do find mistranslations in articles translated in Hindi, which is probably due to insufficient knowledge on the part of the native language, but it is very rare, and I am always surprised when this happens. They do not really contain mistranslations based on misunderstanding of the original language and the technical terms are usually correct, but the target language is sometime so bad that I have to read the original text at least twice before I can figure out what the translated text means.

One of the reasons behind this is the phonological, alphabetical difference between Hindi and English and also the preposition and postposition difference in them. The Devangari script employed by Hindi contains both vowels (10) and consonants (40). Hindi is highly phonetic; i.e. the pronunciation of new words can be reliably predicted from their written form. This is in strong contrast to English. Conversely, it results in mispronouncing words that people first encounter in writing. In Hindi, objects have genders. For instance, a book is feminine and a house is masculine. Hindi uses a different word order than English. Since grammar is quite difficult with two genders, laypeople make mistakes in that regard. Also in Hindi Post-positions are used instead of Prepositions.

Translators should be aware of the fact that incorrect comprehension of a text considerably decreases the quality of the translation. Finding solutions to dilemmas is a constant in the work of the translator. This includes reading comprehension strategies for translation (underlining words, detecting translation difficulties, contextualizing lexical items, analyzing them, and so on.)

Translators should also be aware that meaning is not only conveyed by words. Hence adequate decoding and re-coding of nomenclatures, figures, tables and charts; standardized terms, acronyms, toponyms, etc. is a matter that must be properly considered.

Last, but not least, translators should observe that the essence, in terms of meaning and sense, register and style, etc., and the lay out of the original text, in terms of format, i.e. sources, paragraphs, indentation, columns, tables, etc., is properly adhered to in the translated unit.

If followed properly this can and will certainly help in providing the best translation in business.For More Information Plz visit our site here :- http://www.somyatrans.com



No comments:

Post a Comment