There was a time when the ability to translate was simply thought to be an enhanced form of the ability to understand or read a foreign language. Thus, translation has never had the same recognition and respect that other professions do. Translation has constantly been underestimated as a profession. After all, as many people think, “if translation is just taking words from one language and finding the equivalent in the target language, how hard can it really be?”
But, with this misconception about what translation really is, comes some questions: is it possible to remain entirely faithful to the text one translates? If so, are there equivalent words, phrases, and idioms in the target language to replace the ones in the source language? Having to face these tough decisions translators have become the villains in this story. The Italian language even has the expression “traduttore, traditore” - meaning “translator, traitor”. This phrase was first applied to the French by irate Italians who felt that many French-language translations of Dante Alighieri betrayed either the beauty or the accuracy of his work.
However, regardless of the 'popular belief', translation is not an easy task and involves much more than simply transferring words into another language. It requires research, a comprehensive understanding and command of both the source and target languages, cultural knowledge, and specialization on the topic one is translating. And even then, there are still inherent problems with the language itself that lend themselves to numerous interpretations and glaring mistakes. Even though, there are some phrases that are so connected to a cultural context that it is virtually impossible to provide an equivalent translation of the text that also bears the same meaning.
So what exactly is the translator’s job when dealing with these difficulties? It is a tough call to decide whether it is better to translate literally so as not to “betray” the original text but at the same time risk a lower quality translation, or decide whether it is better to find the closest alternative that makes sense in the target language but that may somewhat change the definition. Wordplay (such as a palindrome, paronomasia or spoonerisms), rhymes, and/or objects, actions, or concepts that don't exist in a culture or language might become a problem to translators. How does one translate the word SERENDIPITY into Portuguese? Or the word SAUDADE into English? Thus, for Eco (2003), 'translation is always a shift, not between two languages but between two cultures. A translator must take into account rules that are not strictly linguistic but, broadly speaking, cultural.' It is fair to say then that, when it comes to translation and language, in fact, translators don't translate words they translate what people do with words.
This is due to what in linguistics is called a lexical gap or lacuna. A lacuna, from the Latin meaning a hole or pit, refers to the absence of a word or idiomatic phrase in translation from one language to another (Janssen, 2012). Language is strongly entwined with culture and identity, ergo most of the untranslatable expressions are related to a culture’s conception of time, states of being and social relationships. When the source and the target languages do not share a particular common concept, a lacuna happens.
However, there are some techniques translators can use to overstep the aforementioned language barriers. Namely:
- Adaptation, also known as free translation, is a translation procedure whereby the translator replaces a social, or cultural, reality in the source text with a corresponding reality in the target text; this new reality would be more usual to the audience of the target text. For example, in the Belgian comic book The Adventures of Tintin, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick Milou is translated as Snowy in English; likewise the detectives Dupond and Dupont become Thomson and Thompson in English.
- Borrowing is a translation procedure whereby the translator uses a word or expression from the source text in the target text, i.e., dispenses with translation all together and adopts the foreign word as new vocabulary. Borrowings are normally printed in italics if they are not considered to have been naturalized in the target language.
- Calque, or loan translation, is a form of borrowing from one language to another whereby the semantic components of a given term are literally translated into their equivalents in the borrowing language word by word. Because idioms, expressions or, occasionally, a word are literally translated into the target language, calquing often doesn't make much sense.
- Compensation is another way to express the untranslatability of language conversion. In this translation artifice, the translator solves the problem of aspects of the source text that cannot take the same form in the target language by replacing these aspects with other elements or forms in the source text. For example, many languages of the world have different words where others only use one. For example, many languages have two forms of the second person pronoun (informal and formal). Hence, to translate a text from Spanish to English, that has retained the you form only, the translator may have to compensate by using a first name or nickname, or by using syntactic phrasing that are viewed as informal, such as I'm, you're, gonna, dontcha, etc.
- Paraphrase, sometimes called periphrasis, is an effective way of expressing that which is not translatable in another language. It replaces a word or phrase in one language with a completely unequal word or phrase in the translation. But the outcome results in a similar meaning albeit with an entirely different wording. For example, the English idiom for death, “to kick the bucket,” is best translated into Portuguese by paraphrasing it into its own equivalent, “bater as botas.” With this technique, there is not only the attempt to connect a lexical gap, but also to bridge a cultural gap and find human commonality in different languages.
Criticisms aside, translation is of the uttermost importance in today’s globalized scenario, where being able to express yourself in one or more languages has become a mandatory feature for most companies and individuals. And, as Goethe once said, “say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.”
