| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Translation theory in practice. Thread poster: LilyLowe
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Lingua 5B wrote:
Then just translate goluboy as baby blue?
Possibly. But, to bring in a bit of theory, in some cases just 'blue' would do if you wouldn't expect such specification in English. To take a trivial example, let's say you have four balls: red, yellow, green and another that in Russian would be 'goluboy'. Well, sure, if you were translating from Russian you could use 'light blue'. However, if you were just naming the colour in English, you would just say 'blue'.
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 02:34
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
DLyons wrote: Lingua 5B wrote:
People keep asking me why we refer to blonds as blue heads, well that's specific etymology issue I don't know about but I'm sure it's researchable, study theory and you will find out! : D
[Edited at 2015-08-28 09:54 GMT] I have no idea where it came from, but "bluey" is 'Strine for a red-head. There's apparently a colour "Pigeon Blue" RAL 5014. And genuinely blue pigeons (but not European ones) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_pigeon[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:02 GMT]
In old times, people referred to colors from what they could see in nature (animals, plants, clouds, etc), until artificial colors started being made. Which is probably why "golubija boja", at least in Serbian, is found in old, archaic texts. Lots of theory in this topic : D
| | | | DLyons
Ireland
Local time: 01:34
Spanish to English
+ ...
Lingua 5B wrote:
"Blue head/ blue-haired" is a standard term for a blond in Serbian (orig. plavuša, plava kosa)
Earlier version "plavojka". The root "plav" is cognate with German "falb", English "pallid", Latin "pallidus"? Or perhaps I am totally wrong???
So what I think is that it originally meant "fair-haired" but I haven't the slightest idea when/why the word subsequently picked up "blue" as a connotation.
[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:15 GMT]
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 02:34
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Yes of course, context, context. | Aug 28, 2015 |
Alistair Gainey wrote: Lingua 5B wrote:
Then just translate goluboy as baby blue? Possibly. But, to bring in a bit of theory, in some cases just 'blue' would do if you wouldn't expect such specification in English. To take a trivial example, let's say you have four balls: red, yellow, green and another that in Russian would be 'goluboy'. Well, sure, if you were translating from Russian you could use 'light blue'. However, if you were just naming the colour in English, you would just say 'blue'.
In your example, yes. However, if you are translating a wall paint catalogue, then you will do your best to be specific.
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Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 02:34
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| "Plavojka" exists in Serbian even today. | Aug 28, 2015 |
DLyons wrote: Lingua 5B wrote:
"Blue head/ blue-haired" is a standard term for a blond in Serbian (orig. plavuša, plava kosa) Earlier version "plavojka". The root "plav" is cognate with German "falb", English "pallid", Latin "pallidus"? Or perhaps I am totally wrong???
Plavojka would be a variation of "plavuša", and a term that is more playful and less frequent/less standard.
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Lingua 5B wrote:
In your example, yes. However, if you are translating a wall paint catalogue, then you will do your best to be specific.
Absolutely. Which, in fact, is quite a challenge; Dulux, for example, either use codes on their Russian website for many of their colours, or leave them in English: http://www.dulux.ru/ru/colour-palettes
[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:19 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:20 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:21 GMT]
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 02:34
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Yes, colors are pretty self-explanatory. | Aug 28, 2015 |
Alistair Gainey wrote: Lingua 5B wrote:
In your example, yes. However, if you are translating a wall paint catalogue, then you will do your best to be specific. Absolutely. Which, in fact, is quite a challenge; Dulux, for example, either use codes on their Russian website for many of their colours, or leave them in English: http://www.dulux.ru/ru/colour-palettes[Edited at 2015-08-28 10:19 GMT] [Edited at 2015-08-28 10:20 GMT] [Edited at 2015-08-28 10:21 GMT]
From the position of a buyer, wall paint colors are self-explanatory. If there are no parallel terms, there is a parallel set of eyes, lol, so they can choose and refer to a code.
The problem would be bigger if you were a writer or literary translator trying to explain the color using words only.
| | | | | What have 50 shades of blue got to do with it? | Aug 28, 2015 |
We do not need translation theory to tell us how to translate a specific kind of blue or any other word with no direct equivalent in the target language. All we need is common sense.
Basic research to prove the bleeding obvious might have its place in a field like medicine as a stepping stone towards something useful, but not in translation. No amount of theorising will ever result in better translations, let alone improve people's lives.
I believe the study of transl... See more We do not need translation theory to tell us how to translate a specific kind of blue or any other word with no direct equivalent in the target language. All we need is common sense.
Basic research to prove the bleeding obvious might have its place in a field like medicine as a stepping stone towards something useful, but not in translation. No amount of theorising will ever result in better translations, let alone improve people's lives.
I believe the study of translation to be a complete waste of time and money that could and should be put to some better use. ▲ Collapse
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 02:34
French to English
| thank you Chris S | Aug 28, 2015 |
Chris S wrote:
We do not need translation theory to tell us how to translate a specific kind of blue or any other word with no direct equivalent in the target language. All we need is common sense.
Basic research to prove the bleeding obvious might have its place in a field like medicine as a stepping stone towards something useful, but not in translation. No amount of theorising will ever result in better translations, let alone improve people's lives.
I believe the study of translation to be a complete waste of time and money that could and should be put to some better use.
for saying it like it is.
So for a long time I was self-taught. I came to Paris aged 19 as an au pair and had a few compulsory French lessons where I learnt pretty much nothing. I then worked as an English teacher and got into writing content for computer-assisted language learning. I had qualifications for none of that but was a way better teacher and writer than many of those who did.
Then I got into translation. I'll admit that my first translations were probably not that good, but I earned enough money to keep going. I did a stint as PM/proofreader/translator where mutual proofreading with great colleagues helped me no end.
When it was obvious that the agency was going under, I applied to get a Master's in Translation on the strength of my 15 years' experience. I submitted an application, and I was told that my sample translations were excellent. Most people going through the same process as me had to do quite a few of the classes and were only dispensed from a small proportion. I was dispensed from all the classes involving translation from French into English (my combination). I take that to mean that I didn't need to learn anything about how to translate from French into English.
However my case caused a few tensions because they had decided that you couldn't just be given the Master's on the strength of your application alone, everyone had to follow at least a few classes, so that the students wouldn't feel that the diploma was worthless.
So they made me take a few classes of translation from English into French, which I never had any intention of doing, and of course since I had learned everything on the job, I obviously knew nothing about theory, so they made me do the translation theory class.
NB I had produced excellent translations with no knowledge of the theory.
Well, attending that class was an eye-opener. The questions some students asked showed that they definitely needed a space in which to learn about the real world, trouble was the translation theory class was not that space. I learned absolutely nothing about how to translate. I did contribute a lot to the class, giving concrete examples of how I applied common sense/diplomacy/patience when talking to clients to illustrate what the teacher was waffling about.
Concrete examples included:
- when the client tells you there is a zero missing in the document specifying the amount of money she is to inherit, you refuse to add that zero in your translation, even if that means she then storms out without paying
- when the client insists on adding "have" before "produced" because there's an "a" before "produit" in the French text, you gently explain that in 15 years of teaching you never managed to get any French students to understand the difference between "have produced" and "produced" enough to apply the rule properly, so the client should just take you on trust. Then when they continue to press for an explanation you casually add that you stopped teaching because of the murderous thoughts a particularly thick student inspired.
- explaining why you translated "gestion et management" as just "management"
- explaining why you translated "convivial" as "warm and friendly" rather than just "friendly"
- explaining why using the expression "gaining a footing in a new market" did not imply that the company was expanding into sports shoes
(all true situations I have been in as a translator BTW)
Basically the only thing that I learned is that translation studies is about using lots of pompous, long words and hot air to say that translating word for word is not an option and you need to apply some common sense. The course was a total waste of time for me, although I was happy to help my fellow students, of course.
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 06:04
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Translation theory and practice | Aug 28, 2015 |
I did a whole paper on translation theory for my MA in Hindi. I wouldn't say it was all useless. In academics they look at translation mostly from a linguistic point of view and restrict their consideration to literary translations, whereas most of what we do are related to practical situations where the translation has to communicate, and produce very tangible results for the end client. So what we end up doing is not truly translation as defined in academics but a hybrid kind of thing which in... See more I did a whole paper on translation theory for my MA in Hindi. I wouldn't say it was all useless. In academics they look at translation mostly from a linguistic point of view and restrict their consideration to literary translations, whereas most of what we do are related to practical situations where the translation has to communicate, and produce very tangible results for the end client. So what we end up doing is not truly translation as defined in academics but a hybrid kind of thing which includes among other things a bit of transcreation, localization, simplification, and even deviation from the source. We concentrate on producing the desired tangible end results for the client rather than on achieving technically correct translation.
This is why it is the experience of most people responding to this thread that translation theory is mostly bunkum and a waste of time.
Another issue with translation theory is that it is mostly a rehash of linguistic studies and studies purely based on translation are much rarer. While translators do work with languages, what they do is technically much different from what monolingual writers do. Translators try to find an ideal match between two systems (ie., two languages) that fundamentally do not match. For example, when we compare the tense structure of English and Hindi, we find that the categories don't exactly match between the two languages, and what is said in a particular tense category in English, when it is transposed to a corresponding tense category in Hindi (if that exists, that is) then it would very often sound very odd and unnatural. Hindi would say the same thing in a different way using may be a different tense category.
Now, translation theory would say that the ideal way to translate would be to find correspondence at literal, syntactic and semantic levels between two languages. But the above tense example shows that this may not be the most practical or effective way of translation.
My approach to translation theory is that I read it with interest, but tackle translation intuitively, and if translation theory enters the process at all, it does in a very oblique and subconscious way.
I would also like to comment on the misconception expressed here that literal translation is something that has no practical value at all. However, it would be instructive to recall here that in many religious and legal translations, literal translation, wherever possible, is the most preferred technique. Particularly in religious texts, which many believe (rightly or wrongly) are fallen directly from the mouth of God himself, and are so sacred and infallible that changing even a single letter or a punctuation in the translation would be tantamount to sacrilege. Many translations of the Bible and the Koran have indeed been done in a very literal way, and they are highly regarded by their clientele.
[Edited at 2015-08-28 12:59 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 06:04
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Coincidence? | Aug 28, 2015 |
DLyons wrote:
Earlier version "plavojka". The root "plav" is cognate with German "falb", English "pallid", Latin "pallidus"? Or perhaps I am totally wrong???
So what I think is that it originally meant "fair-haired" but I haven't the slightest idea when/why the word subsequently picked up "blue" as a connotation.
The Hindi word for pallid is pheeka, which does sound a bit like plavojka. A coincidence?
| | | | Roni_S
Slovakia
Local time: 02:34
Slovak to English
There is also the Slovak term "plavovlasy", which ultimately means fair-haired. It is used very frequently to mean blonde.
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Nadja Balogh
Germany
Local time: 02:34
Member (2007)
Japanese to German
+ ...
| My experience with "translation theory" | Aug 29, 2015 |
The usefulness of translation theory really depends on what the term “translation theory” is referring to.
I have a German university degree in translation and had to attend some classes called “translation sciences”. They were the most boring classes I ever had to sit through. I have forgotten much of course, but the main purpose of “translation sciences” seemed to be to describe the translation process as meticulously as humanly possible - it was like an exercise in ab... See more The usefulness of translation theory really depends on what the term “translation theory” is referring to.
I have a German university degree in translation and had to attend some classes called “translation sciences”. They were the most boring classes I ever had to sit through. I have forgotten much of course, but the main purpose of “translation sciences” seemed to be to describe the translation process as meticulously as humanly possible - it was like an exercise in abstraction. What these classes did not do (on purpose, I think) was to deal with too many specific language examples - because that would have tainted the beautiful theoretical ivory tower which the teacher admired so much.
So as far as this type of translation theory goes, even as a student I already suspected that I would never ever gain anything out of it in practical life, and this has proven to be true. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 02:34
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Comparative analysis - name of the course. | Aug 29, 2015 |
Nadja Balogh wrote:
The usefulness of translation theory really depends on what the term “translation theory” is referring to.
I have a German university degree in translation and had to attend some classes called “translation sciences”. They were the most boring classes I ever had to sit through. I have forgotten much of course, but the main purpose of “translation sciences” seemed to be to describe the translation process as meticulously as humanly possible - it was like an exercise in abstraction. What these classes did not do (on purpose, I think) was to deal with too many specific language examples - because that would have tainted the beautiful theoretical ivory tower which the teacher admired so much.
So as far as this type of translation theory goes, even as a student I already suspected that I would never ever gain anything out of it in practical life, and this has proven to be true.
We had a "comparative analysis" course which dealt exactly with what you call "specific language examples", "common mistranslations", "common errors", "how NOT to translate this and that" and similar pragmatic aspects (I named just a few examples in this thread earlier on for my language pair, but there is a long list). And they precisely dealt with queries that would pop up in my head in real/practical life helping me bridge any gaps I may have had.
Then of course there is also abstract theory which is probably most useful in research and perhaps teaching.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 02:34
French to English
| practice and theory | Aug 29, 2015 |
and then of course there's that joke about the French engineer scratching his head as he watches a self-taught eccentric American inventor power his time-machine up.
"OK so it works in practice, but does it work in theory?)
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