<center><font colour=red>What About the Gluts?</font></center>

translation_articles_icon

ProZ.com Translation Article Knowledgebase

Articles about translation and interpreting
Article Categories
Search Articles


Advanced Search
About the Articles Knowledgebase
ProZ.com has created this section with the goals of:

Further enabling knowledge sharing among professionals
Providing resources for the education of clients and translators
Offering an additional channel for promotion of ProZ.com members (as authors)

We invite your participation and feedback concerning this new resource.

More info and discussion >

Article Options
Your Favorite Articles
Recommended Articles
  1. ProZ.com overview and action plan (#1 of 8): Sourcing (ie. jobs / directory)
  2. Réalité de la traduction automatique en 2014
  3. Getting the most out of ProZ.com: A guide for translators and interpreters
  4. Does Juliet's Rose, by Any Other Name, Smell as Sweet?
  5. The difference between editing and proofreading
No recommended articles found.

 »  Articles Overview  »  Art of Translation and Interpreting  »  Translation Techniques  »  
What About the Gluts?

What About the Gluts?

By Marcia R Pinheiro | Published  07/5/2012 | Translation Techniques | Recommendation:RateSecARateSecARateSecIRateSecIRateSecI
Contact the author
Quicklink: http://deu.proz.com/doc/3610
Author:
Marcia R Pinheiro
Australien
Englisch > Portugiesisch translator
 
View all articles by Marcia R Pinheiro

See this author's ProZ.com profile
It is possible to find more than one match for the same source-language expression.

Finding a match means finding an expression that makes readers select the world reference that was selected by the writers of the the source-language expression.

Basic hierarchy:
1) Perfect match (sound: if ão in Portuguese sounds like tion in English, then consideration is a perfect match for consideração. Sense: if driving a car in English forms the same Inner Reality image as dirigindo carro in Portuguese, then driving a car is a perfect match for dirigindo carro);
2) Semantic match (sense: bolsa is a semantic match for bag. Scholarship is bolsa de estudos in Portuguese. Bolsa de estudos literally translates into bag of studies, which does not make any sense in English, so that scholarship is a semantic match for bolsa de estudos); and
3) Gap (will demand notes, the N.T.s).

The sigmatoid bloco (Portuguese) finds at least notebook, and carnival group as semantic matches in English.

In the other direction, the sigmatoid you (English) finds at least tu, você, and,vós as semantic matches in Portuguese.

That is a glut problem!

There are situations in which this problem is unsolvable.

The plurality of choices may mean withdrawing from an assignment, and that is why translators should put a price on their labour and/or commit only after examining the source-language documents.

Frequently clients want the work done for yesterday, and the temptation is extraordinary.

Suppose that there is a list, and bloco is one of the sigmatoids in it.

The difference between a notebook, and a carnival group is enormous.

Translator's Notes (N.T.s) may be used in this situation, but, if that is part of another document, say a dictation list for kids, there could be some negative value aggregated to the translator's name as a consequence of using them.

Contexts are a necessity: only those can raise our understanding to the needed level, so that our Inner Reality contain the right image.









Copyright © ProZ.com, 1999-2024. All rights reserved.
Comments on this article

Knowledgebase Contributions Related to this Article
  • No contributions found.
     
Want to contribute to the article knowledgebase? Join ProZ.com.


Articles are copyright © ProZ.com, 1999-2024, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Content may not be republished without the consent of ProZ.com.