What is translation?
Prof. Majeed Al-Maashta Ph.D
Translation is the replacement of an original text with another text.
As such translation has been regarded as a kind of inferior substitute for the real thing, and it has been likened to the back of a carpet, or a kiss through a handkerchief. But it can also be seen more positively as providing access to ideas and experiences that, although represented at second hand, would otherwise be closed off in an unknown language.
So although translation can be seen as a kind of limitation, it also has the opposite function of overcoming the limitations that particular languages impose on their speakers. Instead of comparing it to such reduced activities as hygienic kissing or laying down a carpet bottom – side up, translation can also be compared to building bridges or extending horizons, metaphors which point to the positive, enabling function of translation. In this sense translation can be seen as a service: it service a need human beings apparently have to transcend the world to which their own particular languages confine them. Translations mediate between languages, societies, and literatures, and it is through translations mediate between languages, societies, and literatures, and it is through translation that linguistic and cultural barriers may be overcome.
Translation, of its nature, provides access to something, some message, that already exists, and it always therefore a secondary communication. Normally, a communicative event happens just once. With translation, however, communicative events are reduplicated for people originally prevented from participating in, or appreciating, the original event.
Kind of translation
Translation is the process of replacing an original text, known as the source text, with a substitute one, known as the target text.
The process is usually an interlingual translation in that the message in the source language text is rendered as target text in a different language, and it is in this sense that we have referred to translation so far. But sometimes the term is also used to refer to an intralingual translation, a process whereby a text in one variety of the language is reworded into another. This would be the casa where the message of a text in, say, Old English is reworked into a text in Modern English, or a text in one dialect or style is reworked into anther. And we can also speak of translation, when the replacement involves not another language but another, non-linguistic, means of expression, in other worlds a different semiotic system. In this sense we can say for instance that a poem is translation into a dance or picture, a novel into an opera or a film. Such transmutations are examples of intersemiotic translation.
What all these three processes have in common is that they involve the replacement of one expression of a message or unit of meaningful content by another in a different form.
The term translation used to describe linguistic activities such as summarizing or paraphrasing. Although such activities resemble translation in that they replace a message that already exists, they differ in that they are designed not to reproduce the original as a whole but to reduce it to its essential parts, or adapt, it for different groups of people with different needs and expectation. In this book we will be concerned with translation as it is most commonly understood, that is to say as the process of interlingual replacement of one text by another.
Translation and interpreting
Translation can be written or oral. The written form is known as translation, the oral one is known as interpreting_ a term distinct form the type of interpreting mentioned above with reference to understanding and explicating the meaning of a text. In professional conference interpreting, a distinction is usually made between simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. In the former, the act of interpreting is carried out while the speaker is still talking, in the latter, interpreting occurs after the speaker has finished.
In written translation a fixed, permanently available and in principle unlimitedly repeatable text in one language is changed into a text in another language, which can be corrected as often as the translator sees fit. In interpreting, on the other hand, a text is transformed into a new text in anther language, which is, as a rule, orally available only once. Since the new text emerges chunk by chunk and does not stay permanently with the interpreter (or the addressees), it is only controllable and correctible by the interpreter to a limited extend. While some steps in interpreting as automatic and need little reflective thought, others may be more difficult and take time. This can lead to serious problems, as the interpreter has to listen and interpret at the same time. All this is very different in translating, where the source text at his or her own par. Further, the original is available for translation in its entirety, whereas, in simultaneous and consecutive (conference) interpreting, it is produced and presented bit by bit. This is a great challenge for the interpreter who needs to create an ongoing text out of these bits that must eventually form a coherent whole.
Besides conference interpreting in national or international environments, another type of interpreting, known as community interpreting, (sometimes also called public service interpreting, or dialogue interpreting) has recently gained importance.
Given increasing international migration and the resulting mixture of linguistic backgrounds, community interpreting fulfils an important mediating function in that it facilitates communication between officials and lay persons who speak different languages. Community interpreting is almost always carried out consecutively (face-to-face or over the phone). It takes place for instance in police or immigration departments, social welfare centres, hospitals, schools or prisons, and is either carried out by untrained "natural interpreters" such as bilingual relatives and friends, or by professional expert in specialist (legal, medical, etc.) domains. The interpreter has to interpret for both parties, thus switching between both languages. Untrained volunteer community interpreters are often neither neutral nor objective when they interpret for a relative or a friend: rather, they tend to take the side of whoever they are helping out in an institutional context. A type of interpreting witch is similar to community interpreting is "liaison interpreting" but here the interpreting is done between person of equal status in business and technical meetings.
The distinction between translation (written) and interpreting (oral) is a necessary one _they are very different activities. In written translation, neither author of source texts nor addressees of target texts are usually present so no overt interaction or direct feedback can take place. In the interpreting situation, on the other hand, both author and addressees are usually present, and interaction and feedback may occur. In this book, we shall be concerned primarily with the written form, translation, and we shall only occasionally consider the oral form, interpreting.