Let us take an Indian example – suppose you are translating a message or a document for primarily English - Western readers who are not familiar with Indian culture. The word “sindur” appears somewhere in the document / message, which we generally translate as “the vermillion mark.” The problem is that the literal translation would not translate the cultural connotations associated with the word “sindur.” The translator then would need to convey the message probably by providing details about what is the significance of “sindur” in Hindu culture (may be in foot notes). There can be many examples like this. It is not a problem that is faced only by the translators, but it is also faced by the Indian English writers writing about India. In one instance, Mulk Raj Anand had to translate the term “namak haram” into English and he coined the expression “spoiler of the salt.” Do you think the sense of “namak haram” is translated in the newly coined phrase of Mulk Raj Anand?
Now let us take an example where the English word “subway” has to be translated into Hindi. In our city life, we all are accustomed to Subways, but if someone says “bhumigat paidal paar path” it will take some time for us to decipher what the person is saying whereas the literal translation of “subway” is “bhumigat paidal paar path.” Thus translation is a tricky affair as it is very difficult to find the right equivalent in target language.
Thus if the translation has to be accurate or equivalent to the source message then it is not necessary that the code units that one translates into will be always similar and accurate. One cannot always translate word to word (we have discussed ‘word to word translation’ in Chapter 2). What assumes more significance is to translate the sense of the source message in the translated message. For example, if one is translating Shakespeare famous sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” (Sonnet 18) into Hindi, the problem that the Translator would obviously face is how to translate the phrase “summer’s day.” In India, the summer season is very different from the English Summer which is quite pleasant. Now if the translator merely compares the beloved with summer then the meaning of the ‘pleasant presence’ would be lost in translation. Therefore Jakobson significantly says that ‘Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey’. So if one has to translate the phrase “a summer’s day” then instead of a literal translation of summer, one needs to translate the sense.
In the translation activity that you just did, what you probably figured out is that you have been trying to find equivalence in your mother tongue for the words and sense that is expressed in these two lines of a famous poem by John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale). According to American scholar Eugene Nida and many other translation scholars of the twentieth century, the cardinal problem of translation studies is the question of equivalence. Nida tried to solve the problem by making translation scientific. Based on his experience of translating The Bible, Nida’s theory of translation as science finds its expression in two major works in the 1960s: Toward a Science of Translating (Nida, 1964) and the co-authored The Theory and Practice of Translation (Nida and Taber, 1969).
Based on the theoretical linguistic developments of 1960s, Eugene Nida started with the premise that a word does not have a fixed meaning and but ‘acquires’ meaning through its context, in the culture and setting that one uses the word. The meaning is attributed to the word from that context and culture. Therefore Nida’s model of Translation does not merely talk about the act of translation, but mentions a three-stage system of translation –
● analysis,
● transfer and
● restructuring.
Analysis
Translation is a three stage process as the first role of a translator is to be a good reader. The deeper the translator can critically understand the text in the source language, the better will be his or her rendering of it in the target language. So the first step is crucial to translation as translation is not always done word for word. The sense and the spirit of the text needs to find its manifestation in the target language and till the time the translator does not fathom the sense and spirit of the original text, in no way can he or she deliver it in the translated text.
Analysis of Grammatical meaning would be entirely linguistic in nature. This would involve carefully looking at the different sub parts constituting say, a sentence, that is to be translated. For instance: While a sentence like “Meena played the game.” Can easily be translated into Hindi as “Meena ne khel khela”, its passive form i.e. “The game was played by Meena” leads to a translation “Khel Meena dwara khela gaya.” Where the highlighted word is capable of further giving a twist to the story as it may mean “Meena was able to play the game.” This is an example of grammatic ambiguity which needs to be clarified by the context. Now to look at Referential meaning, which pertains to extralinguistic features, let us consider a specific reference to an event. “The Home Minister wrote to the Defense Minister about the recent spate in terrorist activities in Mumbai. He stressed on the need for improving patrolling around sensitive areas there.” While translating this statement, the translator will have to keep in mind that the pronoun “He” in the second sentence refers to the Home minister and not the other; also that, ‘there’ refers to a specific location in Mumbai. Connotative meaning would refer to the abstract value associated with a certain word. For instance, the word “fire” while actually standing for a physical event that burns, might be used to connote the ideas of “intensity” or “ambition”. Similarly the color “white” may connote “innocence, purity or peace” depending upon its context. Finally looking at the Socio-cultural meaning, which is basically social and cultural significance attached to a certain word or expression, for instance, the color “white” (discussed above) when used to describe a Hindu woman’s clothing would refer to her state of marital being a widow. This meaning will not be available to, say, a person from western culture where a woman gets married wearing white attire.
Hence we can say that a careful observation and analysis of words/phrases/expressions is of primary importance as the first step in the process of translation.
Transfer
As the translator is done with the first step the second stage of Transfer comes to being, where the translator needs to find the equivalence between the language of the Source text to that of the target language. In other words, after the analysis of the source text, the translator needs to transfer the meaning in the target language (by finding the right equivalent) and then restructure the whole thing to make it appealing to the readers. If the reading of the translated text is not similarly pleasurable as the source text then the translator has failed in his attempt of translation.
The process of transferring a message requires a clear understanding of the fact that no two languages are the same grammatically or otherwise, and, each language conveys a different meaning through its unique structures. Hence while transferring a message from the source language to the target language, the translator must first establish a common route of communicability between the SL and TL and thereafter try and render as accurate a meaning in the TL as possible without interfering with the actual content of the SL.
To understand this with the help of an example, culture specific ideas such as striking up a conversation with a total a stranger by means of addressing him honorifically as “mama” in Tamil is not available in English. In Tamil, the same expression can also be used to address an actual relative. To translate it in English would therefore require some application on the part of the translator, who will first need to figure out a way of communicating the connotation, and then convey the message without altering the thrust of the message, which in the case of this word, can be done by substituting it with “Uncle”.
Restructuring
Restructuring is the final step of the process of translation which depends most on finding the most suitable equivalent in the TL. Restructuring is affected by cultural characteristics of the SL and TL, the grammatical structures and vocabulary of the two languages, as well as the varying intent and method of the author versus that of the translator. While restructuring a message into the TL, the translator may either choose to be accurate to the source language: whereby he/she will try to present the expression closest to its true form (for instance, by translating “Bhai” from Hindi as “Bhai” in English with a small note describing it as a form of addressing a gangster in Mumbai); or by choosing to be closer to the target language and naturalizing the cultural connotation in favor of the target reader (for instance, by translating “saala” from Hindi to “rascal” in English without going into the intricacies of it also meaning “brother of one’s wife/brother-in-law”).
In the context of equivalence, it needs to be kept in mind that the ideas of ‘literal’, ‘free’ and ‘faithful’ translation were thought to be redundant by Nida in favour of ‘two types of equivalence’ (Nida, 1964):
(1) Formal Equivalence and
(2) Dynamic Equivalence.
Formal Equivalence: “Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content . . . One is concerned that the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language.” (Nida 1964a: 159) While the translator is trying to find formal equivalence, what he or she is doing is to closely follow the form, content and structure of the source text. In some cases, these kinds of translations have their own importance; for example, in an academic environment. If a student of Indian literature is reading a Latin American Novel, originally written in Spanish and translated into English, and if the translation is done from the point of view of Formal Equivalence, then it will be better as that would allow the student to have access to the Latin American culture and its linguistic peculiarities. Many a times the translator may have to use elaborate foot notes to make the readers aware of the cultural and linguistic practices of the Latin American Culture.
If you remember the example of “Sindur” which we have talked about earlier, in that case the translator may choose to give a footnote explaining the significance of Sindur in Indian culture and Tradition.
Dynamic Equivalence: Dynamic, or functional equivalence is based on what Nida calls ‘the principle of equivalent effect’, where ‘the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message’ (Nida 1964). In case of Dynamic Equivalence, the translator focuses more on the culture and linguistic expressions of the target language and translates accordingly. In other words, the translator tries to figure out ‘the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message’ (Nida and Taber 1969). Therefore, what the translator does is to eliminate the foreignness of the source language and culture as much as possible and bring the translated text as close to the Target language culture and grammatical and linguistic rules as possible so that the readers while reading the text does not feel awkward. The naturalness with which the reader reads a text of his or her own mother tongue, the same effect should also be there in the translated text.
Thus for Nida, the success of the translation depends above all on achieving equivalent response. It is one of the ‘four basic requirements of a translation’, which are:
(1) making sense;
(2) conveying the spirit and manner of the original;
(3) having a natural and easy form of expression;
(4) producing a similar response
Translators face innumerable problems in their quest for equivalence. For instance, if English is the source language and Hindi is the target language, one may face a problem conveying the multiple meanings denoted by a common English word like Snow. In English, Snow may express the following forms of snow with minor variations: icicle or sleet or floe (Icicle: a hanging, spike-like piece of ice formed by the freezing of dripping water; Sleet: rain in the form of small ice pellets; and, Floe: a sheet of floating ice, chiefly on the surface of the sea.) But in Hindi, the usual term barf will not be able to convey these meanings. To take another example, the bird ‘owl’ may be understood the same way universally, but at the same time, while it conveys the positive ideas of being insightful, mystical, a symbol of grace and wisdom in the Western culture, being called an ‘owl’ or ‘ullu’ in Hindi/ Indian culture is understood to be a mildly offensive way of hinting at someone’s stupidity, mediocrity, pessimism and so on, which are definitely negative.
Though Nida favored Dynamic Equivalence over Formal Equivalence, but to always translate thus would be ruining the source text completely and would be creating a new text. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Bottom turns to an ass head, it is said that: “Bottom, Thou are translated.” The meaning of ‘translation’ here is that of a kind of transformation, a physical one in this case. In Dynamic equivalent translated text, the same would happen as the translation would be very different from the source language text leading to a new text altogether.
Thus equivalence is the cardinal issue in translation but as Mona Baker says equivalence ‘is influenced by a variety of linguistic and cultural factors and is therefore always relative’ (Baker 1992: 6). Susan Bassnett in her book Translation Studies sees the process of translation as potentially the process of finding the exact equivalent as she writes –
“Translation involves far more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items between languages ... Once the translator moves away from close linguistic equivalence, the problems of determining the exact nature of the level of equivalence aimed for begin to emerge. (Bassnett 2002: 34)
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