Translation Process

1.Translation Strategy

Hurtado Albirproposes the following definition of translation strategy: “Strategyis the procedure used by the translator to solve problems that emerge when carrying out the translation process with a particular objective in mind” (Hurtado Albir 1996, 1999).

According to Chesterman translation strategy is “a plan that is implemented in a given context.” (2005: 26).

Jaaskelainen (2005: 71) considers strategy as, "a series of competencies, a set of steps or processes that favor the acquisition, storage, and utilization of information".

"A 'strategy' is a generalization about typical courses-of-action exhibited by professional translators" (Neubert and Shreve, 1992: 52); they are the standard tools of the trade, the procedures offering a solution to the various types of problems encountered in the translation task.

It is worth mentioning that translation techniques affect the micro-units of text and the results of translation, while translation strategies affect the process of translation.

Translators use strategies for comprehension (e.g., distinguish main and secondary ideas, establish conceptual relationships, search for information) and for reformulation (e.g., paraphrase, retranslate, say out loud, avoid words that are close to the original). Because strategies play an essential role in problem solving, they are a central part of the subcompetencies that make up translation competence.

2. Stages of Translating Process

Description of the translating process is one of the major tasks of the translation theory. According to N. Strelkova “Translation work is usually seen as consisting of three stages: 1) studying the original, 2) the translation work proper, and 3) self-editing” (Strelkova, p. 9).

Stages of Translation

Stage	Its characteristics
Studying the original (pre-translation scanning)	1. Review the material you are going to translate so that you can understand its intent and content. Use your linguistic competence and ‘world knowledge’ (de-verbalized, theoretical, general, encyclopaedic and cultural) to grasp the sense of the ST. 2. Identify its genre or functional style. 3. Identify the problems you may come across in the process of translation.
The translation work proper	4. Identify the units of translation. 5. Make a draft translation.
Self-editing	6. Leave a little extra time to review the text after having finished the translation. You should take a break and look at the text from a new perspective, which will allow you to improve your work. 7. Then edit this version: - check the translation against the original to ensure accuracy of content; - proofread it carefully to correct typographical errors and grammatical mistakes. 8. Translate the headline. 9. The final stage involves going over your draft to verify that the text reads as one originally produced in the target language - not as a 'translation'.

3. The Problem of the Unit of Translation (UT)

Being one of the fundamental concepts always argued about in the realm of translation, the unit of translation (UT) has been given various definitions by different theorists. Some linguists say that a word can’t be the UT because the boundaries between words aren’t clear and it is difficult to single out a separate word in speech. For example, the noun ice cream and the phrase I scream are pronounced the same. That’s why these authors reject a word as a UT.

Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997) define it as: "a term used to refer to the linguistic level at which ST is recodified in TL" (p. 192). In other words, it's an element with which the translator decides to work while translating the ST. Barkhudarov (1993) defines a UT as the smallest unit of SL which has an equivalent in TL". He recommends that this unit of translation, no matter how long, can itself have a complex structure although its parts separately cannot be translated and replaced by any equivalent in the TL.

Newmark insists that the unit of translation, understood as a segment of the original text from which the translator can begin his or her reformulation in a different language, is part of a movable scale: “The word, the lexical unit, the collocation, the group, the clause and the sentence–rarely the paragraph, never the text”.

On the whole, in modern language the UT is distinguished on the following levels:

	Level	Its characteristics	Example
	The level of phonemes	Though a phoneme doesn’t bare an independent meaning of its own, it is sometimes used as a UT. In this case a phoneme of a SL is substituted for the similar in articulation and acoustic features phoneme in the TL or graphemes in writing.	Su th erland - Са т ерленд (графство Шотландии) [Ө] – [t]
	The level of morphemes	The adoption by the TL of a compound word whose components are literal translations of the components of a corresponding compound in the SL.	Backbencher - "заднескамеечник" (рядовой член парламента) back is a root, bench is a root, -er is a suffix
	The level of words	The unit of the TL is one word and it is much more frequently used in the SL. But such cases are too limited. Only some words in a sentence find their correspondence in the TL.	Tom thanked his teachers. – Том поблагодарил своих учителей.
	The level of collocations (phrases)	Very often their meanings are not equal to the meanings of their components (that is the words they consist of). And in this case they are translated by means of their equivalents in the TL.	To plough the sands - заниматься бесполезным делом / тратить силы впустую But if an interform of the phrases coincides in both languages, the literal translation is possible. Pandora's box - ящик Пандоры (источник всяческих бедствий)
	The level of sentences	When a translator segments a text into translation units, the larger these units are, the better chance there is of obtaining an idiomatic translation.	On December 23, 1856, cries of new life swelled from a North Carolina farmhouse, their source a baby boy named James Buchanan Duke. The lad would have far more impact on the world than the failed president his name honored. 23 декабря 1856 года с фермы, расположенной в Северной Каролине, донеслись крики новорожденного, возвестившего о своем появлении на этот свет. Это был мальчик, которого нарекли Джеймс Бучанан Дьюк. Парнишка этот повлиял на мир куда больше, чем неудачник-президент, в честь которого он был назван. (Steiner, John F., Steiner, George A. Business, Government, and Society: A Managerial Perspective, Text and Cases. USA, 2011. Ch. 3)
	The level of text	On this level more attention is paid to producing a naturally reading TT than to preserving the ST wording intact.	For example, compare the Russian translation of Ch. Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre with the original.

Lecture 3

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