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Do not fill this in! == Translators == Competent translators show the following attributes: *a ''very good'' knowledge of the language, written and spoken, ''from which'' they are translating (the source language); *an ''excellent'' command of the language ''into which'' they are translating (the target language); *familiarity with the subject matter of the text being translated; *a profound understanding of the [[etymological]] and [[idiomatic]] correlates between the two languages, including [[Register (sociolinguistics)|sociolinguistic register]] when appropriate; and *a finely tuned sense of when to ''metaphrase'' ("translate literally") and when to ''paraphrase'', so as to assure true rather than spurious ''[[#Equivalence|equivalents]]'' between the source and target language texts.<ref>*[[Christopher Kasparek]], "Prus' ''Pharaoh'' and Curtin's Translation," ''[[The Polish Review]]'', vol. XXXI, nos. 2–3 (1986), p. 135.</ref> A competent translator is not only bilingual but [[bicultural]]. A [[language]] is not merely a collection of [[word]]s and of rules of [[grammar]] and syntax for generating [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]]s, but also a vast interconnecting system of [[connotation]]s and [[culture|cultural]] references whose mastery, writes [[linguist]] [[Mario Pei]], "comes close to being a lifetime job."<ref>[[Mario Pei]], ''The Story of Language'', p. 424.</ref> The complexity of the translator's task cannot be overstated; one author suggests that becoming an accomplished translator—after having already acquired a good basic knowledge of both languages and cultures—may require a minimum of ten years' experience. Viewed in this light, it is a serious misconception to assume that a person who has fair fluency in two languages will, by virtue of that fact alone, be consistently competent to translate between them.<ref name="Kasparek p. 86"/> [[Michael Wood (literary scholar)|Michael Wood]], a [[Princeton University]] emeritus professor, writes: "[T]ranslation, like language itself, involves contexts, conventions, class, irony, posture and many other regions where [[speech act]]s hang out. This is why it helps to compare translations [of a given work]."<ref>[[Michael Wood (literary scholar)|Michael Wood]], "Break your bleedin' heart" (review of [[Marcel Proust]], ''Swann's Way'', translated by [[James Grieve (Australian translator)|James Grieve]], NYRB, June 2023, {{ISBN|978 1 68137 6295}}, 450 pp.; and [[Marcel Proust]], ''The Swann Way'', translated by [[Brian Nelson (literature professor)|Brian Nelson]], Oxford, September 2023, {{ISBN|978 0 19 8871521}}, 430 pp.), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 46, no. 1 (4 January 2024), pp. 37–38. (p. 38.)</ref> [[Emily Wilson (classicist)|Emily Wilson]], a professor of classical studies at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and herself a translator, writes: "[I]t is [hard] to produce a good literary translation. This is certainly true of translations of [[ancient Greek]] and [[Latin|Roman]] texts, but it is also true of literary translation in general: it is very difficult. Most readers of foreign languages are not translators; most writers are not translators. Translators have to read and write at the same time, as if always playing multiple instruments in a [[One-man band|one-person band]]. And most one-person bands do not sound very good."<ref>[[Emily Wilson (classicist)|Emily Wilson]], "Ah, how miserable!" (review of three separate translations of ''[[The Oresteia]]'' by [[Aeschylus]]: by [[Oliver Taplin]], Liveright, November 2018; by [[Jeffrey Scott Bernstein]], Carcanet, April 2020; and by [[David Mulroy]], Wisconsin, April 2018), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 42, no. 19 (8 October 2020), pp. 9–12, 14. (Quotation: p. 14.)</ref> When in 1921, three years before his death, the English-language novelist [[Joseph Conrad]] – who had long had little contact with everyday spoken Polish – attempted to translate into English [[Bruno Winawer]]'s short Polish-language play, ''The Book of Job'', he predictably missed many crucial nuances of contemporary Polish language.<ref>[[Zdzisław Najder]], ''Joseph Conrad: A Life'', Camden House, 2007, ISBN 978-1-57113-347-2, pp. 538–39.</ref> The translator's role, in relation to the original text, has been compared to the roles of other interpretive artists, e.g., a musician or actor who interprets a work of musical or dramatic art. Translating, especially a text of any complexity (like other human activities<ref>[[Stephen Greenblatt]], "Can We Ever Master King Lear?", ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIV, no. 3 (23 February 2017), p. 36.</ref>), involves ''interpretation'': choices must be made, which implies interpretation.<ref name="Kasparek p. 85"/>{{efn|"Interpretation" in this sense is to be distinguished from the function of an "[[#Interpreting|interpreter]]" who translates orally or by the use of [[sign language]].}}{{efn|Rebecca Armstrong writes: "A translator has to make choices; any word they choose will carry its own nuance, a particular set of interpretations, implications and associations. [Often the translator] need[s] to render the same [...] word differently in different contexts."<ref>Rebecca Armstrong, "All Kinds of Unlucky" (review of ''The [[Aeneid]], translated by [[Shadi Bartsch]]'', Profile, November 2020, {{ISBN|978 1 78816 267 8}}, 400 pp.), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 43, no. 5 (4 March 2021), pp. 35–36. (Quotation: p. 35.)</ref>}} Mark Polizzotti writes: "A good translation offers not a reproduction of the work but an interpretation, a re-representation, just as the performance of a [[Play (theatre)|play]] or a [[sonata]] is a representation of the [[Play (theatre)|script]] or the [[Sheet music|score]], one among many possible representations."<ref>[[Mark Polizzotti]], quoted in [[Marina Warner]], "The Politics of Translation" (a review of [[Kate Briggs]], ''This Little Art'', 2017; [[Mireille Gansel]], ''Translation as Transhumance'', translated by [[Ros Schwartz]], 2017; [[Mark Polizzotti]], ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', 2018; [[Boyd Tonkin]], ed., ''The 100 Best Novels in Translation'', 2018; [[Clive Scott (linguist)|Clive Scott]], ''The Work of Literary Translation'', 2018), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 40, no. 19 (11 October 2018), p. 21.</ref> A translation of a text of any complexity is – as, itself, a work of art – unique and unrepeatable. Conrad, whose writings [[Zdzisław Najder]] has described as verging on "auto-translation" from Conrad's Polish and French linguistic personae,<ref>[[Zdzisław Najder]], ''Joseph Conrad: A Life'', 2007, p. IX.</ref> advised his niece and [[Polish language|Polish]] translator [[Aniela Zagórska]]: "[D]on't trouble to be too scrupulous ... I may tell you (in French) that in my opinion ''il vaut mieux interpréter que traduire'' [it is better to interpret than to translate] ...''Il s'agit donc de trouver les équivalents. Et là, ma chère, je vous prie laissez vous guider plutôt par votre tempérament que par une conscience sévère ...'' [It is, then, a question of finding the equivalent expressions. And there, my dear, I beg you to let yourself be guided more by your temperament than by a strict conscience....]"<ref>[[Zdzisław Najder]], ''Joseph Conrad: A Life'', 2007, p. 524.</ref> Conrad advised another translator that the prime requisite for a good translation is that it be "idiomatic". "For in the [[idiom]] is the ''clearness'' of a language and the language's force and its picturesqueness—by which last I mean the picture-producing power of arranged words."<ref>[[Zdzisław Najder]], ''Joseph Conrad: A Life'', 2007, p. 332.</ref> Conrad thought [[C.K. Scott Moncrieff]]'s English translation of [[Marcel Proust]]'s ''À la recherche du temps perdu'' (''[[In Search of Lost Time]]''—or, in Scott Moncrieff's rendering, ''Remembrance of Things Past'') to be preferable to the French original.<ref>Walter Kaiser, "A Hero of Translation" (a review of Jean Findlay, ''Chasing Lost Time: The Life of [[C.K. Scott Moncrieff]]: Soldier, Spy, and Translator''), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXII, no. 10 (4 June 2015), p. 55.</ref>{{efn|See "[[#Poetry|Poetry]]", below, for a similar observation concerning the occasional superiority of the translation over the original.}} Emily Wilson writes that "translation always involves interpretation, and [requires] every translator... to think as deeply as humanly possible about each verbal, poetic, and interpretative [[choice]]."<ref>[[Emily Wilson (classicist)|Emily Wilson]], "A Doggish Translation" (review of ''The Poems of [[Hesiod]]: Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles'', translated from the Greek by [[Barry B. Powell]], [[University of California Press]], 2017, 184 pp.), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXV, no. 1 (18 January 2018), p. 36.</ref> Translation of other than the simplest brief texts requires painstakingly [[close reading]] of the [[source text]] and the draft translation, so as to resolve the ambiguities inherent in [[language]] and thereby to [[asymptotically]] approach the most accurate rendering of the source text.<ref name="Pharaoh 2020">[[Christopher Kasparek]], translator's foreword to [[Bolesław Prus]], ''[[Pharaoh (Prus novel)|Pharaoh]]'', translated from the Polish, with foreword and notes, by Christopher Kasparek, [[Amazon Kindle]] [[e-book]], 2020, ASIN:BO8MDN6CZV.</ref> Part of the ambiguity, for a translator, involves the structure of human language. [[Psychologist]] and [[neural science|neural scientist]] [[Gary Marcus]] notes that "virtually every sentence [that people generate] is [[ambiguity|ambiguous]], often in multiple ways. Our brain is so good at comprehending language that we do not usually notice."<ref>[[Gary Marcus]], "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish artificial intelligence from the natural kind", ''[[Scientific American]]'', vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), p. 63.</ref> An example of linguistic ambiguity is the "pronoun disambiguation problem" ("PDP"): a machine has no way of determining to whom or what a [[pronoun]] in a sentence—such as "he", "she" or "it"—refers.<ref>[[Gary Marcus]], "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish artificial intelligence from the natural kind", ''[[Scientific American]]'', vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), p. 61.</ref> Such disambiguation is not infallible by a human, either. Ambiguity is a concern both to translators and – as the writings of poet and literary critic [[William Empson]] have demonstrated – to [[literary criticism|literary critics]]. Ambiguity may be desirable, indeed essential, in [[poetry]] and [[diplomacy]]; it can be more problematic in ordinary [[prose]].<ref>[[David Bromwich]], "In Praise of Ambiguity" (a review of [[Michael Wood (academic)|Michael Wood]], ''On Empson'', [[Princeton University Press]], 2017), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]''), vol. LXIV, no. 16 (26 October 2017), pp. 50–52.</ref> Individual [[expression (linguistics)|expression]]s – [[word]]s, [[phrase]]s, [[sentence (linguistics)|sentence]]s – are fraught with [[connotation]]s. As Empson demonstrates, any piece of language seems susceptible to "alternative reactions", or as Joseph Conrad once wrote, "No English word has clean edges." All expressions, Conrad thought, carried so many connotations as to be little more than "instruments for exciting blurred emotions."<ref>[[Michael Gorra]], "Corrections of Taste" (review of [[Terry Eagleton]], ''Critical Revolutionaries: Five Critics Who Changed the Way We Read'', Yale University Press, 323 pp.), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIX, no. 15 (6 October 2022), p. 17.</ref> [[Christopher Kasparek]] also cautions that competent translation – analogously to the dictum, in mathematics, of [[Kurt Gödel]]'s [[incompleteness theorems]] – generally requires more information about the subject matter than is present in the actual [[source text]]. Therefore, translation of a text of any complexity typically requires some research on the translator's part.<ref name="Pharaoh 2020"/> A translator faces two contradictory tasks: when translating, to strive for [[omniscience]] concerning the text; and, when reviewing the resulting translation, to adopt the reader's unfamiliarity with it. Analogously, "[i]n the process, the translator is also constantly seesawing between the respective linguistic and cultural features of his two languages."<ref name="Pharaoh 2020"/> Thus, writes Kasparek, "Translating a text of any complexity, like the performing of a musical or dramatic work, involves ''interpretation'': choices must be made, which entails interpretation. [[Bernard Shaw]], aspiring to felicitous understanding of literary works, wrote in the preface to his 1901 volume, ''[[Three Plays for Puritans]]'': 'I would give half a dozen of [[Shakespeare]]'s plays for one of the prefaces he ought to have written.'"<ref name="Pharaoh 2020"/> {{blockquote|It is due to the inescapable necessity of interpretation that – ''pace'' the story about the 3rd century BCE [[Septuagint]] translations of some biblical [[Old Testament]] books from [[Hebrew]] into [[Koine Greek]] – no two translations of a literary work, by different hands or by the same hand at different times, are likely to be identical. As has been observed – by [[Leonardo da Vinci]]? [[Paul Valery]]? [[E.M. Forster]]? [[Pablo Picasso]]? by all of them? – "A work of art is never finished, only abandoned."<ref name="Pharaoh 2020"/>}} Translators may render only parts of the original text, provided that they inform readers of that action. But a translator should not assume the role of [[Censorship|censor]] and surreptitiously delete or [[bowdlerize]] passages merely to please a political or moral interest.<ref name="Billiani, Francesca 2001">Billiani, Francesca (2001)</ref> Translating has served as a school of writing for many an author, much as the copying of masterworks of [[painting]] has schooled many a novice painter.<ref>[[Anka Muhlstein]], "Painters and Writers: When Something New Happens", ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIV, no. 1 (19 January 2017), p. 35.</ref> A translator who can competently render an author's thoughts into the translator's own language, should certainly be able to adequately render, in his own language, any thoughts of his own. Translating (like [[analytic philosophy]]) compels precise analysis of [[language|language element]]s and of their usage. In 1946 the poet [[Ezra Pound]], then at [[St. Elizabeth's Hospital]], in [[Washington, D.C.]], advised a visitor, the 18-year-old beginning poet [[W.S. Merwin]]: "The work of translation is the best teacher you'll ever have."<ref>''[[W.S. Merwin: To Plant a Tree]]'': one-hour documentary shown on [[PBS]].</ref>{{efn|Elsewhere Merwin recalls Pound saying: "[A]t your age you don't have anything to write about. You may think you do, but you don't. So get to work translating. The [[Occitan language|Provençal]] is the real source...."<ref>[[Ange Mlinko]], "Whole Earth Troubador" (review of ''The Essential W.S. Merlin'', edited by [[Michael Wiegers]], Copper Canyon, 338 pp., 2017), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIV, no. 19 (7 December 2017), p. 45.</ref>}} Merwin, translator-poet who took Pound's advice to heart, writes of translation as an "impossible, unfinishable" art.<ref>Merwin's introduction to his 2013 ''Selected Translations'', quoted by [[Ange Mlinko]], "Whole Earth Troubador" (review of ''The Essential W.S. Merlin'', edited by [[Michael Wiegers]], Copper Canyon, 338 pp., 2017), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIV, no. 19 (7 December 2017), p. 45.</ref> Translators, including monks who spread [[Buddhist]] texts in [[East Asia]], and the early modern European translators of the Bible, in the course of their work have shaped the very languages into which they have translated. They have acted as bridges for conveying knowledge between [[culture]]s; and along with ideas, they have imported from the source languages, into their own languages, loanwords and calques of [[grammar|grammatical structures]], [[idiom]]s, and [[vocabulary]]. ===Interpreting=== [[File:Cortez & La Malinche.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.0|[[Hernán Cortés]] and [[La Malinche]] meet [[Moctezuma II]] in [[Tenochtitlan]], 8 November 1519.]] [[File:Lewis and Clark 1954 Issue-3c.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Lewis and Clark Expedition|Lewis and Clark]] and their [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] interpreter, [[Sacagawea]]]] {{Main|Interpreting}} [[Interpreting]] is the facilitation of [[speech communication|oral]] or [[sign language|sign-language]] [[communication]], either simultaneously or consecutively, between two, or among three or more, speakers who are not speaking, or signing, the same language. The term "interpreting," rather than "interpretation," is preferentially used for this activity by Anglophone interpreters and translators, to avoid confusion with other meanings of the word "[[wikt:interpret|interpretation]]." Unlike English, many languages do not employ two separate words to denote the activities of [[writing|written]] and live-communication ([[speech communication|oral]] or [[sign language|sign-language]]) translators.{{efn|For example, in [[Polish language|Polish]], a "translation" is "{{lang|pl|przekład}}" or "{{lang|pl|tłumaczenie}}." Both "translator" and "interpreter" are "{{lang|pl|tłumacz}}." For a time in the 18th century, however, for "translator," some writers used a word, "{{lang|pl|przekładowca}}," that is no longer in use.<ref>[[Edward Balcerzan]], {{lang|pl|Pisarze polscy o sztuce przekładu, 1440–1974: Antologia}} (Polish Writers on the Art of Translation, 1440–1974: an Anthology), 1977, ''passim''.</ref>}} Even English does not always make the distinction, frequently using "translating" as a synonym for "interpreting." Interpreters have sometimes played crucial roles in [[human history]]. A prime example is [[La Malinche]], also known as ''Malintzin'', ''Malinalli'' and ''Doña Marina'', an early-16th-century [[Nahua peoples|Nahua]] woman from the Mexican [[Gulf of Mexico|Gulf Coast]]. As a child she had been sold or given to [[Maya peoples|Maya]] slave-traders from Xicalango, and thus had become bilingual. Subsequently, given along with other women to the invading Spaniards, she became instrumental in the [[Spain|Spanish]] conquest of [[Mexico]], acting as interpreter, adviser, intermediary and lover to [[Hernán Cortés]].<ref>Hugh Thomas, ''Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico'', New York, Simon and Schuster, 1993, pp. 171-72.</ref> [[File:Lin Shu.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Lin Shu]]]] Nearly three centuries later, in the [[United States]], a comparable role as interpreter was played for the [[Lewis and Clark Expedition]] of 1804–6 by [[Sacagawea]]. As a child, the [[Lemhi Shoshone]] woman had been kidnapped by [[Hidatsa]] Indians and thus had become bilingual. Sacagawea facilitated the expedition's traverse of the [[North American continent]] to the [[Pacific Ocean]].<ref>"Sacagawea", ''[[The Encyclopedia Americana]]'', 1986, volume 24, p. 72.</ref> The famous Chinese man of letters [[Lin Shu]] (1852 – 1924), who knew no foreign languages, rendered Western literary classics into Chinese with the help of his friend Wang Shouchang (王壽昌), who had studied in France. Wang interpreted the texts for Lin, who rendered them into Chinese. Lin's first such translation, 巴黎茶花女遺事 (''Past Stories of the Camellia-woman of Paris'' – [[Alexandre Dumas, fils]]'s, ''[[The Lady of the Camellias|La Dame aux Camélias]]''), published in 1899, was an immediate success and was followed by many more translations from the French and the English.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Chen|first1=Weihong|last2=Cheng|first2=Xiaojuan|date=1 June 2014|title=An Analysis of Lin Shu's Translation Activity from the Cultural Perspective|url=http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/tpls/vol04/06/14.pdf|journal=Theory and Practice in Language Studies|volume=4|issue=6|pages=1201–1206|doi=10.4304/tpls.4.6.1201-1206|issn=1799-2591}}</ref> ===Sworn translation=== [[Translating for legal equivalence|Sworn translation]], also called "certified translation," aims at legal equivalence between two documents written in different languages. It is performed by someone authorized to do so by local regulations, which vary widely from country to country. Some countries recognize self-declared competence. Others require the translator to be an official state appointee. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, certain government institutions require that translators be accredited by certain translation institutes or associations in order to be able to carry out certified translations. ===Telephone=== Many commercial services exist that will interpret spoken language via telephone. There is also at least one custom-built mobile device that does the same thing. The device connects users to human interpreters who can translate between English and 180 other languages.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/06/27/186525030/translation-please-hand-held-device-bridges-language-gap |title=Translation, Please: Hand-Held Device Bridges Language Gap |newspaper=NPR|access-date=9 October 2014}}</ref> ===Internet=== Web-based human translation is generally favored by companies and individuals that wish to secure more accurate translations. In view of the frequent inaccuracy of machine translations, human translation remains the most reliable, most accurate form of translation available.<ref>{{Cite news| url=http://www.economist.com/node/15582327?story_id=15582327&source=hptextfeature | newspaper=The Economist | title=The many voices of the web | date=4 March 2010}}</ref> With the recent emergence of translation [[crowdsourcing]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Graham |first=Paul |url=https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/04/mechanical-turkish-ackuna |title=How Ackuna wants to fix language translation by crowdsourcing it | Wired UK |publisher=Wired |access-date=1 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120517232045/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/04/mechanical-turkish-ackuna |archive-date=17 May 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.benzinga.com/press-releases/11/02/p843476/translation-services-usas-crowdsourcing-translator-ackuna-com-raises-th |title=Translation Services USA's Crowdsourcing Translator, Ackuna.com, Raises the Bar for More Accurate Machine Translations |publisher=Benzinga |access-date=1 May 2012}}</ref> [[translation memory]] techniques, and [[internet]] applications,{{citation needed|date=May 2023}} translation agencies have been able to provide on-demand human-translation services to [[Small and medium businesses|business]]es, individuals, and enterprises. While not instantaneous like its machine counterparts such as [[Google Translate]] and [[Babel Fish (website)|Babel Fish]] (now defunct), as of 2010 web-based human translation has been gaining popularity by providing relatively fast, accurate translation of business communications, legal documents, medical records, and [[software localization]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://venturebeat.com/2010/03/26/speaklike-offers-human-powered-translation-for-blogs/ |title=Speaklike offers human-powered translation for blogs |website=VentureBeat |last= Boutin|first=Paul|date=26 March 2010}}</ref> Web-based human translation also appeals to private website users and bloggers.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011100701.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |title=MyGengo Is Mechanical Turk For Translations |first=Serkan |last=Toto |date=11 January 2010}}</ref> Contents of websites are translatable but URLs of websites are not translatable into other languages. Language tools on the internet provide help in understanding text. ===Computer assist=== {{Main|Computer-assisted translation}} Computer-assisted translation (CAT), also called "computer-aided translation," "machine-aided human translation" (MAHT) and "interactive translation," is a form of translation wherein a human translator creates a [[#Source and target texts|target text]] with the assistance of a computer program. The machine supports a human translator. Computer-assisted translation can include standard [[dictionary]] and grammar software. The term, however, normally refers to a range of specialized programs available to the translator, including translation memory, [[terminology]]-management, [[concordancer|concordance]], and alignment programs. These tools speed up and facilitate human translation, but they do not provide translation. The latter is a function of tools known broadly as machine translation. The tools speed up the translation process by assisting the human translator by memorizing or committing translations to a database (translation memory database) so that if the same sentence occurs in the same project or a future project, the content can be reused. This translation reuse leads to cost savings, better consistency and shorter project timelines. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page