Translation

===Western theory===
[[File:John Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt.jpg|thumb|upright|[[John Dryden]]]]
Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into [[ancient history|antiquity]] and show remarkable continuities. The [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greeks]] distinguished between ''metaphrase'' (literal translation) and ''paraphrase''. This distinction was adopted by English poet and translator [[John Dryden]] (1631–1700), who described translation as the judicious blending of these two modes of phrasing when selecting, in the target language, "counterparts," or [[Dynamic and formal equivalence|equivalents]], for the expressions used in the source language:

{{blockquote|When [words] appear... literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since... what is beautiful in one [language] is often barbarous, nay sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words: 'tis enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.<ref name="The Translator p. 83"/>}}

[[File:Cicero - Musei Capitolini.JPG|thumb|left|upright|[[Cicero]]]]
Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of "imitation", i.e., of adapted translation: "When a painter copies from the life... he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments..."<ref name="Kasparek p. 84"/>

This general formulation of the central concept of translation—[[Dynamic and formal equivalence|equivalence]]—is as adequate as any that has been proposed since [[Cicero]] and [[Horace]], who, in 1st-century-BCE [[Ancient Rome|Rome]], famously and literally cautioned against translating "word for word" ({{lang|la|verbum pro verbo}}).<ref name="Kasparek p. 84"/>

Despite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual ''practice'' of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. Except for some extreme metaphrasers in the early Christian period and the [[Middle Ages]], and adapters in various periods (especially pre-Classical Rome, and the 18th century), translators have generally shown prudent flexibility in seeking [[Dynamic and formal equivalence|equivalents]]—"literal" where possible, paraphrastic where necessary—for the original [[meaning (linguistics)|meaning]] and other crucial "values" (e.g., [[Style (fiction)|style]], [[verse form]], concordance with musical accompaniment or, in films, with speech [[Manner of articulation|articulatory]] movements) as determined from context.<ref name="Kasparek p. 84"/>

[[File:Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds 2.png|thumb|upright|[[Samuel Johnson]]]]
In general, translators have sought to preserve the [[Context (language use)|context]] itself by reproducing the original order of [[sememe]]s, and hence [[word order]]<ref>[[Lydia Davis]], "Eleven Pleasures of Translating", ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXIII, no. 19 (8 December 2016), pp.&nbsp;22–24. "I like to reproduce the word order, and the order of ideas, of the original [text] whenever possible. [p. 22] [T]ranslation is, eternally, a compromise. You settle for the best you can do rather than achieving perfection, though there is the occasional perfect solution [to the problem of finding an equivalent expression in the target language]." (p.&nbsp;23.)</ref>—when necessary, reinterpreting the actual [[grammar|grammatical]] structure, for example, by shifting from [[active voice|active]] to [[passive voice]], or ''vice versa''. The grammatical differences between "fixed-word-order" [[language]]s<ref>Typically, [[analytic language]]s.</ref> (e.g. English, [[French language|French]], [[German language|German]]) and "free-word-order" languages<ref>Typically, [[synthetic language]]s.</ref> (e.g., [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Latin]], [[Polish language|Polish]], [[Russian language|Russian]]) have been no impediment in this regard.<ref name="Kasparek p. 84"/> The particular syntax (sentence-structure) characteristics of a text's source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language.
[[File:Martin Luther, 1529.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Martin Luther]]]]
When a target language has lacked [[terminology|term]]s that are found in a source language, translators have borrowed those terms, thereby enriching the target language. Thanks in great measure to the exchange of calques and loanwords between languages, and to their importation from other languages, there are few [[concept]]s that are "[[untranslatability|untranslatable]]" among the modern European languages.<ref name="Kasparek p. 84"/> A greater problem, however, is translating terms relating to cultural concepts that have no equivalent in the target language.<ref>Some examples of this are described in the article, [http://www.noproblem.no/translate.html "Translating the 17th of May into English and other horror stories"], retrieved 15 April 2010.</ref> For full comprehension, such situations require the provision of a [[gloss (annotation)#In linguistics|gloss]].

Generally, the greater the contact and exchange that have existed between two languages, or between those languages and a third one, the greater is the ratio of [[metaphrase]] to [[paraphrase]] that may be used in translating among them. However, due to shifts in [[ecological niche]]s of words, a common [[etymology]] is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English ''actual'' should not be confused with the [[cognate]] French {{lang|fr|actuel}} ("present", "current"), the Polish {{lang|pl|aktualny}} ("present", "current," "topical", "timely", "feasible"),<ref name="Kasparek p. 85">Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 85.</ref> the Swedish ''aktuell'' ("topical", "presently of importance"), the Russian {{lang|ru|актуальный}} ("urgent", "topical") or the Dutch ''actueel'' ("current").

The translator's role as a bridge for "carrying across" values between cultures has been discussed at least since [[Terence]], the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translator's role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, and so has also been compared to that of an [[artist]]. The main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as [[Cicero]]. Dryden observed that "Translation is a type of drawing after life..." Comparison of the translator with a musician or actor goes back at least to [[Samuel Johnson]]'s remark about [[Alexander Pope]] playing [[Homer]] on a [[flageolet]], while Homer himself used a [[bassoon]].<ref name="Kasparek p. 85"/>

[[File:Herder by Kügelgen.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Johann Gottfried Herder]]]]
In the 13th century, [[Roger Bacon]] wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both [[language]]s, as well as the [[science]] that he is to translate; and finding that few translators did, he wanted to do away with translation and translators altogether.<ref>Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", pp. 85-86.</ref>

[[File:Per Krafft - Portrait of Bishop Ignacy Krasicki - MNK II-a-671 - National Museum Kraków.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|[[Ignacy Krasicki]]]]
The translator of the [[Bible]] into German, [[Martin Luther]] (1483–1546), is credited with being the first European to posit that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language. L.G. Kelly states that since [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] in the 18th century, "it has been axiomatic" that one translates only toward his own language.<ref>L.G. Kelly, cited in Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 86.</ref>

Compounding the demands on the translator is the fact that no [[dictionary]] or [[thesaurus]] can ever be a fully adequate guide in translating. The Scottish historian [[Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee|Alexander Tytler]], in his ''Essay on the Principles of Translation'' (1790), emphasized that assiduous reading is a more comprehensive guide to a language than are dictionaries. The same point, but also including listening to the [[spoken language|''spoken'' language]], had earlier, in 1783, been made by the Polish poet and [[grammar]]ian [[Onufry Kopczyński]].<ref name="Kasparek p. 86">Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 86.</ref>

The translator's special role in society is described in a posthumous 1803 essay by "Poland's [[La Fontaine]]", the Roman Catholic [[Primate of Poland]], poet, [[Encyclopedia|encyclopedist]], [[Novelist|author]] of the first Polish novel, and translator from French and Greek, [[Ignacy Krasicki]]:

{{blockquote|[T]ranslation... is in fact an art both estimable and very difficult, and therefore is not the labor and portion of common minds; [it] should be [practiced] by those who are themselves capable of being actors, when they see greater use in translating the works of others than in their own works, and hold higher than their own glory the service that they render their country.<ref>Cited by Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", p. 87, from [[Ignacy Krasicki]], {{lang|pl|"O tłumaczeniu ksiąg"}} ("On Translating Books"), in {{lang|pl|Dzieła wierszem i prozą}} (Works in Verse and Prose), 1803, reprinted in [[Edward Balcerzan]], ed., {{lang|pl|Pisarze polscy o sztuce przekładu, 1440–1974: Antologia}} (Polish Writers on the Art of Translation, 1440–1974: an Anthology), p. 79.</ref>}}
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