Literal Translation: Advantages and Disadvantages

Specialized translation plays significant role in transferring knowledge in various academic fields. It is the translation in certain academic discipline, such as press, economy, law, literary and sciences. Every academic discipline has its own language, terms and style. This paper has aimed to investigate the difficulties of translating specialized texts for the novice translator and how to overcome these difficulties. The paper has used analytical descriptive approach and chosen the test to collect the data. The test has been distributed to (13) first level master students in the University of Khartoum. The most important results of the study were: The performance of the novice translators in rendering specialized text was weak by 46.15%, middle by 42.32%. The students lack linguistic skills, knowledge and experience were weak by 65.38 % and middle by 30.76 %. The study has recommended the necessity of training of the new translators to render specialized translation. Also the new translator has to be equipped with knowledge and experience to overcome different specialized translation problems. The study also has recommended avoiding literal translation so as translation looks natural (the target readers not feel it is translation). The study has suggested further researches in how to deal with the new terms, the written translation strategies and specialized translation.

Over decades, there used to be a number of studies on Legal translation since it was one of the most challenging issues for translators and it still a critical and authoritative translation produced by legal bodies. Actually, translating legal texts might raise some problems in translation pertaining to the differences between the Source and Target Texts. Thus, it can result in a certain amount of ambiguity with respect to the legal texts, as it belongs to people‟s beliefs and cultures. This study investigates the quality of the translated text from Arabic into English. Hence, the focus is on the changes of the message in the translation process that is attributable to functional & verbal equivalence in Arabic and English as well. The study will rely on Baker‟s theory (1992) to examine whether the semantic changes affect the quality of the translated message in terms of equivalence, along with Newmark methods (1988) in translation. The study will analyse as well five different forms of marriage contracts translated by different native translators in the Arabic as a source language and their correspondence into English as a target language, in order to identify the cultural and linguistic equivalence by using functional comparisons between the Arabic and English legal systems.

2017

This research aims to compare the translation techniques used by professional translators and translation learners in translating an essay and the researcher compares the resulted naturalness. The data sources were the English version and the Indonesian translations of an essay entitled Women in Gold. The essay was translated into Indonesian by three professional translators and fifteen translation learners (English students of Jendral Sudirman University). The data were collected by note taking techniques, then were analyzed by using content analysis techniques. Twelve readers as the raters were asked to rate the naturalness of the translated essays. The results show that there are thirteen techniques used by the translation learners and twelve techniques used by professional translators. The most frequent technique used by the translation learners is literal translation (27.45%), followed by established equivalent (21%), and reduction (9.80%). Those used by the professional transl...

This paper sheds light on the impediments of translation and on the strategies that should be followed for clarity of intent. It focuses on basic prospects of linguistic, lexical, and cultural problems. The paper tackles the ambiguity some new learners might fall with during translation. It exposes models of Arabic sentences, expressions and proverbs to English and back for a precise translation. The objective of this work is to avoid some peculiarities which are dealt with as defects in both academic and non-academic fields of translation. This paper is, therefore, an attempt to expound these problems so the translator can aware of the lacunae which might go unseen in the process of translation. It is also to seek which meaning is possibly intended by the writer based on, not a customary translation, however, diversity of times and attitudes as well. To ease the function to the foreign speakers and to make this work more attainable, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions are considered whenever necessary.

Translation techniques are never getting old; translation is a classic method in the process of learning languages. The trigger under personal motto that NOT WORDS, BUT MEANING led to write this paper and we are also fully aware that people understand speeches, but not WORDS. This study investigates the use of translation method, technique, and structure in learning any languages (particularly Mongolian to English vice versa) by focusing on specialized or professional translations. The objectives of this study are: i. to try to introduce systematic approaches how to translate from source language to the targeted one, why the translation is playing in main role in languages, how the meanings are shown by words structurally and grammatically, ii. To give more simple ideas on grammatical structure and lexical families for translating materials tailored to the communication needs of students, being passionate for translations at the universities by combining cultural and language differences based on contrastive and comparative, parallel linguistic researches on translation. For this purpose, as the researcher and author of this academic paper, this is aimed for applying much easier and simpler ways to the students, beginner for sophisticated translations; so that instructors and learners at the universities may understand well on creating own much optimal translations. In general understanding of translations, this is a process of conveying the source meaning to the targeted language with the same ideas as informed. Certainly for translation, we need to have excellent knowledge of grammars, lexical families (word choice), sentence structures, order of context, and so forth, however, mother language is always fundamental influence to translate any speeches or documents. Hence, this academic paper is based on authentic cases and translation barriers of students at universities, targeting on how to have systematic approaches on written translations.

Article, 2021

Cultural items are part and parcel of any culture and their translation is one of the most difficult tasks a translator may encounter. This research paper attempts to evaluate the translation of short stories shedding light on some problematic areas of literary translation (i.e., metaphors, idioms, irony, etc.) that play a significant role in characterizing a literary text. It also aims to identify the strategies applied by the translator in rendering such problematic areas into the TL with evaluative commentaries. The comparative descriptive method was followed. The 20 story translations were randomly selected out of 40 Yemeni short stories done by Dr. Shirin Mohammed. Researchers evaluated the translation using the triangulation method. First, the problems were identified through a qualitative analytical comparison of the ST to the TT. Then, frequencies and percentages were quantitatively used to determine the size of each translation strategy adopted by the translator (literal translation, free translation, translation by Paraphrasing, translation by Omission, Transliteration) in relation to the translation of literary problem type (metaphors, idioms, proverbs, irony, religious expressions, cultural-specific lexical items, illusion). Results show that the most three problematic areas are idioms, religious expressions, and cultural-specific lexical items respectively. On the other hand, the less problematic areas are metaphors and allusions with the same rank, irony, and proverbs respectively. In addition, the most frequently used strategy is literal translation, followed by paraphrasing, omission, free translation, and transliteration. The strategic-problem tactic of the translator shows ST is mostly rendered word-for-word into the TT which demonstrates how the translator is stuck to the ST lexis. Ineffective and inadequate uses of the strategy of omission result in an unnecessary exclusion of some idioms and religious expressions. Although transliteration endows the TT with local colour and atmosphere, it hampers the TT reader's comprehension when it is used without adding explanatory notes. Occasionally, the translator fails to achieve comprehension at the ST level and understand the ST intended message. Therefore, the outcome is a mistranslation. However, the use of translation by paraphrasing and free translation establish bridges of effectiveness and acceptability between the ST and TT.

SIGEH ELT : Journal of Literature and Linguistics

This article concerns on the translation techniques based on the emphasis of language, source and target. This article is conducted with qualitative reserch design by using library study and review of literature. This article shows that the emphasis in translation, whether source langauge or target language has suitable technique in transfering the idea of source text. This article shows that source language emphasis closely relates to word level equivalence that might be assisted by machine translation or fully exploring human capital of thinking. Meanwhile, the target language emphasis closely relates to sense of language notions which focus on readable and acceptable aspect of translation product.

Translation is of an absolute necessity in today's world. Robinson (1997) states that the study of translation is an integral part of intercultural relations and of conveying scientific and technological knowledge. He further mentions that " translators need to be able to process linguistic materials quickly and efficiently; but they also need to be able to recognize problem areas and to slow down to solve them in complex analytical ways " (p. 2). This study is an attempt to explore and evaluate an oblique translation of a text from English into Persian to find the most frequent translation strategy. To reach the goal of the study, the researchers selected one hundred and ten sentences of an original English text which had been translated freely at random and compared them with their Persian counterparts. The findings of the study indicated that Persian translator used equivalent strategy with the highest percentage (45%) in the translated corpus. After that, modulation, and transposition had the highest percentages respectively.

English Journal Literacy Utama, 2020

The aim of the study is to find out the type of translation method that the college students use most in translating a text from English into Indonesia, and challenges that the college students face in translating the material. The subject of this research takes place in one College in Cimahi. The participants of this study are 10 college students who will translate a text from English into Indonesian. The college students translation method in translating a text from English into Indonesian are the research object. The data collection techniques used in this study involved doing the test, and interview. This research reveals that (1) the students use Literal translation as the method in translating a descriptive text as the most used translation method is Literal Translation that reached 69.4% as there are 125 sentences that are indicated as the Literal Translation Method out of 180 sentences of total. (2) The challenges of students that face in translating a descriptive text...

Human beings live in a social world and interaction is at the heart of human society with language being the tool for this interaction and communication. In a world marked by globalization and global communication, there is a deeply-felt need for mutual understanding among people of diverse cultures and languages. In the absence of a common universal language for all, this very need is met by translation. Translation plays a fundamental role in exchanging views and information between languages. Thus, translation coexists with communication and language, and various societies need translation for communication purposes. This article aims at providing a short background of the translation studies, theories and areas, as well as a discussion on the current issues and future perspectives. Meanwhile, the necessity of teaching translation and integrating it into school program is discussed. It is hoped that the reader will familiarize himself with a short but comprehensive view of translation and current issues of interest in translation.