One
widely-accepted list of translation techniques is outlined briefly below.
1.
Borrowing
This
means taking words straight into another language. Borrowed terms often pass
into general usage, for example in the fields of technology
("software") and culture ("punk"). Borrowing can be for
different reasons, with the examples below being taken from usage rather than
translated texts:
The
target language has no (generally used) equivalent. For example, the first
man-made satellites were Soviet, so for a time they were known in English as
"sputniks".
The
source language word sounds "better" (more specific, fashionable,
exotic or just accepted), even though it can be translated. For example,
Spanish IT is full or terms like "soft [ware]", and Spanish
accountants talk of "overheads", even though these terms can be
translated into Spanish.
to
retain some "feel" of the source language. For example, from a recent
issue of The Guardian newspaper: "Madrileños are surprisingly
unworldly."
2.
Calque
This
is a literal translation at phrase level. Sometimes calques work, sometimes
they don't. You often see them in specialized, internationalized fields such as
quality assurance (aseguramiento de calidad, assurance qualité,
Qualitätssicherung...).
3.
Literal Translation
Just
what it says - "El equipo está trabajando para acabar el informe" -
"The team is working to finish the report". Again, sometimes it works
and sometimes it doesn't. For example, the Spanish sentence above could not be
translated into French or German in the same way - you would have to use
technique no. 4...
4.
Transposition
This
is the mechanical process whereby parts of speech "play musical
chairs" (Fawcett's analogy) when they are translated. Grammatical
structures are not often identical in different languages. "She likes
swimming" translates as "Le gusta nadar" (not
"nadando") - or in German, "Sie schwimmt gern", because
gerunds and infinitives work in different ways in English and Spanish, and
German is German (bringing in an adverb to complicate matters). Transposition is
often used between English and Spanish because of the preferred position of the
verb in the sentence: English wants the verb up near the front; Spanish can
have it closer to the end.
5.
Modulation
Now
we're getting clever. Slightly more abstract than transposition, this consists
of using a phrase that is different in the source and target languages to
convey the same idea - "Te lo dejo" - "You can have it".
6.
Reformulation (sometimes known as équivalence)
Here
you have to express something in a completely different way, for example when
translating idioms or, even harder, advertising slogans. The process is
creative, but not always easy. Would you have given the name Sonrisas y
lágrimas to the film The Sound of Music in Spanish?
7.
Adaptation
Here
something specific to the source language culture is expressed in a totally
different way that is familiar or appropriate to the target language culture.
Sometimes it is valid, and sometimes it is problematic, to say the least.
Should a restaurant menu in a Spanish tourist resort translate
"pincho" as "kebab" in English? Should a French text
talking about Belgian jokes be translated into English as talking about Irish
jokes (always assuming it should be translated at all)? We will return to these
problems of referentiality below.
8.
Compensation
Another
model describes a technique known as compensation. This is a rather amorphous
term, but in general terms it can be used where something cannot be translated
from source to target language, and the meaning that is lost in the immediate
translation is expressed somewhere else in the TT. Fawcett defines it as:
"...making good in one part of the text something that could not be
translated in another". One example given by Fawcett is the problem of
translating nuances of formality from languages which use forms such as tu and
usted (tu/vous, du/Sie, etc.) into English which only has 'you', and expresses
degrees of formality in different ways. If you want to read more, look at
Fawcett 1997:31-33.