Translation

Translation is the communication and interpretation of a fixed text (usually written) from the original language of the source text into the target language. Interpreting is often identified with translation under this term. The important difference between translation and interpreting is that in translation the source text is fixed and can therefore be repeatedly consulted, whilst the source text for interpreting is not fixed (as it is orally communicated).

History

The origins of language around 100,000 years ago and writing around 5000 years ago form the basis for the development of translation. Famous translations often serve as reference points for tracing the course of history. Little is known about the history of translation in cultures outside of Europe, e.g. in the Mediterranean. Similarly, the history of interpreting has not been extensively researched, although interpreting certainly outdates translation, with the exchange of oral information holding greater importance in the past.

One of the first instances of translation is from 247 BC when the Septuagint was written, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, which was carried out by 72 translators in 72 days. The inscription on the Rosetta stone, a hieratical decree dated at around 196 BC, is written in two languages and three different scripts: Egyptian in demotic and hieroglyphic script as well as Greek. This multilingual document helped to decipher hierogyphics. Translations have often played a important role in the communication of knowledge between different peoples. It is possible to trace how information flowed by looking at certain periods where numerous translations were being carried out. Ancient Rome was a centre of translation activity, where mainly Greek literature was translated into Latin. Theoretical scriptures about literature and rhetoric have been passed down from this time, which anticipate current debate some centuries later about the values of word-for-word or looser translation.

A prominent figure in the history of translation is Hieronymus (ca.331-429 AD), who was later canonised and is nowadays considered the patron saint of translators. Hieronymus was instructed by Pope Damascus I to complete a translation of the Bible into Latin based on recognised Greek texts. He later translated the Old Testament from Hebrew. For a long time, his Latin version of Bible was the authoratative text for the Roman Catholic church. In the 9th and 10th century Baghdad became another focal point for translation. Scientific works were translated from Greek into Arabic, namely in the House of Wisdom. These translations played an important role in the development of science in Medieval Europe, as it formed the basis for a greater centre of translation, the so-called "Toledo School of translation". In 12th and 13th century texts of Arabic and Greek origin were translated into Latin, and later into Spanish. The Renaissance period, which began in Italy in 14th century, was marked by its renewed and increased interest in ancient texts, leading to an upsurge in translation, which together with the increased spread of written information thanks to the development of the printing process carried on into the Reformation period. Many reformers were also translators of the Bible, of whom the most well-known in the German speaking world in certainly Martin Luther. Luther argued that the Bible's content should be printed in the German language so that it could be understood by everybody: in vernacular German, rather than overly sophisticated German, complicated by trying to conform to the grammatical structures of the original language. In his "letter from interpreters" he explains his concept of translation. The Lutherian Bible was of great significance to the development and above all to the standardisation of the German language.

Another pivotal epoch for translation in the German speaking world was the Romantic period. Literary translations from different European languages into German played an important role, including the Schlegel-Tiecksche Shakespeare translation still read today. During the Romantic period many intellectuals concerned themselves with the theories behind translation, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt.

The 20th century has witnessed an explosion in specialised translation thanks to the development of international relations as well as an increase in scientific theory, forming the basis for the training of translators and interpreters today. Older translation theories tend towards the opinion that the translator should consider as many possible aspects of the source text (e.g. metaphors and comparisons, patterns of emphasis and thematic progression, sentence structure, linguistic variants such as dialect, socialect, etc.). More recent theories, on the other hand, call for the various aspects of the source text to viewed with differing priority so that the translation meets the specified demands of the target text reader. These demands are influenced by factors external to the text, such as time and place, intention of the translator, exceptions of the translation's recipient, conventions for particular texts in the target language and culture etc.

Problems of translation

Equivalence
The main issue in translation is that of a translation's equivalence. The target text should both recoginisably relate to the source text and meet the demands of the reader of the target text. The translation should either bring the reader closer to the characteristics of the original culture and language or he should be provided with a text that fufils its purpose in the target culture and language. In literary translation, for example, a particular grammatical structure in the source language can characterise the style of the target text; a word-for-word translation that deviates dramatically from the regular usage and style of the target language will jar with the reader. A translation is, therefore, judged both by how faithfully it renders the meaning of the source text, without adding to or subtracting from it and by how transparently it appears to a native speaker of the target language to have been written in that language and whether it conforms to the language's grammatical, syntactic and idiomatic conventions.

Subjectivity
Several subjective factors affect the translation process:

the translator's choice between variants of the target text
the translator's sensitivity to cultural and social backrgounds
the reception and interpretation of the source text (hermeneutics)
different methodical and technical preliminary decisions for the analysis and evaluation process
the translator's opinion (with regard to the function, purpose and strategy of the translation)

Philosophical implications

Translation is subject to many philosophical issues, including hermeneutics, the philosophy of language and epistemology. Hermeneutics tackles the phenomenon of translation as an experience of distance and otherness. This means a translation should take into account certain hermeneutic concerns, such as looking at the history and tradition of a text in the source language. A simple transfer of the text's content from the source to the target language is not enough.

The translator must decide where he will adapt the source text so it approximates the target language, and thereby attempt to disguise the 'foreignness' of the text, or whether he will try to reflect this foreign language and context by means of the target language. Both methods are legitimate, deciding which version is 'closer' to the original cannot be by simply referring back to the original text.

In the question of 'translatability', tranferring the content of a text, the philosopher Quine argued that it is impossible to objectively rank the many possible variations of a translation and that translation of a language is a question of experience. At the very least, it is possible to imbue the translation with the explicit meaning of the source text, if not always with the subjective cultural and/or emotional connotations that the phrase in the source language may suggest. In principle, everything can be expressed and translated into natural human speech. When there are no lexeme in the target language for particular terms or concepts, they can be expressed in another way, by means of morphologic structures, changing the sentence structure or verb and noun positionning, paraphrasing, and other methods.

These concerns of language, meaning and word sense contribute to the difficulties in translation, as often debated in the philosophy of language.

Literary translation
Literary translation is probably the most well-known and most widely debated form of translation, although it only constitutes a small part of the translation market. In comparison to translators of other specialist texts, literary translators tend to earn considerably less, meaning that in the most cases this career choice is justified by a personal enthusiasm for a certain language and culture. Literary translators and translators of religious or historic texts often adhere to the source as much as possible. Translation is often complicated by the form of the text and other stylistic devices such as slang and metaphor etc. This means that translators often 'stretch' the boundaries of the target language to produce an unidiomatic text. Similarly, a literary translator may wish to adopt words or expressions from the source language to make reference to the original context and colour of the text.

Literary translations play a important role in intercultural exchange, the image of other cultures in a certain speaking world and the development of national culture and identity. A well-known example of this concern with foreign literature is the German Romantic era, during which the works of many European writers, such as Shakespeare and Cervantes were translated by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Dorothea Tieck and Ludwig Tieck, translations which are still used today.

Computer-assisted and machine translation
Machine translation is a procedure, which carries out automatic translations by means of a computer programme, without human intervention. However, a computer-assisted translation can never match the quality of a translation carried out by a human. There are, nonetheless, many useful technical resources for translators, for example terminology databanks and translation memory systems, which automatically recognise phrasing that has already been translated and saved to memory. The internet can also be a useful tool for checking whether the phrasing of particular specialist terms exists in and is sensitive to the target language.