More Paragraphs on Translation

by Peter Newmark

Peter Newmark's fifth book on translation continues his series of articles in The Linguist. He is as much concerned with the minutiae of translation ― capitalisation, square brackets, dashes ― as with its perennial major truth, beauty, morality, logic, language convergence, linguistic differences and culture. New occupations and technologies throw up a corresponding new number of translation topics and, again, a large number of translation examples in a number of languages match these topics.

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1998

About the author

He was one of the main figures in the founding of Translation Studies in the English-speaking world in twentieth century. He was also very influential in the Spanish-speaking world.

He is widely read through a series of accessible and occasionally polemical works: A Textbook of Translation (1988), Paragraphs on Translation (1989), About Translation (1991), More Paragraphs on Translation (1998).

He was associated with the founding and development of the Centre for Translation Studies at Surrey. He was chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Specialised Translation. He also wrote "Translation Now" bimonthly for The Linguist and was an Editorial Board Member of the Institute of Linguists.

Reviews

[Melvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

More useful insights on specific translation issues with none of the tedious abstractions that dog so much translation theory. Lots of useful comments for the translation teacher too.

Just a few examples:

Componential Analysis: Register
The register of a text can sometimes be preserved by using componential analysis. Thus for ‘un bond’, a 'sharp rise' rather than 'a leap' or 'a jump'.

Comedy
The translation fails if the spectators do not laugh,

Sammeltrieb. The jargon terms are 'collectionism' and 'syllogomania', but I preferred 'the urge to hoard'.

Bezugsperson. 'The person one relates to'. An English coinage is desirable.


The Singularly Emphatic Tongue
Is English the only language that distinguishes 'one' from 'a': (except for Turkish), leading to common mistakes or ambiguities among translators, and that has emphatic present and past tenses (do love, did love), all three features often neglected by translators?

Make them work
Why not make the second readership do its own homework, which the first readership had to do?
Why hand out everything on a plate?

Gushy style - Faded Metaphors
In reporting style, English tends to be more matter of fact than French: l'aube de ce siècle: 'the beginning of the century' (not 'dawn'); les fidèles du parti: the party's supporters ('party faithful' is a gushier style).

Faithfulness
Parks states: 'Faithfulness is by no means a dull thing, but a dynamic process that requires infinite sensibility and resourcefulness'. Nothing about translation has ever needed saying so much as that.

Colloquial Language
The more colloquial or idiomatic a source language text, the more it is likely to diverge from literal translation in the target language.
Incidentally, that's why many guide books are so risible, and give literal translation a bad name.

Repetition
It is sometimes useful to strengthen the translation of long and complicated sentences by repeating a key-noun. For example:

Le PCF ne veut pas démordre d'un objectif de travail stable, devenu irréaliste parce qu'inaccessible . . .'
The French Communist Party refuses to abandon its goal of secure employment, a goal that has become unrealistic since it is inaccessible.'

Translation the Great Impersonation
Translation looked at in one way is based on the deception that one is pretending to be someone one is not -- consciously in literary translation,
implicitly in non-literature.