الرئيسية
من طرف 
]What is Translation
The word translation itself is the product of combining two Latin words
Trans which means across
And lat which means to carry
]Therefore the word translate meaning “to carry across”, which is exactly what you do while translating “you carry the words across from one language to another language
The formal definition of translation is this:a written communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written communication in a first language
In the translation process we have two key elements
SL
Subject Language
Being the original language you’re translating from
TL
Target Language
Being the second language you’re translating toProblems you’ll encounter as a translator
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Cultural specific terms
In every culture there are some unique terms which can’t be translated for the lack of synonymous words or even close words, like the word
الزكاة
in the Islamic and Arabic culture, which proven to be challenging to translate, for there is no similar word or act in the western culture-assuming we want to translate from Arabic to English-so, they came up with an interesting solution for this kind of unique terms called “Transliteration”
Transliterationis a way to deal with the unique cultural terms so they would be readable in foreign languages, what you do in transliteration is this
You take a unique word like
الزكاة
in our language-this being Arabic to English case as we mentioned before-and write it down in English letters, you flag it with a number-or any other mark for that matter- , and then you explain it in the footnote of the page; the outcome will be something like this
Zakat* is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, which the one who denies them is not considered a Muslimthis being the passage)
____________________________________________.
Zakat is the third of the five pillars of Islam and it refers to spending a fixed portion of one’s wealth for the poor, or…or…... or(this being the footnote…
Needles to say we use transliteration a lot, and especially with names
Environment and it influence
People usually use expressions inspired by their environment in their day-to-day life, expressions if you translated literally might not have the same meaning or the sought for impact
For exampleconditions like freeze and warm differ in ways you might never think of, like when we use a phrase like this in our language as an expression of relief
لقد اثلجت صدري بهذا الخبر
In short that means its good news that you just heard, but if you translate it literally it will be something like this “you’ve frozen my chest with this news”!!?? Well, you definitely don’t want to say that in public, because it sounds absolutely stupid
The reason we used the term “Frozen” is because we live in a hot environment most of the year, making “Cold” days something we look forward to, hence “Frozen = Relief”!. But, that’s just in our side of the world, and specially the Middle East. In the other hand, people in countries like Russia suffer from the fiercely cold weather, so talking to them about “Frozen” things won’t exactly make them happy; so, what can we do in situations like this?
What we do is this; we look at what’s beyond the words, we look for the real meaning, and pass that meaning to the receiver, confused? Well, it’s not that hard, in our little example earlier e mentioned that we used the phrase” You’ve frozen….” As an expression of relief because we think of “Frozen” as a good thing, so what we need to do now, is to express the same feeling-which is relief- in a terms that people in cold areas can accept (needles to say that the majority if English speakers live in cold places) so, instead of just literally translating it, we rephrase it, and we say
You warmed my heart with this news
Now this has the same meaning as the original phrase, and stands -in away or another-for relief
***
Idioms
.
Idioms are specific expressions which are familiar to the native speakers of a language. Idioms usually never get used in formal writings such as academic writing for a bunch of reasons
dioms are informal- they are more typical of speech
.
Idioms [/size]are culture-specific- they may not be understood by all readers
Idioms[/size] interfere with clear communication- academic ideas are best presented directly and transparently.
here you can find a useful information regarding Idioms
Figures Of Speech
some examples
Once in a blue moon
It’s an expression of rarity
To bite the hand that feeds the one
As to say “someone is ungrateful
He has a finger in every pie
Stands for curiosity, used to describe the man who can’t just let the people be, always looking for something, always asking around, knows something about every one, in short, the kind of guy you don’t want to be
The walls have ears
It simply means
الجدران لها اذانٍ!!
***
The context
The context is a major issue when it comes to translating, because many words have various meanings depending on the context. The different meanings of the same word are called the Semantic range of the word, some words have a small semantic range and others have a large one…so, the context really is a matter of a great concern
Now, if we take a word like (facility) as an example, and put in three different sentences...We can see how much the context really matters in terms of the semantic rang
:
AShe has a great facility in learning languages
Facility here means the ability too learn without any difficulties, translation will be
بامكانها ان تتعلم اللغات بيسر بالغ.
BThe most important facility of traveling now days is traveling by plane
Facility here means: Mean, as in “the most important mean of traveling….”, translating will be
اهم وسيلة للسفر هذه الأيام, هي السفر بالطائرة.
The radar facilities in Cairo airport are periodically updated to cope with the increasing volume of traffic
Facility here means: Building
منشأة او مرفق
, although the Doctor who was giving this lecture somehow insisted-for some strange reason-that it means: Device
Abbreviations
Abbreviations can and will give you serious headaches, for you’ll never what they stand for half the time, and when you look them up, you’ll get more confused…this assuming you’re a common guy like me
SPCA
SPCC
ESL: English as a second language
EFL: English as a foreign language
GATT
FAO
Once in a blue moon
It’s an expression of rarity
To bite the hand that feeds the one
As to say “someone is ungrateful
He has a finger in every pie
Stands for curiosity, used to describe the man who can’t just let the people be, always looking for something, always asking around, knows something about every one, in short, the kind of guy you don’t want to be
The walls have ears
It simply means
الجدران لها اذانٍ!!
***
The context
The context is a major issue when it comes to translating, because many words have various meanings depending on the context. The different meanings of the same word are called the Semantic range of the word, some words have a small semantic range and others have a large one…so, the context really is a matter of a great concern
Now, if we take a word like (facility) as an example, and put in three different sentences...We can see how much the context really matters in terms of the semantic rang
:
AShe has a great facility in learning languages
Facility here means the ability too learn without any difficulties, translation will be
بامكانها ان تتعلم اللغات بيسر بالغ.
BThe most important facility of traveling now days is traveling by plane
Facility here means: Mean, as in “the most important mean of traveling….”, translating will be
اهم وسيلة للسفر هذه الأيام, هي السفر بالطائرة.
The radar facilities in Cairo airport are periodically updated to cope with the increasing volume of traffic
Facility here means: Building
منشأة او مرفق
, although the Doctor who was giving this lecture somehow insisted-for some strange reason-that it means: Device
Abbreviations
Abbreviations can and will give you serious headaches, for you’ll never what they stand for half the time, and when you look them up, you’ll get more confused…this assuming you’re a common guy like me
SPCA
SPCC
ESL: English as a second language
EFL: English as a foreign language
GATT
FAO
منقول للفائدة للجميع
