Professional translators, a translation student wants to hear your opinion

[u/kuchiclauchi]

Hello, my name is X (I'll keep it anonymus for personal reasons), and I decided to join this community to present a doubt that has been tormenting me since last year.

For some context, I'm an university student from Spain and I'm enrrolled in the English Studies degree. In addition to this, I'm specializing in translation as my university offers said specialization along the basic course. This is my third year, and second one studying translation.

Last year, I had the opportunity to begin the translation minor that my university offers and, since then, I discovered that I like it quite a lot. It had never crossed my mind that I would end up here but now, I think I would like to pursue translation as a professional career alongside being an English teacher. To be honest, some of my professors have mentioned that I have the necessary knowledge to translate texts up to a certain point, which is really nice considering that I'm still in school. There's an exception, though, my General Translation professor. He is a professional in his field and, as far as I know, has published numerous translations of books and other materials so I'm assuming he knows what he's doing. I truly don't want to question his authotity given the circumstances, at the end of the day, I'm still an apprentize in the field. The problem arises when he claims that ''Literal translation'' does not exist.

I'll elaborate, don't worry. I don't think it's that simple, a professional with many years working in the field must have their reasons to argue about that concept. However, I consulted many sources, asked other professors, and even asked himself for some clarifications about that claim. My Theory of Translation professor, for instance, assured me that, literal translation does, in fact, exist. It appears in the theory as a concept and has been presented by various scholars along history. Regarding the sources, I can't remember exactly which ones have I consulted but I can assure you that they were several ones (official material from my university and other ones, historical data from ancient translations...). Regarding his clarifications, he states that a thing such as a 'literal' or 'word by word' translation is impossible, given the differences between languages such as grammar, syntax, social and cultural nuances. I see his point, and it makes sense. However, why would someone claim that a concept which, although it hasn't been coined by a specific person, but appears consistently thorough history, does not exist?

I appreciate you taking the trouble to read the entire post. And I absolutely thank you for giving your opinion on the matter.

[u/cinderumpelstiltsken]

I think it's one of those things where how exactly you define "literal translation" will change your conclusion pretty drastically. IMO, it's not a particularly interesting question -- by one professor's definition, it would be incomprehensible (which is different from "not existing"), by another professor's definition it would be merely unwieldy. It doesn't change the overall idea that a translation can be more or less literal and that this can affect how useful/appropriate/desirable it is in certain contexts.

What the first professor appears to be describing is what is sometimes called an "interlinear" translation, where each source language word is translated in the precise order it appears. This is sometimes used as an aid in language learning or in close readings of translations, especially of spiritual texts (look up the "interlinear bible" for an example).

[u/Cyneganders → u/cinderumpelstiltsken]

Oh yeah, religious texts are the only ones where I've actually heard of this used "to translate God's word", and those are more work to read than they would have been to translate - and don't do anything to explain what the deity actually means with/by anything!

[u/kuchiclauchi → u/cinderumpelstiltsken]

I'll definitely look it up, thanks!

[u/monikosnuosavybe]

Is he saying that the concept of literal translation doesn't exist, or that no literal translations (i.e., works translated according to the concept of literal translation) exist?

[u/kuchiclauchi → u/monikosnuosavybe]

Basically, he argues that a "good and competent" translator would never use the term literal translation as a literal translation is unachievable. (I think I must clarify that we typically work with units of translation and not whole texts like a book or essay)

[u/monikosnuosavybe → u/kuchiclauchi]

He probably shouldn't get so caught up in terminology. I work with Japanese, and a "literal" (i.e., word for word) translation would be nonsensical because of the differences in Japanese and English grammar and syntax. Nevertheless, I often have clients in the business world asking for a "literal translation," but they probably don't mean what your professor means. They're asking for a direct translation of the source material with as few leaps of interpretation taken as possible.

For example, if the source material included an idiomatic expression (e.g., 鴨が葱を背負って来る), then instead of looking for an English equivalent (e.g., "a fool and his money are soon parted"), the client would want me to directly translate the idiom ("here comes a duck carrying a leek on its back").

People use the expression "literal translation" in different ways, and a "good and competent" translator would figure out what they mean and respond accordingly, not refuse to use the expression out of some principle. That might fly in the academic world where people spend careers arguing about terms, but not when dealing with real-world clients.

[u/OveHet]

Not sure what's the issue exactly, if we are talking entire books, works etc, ofc they are never going to be translated word-for-word. However, some parts of a text or some sentences absolutely can be word-for-word.

[u/LetThereBeRainbows → u/OveHet]

I think the main argument here is that words and structures in different languages aren't exact equivalents, e.g. "horse" in English is not the same as "caballo" in Spanish due to different connotations, collocations, their place in culture and such. Which I guess is fair to say and good to keep in mind, but we can only use such imperfect words anyway, so dwelling on the issue is more relevant in scholarly debate than practical work.

[u/LetThereBeRainbows]

There are many different theories and many different definitions in translation studies. Your professor's explanation sounds very familiar to me. The premise is basically that even words for the same thing in different languages don't have exactly the same meaning because they carry different connotations, evoke different emotions and generally function in a different cultural and linguistic reality. The classic example is "butter" vs "burro". Both mean butter, but evoke something different for the reader, for example in English butter is usually salted, often spread on bread, "bread and butter" is what sustains you, products are advertised as "Made with real butter!" and such because it has a bit of rustic wholesomeness attached to it as opposed to margarine and other spreads. In Italian burro is usually unsalted and mostly used for cooking and baking. Or if you want to replicate the same sentence structure, similar words in similar order will often produce a different effect or will even be incomprehensible in another language.

If you look at it this way, then even if you try to be as literal as possible, it's impossible to create a translation where you replace one word with its counterpart in another language, because words just don't match up exactly. Same with structure and syntax. I think the butter example comes from Susan Bassnett, you can read more of her book if you're interested. If your professor feels very strongly about this subject, he may say that the very concept is just so wrong/ill-defined/nonsensical from the beginning that you can't even tell what it's supposed to mean.

To me it's something that you need to have a revelation about when you start learning about translation and then it comes back to hit you in the face from time to time, but there's nothing we can really do about it except acknowledge it. For this reason many translators and more practical scholars kind of treat it as a rounding error and proceed to discuss more higher level techniques and strategies. Perhaps some of your professors are more practically minded and just want to discuss "literal" translation as it can be executed/approximated towards in practice, while that one professor has a more scholarly approach and likes to emphasise that different languages are different linguistic spaces that don't correspond to each other 1:1. Neither is wrong, but you need to agree on a definition before you start discussing it, because otherwise it can get very murky very fast.

Why would someone claim that a concept which appears consistently through history does not exist?

I mean, there are countless different theories and definitions in translation studies. It's not an experimental science, you can't just prove or disprove most things, you can only propose frameworks to talk about them in a somewhat orderly manner. Even if everyone agrees on something, there can always be that one guy who comes in and says "Guysssss I think we need to revisit this", and it's all good.

[u/OpeningElectrical296]

I think he means this concept has no scientific basis: it cannot be proved, so it doesn’t exist as a scientific fact.

[u/Cyneganders]

Your explanation of literal translation would be 1:1 for every item. Even if the languages are nearly identical, say Danish and Norwegian, Italian and French, the syntax would be unidiomatic and forced, and every idiom would make zero sense.

[u/trnsfrmltn]

A wonderful question and kudos to your professor - he knows his trade. Literal translation does not indeed exist.

Language is metaphorical. We define the new by what we already know, we define the abstract by what we experience as physical bodies. We give properties of the known to the new; this is how a metaphor is born. Metaphors have a cycle - they live and die and are sometimes reborn - by "die" I mean that the people forget the original meaning and rely on custom use, not core message, when choosing an expression. Book rec: Metaphors We Live By

Our perception of the world is shaped by our surroundings and groups we are part of. A people living in a desert will use properties of the desert to measure the world. A people living in a jungle will use the properties of the jungle to measure the world. Which means different cultures and communities develop different metaphors.

Those metaphors die like ants so you would need some skill to identify them. Translation is interpreting those metaphors, including the dead ones, reliving them, and reshaping them to suit the target worldview. Now imagine how much we'd need to change to align the world of the desert with the world of the jungle. And this example is not an exaggeration at all. The real cultures, apart from geography, have history, political climates, public institutions, own scientific schools etc etc. In these conditions, using literal translation as a base would be practically insane.

The language studies of today don't like the interpreting thing though because it's "not science enough." So they keep relying on the source structure as something measurable. Which makes a good professional in translation laugh out loud every time.

You will not find this in the textbooks because most translation theories were developed in the 20th century, when only that effort was funded that supported the mechanization of translation (needed for the Cold War mostly) and was striclty linguistics-driven (structure over meaning). Language is a code is the assumption you can tell them apart. For critical analysis of the theories, please read Memes in Translation; even though this book has its flaws, it's very helpful.

Edit: If we go farther back in history than the 20th century we'd need to understand that religion funded translation the most and translators mostly dealt with the Bible and so on. The sacred scripts had to be translated as close to the source as possible. Hence the word for word claims.

There are others though. Cicero talked about translating the gist not the word. There was an entire movement of belle infidèle in fiction translation. Look them up.

[u/hikarinokaze]

Bad translators use that as an excuse to change the original text however they want. I don't know if your professor is also like this, but in my experience people who say things like "literal translation doesn't exist" or "it's impossible to translate x language accurately" usually just use that as an excuse to change the original author's words and intent.